Book Reviews

Summary: A novel about spiritual formation. 

I am a bit cynical about Christian novels. It isn’t that I do not know that good Christian novels exist, I know they do. Many Christian novels are among my favorite novels. But I also know that there are a very large number of novels that are classified as Christian, which are not focused on art, but on propaganda. I am most opposed to the Christian novel as propaganda, but a second category, Christian novel as “safe” is nearly as bad. It is not that I think that everyone should read every type of novel or that appropriate boundaries should not exist for the content within novels. But “safe” should not be the primary category for writing a novel.

Novels are relatively recent inventions. Novels continue to evolve and change. Novels communicate emotion, empathy, stories, perspectives which we do not have, windows into the lives of others which we do not live. There is a role for communicating information in the novel, but it isn’t a primary role for novels.

I have been intentionally trying to read fiction every day this year. I have not been perfect in that, but I have read a lot more fiction this year than I have in many years. That has in part forced me to find fiction to read. As a spiritual director, I was aware that the Sensible Shoes series existed. But it was not until hearing a podcast interview with the author that I decided to pick up this first book.

Sensible Shoes is about four different women who meet at a spiritual formation workshop. The facilitator of the workshop is a spiritual director. The women sit together by chance, but they become friends over the several months of the class and the reader comes to know not just their relationship with each other and God, but also their history and background that has led them to where they are.

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Summary: A retelling of Huck Finn from Jim’s viewpoint.

While I have read some of Mark Twain’s books, I have never read Huck Finn or Tom Sawyer. Almost all of my background for the story of Huck Finn is from the 1968-69 live action and animation series, “The New Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.” The show used three live action characters who played Huck Finn, Tom Sawyer and Becky Thatcher, but was otherwise entirely animated. You can see an example here. My memory is pretty vague, but I remember it being almost entirely fantasy. The children found magical creatures as they took a raft down the Mississippi. That was poor preparation for reading James, a retelling of Huck Finn through the perspective of Jim.

My perception prior to reading was that Jim was a slave about the same age as Huck Finn, but once I was a little way into the book I check and the original book had Jim/James in his late 20s. The story keeps to the outline of Huck Finn. Jim runs away to keep from being sold away from his wife and daughter. While at the same time and unrelated, Huck Finn fakes his death to get away from his abusive and alcoholic father.

Jim and Huck Finn find one another while they are both hiding out on an island in the Mississippi River. Jim realizes that he will be blamed for Huck’s death, and at the same time knows that Huck is too young to care for himself and so takes Huck under his care as they try to get away. The book starts out in Hannibal, IL. I had previously assumed Hannibal, MO was further south, but it is 100 miles due west of Springfield IL. Missouri was a slave state and while it would have taken longer to get to than today, Springfield was where Abraham Lincoln was based prior to his election as president. The vague initial plan was to take the Mississippi River south to the Ohio River (about 200 miles) and escape to freedom.

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Summary: An AI seeks justice.

I have been intentionally trying to read at least some fiction every day this year. I blew through this trilogy and I am going to just write one review for the trilogy as a whole.

The series intentionally starts leaving the reader in the dark about what is really going on. The story slowly unwinds and it is really not until the last third of the book that everything that the reader needs to know is revealed.

The main character is seeking revenge. But very early in the book, she is distracted when she runs across someone she knows dying in the snow. She save them and then feels an obligation along with her desire for revenge.

The world building is well done. This is a classic space opera trilogy. The first book has all the vibes of a western or left for dead spy novel but with a space setting. There is an Asian/British feel to some of the culture that is accented even more in later book. An emotionally reserved culture, lots of tea, colonialism are all very common.  It took a little while to understand, but the culture of the main characters does not distinguish genders, so everyone is “she” in that language, but in other languages, there are gender distinctions.

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Summary: A novel about the English mystic Margery Kempe, the author of what is usually considered the first autobiography written in English. 

I have been intentionally trying to read fiction every day and this has led to me reading a lot more fiction this year. Revelations is about Margery Kempe (c1373-1438?). This is a novel based on her life, roughly from her autobiography, The Book of Margery Kempe.

In that autobiography she details her many visions of Jesus or other members of the trinity as she went on various pilgrimages, including to the Holy Land. But that autobiography also details her many pregnancies and children and the abuse (and rape) from her husband. She suffered what we would now label postpartum depression and has the first of her visions of Jesus after the birth of her first child. And it is believed that she has 14-15 pregnancies with multiple children dying in infancy or still births.

She negotiated a “chaste marriage” and soon after left her husband (and children) when she was about 43. She meets Julian of Norwich and has extended conversations with her. Julian was also a mystic and author and the novel expands on that connection.

Obviously, while there is source material, much of the book is fictionalized. Unintentionally, this is another book on the Love of God that is a connection between Greg Boyle’s Cherished Belonging and the novel Sensible Shoes and John Armstrong’s The Transforming Fire of Divine Love: My Long, Slow Journey into the Love of God (which I am still reading.) This unintentional theme of God’s love throughout my reading this spring has made me think more about how the mystical experience of God’s love matters to the church and to those who never have a mystical experience of God’s love.

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Summary: Exploration of the role of love, community and belonging.

I have known of Greg Boyle for a while, but I have not previously read his books. I thought I had a good idea of his perspective and approach and I just didn’t think I needed to read him. But Cherished Belonging was the book chosen for the book club that I love and so I picked the book up and read it. I think I had a pretty good understanding of Boyle and that my impressions were largely correct. But I was challenged by the book.

Boyle starts early in the book telling the reader that there are two principles that frame his ministry and approach. “1) Everyone is unshakably good (no exceptions) and 2) We belong to each other (no exceptions).” (p2) While there is a bit of fluidity to how he uses “good” in the first part, mostly what he means is inherent worth and value, not moral goodness. I think if you understand him to mean, everyone is made in the image of God and therefore has value, that will be the rough meaning in most situations throughout the book. The stories he shares make it clear that he does not mean that everyone makes good choices or that they always will do the right thing at important points.

With that caveat about how he seems to mean good, I do think that the book is helpful especially in a time when basic Christian values are being questioned. Boyle is remaindering the reader that not only are we called to love, but we are call to love all, even those who are not particularly lovable. He reminds us that those who are most hard to love, generally have been the victims of abuse and harm. Those who have abused and harmed, will often harm others. And as he repeatedly illustrates in his stories, our systems of “justice” often perpetuate more harm instead of healing to those who are at the bottom rungs of our society.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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