The Cure by Athol Dickson

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The Cure Thumbnail The Cure by Athol DicksonDISCLAIMER: It is no secret that Athol Dickson is my client. We have worked together for hundreds of hours getting his works out before you the readers. He has also become something more:  friend from across the country, kindred spirit and fellow follower of Christ. But I read The Cure long before I met Athol and Riley Keep is a character close to my heart ever since. There is a lot of Riley in me and I suspect in many of you. If you have read The Cure, join the conversation and leave a comment about how it affected you.

The Cure is free at Amazon for the next 5 days

A Review

Riley was no longer dead; his ghostly days were over… here at last was something truly good to drink. The Cure is something truly good to drink. – The Cure

There was a time when Riley Keep was a man of supreme confidence: minister, missionary, educator of New England’s finest. Then something terrible happened; he came face to face with his humanity and what he saw changed him. Now he returns home years later an abject failure, a ghost moving among the living. By accident he catches his reflection in a mirror and he sees something far different: failed protector of an entire people, weakling of a husband, incompetent father, and drunkard.

Athol Dickson offers us the most unlikely, and to be honest, most unlikeable of heroes. Riley Keep has fallen so far that when he returns to his home town in Maine along with a dying homeless friend no one even recognizes him. Not the church people, not his former friends, and not even the mayor who just happens to be his estranged-wife. Through an apparent accident Riley discovers something every person trapped by the demons of their personal sins would give anything to have, a magic bullet that would forever take away their addiction. Riley Keep has discovered The Cure.

What happens next is on one level a rousing suspense story and on another a parable of failure and despair. It is the story of far away pagans and the pagan within us all. And in the end it is a story of ultimate hope. As always, Dickson’s characters are vivid, tragic, heroic, well-intentioned, and severely flawed. Even when Riley Keep gets his act together and appears to become a great success, he is within himself a failure. In other words he is real. Perhaps this is why some found this story uncomfortable.

Upon his return to his home town, Riley observes that people walk by him but never look into his eyes, never see him. He guesses it is because they fear they see some of themselves. I think Riley Keep guesses right.

One question for the author, Athol Dickson …

Riley Keep’s character had such depth. How much of Athol Dickson is hiding inside of Riley?

AD Headshot JPG The Cure by Athol DicksonI do indeed have personal experience with drug addiction and with homelessness. In my late teens, I started drinking and smoking marijuana, and soon I began using narcotics of almost every kind, from LSD to heroin. I was stoned pretty much continuously for about eight years. I ended up addicted to methamphetamine, my drug of choice, what some people call “crank” or simply, “meth.” I was also homeless for a little while, although I always managed to sleep on the floors or sofas of my fellow dopers and never spent the night in a shelter. But I do know what it feels like. So I learned most of what I needed to know to write THE CURE through those experiences, and the rest I’ve learned through association with alcoholic friends and family members, and by volunteering over the years at shelters.

Although it has been years since I considered myself a drug addict, I’ve been to AA meetings and I spend several hours at a shelter near my home a couple of days every month, helping people put together resumes, preparing meals for them, and just hanging out to spread the love. They say an alcoholic is always an alcoholic, but for me at least, the meth addiction has been healed. I do, however, remain addicted to sin, and while that may not sound like the same thing, in fact it really is.

To Which Ted Said

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51uhZXPC3xL. SL160 To Which Ted SaidMy recent review of Ted Dekker’s Eyes Wide Open was, shall I say, less that flattering. Not so much because I didn’t think it worthwhile but because I, along with more than a few others, found the marketing of the books less that desirable. To the author’s credit, here is his response my review at Amazon along with my reply to him. I was public with my misgivings and he should be allowed the same forum to speak for himself.

Hi Tim… Ted Here.

Truly, I am sorry for the confusion that the release of this episodic story has caused some. Perhaps the main message in the release pages for Identity wasn’t clear enough. The whole idea was to present Eyes Wide Open like a TV series like Dexter or Homeland (which is what we compared it to in the copy (WHAT WOULD A TV SERIES FROM TED LOOK LIKE?) where Identity is the pilot, offered free, just like iTunes does so often for TV series. Nothing new… Just convenient (even expected of many these days, a return to the era of Dickens, as you point out.)

Eyes Wide Open is the whole season, as we said. We also compared it to Black, Red, White, a series in which each ends in a cliffhanger, only Eyes Wide Open is shorter. Somehow in all of that the message should have been clearer — not everyone reads the full description in the Eblasts and or posts. Live and learn. Next time we will find a different way to present it.

Either way, Identity is free… Just like Black, no one is obligated to continue to find out what happens to Thomas (Black ended with a gun to Thomas’s head:) Eyes Wide Open is definitely a return to the kind of intense spiritual struggle found in my earlier work… I hope you find the whole ride both challenging and rewarding. I know it was for me in the writing. Thank you for following my writing for all of these years. See around cyberspace…

To which Tim Said …

First off, let me say thanks for taking the time to comment here. I was not offended to the point I didn’t purchase the next two installments and plan to finish Eyes Wide Open. As a publicist and a writer myself I am aware of how easily the best laid plans can go in unexpected direction. And as one has clients who are self-published and must constantly look for creative ways to be seen and heard I understand what you were trying to accomplish. I never meant to imply there was intended deceptive marketing on your part – perhaps just a need for some different wording.

With that aside, let me say to you and those who read my reviews, The Circle is one of the reasons I found myself pulled back into writing after many years of ignoring the craft. Thank you for introducing a new generation to the kind of storytelling that Bunyan gave birth to hundreds of years ago.

So has anyone read the installments available? If so, what do you think about Eyes Wide Open?

 

Identity by Ted Dekker

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Identity by Ted DekkerIt’s been quite a while since I read a novel by Ted Dekker, partly because my to-read pile is threatening to overwhelm me and partly because I was left somewhat flat by the second installment of his joint venture with Tosca Lee in the Book of Mortals. The jury is still out for me as to whether that series failed to grab me because I expected something to match the Circle or because what we got was a continuation of the Circle disguised as something new.

With that off my chest, book one of Eyes Wide Open is a winner so far. I say so far because Dekker is offering this novel in four installments. I enjoyed the frantic and escapist tale as it unfolded in this first installment. At the same time I had to continually work to get the bad taste out of my mouth about the marketing of this book. But more about that later.

Identity is the story of two characters, both seriously disconnected from the people and society around them. Christe Snow (17) is a young woman with a largely missing past, illustrated in the silver locket she wears that contains nothing but stock photos. Austin Hartt (19), her only real friend, is a prodigy. His life consists of the books that surround him, auditing classes at Harvard though he’s never enrolled, and the realization he may have a tumor threatening to destroy the intellect he so cherishes.

When Christie returns to an abandoned hotel basement to search for the cherished locket she somehow misplaced, she finds the fragile identity she so carefully protects threatened in ways even she, with all her insecurities, could have never imagined. First trapped in the abandoned basement she breaks through an old wall to find herself in the hallways of St. Matthews’s psychiatric ward. Soon she and then Austin who comes looking for her, find themselves trapped in a nightmare of different sorts. Both she and Austin are labeled as delusional patients with different names and their own identity effectively erased.

Since this is in essence only the first few chapters of what will be a complete novel, I will withhold questions about plot issues for now. This has a definite YA feel and since I don’t read a lot of Young Adult fiction I also won’t judge the story by its style. So far it’s a story that’s both entertaining and that compels you to keep turning pages to see what will happen to Christie and Austin as they struggled to hold on to their identity.

Now back to that lingering taste in my mouth I can’t quite get rid of. Besides being a writer, I am also involved in marketing and it is there that Eyes Wide Open uses a risky and to some a bit shady ploy. For weeks Dekker advertised this as a “ground breaking” method of telling story. Bold promises were made to recapture the story telling spirit of The Circle. In fact, I along with thousands of others signed up to receive Identity free. We were told it was the first of four books, each complete in itself, that would tell one unified story. And nothing could be further from the truth.

Identity ends with nothing complete in itself. I received at least three emails after signing up trumpeting the day I could enter information to receive my “free” copy of Identity. Never once, until that day came was it identified as a Kindle version of what amounts to the first six chapters of an incomplete book.

There is nothing wrong with using a serial approach to get a story out there. In fact, Dean Koontz did this quite effectively with Odd Interlude. The difference in the two is that Koontz never presented the three installments of Interlude as anything besides what they are: three parts to one story none of which stand alone in any way.

Eyes Wide Open is a good story but there is nothing ground breaking about how it is being doled out. Dickens was found in installments in London newspapers long before they became the classic books we know today. Same goes for Louisa May Alcott, Isaac Asimov, Philip K. Dick, and a host of others.

Nevertheless, even though I am a marketer and understand how I was manipulated, I quickly bought the second installment of Dekker’s new work and am set to read Mirrors this afternoon. Perhaps, like Christie and Austin, I am a puppet in Ted Dekker’s maniacal hands. Or perhaps I just like a good story and so far this one is. Toothpaste can do wonders for a bad taste in one’s mouth but a book with no story cannot.

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image3 Identity by Ted DekkerTED DEKKER is a New York Times bestselling thriller author. Heralded as a “master of suspense” by Library Journal, Dekker has sold millions worldwide, establishing himself as one of the most widely recognized author brands.Ted Dekker’s fans are comprised of readers of all ages, backgrounds, and belief systems who love his compulsively readable stories, authentic characters, and universal and relatable themes that he explores from a unique point of view.

Murder by Degrees in the “Mainstream” Media

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image thumb1 Murder by Degrees in the “Mainstream” MediaA headless body floating in the East River, a newfangled execution device called the electric chair, and a corrupt police department – what more could you need for a great murder mystery?

The Murder of the Century: The Gilded Age Crime That Scandalized a City & Sparked the Tabloid Wars by Paul Collins reminds us that non-fiction is a greater challenge to write than fiction because it’s more difficult to make believable.

The Murder of the Century is about, as you might guess, a murder. But more than that it is the story of how journalism became sensationalism and truth was forced to play second fiddle to headlines that sell. Perhaps most telling of all is the fact this story shows us that real news has been the victim of murder by degrees for much longer than most of realize.

Long before CNN, MSNBC and FOX News, Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst were betting their fortunes on creating a new kind of media. Ironically, Pulitzer is now remembered for the likes of iconic Pulitzer Prize winning authors, Harper Lee and William Faulkner. But in 1897, he and Hearst all but invented yellow journalism. Pulitzer would spend the end of his life trying to build a different legacy and Hearst was later immortalized in the movie Citizen Kane.

Behind this is a story of a headless body found in the East River, a new fangled execution device called the electric chair, and a police department that needed to be whipped into shape by a young man by the name of Teddy Roosevelt. Like so many news stories today, the media became the star and the actual players in the murder mystery took a back seat.

In fairness to those players, The Murder of the Century involved a twisted love affair. The principle suspects in the murder were Augusta Nack and Martin Thorn. Mrs. Nack was a mid-wife rumored to have performed hundreds of abortions. Thorn was a barber who had a fling with Mrs. Nack and killed her husband with her help. Or so the story went. Thorn ultimately died in the electric chair and Mrs. Nack lived like a celebrity in prison for a few years before living out the rest of her life in New York City where she had grown famous.

How the papers covered the story and millions followed it is all but incredible. The papers invented color pictures just for the trial. They even created their own version of Twitter in a telegraph age. Champion homing pigeons were brought from Europe to relay court room artist’s sketches back to the news rooms for mid-day extras.

Collins masterfully immerses the reader into a New York City both foreign and amazingly similar to today. Instant news punctuated by sound bites for the masses hungry to be told what to think abounded. In the end, it is likely the real mastermind of the murder walked the streets of New York free for years to come. Mr. Thorn was not so lucky.

“Newspaper may be the first draft of history, but most of what they cover never gets a second draft.” – Author Paul Collins

In this age of instant news offered up in a 24/7 format, there is much to learn from The Crime of the Century. We are each responsible for filtering what passes for news through a reasoned mind. It is our responsibility to determine as best we can what should be accepted as fact and what should not.

Competition between the papers of Hearst and Pulitzer was intense and a bit cut throat. Neither was above inventing facts when none were to be found. Hearst even when so far as to use his own reporters as a kind of mercenary army to aid the rebellion in Cuba. “Remember the Maine” became the battle cry of America in 1898. Unfortunately, the war with Spain that ensued was more manufactured by the media than reality.

The author invokes powerful images of legions or reporters fanning out on their bicycles to either find or make the news. While Mr. Thorn languished in squalid conditions and ultimately died in Sing Sing, Mrs. Nack became a reporter’s dream celebrity. Though imprisoned for nine years she lived much of that time in relative ease because she posed a sympathetic picture and granted reporters unlimited access. She had a story she loved to tell and the public was willing to pay to hear it.

Turn of the century New York City was inhabited by 100’s of language groups. Living conditions were meager and near illiteracy was rampant. As a result, the average man turned to dime novels and sensational “yellow” papers for entertainment and news. Parallels between that gilded age and ours are not hard to find.

So do you still much attention to what happens in the national news? Local? On a scale of 1 to 10 what how would you rate your trust level for much of what you see and hear in the media?

Sibella Giorello’s Stars Shine Bright

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GiorelloSilbella Sibella Giorello’s Stars Shine BrightThursday Review
Raleigh Harmon Novels
by Sibella Giorello

When Sibella Giorella won a Christy Award for her debut novel, The Stones Cry Out, it was natural to wonder if she could maintain the momentum and continue to grow as a writer. There have been many one-hit-wonders in fiction, some by choice (Harper Lee), and others because they apparently didn’t have any more to offer.

Then along came The River Runs Dry and Sibella proved she and her main character Raleigh Harmon had a lot more to offer. Raleigh was a character with depth working in a profession where faith is hard to come by. That was followed by The Clouds Roll Away and The Mountains Bow Down. It was then that I noted in a review:

Every time I begin a novel by this gifted author I always think, “This isn’t the kind of book I usually read.” But it never takes more than a couple of pages for me to forget such a misguided notion and find myself sucked in by Giorello’s first-person immediacy, unvarnished honesty, and determination to peel back the façade of human goodness to reveal what lies beneath. It isn’t just the vain lives of the Hollywood elite who are being exposed in this story. Raleigh Harmon, a believer, is having yet another layer of duplicity scraped away in a painful process of self-discovery. And it is the depth of her character and the power of the author’s prose that keeps me coming back.

An now Raleigh Harmon is reaching the end of her journey with what is probably the last in the series, The Stars Shine Bright. I’ll be reviewing the novel in next week’s Thursday review installment. Until then, here are few things the author shared during the course of several interviews she has done with me. Once you finish reading you can listen to Sibella in an interview she granted me at Fiction Addict.

On “Christian” Fiction: “The truly great writers who were believers, like Charles Dickens and Flannery O’Connor, didn’t write explicitly “Christian” literature. They didn’t see the world in terms of “us and them.” They wrote stories that brought fractional worlds together, forming a complete picture of life. As believers, they also loved their characters as themselves. Even the bad guys. You can feel that when you read their work.  So  … instead of worrying about whether we’re writing “Christian fiction,” we should work at being authentic Christians who write whatever God puts on our hearts. And let it fall where it falls. The rest is just noise”.

Just for Writers: “I always want to tell fellow writers: ‘Lock and load!’ All the junk that’s supposedly keeping you from writing will always be there — always. In fact, once you get published, the challenges only grow. So if you want to write, write. Ignore that voice whispering in your ear, the one that insists ten or twenty times a day that you should just quit. Don’t quit. Fight back. FIGHT BACK.And when you need to call in reinforcements, read James Scott Bell’s “The War of Art for Writers.” You’ll see just how clearly the battle lines are drawn for us foot soldiers at the keyboard. Semper Fi, scribes. Semper Fi”.

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image thumb Sibella Giorello’s Stars Shine BrightSibella Giorello grew up in Alaska and majored in geology at Mt. Holyoke College. After riding a motorcycle across the country, she worked as a features writer for the Richmond Times-Dispatch. Her stories have won state and national awards, including two nominations for the Pulitzer Prize. She now lives in Washington state with her husband and sons.

Time for an Odd Interlude

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image5 Time for an Odd InterludeThursday Review
Odd Interlude
Suspense – Bantam June 2012

I am twenty years old. To a world-wise adult, I am little more than a child. To any child, however, I am old enough to be distrusted, to be excluded forever from the magical community of the short and beardless. 
- Odd Thomas

In 2003, Dean Koontz introduced us to a most unlikely hero. His name was Odd Thomas, a 20 year old short order cook who one day began to see of all things, dead people. But these weren’t ordinary dead people. No one else saw them except Odd and he came to realize they must be hesitant about moving on beyond the veil of this world. And though they never spoke, Odd quickly learned that their appearance almost always meant trouble.

Since then, there have been a several more installments of the saga of Odd Thomas. What has come outside the world of Odd has been hit and miss. Perhaps it’s success or perhaps because he simply writes what he wants to write but Dean Koontz can frustrate the most ardent of fans. 77 Shadow Street, his last novel, made one wonder if the master of suspense had called in a junkie ghost writer from an alternate universe. But every time Koontz returns us to Odd, we are never disappointed.

Odd Interlude is an eBook only Odd story offered as three connected novellas getting us ready for the soon to come Odd Apocalypse the end of July. These novellas are Koontz at his best. The pace is frantic, the characters memorable, and the ending satisfying. Sure the author’s almost neurotic fixation on secret government doings is present and of course there’s a dog. But for me, at least, I choose to forgive the muddled 77 Shadow Street because I know Koontz can give us crystal clear fountains of prose like the following from Odd Interlude #1:

Long ago, I learned that, even with my sixth sense, I am not a singularity, and that the world is a place of layered wonders beyond counting. Most people unconsciously blind themselves to the true nature of existence, because they fear knowing that this world is a place of mystery and meaning. It’s immeasurably easier to live in a world that’s all surfaces, that means nothing and demands nothing of you.

So amidst the backdrop of a guy who sees dead people, a little girl who befriends an artificial intelligence, and an insidiously evil unknown entity we are reminded of a powerful truth: this age does fear mystery and clings to a world that’s all surface with no depth.

David Platt Want us to Get Radical

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423214 1 ftc David Platt Want us to Get RadicalThursday Review
Radical by David Platt
Multnomah Books

Do you and I believe Him enough to obey Him and to follow Him wherever He leads, even when the crowds in our culture- and maybe in our churches- turn the other way?

There is no doubt that David Platt came to the Church at Brookhills in Birmingham, Alabama in a radical way. At the age of 26, he had earned a Bachelor of Arts, Bachelor of Arts in Journalism, Master of Divinity, Master of Theology, and Doctor of Philosophy yet there was one glaring empty omission to his resume – he had never pastored a church. Not a small church, not a medium sized church, and certainly not a mega-church in an affluent suburb of one of the wealthiest counties in the southeast.

David Plat had only been asked to fill in for a couple of weeks while the church leadership could formulate its plan for a traditional pastor search. But seven years later, the people of the Church at Brookhills have known no other leader than the young man God never let leave. When interviewed by Lucky Severson of PBS as to what he attributed for becoming the youngest pastor of a mega-church in America, Platt’s answer was typical of his boyish quiet manner; “Clueless … just clueless.”

Being young is hardly the end of this amazing story. Several years ago Dr. Platt began to rethink the church and the direction he should be leading those who looked to him as their pastor. That reflection turned into a New York Times Bestseller titled, Radical: Taking Back Your Faith from the American Dream. Platt calculates that Christian churches in the US spend $10 billion a year on buildings and own property valued at $230 billion. He says too many churches are acting like big corporations, but Brook Hills is now constantly looking for ways trim its budget.

Don’t let the title lead you to confuse what Platt is calling the American church to with a social gospel. Radical has nothing to do with politics (left or right) or a watered down message that cheapens the Gospel. What David Platt is calling Christians to is simply to free themselves of rank materialism so their resources can be used like God wants them to be used. A promo for the book read:

As you read Radical, you’ll discover that this is more than just about digesting a book. This is about an idea – an idea that we were created for far more than a nice, comfortable Christian spin on the American dream. An idea that we were created to follow One who demands radical risk and promises radical reward. An idea that David Platt certainly didn’t come up with, or anyone else in contemporary Christianity, for that matter. It’s an idea that was first expressed in the simple yet radical words from Jesus to his disciples when he said: Follow me.

 

Platt isn’t advocating that possessions are evil but he does call into question how tied church people have become to those possessions.

And don’t think this is some academic or theoretical treatise to sell a few books. The Church at Brookhills is in the midst of what its leadership calls a Radical Experiment. One of the first things the church did over a year ago was to take its entire surplus fund of $500,000 and give it away in partnerships with churches in India. In the months following the church has trimmed another $1.5 million from its budget and used the savings to build wells, improve education, provide medical care, and share the gospel in impoverished places around the world.

The Radical Experiment isn’t just about money for foreign countries. At least 250 of the church’s members have moved from Birmingham to give at least 3 months to one year of their lives in other parts of the word. Some families like Chuck and Margaret Clark sold their home in the suburbs and moved their children into the inner city. A majority of the church’s members have accepted the challenge to downsize their lives as God leads them.

No one is telling anyone what they have to do. Instead, everyone is simply encouraged to simplify their life and help break the ties of debt and materialism that holds much of the American church in bondage. This is a far cry from the prosperity gospel that has become the battle cry for so many mega-churches in our land.

Americans as a people need to rediscover another part of the American Dream. We need more of what my ancestors had when they loaded an ox cart in 1821 in North Carolina and headed out for what was then called the Great Southwest (i.e. New Augusta, Mississippi). None of them would have made it only as individuals. Every person, from the youngest child to the oldest adult, had to do more than their part. Perhaps what Platt is calling the church to only seems Radical because we have become far too removed from what got us here in the first place.

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Rearview by Mike Dellosso

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Rearview+by+Mike+Dellosso Rearview by Mike DellossoThursday Review
Rearview by Mike Dellosso
Suspense – Tyndale House 2012

DEATH COMES FOR EVERYONE. But what if you were given seven more hours? Would you go back and relive a previous time in your life? Or would you live seven more hours starting now? The clock is ticking. What will you do with the time you have left?

Rearview by Mike Dellosso is one installment in the now completed 7 Hours project from Tyndale House Publishers. Each novella has been made available for $1.99 in eBook format or you can obtain all 7 in one volume, over 800 pages for $9.99.

In his installment, Rearview, Dellosso offers what his fans have come to expect. The hero, Dan Blakely, is an average guy – an English professor at a small college with a wife, kids, mortgage, and new car payment. And then on one fateful morning his normal world becomes a whirlwind of unexpected and unexplainable events. The clock is ticking backwards on Dan Blakely’s life and what it will finally toll for will catch you totally by surprise. This is classic Mike Dellosso at his nail-biting best.

It’s good to see Tyndale offering authors other avenues for publication. The seven authors make up a veritable who’s who of Christian thriller writers: Rene Gutteridge, Travis Thrasher, Tom Pawlik, Ronie Kendig, James Andrew Wilson, Robin Parish, and of course Mike Dellosso.

Tyndale has done a good marketing job with a first-rate dedicated web site and Facebook page. I only mention this because many publishers no longer offer much in the way of marketing effort to any writers other than their very top sellers. 90 percent of authors are pretty much on their own to make sure the word gets out once they sign that contract.

Now all that is left is for readers to reward such efforts by buying these authors’ works and spreading the word.

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image8 thumb Rearview by Mike DellossoOther Reviews of Novels by Mike Dellosso

The Hunted and Scream;
Darlington Woods; Darkness Follows

Interviews and Such

Print Interview; Fiction Addict Podcast

Mortal – Ted Dekker and Tosca Lee

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mortal thumb Mortal Ted Dekker and Tosca LeeThursday Review
Mortal (The Books of Mortals) by
Ted Dekker and Tosca Lee
Fantasy – Faithwords 2011

As in the days of Chaos, only love given freely inhabits the Maker’s design. Those who claim love dependent on allegiance are imposters who know nothing of the Sovereign realm. They will die the same as those who walk without life already!  (Mortal, p. 287)

Book One of The Book of Mortals told us the story of a world filled with dead people with no idea they are dead. In this far future earth (though never called that), nearly five centuries have passed since a select group of scientists worked to tinker with humanity’s genetic code. Their discovery of a way to eliminate all emotions save fear, gave way to a unified world ensured peace by the Order.

But then, on one seemingly uneventful day, 24 year old Rom, finds his and a handful of friend’s lives forever altered. A few drops of mysterious blood opens their eyes and minds to a  world they once thought alive but filled with people with no emotion save fear.

Mortal picks us nine years after the fateful events chronicled in Forbidden. The promised sovereign, Jonathan, whose blood can change walking emotional corpses into vibrant and passionate “living” Mortals, is set to return to the capital and assume his place of leadership over a world he will lead back to life.

In this installment, Rom, the first to taste new life is determined to protect Jonathan. The nomadic Mortals they now live with owe their new life to Jonathan and are pledged to do whatever it takes to see him assume rule over the world. And a new character, Jordan, sees in Jonathan something more than a Sovereign.

But there are surprises ahead that threaten everything Rom and the Mortals believe are destiny for Jonathan and themselves. Saric, with a new dark life of his own has an army of Dark Bloods who see him as their Maker and will serve him to the last man and woman. There can be no doubt Mortal will end in an epic battle between those who serve Saric because they have no choice and the Mortals who are ruled only by the power of being truly alive.

There is much good to say about both Forbidden and now, Mortal. The duo of Ted Dekker and Tosca Lee have pooled their talents once again to build a story world reminiscent of another Dekker hit, The Circle. Dekker’s zealous and sometimes nearing maniacal emphasis on the themes of darkness and light is evident in full force and Lee’s power of prose paints word pictures to be remembered.

Everything about Mortal is about stark contrasts. Consider Rom’s meeting with Feyn after she has received the dark blood of Saric: Her mouth tasted like rot. This is Feyn, the woman he had known and loved. It didn’t matter how foul his senses claimed this act to be. He wasn’t there to take, but to give. Or take this passage: Bliss. Hades. Two destinies of the deceased. Eternal freedom from fear. Eternal fear, bound in wailing and gnashing of teeth. It was taught from birth. It was the way.

At the same time, some of Mortal’s strengths may also be its weakness. Some readers have noted, rightly so, that the theme and plot sometimes feel like a rehash of The Circle. I also understand the reasons for so much emphasis on blood but find much of the conversation about it somewhat repetitious.

One of the realities of faith based fiction is that both writer and reader bear a weight those in the general market do not have. There can be no doubt to a believer that The Book of Mortals is an allegory. And the weight Dekker and Lee bear is to present allegory that faithfully represents the truth behind that allegory. Since this is a whole different subject, I will be taking a look at the theological issues I see standing in the shadows just out of view in Mortal next week.

In spite of a few issues, this is still a great story! Even if it is a rehash of The Circle, that is one story with the retelling. Now we must wait a few more months for Sovereign to find where the authors intend to take us.

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image3 Mortal Ted Dekker and Tosca LeeTED DEKKER is a New York Times bestselling thriller author. Heralded as a “master of suspense” by Library Journal, Dekker has sold millions worldwide, establishing himself as one of the most widely recognized author brands.Ted Dekker’s fans are comprised of readers of all ages, backgrounds, and belief systems who love his compulsively readable stories, authentic characters, and universal and relatable themes that he explores from a unique point of view.

image4 Mortal Ted Dekker and Tosca LeeTOSCA LEE  is the NY Times bestselling author of the critically acclaimed DEMON: A MEMOIR and HAVAH: THE STORY OF E B. Tosca received her B.A. in English and International Relations from Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts. She also studied at Oxford University. In her spare time, Tosca enjoys adventure travel and makes her home in the Midwest.

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Forbidden by Ted Dekker and Tosca Lee

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image thumb1 Forbidden by Ted Dekker and Tosca LeeThursday Review
Forbidden (The Books of Mortals) by
Ted Dekker and Tosca Lee
Fantasy – Faithwords 2011

While I’m finishing up reading and reviewing Book Two in the The Books of Mortals,  here is a review of Book One to bring readers up to speed. Check back next Thursday for a review of Mortal as we return to watch our world began to realize what life and death truly are.

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Imagine a world, our world, where every person on the planet is dead and doesn’t know it. Not zombies according to the current literary fad but rather a planet populated by people who are but shells of what they were created to be. Forbidden by Ted Dekker and Tosca Lee paints a picture of what might happen to a world so bent on eradicating its inner demons that it strips itself of all emotion. All that is, except fear.

Nearly five centuries have passed since a select group of scientists worked to tinker with humanity’s genetic code. Their discovery of a way to eliminate all emotions save fear gave way to a unified world ensured peace by the Order. But then, on one seemingly uneventful day, 24 year old Rom, finds his life altered forever thus beginning the first installment of what will ultimately be a trilogy called The Book of Mortals.

Ironically, Rom is a funeral singer. A funeral in which, like with most of his world, there is no body and no real sorrow. When Rom leaves the funeral he witnesses the unthinkable, a murder. As the old man who has been attacked is dying he gives Rom an ancient vial of blood that can grant something Rom did not even know he was lacking – life. The kind with real emotions: love, hate, jealousy, betrayal, passion, joy, ecstasy and despair. Real life. A life the world does not even know it is missing. To tell more would be to rob the reader of embarking on this journey with Rom and seeing it unvarnished through his eyes.

As with any fantasy or epic there is a fairly large cast of characters. Central to Book One is Rom, the ultimate unlikely hero. With no frame of reference to understand the emotions he now feels all he knows to do is to employ aid from the few friends he has. And he will need them because someone else has discovered the secret of emotions as well. Saric has to be one of the most unsympathetic villains ever created. His discovery of emotion only proves what man’s heart is capable of when all boundaries are removed. Other characters of note include Feyn the soon-to-be Sovereign of the world and sister of Saric, Avra, Rom’s best friend since childbirth, and though only introduced late in the story, the boy Jonathan.

Many collaborations fail miserably but not this one. Dekker’s imagination and sometimes almost maniacal focus on darkness and light coupled with Tosca Lee’s eloquence of prose is magical. Generally I can pick out who wrote what part of a novel but 50 pages into Forbidden I simply did not care. I was no longer reading a story by Ted Dekker or Tosca Lee. I was riding along side Rom, suddenly awakened to his former deadness and unsure if he can stand this new life on the ragged edge. Unsure if it is worth it.

This hero’s journey is summed up in an exchange between Rom and the man they call Book, a keeper of the truth of former times:

“Keep your words. This pain is no life.”
“You only feel pain because you’re alive, boy!” the keeper thundered. “This is the mystery of it. Life is lived on the ragged edge of the cliff. Fall off and you might die, but run from it and you are already dead!”

The setup at the end of Forbidden leaves one impatient for what follows. Even so it can stand alone with its powerful prose, intense action, compelling characters, and premise that leaves one wondering how many walking our world are really dead and don’t know it. It’s been seven years since Ted Dekker revolutionized a genre with Black, the first in his Circle series. I have no doubt a new revolution is about to begin.

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image thumb3 Forbidden by Ted Dekker and Tosca Lee

TED DEKKER is a New York Times bestselling thriller author. Heralded as a “master of suspense” by Library Journal, Dekker has sold millions worldwide, establishing himself as one of the most widely recognized author brands.Ted Dekker’s fans are comprised of readers of all ages, backgrounds, and belief systems who love his compulsively readable stories, authentic characters, and universal and relatable themes that he explores from a unique point of view.

image thumb4 Forbidden by Ted Dekker and Tosca Lee

TOSCA LEE  is the NY Times bestselling author of the critically acclaimed DEMON: A MEMOIR, HAVAH: THE STORY OF EVE, and the Books of Mortals series with NY Times bestseller Ted Dekker: FORBIDDEN, MORTAL and SOVEREIGN (2013). Tosca received her B.A. in English and International Relations from Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts. She also studied at Oxford University. In her spare time, Tosca enjoys adventure travel and makes her home in the Midwest.

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