Christian fiction

Book Review: Mandie and the Forbidden Attic

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Mandie and the Forbidden Attic
Mandie #4
by Lois Gladys Leppard

My rating: 3 / 5
Genre: Children’s Christian historical fiction

I read a lot of this series when I was a kid/pre-teen, and I read some of them to my now-teen daughter when she was younger. Nostalgia definitely affects my reviews for this series, and I’m okay with that. Though I am also willing to admit the flaws in the books; for example, here we have another guy who is drawn to Mandie as soon as he meets her. Though to be fair, they’re sort of thrust together, and so far, he’s mostly just being polite. Mandie is particularly unruly in this book, breaking a rule at her new school over and over despite being caught and even punished. At least it’s one book in which Mandie isn’t just perfect, but in the end, her rule breaking produced a certain outcome that essentially ends up exonerating her, which isn’t a great lesson for the kids who read this book. It’s too easy for the reader to empathize with her and feel like the authority figures are simply being unfair or overbearing, and reading this as an adult, I kind of wish Leppard had been more careful with that. While I think these books can still be good for younger people to read, especially if you’re looking for something with Christian content, I strongly recommend discussing what’s good and bad in them with your kid(s) after they read it.

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Book Review: A Voice in the Wind

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A Voice in the Wind
Mark of the Lion #1
by Francine Rivers

My rating: 3.5 / 5
Genre: Christian historical fiction

When Jerusalem falls to Rome, Hadassah is taken as a slave after losing her entire family, and eventually ends up in Rome as a  personal maid for a young woman named Julia. Hadassah is Jewish by heritage, which makes her hated enough in Rome, but she also follows Christ, which is punishable by death. Julia and her family—mother, father, and older brother Marcus—become dependent on Hadassah, and she in turn falls in love with them, praying that she could somehow be a light in the darkness of their lives. 

I’ve heard of this book for a while but wasn’t sure about reading it, partly because the length was daunting. But since I ended up with a copy of the book (and the rest of the series), I figured it was time to give it a try. And yeah, I think the length was more than it needed to be. For one thing, I didn’t even mention an entire POV character in my synopsis, because he’s so far removed from the rest of story. He’s a Germanic warrior who was captured in battle and forced to become a gladiator, and he does intersect with the main story by the end, but it takes a long time, and I couldn’t help but wonder how much of his story was necessary. There’s also a lot of detail about the debauchery that pretty much all of the characters (minus Hadassah, of course) participate in throughout this book that I think was wholly unnecessary. I understand that this is a fact of life and was very common in Rome during this time, and I am not saying that even Christian writers should pretend it didn’t happen or shy away from it. But I also don’t think it needs to be focused on as much as it is in the book to get the point across. It made the book start to feel repetitive and was also at times unpleasant to read. Seriously, I brought the book to church when my husband had to be there early for worship practice, and as I saw reading in the pew, I thought about how awkward it would be if the pastor (or anyone, really) walked by and caught a glimpse of the page. I think there needs to a balance that this book is pretty far from.

Still, I was invested in the family fairly quickly. I expected to not care at all about Artretes whenever it went back to his POV (that’s the barbarian gladiator), but as long as I skimmed the bloody fight scenes, I was fairly interested in his parts too. Hadassah seems almost too perfect as a character, but I appreciated her fears and frustrations and don’t have too hard a time believing that her persecution helped her to be more than she otherwise might have been. It’s pretty clear that God can work that way. I was really rooting for Hadassah to realize that she was doing more than she thought, but to be honest, the book didn’t quite go how I thought it might and really wanted it to. I obviously didn’t love it, but I did like it enough to want to see how the lives of these characters play out and continue the series.

I am nowhere near an expert on this time in history (or any time, really), but I’ve read a few books set around this time, and this felt real to me. Except for the couple of times that Hadassah used more the modern Christian verbiage of having Jesus in our hearts, which is not only theologically muddy at best but almost definitely not an expression that would have been used in this time period. As for recommendations, fans of Christian historical novels or romance would probably enjoy this, but please keep content warnings in mind (there’s more than I mentioned, but here’s a review with more than I shared). It’s not something I’d recommend for teens, for sure.

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Book Review: Exiles

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Exiles
The Ilyon Chronicles #4
by Jaye L. Knight

My rating: 4 / 5
Genre: Christian fantasy

Spoiler notice: The following review will contain some spoilers for the previous book in the series, Samara’s Peril.

The resistance camp near Landale is growing all the time, and now the exiled rightful kind of Samara is part of the group. The rebels need more allies, so they travel to Dorland to try to enlist the help of the rest of the cretes and even the giants. Meanwhile, the heat is being turned up in both Landale and the capital, while more and more people turn to the one true God, Elôm, all the time.

It was nice to expand even further out in this book, seeing the homeland of the dragon-riding cretes and then meeting the giants. There is a lot of diplomacy and some more snatches of battle in this book. Some of my favorite parts involved Daniel, the son of the emperor, who has always been at odds with his father, but now there’s even more to separate them. There were some parts of the book that I was more interested in than others, and Kyrin is still a major character that I wish was more dynamic. In four books, she hasn’t really changed much, and she’s been pretty boring, overall. Jace annoyed me less in this book, though he did make me shake my head a few times.

Some major events happen in this book, and it ends with a promise of both danger and hope. With two books left in the series, I’m really looking forward to seeing how all of this plays out. My 15-year-old daughter continues to be a huge fan of this series, so it’s easy for me to recommend this book to older teens through adults (it’s not YA, but it’s very clean), fans of fiction with Christian elements, whether you’re really into fantasy or not.

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Book Review: Mists over the Channel Islands

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Mists over the Channel Islands
Allegiance Under Pressure #3
by Sarah Sundin

My rating: 5 / 5
Genre: Christian historical romance

When the Germans invade the British Channel Islands, Dr. Ivy Picot is left trying to keep her dad’s medical practice afloat, with him and half of her family evacuated to England. Then Ivy is pulled into a ring of medical people who help treat hidden laborers who are in danger from their German taskmasters who are using forced labor to build fortifications on the island. One of those responsible for the new structures marring the beautiful landscape of her beloved Jersey is Gerrit van der Zee, a Dutchman who volunteered for the work in the hopes that he’d be able to help the Allies in some way. But even as he is captivated by the lovely young doctor, he can’t tell her that he is not one of the occupiers she so despises, that he’s actually on her side.

Again I’m struck by Sarah Sundin’s grasp on the history in this time period. I’ve read a few non-fiction books about (and in some cases written by) people who were involved in underground resistance rings during WWII, and Sundin’s writing here rings true for the most part. There is one character who never quite grasps the “don’t say anything to anyone ever” concept, but the codes that are set up and different ways they attempt to keep things hidden and secret kept me engage and in suspense. I kept watching the dates tick ever closer to D-Day, then to the date I knew the Channel Islands would be liberated, and wondering how badly things would fall apart as the Germans got more and more desperate. 

Sundin has a way of writing romance into her stories without making it the predominant theme or overwhelming the plot, and the same is the case here. I also really liked several of the side characters and was appropriately saddened by one particular story arc throughout the book. Then near the end, we get to reunite with characters from the previous two books in this series, and I really enjoyed that. I recommend this book to anyone who likes historical fiction from this time period in the Christian romance genre. Though this is the third book in a series, you don’t need really to read them in order. Though of course, since I enjoyed the whole series, I’d say there’s no reason not to start with the first book, Embers in the London Sky.

Thank you to Netgalley and Revell for providing me a copy of this book to review.

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Book Review: Time Lottery

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Time Lottery
Book #1
by Nancy Moser

My rating: 3.5 / 5
Genre: Christian speculative fiction

Three people win a prize that will allow them to travel back in time, within their own minds, to a moment of their choosing, to try to change something in their past. After they’ve lived out the change, they can decide whether they want to stay in the new alternate universe they’ve created or return to their original lives.

The “time travel” involved here is an interesting idea and clearly just a means to the speculation involved in seeing what would happen if one could change a pivotal moment in one’s past. And it is an interesting premise. I was really looking forward to some high emotions and heart-felt moments, partly because of that premise and partly because of my experience with the other book that I read by this author. I can’t really say that it was as emotional as I expected, though. I did enjoy the story, and who hasn’t dreamed of the ability to revisit the past and at least see what could have been different, if not actually stay and live out a new path in life? There are three different storylines here, though there is some connection that requires suspension of disbelief (not in a bad way). One of the storylines I didn’t really connect with as much as the others, and I’m not a huge fan of something that happened at the end of the book. I think that many fans of Christian fiction would enjoy this book, especially those interested in the exploration of past decisions and the ability to change some of those decisions.

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Book Review: Red

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Red
The Circle #2
by Ted Dekker

My rating: 5 / 5
Genre: Christian fantasy thriller

Spoiler notice: The following review may contain some spoilers for the first book in the series, Black.

Fifteen years after the events of the previous book, Thomas of Hunter is the leader of an army of forest dwellers, called the Forest Guard, in a perpetual battle against the desert dwellers, the Horde. He hasn’t dreamed once in those fifteen years, but when he gets into a pinch in battle, he realizes that the answers could be found in his dreams. When he wakes up in the other reality, mere hours have passed and the danger of the Raison Strain virus is ramping up. Both realities need him, and both are on the edge of destruction.

I have to admit that with the way that the previous book ended, I wasn’t all that enthusiastic starting into this book. I’ve never really enjoyed war, battles, fighting, etc. in books, and the endless war between Thomas’s Forest Guard and the Horde (aka Scabs) wasn’t a huge draw for me at the outset. Fortunately, it quickly becomes more than that, especially when Thomas intentionally dreams for the first time in order to glean information he can use to aid the fight. It’s interesting that Thomas has aged 15 years in that reality but is still a younger man in the “real” world. Waking up after dreaming of 15 years going by is hard to imagine, but I liked that some of the people that know him best can see a difference in how he acts and even how he looks (mostly his eyes).

The urgency of the Raison Strain, even though it’s been carried on past the first book, is still there. The world moves on to a new stage as the secret of the virus threatens to be exposed, and though normally I’d feel it’s a mistake to drag something like this on for so long, it works here, thanks to the addition of the parallel reality. Some major revelations are shown involving the connected realities in this book, too, that brought my engagement level even higher. The forest/desert world, which has always displayed a very literal view of good vs. evil and has been the main vehicle for development and change in this series, brings some emotional moments at the end of this book that made me consider diving right into the third book. I won’t, but I also will not be waiting very long to read it. 

I understand even more now why 20-something-year-old me read this series as a parallel to Christianity. It’s not as direct a parallel as I must have expected/wanted it to be, but it’s certainly allegorical. Though the ways the allegory fell short (or even fell apart) bothered me when I was younger, I’m able to enjoy the story for what it is this time around. And I’m glad for that, because I’m enjoying it a lot!

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Book Review: Samara’s Peril

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Samara’s Peril
The Ilyon Chronicles #3
by Jaye L. Knight

My rating: 4 / 5
Genre: Christian fantasy

With Samara, a neighboring country, in peril, the resistance members in Landale embark on a mission to get as much information as they can. This venture will completely change the life of Jace, the half-ryrik who was an orphan, slave, and gladiator before being rescued by Rayad. Then, as war looms between Emperor Daican’s forces and Samara, news comes out of Samara of a man who performs miracles and heals the sick. Could this be the Savior that Elôm’s followers have been waiting for?

There was a lot of really good stuff in this book—action, emotion, and some major surprises. The book has 4 parts, though it mostly breaks down to 2 in my mind: the info-gathering mission and everything surrounding the battle for Samara. The first part contained a reveal that was pretty exciting, and I liked that it was both good and bad, with a hope of more good to come. However, for me, the first part was also heavily bogged down by Jace, who seems to have taken the lead as the main-main character (which I said in my review of the previous book seemed to be Kyrin, but though she does have plenty of POV scenes, this book is definitely Jace’s, overall). Because of his half-ryrik status, Jace can’t bring himself to fully accept that he has a soul and can possibly be loved by Elôm. Despite many people that he trusts giving him a lot of wise and insightful advice, he kind of just covers his ears and sinks deeper and deeper into darkness. I fully understand the purpose of this, in the frame of the grander story, but I wish it could have been done with a little less repetition and without being drawn out so much.

In the 2nd half of the book, a lot of what became an issue for me was mostly personal preference, which I’ll try to explain without spoiling anything. Once I realized in the previous book that the biblical parallel was more to Old Testament times than New, I thought about the possibility of a Messiah character, and sure enough, it’s hinted at in the synopsis for this book. But considering that any text from the “King’s Scrolls” that have been presented in these books have been taken right from the Bible, I was imagining more of a parallel to biblical history, when apparently Knight was going for more of an analogy. The Savior character in this book is vastly different from Christ in the Bible, which threw me off enough to make some scenes much less emotional for me than they might have otherwise been. On top of that, this character was such a small part of the book, he seemed to only really be there to advance Jace’s personal characterization. It was just underwhelming. My 15-year-old daughter, who first recommended this series to me, was disappointed that I was so disappointed, because she loved that aspect of the book. So clearly personal preference plays a large role here. A severely watered-down Christ character disappoints me, but it might not disappoint others. And in the end, I still liked the overall book enough to give it 4 stars. This review might make that rating seem strange, but the couple of things I mentioned weren’t as big a part as they seem; they just took a while to explain. Overall, the story was a good advancement of the world set up in the first two books. I liked King’s Scrolls more, but I’m still looking forward to seeing where the story goes from here.

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Book Review: Mandie and the Ghost Bandits

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Mandie and the Ghost Bandits
Mandie #3
by Lois Gladys Leppard

My rating: 4 / 5
Genre: Children’s Christian historical fiction

I read a lot of this series when I was a kid/pre-teen, and I read some of them to my now-teen daughter when she was younger. Nostalgia definitely affects my reviews for this series, and I’m okay with that. Though I am also willing to admit the flaws in the books. Fortunately, this one was less aggravating than the previous. As a parent now, I was particularly interested in Mandie’s mom’s difficulty in parenting her. With the gap in their relationship between the time Mandie was a baby and when they found each other again over a decade later, Elizabeth doesn’t really know how to be a mom and isn’t very good at standing up to her very willful daughter. It also gives Mandie an actual dimension beyond just coming across as perfect all the time, though it’s fairly subtle. On the other hand, Mandie definitely displays a personality shortcoming in this book, so there’s another flaw. It was a little difficult to understand why Tsa’ni was suddenly so kind and friendly at the end of the previous book, then here was rude again, though he never got quite as bad as he had been before again.

One of my biggest overall issues with this series so far is the theology. In my review of the first book, I mentioned that there seemed to be a salvation-by-works message. Here, I was bothered when Mandie tells the wife of a dear friend that they had to trust God to heal that dear friend who was badly injured, and there doesn’t seem to be any allowance for the possibility that God wouldn’t heal him. And then when he takes a turn for the worst, very soon after Mandie’s insight, Mandie herself falls to pieces and loses all semblance of trusting in God. She is supposed to come across as wise and full of faith, but she doesn’t follow her own advice, which is a bit lacking in understanding anyway. I can’t help but wonder what kind of impact this might have on kids who don’t have a full understanding of God yet. So keep that in mind if your kids might read these books. Outside of that, the story was good overall.

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Book Review: Black

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Black
The Circle #1
by Ted Dekker

My rating: 4.5 / 5
Genre: Christian fantasy thriller

After an encounter with a dangerous loan shark, Thomas Hunter dreams of a world where evil is completely contained and humans live in happiness and harmony. The dream is so vivid that while he’s dreaming, he’s certain the world with the loan shark is the dream. Then the worlds begin to bleed together when he learns about some events that are still future to the “Earth” side and are expected to wipe out most of life on Earth. Knowledge from each world becomes useful in the other, and before long, both worlds are in jeopardy.

I read this book, and the entire trilogy, for the first time back around when it came out. I remember finding it a bit strange, confusing, and not particularly enjoyable. My husband read the series more recently and said he thought I’d like it…so I gave it another chance. I have come to understand that, when I was a young adult, I read this book as a direct parallel to Christianity. Though it certainly has an analogous angle to it, I needed to read it more as fantasy and let it be what it was, not what I assumed it should be. Doing that made this second reading experience far better than the first. I was hooked early on, enjoying the fast pace of the “Earth” reality and the world building of the “green forest” reality alongside it. Though the green forest side was slow in comparison to the Earth side, I skimmed a few scenes when Thomas had a very real, yet at the same time kind of abstract, communion with Elyon, the undisputed Creator of the green forest reality. I get the inclusion of those scenes, but I didn’t feel the need to read them thoroughly.

As the Earth reality gained speed toward the pending disaster, the green forest takes a turn that is sad and unexpected (though, at the same time, unsurprising), and I was really curious to see where that side of the story was going to go next. I remember snippets from the trilogy, but fortunately, it’s mostly all new. The last few pages are a bit bizarre but, at the same time, intriguing. And the book ends on a cliffhanger, which I normally dislike, but it really worked here. And now I’m excited to continue reading, which I didn’t expect to be!

I am aware that I’m at the beginning of a long, twisty mess of a book franchise. Some are directly connected and others are more peripherally so, and apparently there’s no specified order in which to read the books. I have read one of those books in the past and part of another one, and I found both bizarre and unsettling, coincidentally enough. I currently don’t have a lot of desire to read much more than the main trilogy, but I’ll see how I feel when I’m done with the first 3 books, and maybe the prequel.

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Book Sale!

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In honor of the release of book #3 in the Pithea series (and what a good time for it, with so many of us snowed in), the book that kicks off the whole series is available for only $0.99 for the next 5 days, and my novelette The Triangle (unrelated to the series) is free now through Thursday! See below for links and a little more information.

Pithea cover, Kindle

Pithea is the first book in a series of speculative, futuristic fiction. Check it out on Goodreads and Amazon.

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The Triangle is a stand-alone novelette of Christian fiction. Check it out on Goodreads, and go here to get your free copy!

As many who will read this already know, authors, especially self-published or indie authors, need reviews to allow more readers to find their books. If you take advantage of either, or both, of the deals on my books, please make sure to leave me a review on Amazon, Goodreads, or preferably, both!
*Both of these books are also available through Kindle Unlimited.