Book Reviews

Summary: Urban fantasy about what the role of guilt and repair is for those who have been raised to harm. 

When Among Crows is the first of Veronica Roth’s books that I have read since the Divergent series. I read the Divergent series soon after they were released in the 2011-13 era. I think I read all of the series at least twice and I saw the movies. But since then, while Roth has written a number of additional books, I just haven’t bothers to pick them up.

I saw When Among Crows was on sale for kindle and I picked it up because it was short and because it was a modern urban fantasy based in Chicago (similar to Desden Files) and it was loosely based on Slavic folktales. I also picked up The Witch and the Tsar at the same time and it will be my next fiction book. Both books use the folktale character of Baba Yaga and I picked them up together to see how different authors handle the retelling of similar stories.

Similar to other urban fantasy, there are more creatures than just humans living in our world, but not everyone can see them. Dymitr opens the books. He is human and on a quest, but the object of that quest is not fully revealed until very close to the end of the book. Along the way, Dymitr seeks out help from various creatures that feed on human fear or pain or sadness.

This is not a young adult book like Percy Jackson or The Carver and the Queen Emma C. Fox or KB Hoyle’s fairytale series, this is more like Dresden Files’ level of violence and dark fantasy themes, but with less humor than Dresden Files. There isn’t any sex, but there are a few kisses between a gay couple and that doesn’t go any further.

This is a bit between a long novella and a short novel at 175 pages. I read it in three brief reading sessions. I was facinated by the main theme of the book, revenge, guilt and atonement. It takes a while to get into who is guilty for what, but all the characters have killed or harmed others. Some have killed or harmed out of self defense. Some have killed or harmed because they were taught to fear others or that others were trying to harm them and so you needed to kill or be killed.

It isn’t fully revealed until later and it would be a spoiler to discuss, but relationship across boundries is the cause of coming to see a different perspective. And once you see a different perspective, your guilt and the role you have in repair of harm does matter.

Urban fantasy does not tend to take a light view of magic. Magic can be well used or badly used, but regardless, there is always a cost. This book continues that general genre trend.

I lived in Chicago for years. This book uses the polish immigrant story to explore how old world fairytale creatures came to the new world. But the city was not as much of a character to the book as I would have hoped. The next book in the series comes out later this year and by advance page count (which can be wrong) the next book is closer to 300 pages, or nearly twice as long. I look forward to picking it up when it is released.

Spoilers ahead, do not read if you do not want to know them.

Read more

Summary: Percy Jackson and gang’s latest project is pet sitting. 

Wrath of the Tripple Goddess is the second of a subtrilogy within the larger Percy Jackson series. This subtrilogy is set during Percy Jackson’s senior year of high school and the background is that he has to get three letters of recommendation from gods to get into the demigod college, New Rome University, where Percy and Annabeth want to go to college. Percy Jackson was able to get his first letter of recommendation, and this is about getting his second. Because gods only give boons as a result of some quest or challege done for them by a human or demigod, Percy, Annabeth and Grover have to accomplish something for a god. In the last book, they found a stolen challice. In the Wrath of the Triple Goddess, they have to pet sit for some magical creatures at the home of one of the gods.

Thematically, this is a halloween book, so it is a bit spookier than some, although it isn’t very spooky. Generally, I think this subtrilogy has walked a good balance of writing about Percy when he is 5-6 years older than the intiial series, but keeping it oriented toward younger readers so that its content is not too old, but it engages readers who are now older than they were when the initial series came out.

Read more

Summary: A series of loosely connected essays about the influence of the rule of Benedict and Benedictine spirituality on the church.

I have read a number of Rowan Williams’ short books. Most of those books were based on lectures and compiled into books later. This seems to be different in that it appears to be a series of essays that was compiled into a book and just doesn’t have the same level of coherence as I tend to expect from Williams’ books. That isn’t to say they are bad essays, I learned a lot about the history and influence of the Benedictine order. But I think as long as you go into the book with an expectation of essays that are loosely connected and not as a more intentionally shaped book, you will be rightly primed for what the book is.

One of the reviews I skimmed through complained about the last essay, which is less about Benedictines broadly and more about a particular Benedictine author’s book. I agree with the comment, but I also found that essay the most engaging of the book because it was about a book trying to grapple with mysticism in the early 20th century (about the same time that Evelyn Underhill was writing her book on mysticism.) Williams was helpful in pointing out that we tend to think of mysticism phenomenologically or sometimes epistemologically, but that isn’t how all people at all times have thought about mysticism. Those are both useful ways to explore mysticism, but they do limit the concept of mysticism if those are the only methods of exploration.

Read more

Summary: Percy is back for his senior year of high school.

It has been over a decade since I originally read all of the Percy Jackson books. My son read all the Percy Jackson books last year and I had not realized until then that in 2023 and 2024, two new books were released focusing on Percy, Annabeth and Grover. That original trio is what I loved about the original Percy Jackson books and I didn’t like the extended second series as much.

Percy is trying to make up for missing his junior year (because of Hera) and at an alternative high school. Annabeth is doing well at a NYC boarding school near where Percy is attending. Percy is back living at home with his mom and stepdad. And while things are busy because Percy is taking a ton of classes to try to finish school on time, the distraction from the supernatural world hasn’t stopped.

The plan is for Annabeth and Percy to both go to college at New Rome University in California the next school year. But Zeus is behind throwing Percy a curve ball. He has to get three recommendation letters from three different Gods to be accepted. So in addition to his normal school work, he has to complete three quests. Each of these Senior Year adventure books is another quest.

Read more

Summary: A book that is hard to recommend, because it needs a lot of caveating. The right person will find it helpful, most will not.

I have a ambivalent attitude toward reading the mystics. I value mystical thinking and practice, but I tend to find reading them an exercise in frustration. Mystics are often vague and contradictory. They often use language in unusual ways. But there is often still real help there.

Part of my ongoing reading about discernment is about how we apply what we learn even when there is not definitive directions. I was listening to a talk by Sean Rowe, the new presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church and he said (my paraphrase) that we like to talk about discernment, and discernment is good, but the point of discernment is to eventually chose a path and follow it. That is a helpful point and one that I think DeMello needs to hear (or say).

What DeMello is doing here is not saying, “give up and stay where you are,” but “acknowledge where you are and pay attention.” His rough summary is that we don’t change by trying to force ourselves to do hard things, but by paying attention and allowing the Holy Spirit to bring awareness to us.

Read more

Summary: A black history textbook wrapped up in a comedic wrapper. 

I am all about a good Black history book. And I also really appriciate history told by comedians because they are trying to get around the way that many people are resistant to dry dates and events presentations of history.

Black AF History is not a dry presentation. The humor mostly works to get to the heart of the presentation. I think some of the voice of his uncle sections fall a bit flat. But the vast majority works well.

I think on of the by products of the presenation is that this is not a universal Black presentation, but a particular black presentation. That should be obvious becuase there is no universal Black experience that is true of all Black peole at all times. Harriot grew up with a rural southern Black cultural experience. That experience will be differnet from an northern urban Black experience and different from a midwestern farmbelt experience and different from California suburban experience. And all of these are still stereotypical in some way which makes them also incomplete.

Read more

Summary: Short look at both the history of WEB Dubois 1900 World Fair project and how it predated much of the graphical data representation that became common later in the 20th century. 

This is not a long book. There are really only a handful of essays. Those essays give context to the 1900 Paris World Exposition, WEB DuBois and his experience up until this point, and the data that was being presented. A final section discusses how innovative the presentation of the data was and how it predated later similar graphical data presentations.

I have known about this book since it came out but just hadn’t gotten around to reading it. I have an undergrad degree in sociology and part of an early job was using GIS demographics to help churches and church plants with planning. So I have a fair amount of background to know how important this event was in regard to data presentation.

But this matters in part because of what WEB DuBois and the others who participated were trying to do. 1900 was 35 years after the end of slavery. Contextually, 35 yeas ago was 1990, and the first Iraq War hadn’t happened yet. George HW Bush was president and the http protocol was being developed but the first real web browser would not be released widely until 1994. In other words, slavery was recent. It wasn’t just that slavery was recent but that there was widespread perception that Black Americans (and all from African decent) were “less than” those from European decent. The presentation, and WEB DuBois himself, were proof of the falsity of that belief.

Read more

Summary: An orphan who aged out of foster care breaks his (chosen, not biological) brother out of an abusive foster care family, and that starts his discovery of his magical roots, a family he didn’t know he had, and a magical HBCU. 

I have been trying to intentionally read more fiction this year. That has mostly been young adult fiction because it is what has drawn me in so far.

Blood At the Root was published last year and I have seen it on the shelves of a few friends on Goodreads or seen social media posts about it. As I try to generally do, I avoided reading anything about it other than seeing that people I trusted recommended it.

Malik is 17 and petitioned to be released from the foster care system. His mother died when he was seven and people around him, blamed him for her death. He doesn’t really understand what happened. But he knows it has to do with his magic. Since the day of her death, he has magic. But it is mostly uncontrolled and comes out when he is angry or emotional. So he tries to repress his emotions to stay in control. (He is not always in control.)

The book opens with Malik stealing a car so that he can break his (chosen, not biological) 12 year old foster brother out of an abusive foster home. They have grown up in a small predominately Black Alabama town and they dream of going to California to get away from everything. I won’t give away too much more than spoilers from opening chapters, but in the midst of running away, they run into trouble and that leads them to find Malik’s grandmother who he didn’t know he had. She and all those around her also have magic and Malik finds an underground world of magic and Black community which he is not sure he can trust. He has been on his own for 10 years without anyone watching out for him. And it is hard to trust that there could be family that is trustworthy if they had not come for him earlier.

Read more

Summary: An assessment of Bonhoeffer as a pacifist and how that pacifism remained unchanged throughout the 1940s, in opposition to how Bonhoeffer’s story is often presented. 

Discipleship in a World Full of Nazis is intentionally trying to reframe the story of Bonhoeffer. The common story is that Bonhoeffer after his time studying in NYC in 1930-31 came to see the Sermon on the Mount as the central teaching of Christianity. Bonhoeffer focused his teaching in the underground seminary on the Sermon on the Mount and that is reflected in his book Discipleship. But starting at some point in the late 1930s or early 1940s, there was a shift in Bonhoeffer and he came to see that his peace ethic was no longer a viable means of operating. This traditional version of Bonhoeffer shifts into a couple of variations, either Bonhoeffer kept his peace ethnic but violated his own teaching and particpated in the assassination attempt anyway, or he moved toward a type of Nebuhrian realism that justified his participation in the assassination attempt.

Mark Nation says that is all wrong. He directly challenges Bethge’s presenation of Bonhoeffer as changing and instead suggests that Bonhoeffer remained fully and conscously a pacifist until the end. The book is essentially a collection of six main essays about different aspects of why Nation thinks this reframing best makes sense of the evidence that we have and then four appendix essays.

The first essay is summarized by this quote: “Bonhoeffer, let it be said over and over, was not arrested for participating in any assassination attempts. He was arrested for helping to save the lives of fourteen Jews and was imprisoned for subverting the military’s power to conscript him into service.” Part of this discussion is about how Nation doesn’t think there is much, if any, evidence that Bonhoeffer did anything other that communicate with the ecumentical church that there was a movement in Germany trying to remove Hitler from power.

The second essay is about the importance of the “Jewish question”. It is nearly 40 pages and both points out how Bonheffer saw the the problem of overt antisemitism, but how Bonhoeffer was still supersessionist in his treatment of the question and how Bonhoeffer’s method was primarily to talk about the ability of Jewish Christians to be part of the church. Nation suggests that this was at least in part a strategy to get the church to recognize that if Jewish people are unable to be recognized within the church then the very concept of evangelism and the universality of the church was at stake. Germany was only about 1% Jewish and of those about 1 in 6 ethnically Jewish people were Christians.

Read more