The Christian Fantasy Review

I am glad for the redefinition of direction for the blog, and hope it will be very useful to readers looking for this type of work.

Why are there only 10 books reviewed? That seems like a low number to me, for a site that has been around since 2006. The site accepts submissions of books in the genre from authors. Perhaps authors don’t know about the site, or there aren’t enough reviewers. I would love to see more books reviewed here. I would also love to see the book cover links contain more information for the reader before clicking over to the review, such as target age-range (young adult, adult) and sub-genre (horror, science-fiction, high fantasy, etc.) .

A Lost Genre blog post on 10-12-2006 posted by Steve Rice provides some guidelines to help wary readers identify works from the dark side. Rice suggests avoiding a work if it contains 1)detailed instructions on how to do witchcraft, or 2) preaches a false gospel, or if it glamorizes witchcraft or psychic powers. “Tolkien and Lewis didn’t; witches in “Narnia” are a loathesome lot,” he adds. If these two warning signs are missing, any magic is just a plot device, he suggests.

I enjoyed this page-turner. If you have a teenage daughter, this would be a great book for her to read, especially if she is a Twilight fan. You could discuss the similarities and differences. The similarities I see between Seed of Seerling and Twilight are that they are both fantasy love stories where the heroine keeps her purity before marriage. The differences involve the Christian foundation of the Seed of Seerling, resulting in self-controlled and self-effacing actions on the part of the heroine. In Twilight, the heroine is the opposite of self-controlled–she passively lets her feelings rule and decides to forget about what her head might be telling her.

As for my opinion as a Christian, I think this book belittles religion, because it describes some various tribal religious customs that are clearly envisioned as gestures just to make the individual feel good. Pierce, along with so many others, clearly has no idea that there really is a deity out there. However, this book promotes loyalty and teamwork, along with discouraging stealing, so it isn’t in actual conflict with my values. A worldview discussion would be in order with young readers of this book.–Phyllis Wheeler

When he read this first book, he skipped some of the scenes from the ancient days. He was focusing on the contemporary characters. The way this book is put together, that works out OK–the entire story is eventually told in the present day. Funny way to read a book though.

Thomson has a great imagination, full of a variety of characters. She is able to tell a rousing good story. This book does have a certain unfinished quality to it, because of the self-publishing and consequent lack of tight editing. For example, Maggie’s falling in love isn’t described in a convincing way. But this is a small drawback. I enjoyed this book as well as its sequel, Burning Light. –Phyllis Wheeler

Many of the works being sold on the Internet are self-published. Publishers’ Weekly doesn’t review self-published works, and in fact reviews only a fraction of the books sent to it for review. So it’s pretty likely that at least some of the books I would like to suggest for my library would not be mainstream published and/or would not be reviewed in Publishers’ Weekly etc.

I would REALLY like to see some Christian graphic novels available to my boys. This requires that 1) the graphic novels be published, and 2) they be bought by the library, or otherwise made known to my kids.

I didn’t get a response from my email to the library about new books, so I am guessing it got nowhere. So I went to the library (Webster Groves Public Library, Missouri) to ask how I am supposed to make these requests. The librarian pointed me to some little green request slips.

There are hints of intrigue: who is the traitor to the Forest People who is keeping the Horde informed? And mystery: who is the leader of the Forest People, who seems to have come from our own world somehow?

I like this book a lot and will recommend it to my sons. It is a fantasy page-turner with a Christian worldview, just what I am looking for.–Phyllis Wheeler