Among the Unseen by Jodi McIsaac (The Thin Veil #3)

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Summary: Cedar, the new Queen of Tír na nÓg, is trying to adjust to her new life and new powers.  But all the Unseen (the magical creatures of Earth) have started dying. 

The Thin Veil trilogy is one of the increasing numbers of books published by 47North or one of Amazon’s other publishing imprints.  And I think it is fairly similar to the others I have read, better than most self published books, but still not quite to the upper levels of quality of all books.

The Thin Veil trilogy follows Cedar, her daughter Eden, and others through discovering that the Celtic gods were actually an immortal race from another world, and that Cedar is the lost daughter of the last king.

Similar to Rick Riordan’s Percy Jackson series or the Nicholas Flamel series by Michael Scott, this is a modern look at ancient mythology.  But the Thin Veil series is adult fiction (although I would have read it as a teen and I don’t really have any content warning other than some sexual innuendo.)

This is a good light beach read fantasy.  Nothing heavy, but not terribly original either.

The main story arc of the third book is about the sickness and death of the magical creatures on earth.  There was an ancient spell that protected the creatures from humans as long as humans believed in them.  But now that humans have stopped believing in them, they have started dying.

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The Silkworm (Cormoran Strike #2) by Robert Galbraith (JK Rowling)

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Another fast-paced, well-written whodunit from JK Rowling. It’s been 8 months since Cormoran Strike solved the murder of model Lula Landry, and now an Owen Quine, an author of mild success, has gone missing. He ultimately turns up dead–in a gruesome scene that mirrors the ending of his latest to-be-published novel. That novel is a non-subtle attack on numerous celebrities in the publishing world, and the list of those depicted who may respond with murder is a long one. Strike and his assistant Robin meticulously gather the evidence in pursuit of a killer with an impressive ability for planning and forethought.

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Resolving Everyday Conflict by Ken Sande

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Resolving Everyday ConflictSummary: Very practical and biblical look at the way we are to handle the everyday small and large conflicts in our lives.

Every month Christianaudio.com gives away a free audiobook.  Most of the time I do not get around to reading and reviewing the book before the end of the month.  But this month I am on the ball and have finished it before the month is even half over.

This is one of those books that I have already recommended to a number of people.  Everyone deals with conflict on a daily basis.  It may be small or large, but conflict is a part of life.

One of the reviews I saw on Amazon played on the biblical phrase in its title, “Where two or more are gathered there is conflict.”

Ken Sande starts with a simple definition of conflict, “Conflict comes because we see something we think we deserve and cannot have it.”

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Fuzzy Nation by John Scalzi

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Fuzzy Nation by John Scalzi cover imageSummary: A first contact story with cute small fuzzy beings.

One of the things I really like is reinterpretations.  I like to listen to remakes of classic songs.  I like to watch remakes of movies and I like to read reinterpretations of old stories.  Some authors have make their entire careers from this type of writing.

As far as I know Fuzzy Nation is the first time that John Scalzi has tried it.  A classic 1962 book by Beam Piper is the inspiration for Fuzzy Nation.  I have not read the original yet.  (But the original is included in the Audible.com Audiobook and available for free on kindle.  So I will read it soon. Reviewed it here.)

The story starts on a foreign world.  Corporations have started buying up the exploitation rights for newly discovered worlds.  Jack Halloway is a surveyor that looks for new areas to mine.  Halloway is a loner and works hundreds of miles from the closest real settlement.

While away, his house is invaded by several small mammalian type animals.  As Jack gets to know them he realizes that there may be more to this world than anyone has realized.

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I Am a Church Member: Discovering the Attitude that Makes the Difference

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Reposting this review because the Kindle edition is on sale for $0.99.
I Am a Church Member: Discovering the Attitude that Makes the Difference by Thom S. RainerSummary: Short discussion oriented book about what being a church member really is all about.

Someone at Rainer’s publisher has been paying attention to the blogosphere. I Am a Church Member (on sale last week) is a good response to Rachel Held Evans CNN post of two weeks ago.

This is not the only good response, but it is a one method of responding. Evans, I believe, was trying to describe her desires for the church based on her frustrations with the dysfunction of the church. (I don’t think she was trying to ‘demand’ that the church change to fit her desires as some have charged.)

Thom Rainer instead is trying to start with a healthy church and discuss what it means to be a good church member to that healthy church.

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Evangellyfish by Douglas Wilson

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Summary: A skewering of some convenient targets.

I don’t read a lot of Christian fiction.  Most of it I think tries too hard to get a message across and not hard enough to tell a good honest story.  And I think that is the central problem with Evangellyfish.

Douglas Wilson is a good writer.  He strings words together nicely and is pleasant to read.  But from the beginning this seemed like a book that was just too safe and predictable.  It is held up as good satire.  And that does seem to be what he is attempting.  But I happen to really love some good satire.  Christopher Buckley is one of my favorite authors.  Coffee with Jesus, the Colbert Report, Jonathan Swift, etc have left us with a world of satire and so in an age that is cynical about pretty much everything, satire needs to be even more carefully crafted than ever.

What I think that Wilson missed is that the best satire is not only from the inside, but against your own side. Evangellyfish is safe in particular for Wilson. A review on Amazon that I read after I finished captured my thoughts exactly,

“The book bills itself as dangerous and edgy, but it came across to me as par for the Wilson course. Pop quiz: which pastor lives like a hypocrite, full of deceit and sexual sin: the mega-church pastor or the Reformed pastor? Of course the mega-church pastor! What sin does the youth pastor struggle with? Of course sexual sin! Which female character villainously manufactures a campaign of vicious slander: the reporter, the secretary, or the midwife? Of course the midwife! After all, she’s already guilty of near-manslaughter just for having babies outside the hospital (at least according to the book!). To anyone familiar with Douglas Wilson, none of these caricatures are surprising.”

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The Attachments by Rainbow Rowell

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Summary: An IT worker, tasked with reading company emails, falls in love with one of the people he is snooping on. Last year, Rainbow Rowell started getting a lot of attention for her 2012 book, Eleanor & Park.  In part, the attention was for winning several awards including the 2014 Michael Printz Honor Book for … Read more

Looking for Alaska by John Green

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Looking for Alaska by John Green is the first of five novels written by the young adult author. Published in 2005, this novel is about a young high school student who decides that he wants to follow in his father’s footsteps by attending the same boarding school that his dad went to. In order to suck the marrow out of life (side note: I read that YOLO is for people who don’t know what carpe diem means), Miles leaves the comforts of home to go off and have his own adventures. He acquires a roommate and a set of friends belonging to his roommate and through their relationships, their actions, their reactions change each other’s lives forever.

I can now say that I have read all of John Green’s novels with the exception of Will Grayson, Will Grayson, which he co-wrote with David Levithan. I really enjoy John Green’s novels. Just like I have said in my other reviews, I appreciate that his novels bring excitement and eloquence to the lives of teenagers, and there is no involvement of vampires, witches, death matches or futuristic factions. I definitely liked this book better than An Abundance of Katherines and probably would tie it with Paper Towns (these three novels don’t come close to topping my love for A Fault In Our Stars).

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Dawn by Octavia Butler (Exenogenesis Trilogy #1)

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Summary: A Woman wakes up to discover the Earth as she knows it is no longer, and the only hope of survival is an alien species that has questionable motives.

Dawn is the first book that I have finished reading from KindleUnlimited’s library.  I actually already owned the kindle edition, but the audiobook is included in KindleUnlimited so I moved it to the top of my list.

Octavia Butler is known for her strong African American female leads, unusual in the science fiction world. Butler’s first real hit, Kindred, was semi-fantasy. A time travel book that takes a 1970s African American woman back to her 1820s era slave owning ancestor.  Kindred is an excellent book, one that I highly recommend and the best of Butler’s books that I have read so far.

The other of Butler’s books that I have read is Butler’s last book that she wrote before she died, Fledgling, a vampire book that was written about the time of the Twilight vampire craze.

So Dawn, as an Alien abduction novel, is yet again completely different.  Butler does a great job building suspense, letting you know what the main character is feeling and making the aliens, alien. It is one of the common thoughts of science fiction writers that if we do find aliens, that they will be so alien that we will have a hard time relating to them or even understanding why we don’t understand them.

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Death Masks by Jim Butcher

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Summary: Dresden, not quite as much of a mess this time, is searching for the Shroud of Turin, everyone else is trying to kill him.

Dresden is Chicago’s only professional Wizard.  Essentially he is a Private Investigator for supernatural issues.  That is when he is actually working and not trying to save the world from certain destruction.

Death Masks comes fairly closely on the heals of Summer Knight.  The Red Court (the vampires) have declared war on the White Court (the Wizards) and in particular on Dresden. So the vampires are still trying to kill him.  The local crime lord,who Dresden has previously had an uneasy truce with, seems to have some of his goons after him as well.  And Susan, his (maybe ex) fiancée who is part way through her transformation to a vampire herself after trying to save Dresden in book 3, is back in town.

All of that is in addition to an actual job, finding the Shroud of Turin, which was recently stolen.

Michael, a Knight of the Cross, who was last in Grave Peril (#3) and is one of my favorite characters, is back.  Michael is Catholic and devout and carries a sword around while defeating evil, raising his brood of kids, working as a contractor and keeping his wife happy.  This time he is joined by two other Knights that are trying to save Dresden.

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