The Christian Fantasy Review

The Tribe contest is limited in duration, lasting between the end of October and January 1. At that time, the authors will evaluate contestants and select winners. The top winners will get a book-signing visit from one of the authors, complete with sword fighting and freebies. There are other prizes too, like swords and Amazon gift certificates.

This system is obviously working; the “Underground” bulletin board on the book’s website is full of references to it.

My hat’s off to some marketing geniuses!

What did the bloggers think? Nearly all of them really liked this book, myself included. Some had questions. John W. Otte wonders where the Christian faith is, along with a couple of others. Jason Waguespac has a similar question. He had communicated with author Wayne Thomas Batson a while back about overused plot lines in fantasy fiction. They discussed one: a “chosen” child enters the fray and saves the day. In that exchange, Batson had indicated his next series (this one?) would turn that overused plot line on its head.

Donita K. Paul on new fantasy writers: “Breaking into the writing world is hard when the economy hasn’t tanked. Now it is even harder. But we have an all mighty God. Write the best story you can. Continue to hone your skills. Go to conferences to learn more and network. Join a professional organization like ACFW. Nothing is impossible with God. Read, read, read. Write, write, write, Pray, pray, pray.”

Nearly everyone really enjoyed the book. It has an unusual feature for fantasy these days: it’s upbeat.

Just wanted to let you know that I listened to an audio book while on the road. I’m not ready to report on it yet. This audio book is unusual in that you can’t buy it in print–it’s only published as an audio. Also, it has plenty of original folksy music in it.

Just a report–I’m reading George Bryan Polivka’s book The Legend of the Firefish, Book 1 of his trilogy set in Nearing Vast.

I’m having trouble putting it down! That’s all I’ll tell you for now.

On the home page, one of the trilogy’s characters, Cap Hillis, speaks to the reader as if the reader is a tourist and provides a list of entities to beware of, including pirates and firefish. This is pretty cool. It gives you a good idea of the general lawlessness of the place, and also the idea that in this world, nightmarish monsters can be real. In addition, it gives you a taste of the colorful characters that fill Polivka’s books.

With the story of heroics in response to piracy in the news, it’s interesting that our next Blog Tour review will be a fantasy book about pirates. This is Blaggard’s Moon by George Bryan Polivka, and I’ll tell you all about it starting Monday.

The older we got, the thinner the selection of GREAT Christian books became. There were some wonderful books, to be sure, but not enough in our opinion. This is one of the driving factors in why we’ve chosen to write the Codebearers Series. In fact, you could say that we are writing these books for ourselves – the 10+ year-old versions of ourselves. These are the kind of stories we loved to read (and still do) These are the stories we believe we’ve been called to write and we hope our work answers that call well. There has been nothing more fulfilling than hearing from a reader or parent about how it connected with them and met that very need.–Allan Miller

So I asked Becky Miller of A Christian Worldview of Fiction what she would recommend, since I didn’t know. She kindly responded. She only knows of Christian fantasy, not science fiction, for that age group. Here is what she recommends: