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To the Future...

This post is ridiculously over-due and (as implied by it being over-due) should have been written several months ago.
But I'm sure you all know how it goes - you make more plans than you can realistically accomplish, and then life gets in the way.

All that aside, let's get to the review.

Regardless of what you think about Harry Potter and the series' author, J.K. Rowling, the books have created incredible opportunity and advancement for two separate but not exclusive areas - Youth Literature and Fantasy as a genre. It is in large part, but not entirely, because of the incredible popularity of the Harry Potter books that we have been able to see the growth and legitimization of both Youth and Fantasy Literature.
These recent trends have allowed for a group of authors, writing Youth Fantasy, to emerge within the Christian book market.

Now we can get in debates about whether or not there should be a "Christian" market and whether it's crass to refer to Christians, or Youth as a market, but that is not the concern of this blog. This blog is primarily concerned with one question - Was the book any good?

The book in question is book one in the Codebreakers Series - Hunter Brown and the Secret of the Shadow. the books it the first in a new series by a new author team known as The Miller Brothers, who are in fact brothers, and are in fact two people (at least as near as I can tell).
The book is told from the perspective of high school freshman, Hunter Brown, and follows him through his antics on the last day of classes which lead to him and his buddies acquiring a magical book. The book is significant as it is through the book which Hunter and his buddy, Stretch (who ends up getting separated from Hunter in the process), get teleported to the land of Solandria. At this point the story becomes fairly semi-standard Fantasy - Hunter does some training; he learns a profound lesson about himself; they go on some quests; he saves the world. I'm exaggerating here, but not much, and that's not a slight to the authors. The interesting part of these devices is always in the details of each event, and so to detail them would destroy he more interesting parts of the book.

Moving on, let's move into the review. Overall, I thought it was well written and a great first attempt into the realm of Christian Youth Fantasy, but the Miller Brothers owe much to Bryan Davis and Wayne Thomas Batson (and a couple others) who all but paved the way in this field.
One of the few things I disliked about this book were the illustrations; unfortunately, I found them to detract from the story. The book is illustrated in, what I imagine to be beautifully rendered, 3d computer generated pictures. I'm sure the actual 3d images are very nice to look at, but when converted to sepia tones, the image didn't translate over. Call me old-fashioned, or perhaps a luddite, but I much prefer hand drawn, black-and-white images than attempts to "modernize" the medium by invoking computer art. There is some excellent (what appears to be) hand-drawn artwork with the map and the ring of symbols on the dedication page.

Concerning the story itself, again, I thought it was a terrific first effort and I really liked the realm the authors were able to create - the various citizens, creatures, regions - all were very well thought out. They also came up with a pretty clever way to present events that Hunter might not be present for (as he narrates the book) through the use of dreams/visions. That being said, there were a couple times throughout the story that I felt the narration was a little weak. I don't remember if it was because I felt Hunter used a word I didn't think he would use or because he used a phrase I didn't think he would use, but I didn't find the narrative devise to be entirely believable, although it was nice to see.

In any discussion of Christian Fantasy the issue of Faith should at least be mentioned, and this is the area I have the biggest beef with. I am not the biggest fan of the way most Christian Fantasy deals with the "God Issue," which is to create an allegorical character which represents or replaces God in this other realm. The trend was started in Narnia and is used frequently to this day. I'm uncomfortable with it, and I don't know what to do about it on a philosophical or theological level. That being said, The Miller Brothers do a decent job of keeping their allegorical God general and vague. I also appreciated their personification of the forces of darkness, I thought that was a particularly insightful and interesting creation on their part.

Lastly, it should be mentioned that there is an online component to the book over at Codebearers.com. This is where the 3d graphics shine. Unfortunately, at this time, there are only three games connected with the book (and there have been since February), and I'm not much for forum communities.

Overall, I wanted to like the book more than I did for the reasons mentioned above, but I still liked it. I would recommend this book to 6th to 9th graders, and fans of The Door Within Trilogy by Wayne Thomas Batson - if you liked that series, you'll probably like this one. If you didn't like that series...well...

The second book of the series is scheduled for this coming Fall.

Here's to reading!

A New Thing

I've started this blog in hopes that I might write more of the reviews that I have been wanting to write over the last months.
In celebration, I've combined and re-posted a couple of my Caleb Pascal reviews.

Here's to new things - enjoy!

An Amazing High-Wire Balancing Act

Thrown out with the trash as a baby, Caleb has lived most of his life feeling like someone’s unwanted left-overs. Things don’t get any better when he’s “adopted” by Mr. Groeger, who treats Caleb worse than hired help. Over-worked and beaten, Caleb has begun to accept this miserable life when he meets an old circus clown who shows Caleb that he wasn’t created to live this way.

Kids (and adults) who enjoyed the dynamic characters of The Series of Unfortunate Events, will also enjoy the motley crew that Kersten Hamilton has assembled in this series. With Caleb Pascal & the Peculiar People, Hamilton has created a series that young and old will love to read, featuring dramatic plots, compelling characters, and solid faith lessons. The author also places a verse or two of scripture at the beginning of each chapter; children and parents can have fun figuring out how each verse relates to the chapter it precedes.

Kersten Hamilton packs each book chock full of everything one would hope for in a children's book. I was most impressed by Hamilton's ability to incorporate complex ideas, in simple language, within the plot of the story. Not once did I feel as if the story dragged because of dialogue, nor did I ever feel as if the ideas were treated only superficially. There is great depth and drama contained within these slim books.

This is quite a feat for any author, but especially for one in the market Hamilton finds herself in. Very rarely in the Christian children's market does one find such a daring and talented author (at least in my experience). Often, we find books that are heavy on "Christian Themes"- whether that comes in the form of dense apologetic or heavy-handed allusion. In many cases, even the theology is watered-down in order for the books to be either understandable, or palatable to a wider audience, and in doing so these books sometimes border on bad theology.

Kersten Hamilton's Caleb Pascal books are none of these.

I could say much more, but I won't. Instead, I'll allow you to discover the world of Caleb for yourself.