Rachel Starr Thomson

Tipper’s heart skipped a beat . . . “I have a feeling,” she said, “that we are going to have a glorious quest. This day is the beginning of a great adventure.”

So declares Tipper Schope, who gladly gives up the responsibility of caring for her family’s estate when her disappearing father reappears after fifteen years — well, mostly. He keeps flickering in and out, and his crotchety foreign companions declare a quest necessary: a search for three missing statues, sold off by Tipper to provide money for essentials, that must be joined to each other before Tipper’s father can stop coming apart and reassembling on a floorboard. Despite the heavy stakes — not only the life of Tipper’s father, but possibly the fate of the world, rests on the quest’s success — the journey begins with optimism, and it largely continues that way.

In The Vanishing Sculptor, billed as “a fantastic journey of discovery for all ages,” Donita K. Paul has created a lighthearted story in which not even tragedies can be too tragic. The world in which Tipper lives is simplistic (the villains look like villains; beautiful people always turn out to be good, even if they’re annoying at first), but imaginative and joyously visual. Paul’s dragons are delightful, her “grand birds” are endearingly grand, and the ramblings of confused or otherwise disconnected characters like Lady Peg and Wizard Fenworth are a constant source of locutionary entertainment. Thrown into it all is a missionary story, as Tipper’s father tries to share his newfound faith in Wulder with his skeptical daughter and their closest friend, the grand parrot Sir Beccaroon.

In short, The Vanishing Sculptor is a good tonic for stressful days and heavy hearts. It reminded me of some of Lloyd Alexander’s more upbeat adventures (think Vesper Holly, not Taran the Pigkeeper), with warm family ties and friendships, fights that aren’t too frightening, and lessons that go down easily. Though at times I found the prose choppy, it was a thoroughly enjoyable read from start to finish. In a genre which often relies on heavy themes and gathering darkness, that can’t be said about every book. It’s entirely true of this one.

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NOTE: I’d intended to post an interview with Mrs. Paul today, but it’s not in yet (she’s been rather busy, attending the ACFW Conference and winning an award for Mentor of the Year among other things), so I hope to post it tomorrow. If not, you can expect more ramblings from me of the usual kind on some theme connected to the book :).

Hunter Brown is an average ninth grade boy: good at pranks, bad at first impressions, mediocre at life. Things have been harder to deal with since his father disappeared years ago, but Hunter makes do. Until, in a Neverending-Story-meets-the-Matrix moment, he opens an ancient book and learns that everything he ever knew about his world is wrong.

Not only that, but everything he ever knew about himself is wrong.

Raising my arm to the mirror I wiped the steam away, expecting to see the usual bushy blond hair and oversized ears that reminded me of my father. What I saw instead made my stomach lurch and the blood drain from my face in horror. Something was wrong with my reflection.

Hunter’s terrifying visions collide with reality as he finds himself running from evil spirit-beings that are tracking him in his own hometown. The only way out is into the world of the book — Solandria, where the Codebearers fight an armed resistance against the Shadow. Where Hunter must learn the way of Via, Veritas, Vita — the Way of Truth and Life. Where he’ll face the most powerful enemies and terrifying truths imaginable, and where he’ll finally learn that “By his fear, a man declares his master.”

Hunter Brown and the Secret of the Shadow is a fantasy adventure, an allegory for tweens and teens that’s likely to be read by even younger kids. With that in mind, I make my first caveat: this book is not Anne of Green Gables. It makes use of scary imagery from the start, as Hunter watches a giant red serpent swallow up his town in a vision, falls into an empty grave, and finds himself swimming (or more accurately, drowning) in a lake full of chained dead bodies. While the violence isn’t especially graphic, sometimes it’s gross. And there’s definitely plenty of tension to go around.

At the same time, the book’s frightening images and villains also lend it its greatest strength: this is not a story that shies away from big questions. The truth is that Hunter is not a good guy. He is a sinner who will find out just how deeply his own nature is capable of betraying him and those he loves. As I got deeper into the book, I found myself squirming a little because, the more I identified with Hunter, the more I had to recognize that I’m not a good guy either.

Hunter Brown deals with big issues. It lets us know that our world is in serious danger. It wrestles with questions of free will and Divine sovereignty. It reminds us of eternity.

“You see, Hunter, while there will be some who no longer play a role in the pages you travel, I can assure you those who have been rewritten will never truly die. No, they are at the beginning of a new and wonderful story, one in which there will be no ending, and every page is better and more beautiful than the one before.”

But the book isn’t all serious lessons and scary images — there’s a lot of George Lucas-style fun here, too. One of my favourite scenes involves iguas, giant lizard steeds that run up the trunks of redwood trees and leap from limb to limb while their riders, clipped into their saddles, hang on for dear life. Hunter is personable and often funny.

While young readers are liable to enjoy this story, writers may find themselves throwing fits over certain technique and editing issues (such as the inexplicable spelling of “reins” as “reigns,” done so ubiquitously that I second-guessed myself and checked the spelling to be sure it was wrong!). By the end of the first paragraph I was itching to grab a red pen (whatever happened to commas between independent clauses?). I hoped that the story would grab me enough to make up for this, and while I never stopped desiring to add commas, I found that it did.

Hunter Brown isn’t without its problems. It’s not great literature or seamless writing; not, as I said, Anne of Green Gables — but then, it’s not supposed to be. It’s supposed to be an engaging, exciting story that shares some powerful truths.

In that goal, it certainly succeeds.

“I was the youngest of three daughters. Our literal-minded mother named us Grace, Hope, and Honour, but few people except perhaps the minister who had baptized all three of us remembered my given name.”

As a very young child, Honour renames herself “Beauty,” a nickname which sticks despite the fact that she is hardly the beauty of the family. An awkward young woman in high society, Beauty’s chief interests are horses and books, and she dreams of going away to university and burying herself in Latin and Greek. Her dreams, like those of her sisters, are shattered when her father’s hard-built merchant business is wrecked by a storm at sea. The family must go north, to the wild country with its whispers of magic and its very real hardships, and start life anew.

There, on the edge of a dark forest where no life dares to stir, the familiar story of Beauty and the Beast truly begins.

From the first chapter onward, Robin McKinley’s Beauty is a rich and engaging read. I read it many years ago as a young teenager, and had forgotten everything about it except that I thought I liked Rose Daughter better (McKinley’s second version of the fairy tale). But I picked up a worn copy of Beauty from a local thrift shop, and at long last, over the Christmas holidays I found time to read it. It’s been revisiting me ever since, the way rich and lovely stories do.

Though it shares many details with Disney’s animated movie (which it predates by a good 20 years), McKinley’s version of Beauty and the Beast is quieter, finding its strength and poignancy in the very real joys and struggles of its characters. From Beauty’s blacksmith brother-in-law, who cares for the whole family by the sweat of his brow, to the sisters who love and live so sacrificially, to the heroine herself, the characters do what is right, what is true, and what is truly beautiful. When Beauty explains the origin of her nickname, the Beast responds, “I welcome Beauty and Honour both, then. Indeed, I am very fortunate.”

Beauty is a fantasy, and supposedly a children’s novel, but it delighted me as an adult, and its most fantastic scenes still hold the warmth of real life. I could wish for some of the luxury Beauty finds at the castle, where invisible servants tend her every need and a vast library allows her to study for hours. (“I didn’t know there were so many books in the world,” Beauty says; and the Beast answers, “Well, in fact, there aren’t.”) But it also highlights quiet joys–cups of tea, beautiful sisters, good men, newborn babies, and the altogether worthwhile pursuit of love.

My shelves are full of books that I have yet to read, but Beauty will remain where I can reach it–and read it–again.

Review of Flashpoint by Frank Creed

Review by Rachel Starr Thomson

The year is 2036. The place, Chicago—under control of a worldwide government called the One State. A father drives his children through the rain and drops them off under a bridge before fleeing the “Peacekeepers” on his trail.

Little do Dave and Jen know that they are about to lose everything they’ve ever known—and gain more than they ever suspected.

Flashpoint is Frank Creed’s first novel, a cyberpunk story with a Christian twist. The heroes are “Fundamentalists,” Christians pegged as terrorists by the One State. Don’t confuse this with Left Behind, though—the future may be apocalyptic, but Creed’s vision of it has more in common with Marvel Comics than it does with Tim LaHaye.

Creed’s style is fast paced and action-packed. Dave, aka Calamity Kid, goes from zero to superhero in about twenty seconds through a technical upgrade called “reformation,” a la Matrix. A caveat here: while reformation gives Dave and Jen superpowers, it also shortcuts their spiritual growth. Suddenly they can see angels and demons, hear the voice of God, and do something called “walking in the Spirit” that seems more like a superpower surge than a truly spiritual experience. Flashpoint makes liberal use of scripture verses—the entire text of the Bible is included in the “mindware” our heroes upload—but the messages can be confusing. In one scene, Calamity Kid obeys the Spirit’s injunction to “resist not an evil person” so that he can come out of his faked stupor minutes later and take out his captors using tranquilizer guns and electric shock.

Creed’s greatest asset in Flashpoint is the gritty, polluted, slangy, techno-drenched world of the future. The book opens with a timeline beginning in the 1980’s that makes this future look not only plausible, but probable. Everything in the underground is real, from the slums to the showers. Frank Creed writes like a man who loves words. He’s invented future slang that’s fun and immerses us in his world, but at times his way of putting things is awkward enough to pull readers out of the action and leave them momentarily puzzled: “I nipped my tongue’s tip,” Calamity says, “to mug a wicked grin.”

This is a fun read with adrenaline-pumped moments and lots of attitude, refreshingly creative and artistic. Believers looking for encouragement in their own walk with God may leave this book wishing they could go through a reformation of their own, but Flashpoint can’t help there. Though it touches on some heavy themes, this is still light reading.