The book, which I am not going to name, has the rousing approval of the reviewers of the world. It has a mainstream publisher. The reviewers find it hard to put down, and a great study in character development. One called it “an action-filled survival story aimed at middle grade readers.”

It is all those things, but it’s also very dark. It reminds me of Lord of the Flies, actually. There is such a bleak view of human nature, and not enough in the way of redemptive themes–although there is one character who prays and whose influence is for the good. In fact I cannot imagine my sons picking this up and reading it for fun. They’d read it if a teacher made them, of course, and would identify the themes, and the character development, and so on. All that is very well done.

I love books that aim for joy.

I am hoping to review books that my kids would read for fun. So I’ll let the other folks review the ones the kids would have to read for school.

Jill Williamson offers a nice summary of the previous two books in the series.  This is a good place to start.

I was amazed to discover that this series has a “sound track”! Here is what Rachel Starr Thompson had to say:

“I also recommend paying a visit to the independent record label Ark Music , home of Jeff Johnson and Brian Dunning. Before I ever read The Paradise War , I listened to the music inspired by it — and Johnson and Dunning have been writing and releasing music based on Lawhead’s work ever since. It’s gorgeous stuff.”  It’s eerie music. You can check it out on the Ark site.

Beth Goddard has an interview with Lawhead, da Man. It’s not recent, but hey, it’s very detailed, and tells you what is thinking about his characters.

Since the bloggers on this tour are Christians (many of them writers of Christian science fiction and fantasy), and since this book focuses on Tuck, a priest, there is plenty of conversation about Tuck’s faith, and the faith of the other characters.   Keanan Brand found Tuck’s faith to be woven into the story, not preachy. Tim Hicks calls Tuck “a firm believer in the power of prayer.” Nevertheless, he’s ready with his staff when battle arrives.  “Through it all, Tuck is a pacifist before the fight and a head-basher during it,” says Steve Rice.

It’s not just Tuck who has faith. Other characters are doing their best to live out their faith too.  Becky Miller points out that the false religious ideas and the true ones are presented side-by-side, with no heavy-handed comment from the author–it’s up to the reader to discern. John W. Otte finds the variety of Christian viewpoints to be enriching.

Rachel Starr Thompson has such a way with words. She said it this way:

“Faith is a very real force in Tuck. Nearly every character claims it, be he villain or hero, priest or Norman soldier or Welsh king. Most believe themselves to be on God’s side—or at least sincerely hope they are—and most are wrong in some respect. God is on His own side, after all. But the men and women of Lawhead’s eleventh-century Britain never make the modern mistake of thinking that God is not involved at all.”

So, what genre are we in? Lawhead seems to have moved from fantasy to historic fiction in recent years. What is he up to?  Brandon Barr answers that question with a quote he fished out of Lawhead’s Web site: “I don’t see strong boundaries between SF, fantasy or historical novels, at least not as I’m writing them. Regardless of the particular genre, I am trying to evoke a sense of wonder through the story.”

Everybody agreed that the story is a worthy one, written by a master.

Check out the posts of the others!

Brandon Barr
Jim Black
Keanan Brand
Rachel Briard
Grace Bridges
Valerie Comer
Amy Cruson
CSFF Blog Tour
Stacey Dale
D. G. D. Davidson
Jeff Draper
April Erwin
Karina Fabian
Alex Field
Beth Goddard
Todd Michael Greene
Ryan Heart
Timothy Hicks
Christopher Hopper
Joleen Howell
Becky Jesse
Cris Jesse
Jason Joyner
Kait
Carol Keen
Krystine Kercher
Dawn King
Terri Main
Margaret
Melissa Meeks
Rebecca LuElla Miller
Caleb Newell
Eve Nielsen
Nissa
John W. Otte
John Ottinger
Epic Rat
Steve Rice
Crista Richey
Hanna Sandvig
Chawna Schroeder
James Somers
Robert Treskillard
Rachel Starr Thomson
Steve Trower
Speculative Faith
Fred Warren
Phyllis Wheeler
Jill Williamson

Chawna Schroeder is concerned that the story doesn’t have a proper hero, one that the reader can bond with. Delaney is the story teller, and is off center stage for most of the book. Damrick functions as the hero, performing daring deeds, but he’s got clay feet–we can see his motivations of “self-preservation, anger, mercilessness, and vengeance-type attitudes.”  Then Jenta, the heroine, is “driven by the story rather than driving it.”

(In short, it’s a story about sinners. But I agree, we readers don’t get that close to Damrick.)

On this topic, Rachel Starr Thompson says she thinks the distance gives Damrick and Jenta a mythic quality.

Chawna identifies two themes:
* reaping what you sow, and
* learning to live so as to die without regrets.  (I would reword this as learning to change for the better.)
The resulting tale, balancing these two, is a dark one, she finds.  (I agree that this book has many dark moments. )

Rachel Starr Thompson comments on the sadness aspect too. She finds it “a lament for a world gone wrong, for a world where good people can suffer while evil men prosper. It’s the lament of Ecclesiastes and Job and some of the Psalms, and like them it asks us to find hope in the goodness of God while never asking us to pretend that hope negates the sadness.”  (Well said, I say.)

Personally, I like a book whose characters learn to lean on Jesus, so to speak. I don’t see that happening in this book overtly.  But as they shift, learning to make right choices no matter what the consequence, a Christian can identify the work of the Holy Spirit.

Others have mentioned that they find this book to be in some other genre besides fantasy. It’s a sea tale set in another land. There’s no magic.  It has a very historical air to it, with myriad details.

So, read this book!  Tell me what you think!

Check out the other CSFF blog tour participants :
Brandon Barr
Jennifer Bogart
Keanan Brand
Melissa Carswell
Amy Cruson
CSFF Blog Tour
Stacey Dale
D. G. D. Davidson
Jeff Draper
April Erwin
Karina Fabian
Alex Field
Marcus Goodyear
Todd Michael Greene
Ryan Heart
Timothy Hicks
Cris Jesse
Jason Joyner
Kait
Carol Keen
Mike Lynch
Magma
Margaret
Melissa Meeks
Rebecca LuElla Miller
Nissa
John W. Otte
Steve Rice
Crista Richey
Chawna Schroeder
James Somers
Rachel Starr Thomson
Steve Trower
Speculative Faith
Jason Waguespack
Fred Warren
Phyllis Wheeler
Jill Williamson

The third and final fantasy master of our time I am naming as J.K. Rowling, for her Harry Potter series.  However, I hope you discuss worldview and witchcraft with your teens when you talk about these books.

When the Harry Potter books first started coming out, many Christians were concerned that these books would draw kids into the world of Wicca and ouija boards by making witchcraft appear desirable.  It wasn’t crystal clear then whether Harry, the young wizard, was really on the light side. Or was he learning the occult?

However, as the series matured, it became apparent that Rowling’s is another fantasy world, not related to the principalities and powers discussed in the Bible. Like other fantasy works, there is a deeply evil (and memorable) bad guy. There is also a young, fumbling protagonist who works for good and who eventually gets more adept at it. It is clear that Rowling’s worldview is a moral one.

Along the way, Harry Potter does use incantations and so on, which are bound to make us Christians nervous if we are aware of the Biblical ban on witchcraft in Leviticus 19:26 & 31. This would be a great thing to discuss with your teens: what exactly is it that God is forbidding in consulting mediums and necromancers? Where is the idolatry?

At the same time, Harry’s use of words as instruments of power is an echo of Biblical truth.  God creates using words.  Jesus is described as the Word made Flesh. There is something we can learn or re-learn here, and that is that our words, what we say, really do matter.

Another reason some Christians object to Harry Potter is because he attains some great powers. Is he becoming godlike?  Will this aspect lead our kids astray somehow?

Well, the Superman comics portray someone with godlike powers as well. I used to love reading Superman comics when I was a kid.  IT was fun to imagine being able to fly and so on.  But of course I knew it was fiction. So do Rowling’s readers.

Rowling’s genius is in her broad array of memorable characters.  There are Hagrid, the half-giant who loves strange monsters; Dumbledore, the wise schoolmaster; and many more.  Rowling’s world is the work of many years of imagining characters and details. In my opinion this puts her in a similar league to George Lucas. –Phyllis Wheeler

Lucas has a magnificently large imagination.  He also had the genius to tap into the imaginations of others. Lucas is unique in that he drew a broad framework and then allowed others to add their imaginative input. This took the form of a variety of details in the films, with animals and aircraft and everything in between carefully imagined and portrayed.  It also took the form of books–the set of books he authorized for the time period after the fall of the Empire, as Luke and Leia enter adulthood. The assistance of others gave Lucas’ work a breadth that it would not have had otherwise, unless he had devoted his life to the story as Tolkien did. Lucas’ resulting set of tales spans many centuries and worlds.

In contrast to Tolkien, Lucas is not a Christian. His galaxy long, long ago and far, far away has a deity of sorts, the Force, which can act for good and for evil. It appears that Lucas is offering an Eastern idea of God, which sees the life force as equally good and evil, yin and yang.  This is also not a personal God as we Christians truly know Him to be.

But we all know “the force” isn’t real. This is fantasy, a backdrop for the story. Lucas isn’t trying to sell his audience on a new religion. Lucas’s characters behave in moral ways, good guys fighting against overwhelming odds to defeat evil in the end.  Then there is Lucas’ keynote plot twist:  that the ultimate evil villain turns out to be the father of the young hero.  This tale has picked up a lot of resonance in our culture.

The fantasy genre is an old one–it started with myths and fairy tales at the dawn of time.  We humans love stories that play out the moral struggle within each of us as a struggle of the forces of good and evil, shown on a larger stage. How much better if the struggle contains memorable fantastic creatures and characters!

I see three masters of the fantasy genre in our time.   All of them created an amazingly complex fantasy world with a solid, believable, detailed history to support unforgettable characters and situations.  The first one I am going to talk about is J.R.R. Tolkien.

Tolkien is my favorite.  He was a Christian. The worldview of his work echoes his faith–Middle Earth is a moral world governed by a benevolent deity.  The weak are able to succeed in the battle against evil where the strong cannot. But this is only with the help of apparent coincidence, for example the assistance of Gollum in destroying the One Ring. We Christian readers know this is no accident.  In addition, unseen benevolent forces resurrect Gandalf and send him back to finish his work.  Against all odds, good triumphs over evil.

The most unique feature of Tolkien’s work is the detailed historical backdrop he invents for Middle Earth, including languages. Readers of The Lord of the Rings experience the history of Middle Earth in hearing tantalizing songs that describe heroes of earlier ages without complete explanations. The heritage of song provides the illusion of a real world. And the characters speak in several languages, which certainly seem to me to be reasonably complete tongues.

Tolkien worked most of his life on some aspect of the story of Middle Earth, beginning in childhood by constructing the language that eventually became one of the Elvish tongues. His work is a towering achievement for a man with persistence, focus, and vision. What a blessing he has been to me and to many others!

Snooping around the Internet, I found Marcher Lord Press, which specializes in publishing Christian fantasy books.  The founder, Jeff Gerke, tells his story: he was editing fiction at traditional Christian publishing companies, and was unable to satisfy his yen for the weird.  The companies, he said, target consumers who love chick lit.  That’s who buys books at Wal-Mart and Christian bookstores, apparently.

It’s true. My sons who are Christian and who are fantasy fans do not look for books at Christian bookstores or at Wal-Mart. They look in the library and in the big chain bookstores.  So any books the traditional publishers might publish will not reach my sons.

So it remains to ask these questions: why aren’t libraries buying recent Christian fantasy books?  And why aren’t Borders and Barnes and Noble local stores stocking them?

Marcher Lord Press and other similar outfits have decided to go directly to the consumer using the Internet.  They sell through Amazon and other online bookstores, and through their own Web sites.

It remains to be seen whether this is a way to reach kids like my 16-year-old sons. So far, I’d say they aren’t Internet consumers. None of them has a credit card. They know how to check prices on e-Bay. That’s about it.

I looked on Amazon for the top-selling Christian fantasy books. The top one, featuring a soccer mom as main character, falls more or less in the chick lit category and is in fact published by a mainstream Christian publishing house, Navpress.

The second one in line is self-published and sold over the Internet only (like many similar books). It would likely appeal to my teenage sons: Heroes of Old, first in the Heroes series by Jay L. Young, which apparently has quite a following. This book is described as a cross between the Bible and the X-Men. This author is definitely not available in our library, nor in the local Barnes and Noble.

There is a disconnect here. The marketplace isn’t providing for the teen Christian fantasy market.

For one thing, i think we need to lobby our libraries to buy the best Christian fantasy books. They’re certainly buying the non-Christian ones. We need to demand our share of those library dollars!–Phyllis Wheeler

Fantasy is a matter of taste. Some people just aren’t interested in it. I think it’s a matter of the leap of faith that you have to make as a reader, deciding to suspend your disbelief. Some people don’t want to do it or have difficulty doing it.

But for Christians who love fantasy stories, there is always a challenge in the wings from Christian skeptics. Isn’t this a genre that speaks of magic, witches and werewolves? Doesn’t the Bible forbid consorting with witches?  Isn’t fantasy therefore leading you, the reader, away from God?

Fantasy stories that have blessed me greatly all have a fantasy world set up by the author which has a moral compass.  You can tell which is right side up. The evil bad guy acts evil. The good guys act good.  There is conflict. The fantasy setting allows for magic, dragons, and other things that are not “real” but that nevertheless can help tell a good story.  Having the possibility of using magic increases the author’s creative vocabulary mightily.

In 1947, JRR Tolkien published an essay, “On Fairy Stories,” framing the “fairy story” or fantasy story as an art form that dates from the dawn of time. We are made in the image of God. What does that mean? It means that we love to create, he argues. So we love to make up stories, including stories with elements that are “not real.”

For Tolkien, the heart of the great “fairy story” is the happy ending. That’s not just any happy ending, but one that happens suddenly, when all seems totally bleak. That is what gives us joy.

As a Christian fantasy reader, I have experienced joy, when reading the Narnia tales and Lord of the Rings. I have experienced a letdown and disappointment when reading fantasy books that seem to have been written for the purpose of scaring me.  And I have also experienced a letdown and disappointment when reading tales that have a wrong view of God.

I am hoping that you, my readers, and I can discuss a variety of books and our reactions to them on this blog.