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I recently had the opportunity to read Rain Dance by Joy DeKok, a re-release of her 2006 novel , this time from Sheaf House. I have to say, I like the revised edition’s cover much better:

First off all, if you don’t like books that you need a box of Kleenex near by to read, you might want to stop reading now, because I sobbed like a baby. Of course, I’m in much the same shoes as Jonica, who the author admits in an afterward is based upon her own struggles with infertility and shockingly rude people who make me feel either grateful for my church or paranoid I’m being gossiped about too and just haven’t overheard it, depending on my mood at the moment.

She adds a novel’s worth of conflict to the drama with Stacie, the daughter of a Senator in the mold of Hilary Clinton who discovers the hard way who the real closed minded people are when she falls for the lie that abortion is a quick and easy way to get rid of a little “problem” and make sure her career goals stay on track. The author shows her struggle with post abortion syndome and fears over her increased risk of breast cancer (it also runs in her family) in a way that allows readers to understand the issue from a human perspective.

I like the way she portayed post abortion syndrome especially. It reminds us abortion effectively induces a miscarriage and we all know the devestating effects a miscarriage has on a woman, how she misses the child, she may even fret over whether she  unwittingly did something to hurt the baby. Why are we so surprised, shocked, even scandalized that intentionally inflicting a misscarriage on yourself can wreak similar emotional devastation? We forget the woman’s reproductive system isn’t on the same page as her career goals, is actively working against conscious mind, and did want that child. This is a tragic realization that comes to late for many, and they need loving souls like Jonica, and the author, to bring that pain to the surface, to grieve, and  ultimately find healing in Christ.

I am a little puzzeled at her preaching for the need to make post-abortive women feel welcome in the prolife movement (if I understood what she was getting at) as in Boise, ID, we have several pro-life activists who had abortions, they’re the most passionate and ardent ones, in fact, and I’ve never seen any of them shown anything but grace and mercy. The Church itself might be another thing. I haven’t heard too many admit that sin at the altar, so to speak, and the Church does need to come into way better balance on hot button issues, as we’ve lost many a Christian struggling with homosexuality to the enemy because they were too ashamed to ask for help.

Stylistically, the author chose to tell the story in dual first person, from both Stacie and Jonica’s view, and knowing her attachment to Jonica, and that Stacie needed to be a view point character, that close intmacy with both of them was warranted. However, she had a hard time dealing with the urge to show scenes from both point of view, and this resulted in several scenes being showed twice, with telling over the portions that we’d already seen, or simply summarizing the other person’s view, and we lose some of the immediacy we gained there and some of these passages get a tad dull, but she still manages to connect with her reader’s on a human level.

I tend to agree with previous reviewers, Stacie’s side in particular makes this book a good ministry tool to reach out to women going through that agony. Infertile women will get that good “I’m not alone, and I didn’t do anything to deserve this!” feeling after she raises the question in the first place.

The poor thing recieves a “prophecy” that if she repents of some unstated sin, she’ll be blessed with children, and that last part is theologically accurate, children are a blessing from the Lord. Unfortunately, scripture hints, in specific circumstances that only God may be able to forsee,  infertility is also a blessing, though I would prefer to exchange it for the latter blessing myself.

Interestingly, I didn’t react with the anger Joy, er, Jonica felt, but rather with, “Tell me what I’ve done, Lord, so I can repent of it!” (This reader identified perhaps too much.) It’s a whole lot easier to lift a curse caused by sin than it is to live with infertility God’s allowed for specific, usually ministry-related reasons which He may or may not decide to share with us. That’s why good people fall into the same mentality as Job’s friends in the first place.

Truthfully, I’d be a lot more concerned about the soul of someone who voiced their own personal opinion and decided to give it more authority by saying, “thus says the Lord” when the Lord has not thus said. In old testament times, the penalty for prophesying falsely even once was death. Even with grace, I like to naively think no one would dare risk the Lord’s wrath in that manner, but I’ve lived long enough to know better. Thankfully, God does forgive us, all of us, when we are truly sorry and turn from our sin. Even if it’s abortion. Even if she did have a hard time with showing both sides without resorting to telling or repeating scenes twice, Joy DeKok does a wonderful job of conveying that timeless and timely message without being overly preachy. She likewise develops the friendship between Stacie and Jonica in a believeable way that does a good job of showing how Jonica’s love and compassion for Stacie’s loss, without agreeing with Stacie’s decision, draws her to the Lord without making the reader feel overly lectured on how to be a good witness.

Readers particularly sensitive to books with a message might disagree with me on the preachiness level, given my perchant for message-oriented fiction, but if you like books that make you sob like a baby (I did, anyway) you’ll love this.

Popularity: 3%

Truth Or Dare , the first in Nicole O’Dell’s new Scenarios series from Barbour publishing,  has a wonderful premise and concept: allow the reader to make a key decision for the main character and choose between two different endings based upon that decision. Most curious souls will end up reading both of course; at least I usually exhausted all the possibilities in the Choose Your Own Adventure series.

The Scenarios series features young heroines whom middle school age girls will easily relate to and has enormous potential to help today’s youth make better decisions by showing them the consequences of choices they may have to make themselves someday.

However, I fear it may not get that chance, as in my opinion O’Dell surrendered a tad too often to the temptation to tell them as well as show them. Kids today are savvy; they know when they’re being lectured and they don’t like lectures in disguise. In Truth Or Dare , several characters stop the plot to outright sermonize.

Now, lest there be confusion, I am not one prone to complain that message-oriented books are too preachy. So long as you keep me entertained, I don’t mind a lesson. But even I found myself skimming over the preaching and I fear the target audience will feel talked down to. For most readers, if we want a sermon, we’ll go to Sunday Morning Worship, and this is no less true for children than it is for adults.

In contrast, the Choose Your Own Adventure books’ decision making process  showed clearly the results of one’s actions without any preaching at the reader, that I can remember at least, and allowing us to both learn and have fun, which is the stated goal of the Scenarios series.

I feel a bit uncertain in terms of the writing. It is a juvenile book, but O’Dell’s style seems to me  reminiscent of books intended for 7-10-year-olds and the topics are definitely geared for the 10-15-year-old age bracket stated in her promotional material. Truth Or Dare features four eighth graders playing truth or dare at sleep overs. One poor girl is repeatedly dared to embarrass herself to a crush (call him and say, “I like you,” and “will you go out with me?”) One girl is dared to drink a can of beer and the decision the reader has to make is whether or not to accept a dare to buy a beer.

So it’s not a middle grade book, and the POV choices and the amount of telling convey a maturity level not up to the standards of  the other YA books I’ve read, and I wouldn’t expect such a severe drop in maturity from books aimed at high schoolers versus middle schoolers–it is highly unlikely that the freshman and sophomores included in her target audience will pick up a book about middle schoolers.  So she might want to use older characters in future books and a more mature voice. A middle schooler will usually be happy to read about high school students, but high school students are far more likely to read books about college students than middle school students.

So it comes down to this:  regardless of age, if you feel the topic is one your child is ready to think about, this is a series you would want them to read. And the attractive cover and the compelling, relate-able characters will probably be enough to get your child to open the book. Unfortunately, with the amount of preaching, I am unfortunately not confident your child will read it all the way through. Honestly, it surprises me that O’Dell’s editor didn’t catch that, as it is common knowledge in this industry that kids don’t like to be lectured anymore than adults.

Popularity: 4%

This week, the Christian Fiction Blog Alliance is introducing Timescape from Thomas Nelson (July 14, 2009)  by Robert Liparulo

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Robert Liparulo is a former journalist, with over a thousand articles and multiple writing awards to his name. His first novel, Comes a Horseman, was released to critical acclaim. His other titles include Germ, Deadfall, and Deadlock—secured his place as one of today’s most popular and daring thriller writers.

He is known for investing deep research into his stories and has appeared as an expert on the topics that arise in his fiction on such media outlets as CNN and ABC Radio.

Currently, three of his novels for adults are in various stages of development for the big screen: the film rights to Comes A Horseman. were purchased by the producer of Tom Clancy’s movies; and Liparulo is penning the screenplays for GERM and Deadfall for two top producers. He is also working with the director Andrew Davis (The Fugitive, Holes) on a political thriller. Novelist Michael Palmer calls Deadfall “a brilliantly crafted thriller.” March 31st marked the publication of Deadfall’s follow-up, Deadlock, which novelist Gayle Lynds calls, “best of high-octane suspense.”

Liparulo’s bestselling young adult series, Dreamhouse Kings, debuted last year with House of Dark Shadows and Watcher in the Woods. Book three, Gatekeepers, released in January, and number four, Timescape, in July. The series has garnered praise from readers, both young and old, as well as attracting famous fans who themselves know the genre inside and out.

ABOUT THE BOOK

David, Xander, Dad, and Keal have discovered a terrible secret. Now, finding Mom is only a small part of their mission. And time is running out. Using the portals to build an empire, Taksidian wants the house for himself, and there’s nothing he won’t do to get the family out. The consequences of his meddling reach far beyond the family–to the future of the world itself. The Kings know their survival depends on stopping the bloodthirsty assassin. If only they can find his weakness in time.

Will their tinkering in time reunite the family and save the future . . . or set mankind on an irreversible course of destruction?

Andrea’s Comments: Okay, I just learned that I am used to science fiction and fantasy titles being apart of the CSFF tour, because I could have sworn this was for their August tour coming in a few weeks . . . only to figure out it was a CFBA tour . . . that ran last week. *Slaps forehead*

Seriously, reading this right next to the review coming up later this month for another YA title I was asked to review was interesting, because the ages of the books young heroes indicate a similar audience: 9-15 year olds for Timescape, but the writing of Timescape is far more mature. I tend to lean towards Timescape being meant and well targeted for the teens.

Though spending signficant time in the heads of a nine year old, a twelve year old, and Dad is quite daring for YA, the author pulls it off well. Even his having  Dad mentally referring to himself as Mr King made more sense than one YA novel that annoyed me by having the heroine mentally calling her own mother Mrs. Last Name.  Of course, he wouldn’t call himself that realistically, but the departure makes sense as a device to make it easier for a young reader to cope with being in the head of an adult, though whether it’s actually strictly necessary I can’t say. I think some youths might surprise us.

The amount of research is patently obvious, and for the most part worked in appropriately, meaning I buy that the character explaining this both knows this and would tell it to the other person at this moment.

Like a lot of thriller and action adventure authors, Liparulo is convieniently ignorant of the Bible’s position on obeying civil authories. While Liparulo states in the book a popular opinion that it’s okay to break the law, etc. if the fate of mankind is at stake, or they are ignorantly endangering your loved ones, Romans 13 and the book of Acts is quite clear the only time it is biblically acceptable to disobey civil authorities is when their orders/laws contradict God’s. So this isn’t the simple matter of opinion one might think. One could make a respectable argument that they’re obeying God rather than man in saving a life, but I didn’t understand that to be the author’s argument, or if it was, it could have been far better stated.

Though, I have to say, the common trope of the police officer getting in the hero’s way and endangering lives by not listening to him/her is very insulting to the men and women who fight every day on America’s streets to protect our citizens. And ironically, it didn’t even actually show up on stage in this book. It was in a previous book and a couple of characters decided to rehash it when they were feeling guilty about sneaking into the hospital after hours.

Is it wrong for a writer to have characters who break the law? Actually, I’ll have to say it’s not. If having sin of any sort portrayed in your books was prohibited, Christians would need to stop writing and stop reading because no sin means no conflict and no conflict means no story.

What we need to be careful of is pretending this is saintly behavior. While I appreciate there are doctrinal disagreements, the fact is, there is a standard of truth, the bible, and the simple fact of disagreement doesn’t make truth any less true. I don’t want to major on minors, but we do need to be careful regarding Romans 13 and civil disobedience, because in the world’s eyes,  it reflects poorly on the Church when we break the law–including traffic laws. If you must speed, please don’t do it with a Jesus fish on your bumper.

But I digress.

Seriously, for book four, Liparulo did good. Despite the “stop, read this series from the beginning” warning, I was able to figure out what was going on fairly quickly for being dropped into the middle of the climax from page one–and we hadn’t reached the end of it by the last page, either.

It was much like starting to listen to an episode of the Old Time Radio Superman show in the middle of a series, only he made the character’s recaps far more believable. I did think he carried his justification a bit too far when when the character prone to  mentally rehearsing events started recapping this novel’s events too, but the author also seemed to know when the reader had had enough of that.

Starting in media res and ending with a cliff hanger is a dangerous move that can lend the feel of reading one volume of a multi-volume novel, and from the middle of the set at that, but if he laughs at danger, he shows himself a professional (albeit one that needlessly tosses in my pet peeve-thought tagging–here and there, but that’s not uncommon among long time established authors) .

Parents should be aware there is quite a bit of blood and severed body parts in the book, which some parents may not feel appropriate for their child, and that the Christian content is so subtle I had trouble identifying any clear Christian themes without the reading guide. That’s  largely a matter of the individual reader’s preferences, however,  so I want to make you aware of this issue without prejudice. If extremely subtle is your cup of tea and gore does not cause any spiritual problems for you, this is a wild romp and a fun ride.

Popularity: 2%