a few quick notes, i’m going to be posting my weekly football picks and comments later (probably tomorrow), but first i’m finally getting around to posting these book reviews that i had actually scrawled out old fashioned style on paper… also, if you didn’t notice last week, i did something called “album twee-views” or album reviews via twitter… it’s a rough concept that i’m trying out… we’ll see how it goes… as always let me know what you all think… feedback is always appreciated…
TRIpLE DEKkER…
now playing: Titanomachy – The Beginning – The Showdown
Showdown – Ted DeKker
I’ve had this book for a few years, but didn’t ever dig into it until i was somewhat tricked into breaching the Books of History Series by reading Sinner… Having read Sinner, i became quite interested in reading Saint, but figured i should read Showdown first – since i had it and since it was the first of the three part subseries…
Anyway, despite having a good idea of where the story was headed, i was still enraptured by the narrative presented in Showdown… it’s still a very suspenseful endeaver regardless of any prior knowledge of the series and as such was an incredibly entertaining (and pretty quick) read… one downside is that the overarching metaphor became obvious – almost painstakingly so – long before what i would’ve considered the appropriate time for it to have been revealed…
All in all, though, it’s a compelling read and one that certainly continued to whet my pallette for Saint, which is on my short list…
now playing: Washed By the Water – Needtobreathe
Lunatic / Elyon – Ted DeKker
Well, these are books 5 and 6 of the Lost Books subseries and, in TRu fashion, they were my entry point into the set… my initial thoughts were that it’s clearly a story along the lines of the Lord of the Rings or Chronicles of Narnia in the sense that this entirely new universe is created and it’s certainly well-situated in the fantasy genre… i suppose it’s also important to note that i think these books are written for a teenage audience, but the narrative works beyond that target demographic…
Having not read the previous four books, i was a bit unfamiliar with the relational dynamics surrounding Darsal, Silvie and Johnas and at times it was even difficult to keep track of who was speaking and the full weight of what had been said (lots of impersonal pronouns complicated things as well), but it was pretty easy to follow along in the story regardless…
The main theme that stuck out was clearly the mandate to love your enemies and as such, the books do a good job relating just how difficult that can be… there’s also discussion of baptism and romance and choosing friendships wisely and all of it was presented well, rolled together in a compelling enough tale to encourage me to read the first four (i’ve only got the first two, though)…
One downside, besides the “who’s on first” type issue of who said what, was that the voice of each co-author came through clearer than that of the characters… it was pretty obvious which parts came from the pen of Kaci Hill and which did not… and that’s fine, but it was a little distracting and pushed me out of the narrative at times… Certainly not enough to prevent anyone from truly enjoying this set…
TH-TH-THAT’S ALL FOLKS
and that will do it for now…
peace… love… bdg…