J. Mark Bertrand gives this bit of advice early in his article on post-apocalyptic literature: "He who stockpiles the ammunition can help himself to the rest of the stockpiles." He says he isn't worried about a zombie uprising, which of course is ludicrous. They are coming. Everyone knows it. And here Mr. Bertrand is reading a book called Far North. It's like whistling through a graveyard.

Here's a heart-warming documentary from March 1968 with J.R.R. Tolkien and some Oxford students talking about his epic fantasy. Our friend Bill at Thinklings is rejoicing in part due to his recent to Oxford.

Television and motion picture tie-in books are always a gamble. Sometimes they're written on the cheap by newcomers (talented or not), and sometimes hard-working pros (like the late, great Stuart M. Kaminsky) make them a delight... or a disappointment.

I'm happy to report that Heat Wave by “Richard Castle” is not only a superior effort among tie-in books, but one of the most enjoyable mysteries I've read this year. On top of that, it gave me a subjective reader's experience I've never had before (which I'll explain further along).

One warning—the paperback version has the smallest print I've seen in a novel in years. If you're over 50, you'll need your bifocals for this one.

For those unfamiliar with the joke, “Richard Castle” is the hero of an ABC television series, “Castle,” in which he's portrayed by the charismatic actor Nathan Fillion. Castle is a bestselling author who exerts personal leverage to get permission to follow around a New York detective squad led by Det. Kate Beckett (played by the beautiful Stana Katic). Castle falls in love with Beckett, who is attracted but keeps him at an arm's length. He makes her the heroine (thinly disguised under the name “Nikki Heat”) of a novel called Heat Wave. That book (we are invited to believe) is the one we are reading here. Read the rest of this entry . . .

I recently finished P.D. James’ The Murder Room (2003) beautifully read by Charles Keating. It is a straight-forward detective novel with enjoyable depth, but not really twists and turns. I see The Complete Review has reviewed it more, um, completely than I plan to here.

The story reveals the three siblings who are trustees of a small, unique museum named Dupayne in the London area opposing each other on whether to sign a new lease and allow the unprofitable museum to continue. Several others associated with the museum are walking around, and, of course, someone gets torched. No, it isn’t an accident, even though some characters want to believe it was suicide.

As I listened, I kept thinking about how the second murder yet to come would change the way I interpreted the details. I thought two or three people could have murder the first person, having motive and opportunity, but why would they kill someone else? I didn’t figure it out ahead of time.

I wonder if James’ mysteries have more to offer in the side trails than on the main road. The Murder Room has a warm chapter with the two of the detectives interviewing one of the fringe couples out of routine. It was a young couple with a baby, the husband being connected to a Paul Nash painting in the Dupayne museum. James’ choice of words in this chapter impressed me as geared toward highlighting the life of the child and this poor couple. They had very little, but they were tied to the past by the husband’s father and grandfather’s interest in that painting, and somehow it seeded hope for them. More so, some words appear to be inspire the reader to reflect on what is being aborted when that ugly choice is made.

Detective Inspector Kate Miskin’s wrestling with British class conflicts and arguments about the nature of girl’s education enrich the story as well.

Earlier this year, the Guardian asked several writers for ten rules for the craft, similar to the ten rules Elmore Leonard published this year. I abide by this particular rule of Leonard's, which was taught me by my journalism professor:

Never use a verb other than "said" to carry dialogue. The line of dialogue belongs to the character; the verb is the writer sticking his nose in. But "said" is far less intrusive than "grumbled", "gasped", "cautioned", "lied". I once noticed Mary McCarthy ending a line of dialogue with "she asseverated" and had to stop reading and go to the dictionary.

Here's another good one, this time from Geoff Dyer:

Beware of clichés. Not just the ­clichés that Martin Amis is at war with. There are clichés of response as well as expression. There are clichés of observation and of thought – even of conception. Many novels, even quite a few adequately written ones, are ­clichés of form which conform to clichés of expectation.

This is good stuff. Care to argue over any of these? They aren't all golden.

Anyone with an interest in the Vikings knows of the island and monastery of Lindisfarne. The start of the Viking Age is generally dated to 793, when a devastating and unanticipated raid from Scandinavia brought about its sacking. After centuries as a place of sanctuary, the island became from that day on a target, getting hit again and again by plunder-hungry Northmen. In 875 the entire Lindisfarne community, monks, priests, and lay folk, packed up the monastery treasures, including the remains of Saint Cuthbert and a holy book (thought to be the Lindisfarne Gospels), and set off to find a safer place.

They wandered the land like the children of Israel until 882, when a new monastery site was found (it was relocated to Durham some time after).

Bearing the Saint by Donna Farley is a young adult novel dramatizing the adventures and sufferings of that company during its period of homelessness. As the story begins, the hero, a boy named Edmund, is mourning the loss at sea of his fisherman father. Soon he has much more to worry about as he becomes part of the exodus. Over the years that follow he grows up, becomes one of the bishop’s official “saint bearers,” suffers hunger and exposure, has adventures, falls in love, and comes to terms with Danish rule in Northumberland.

I found the book’s pace a little leisurely for my taste. It was episodic, but that’s the nature of this kind of story, so I can’t call that a criticism. The narrative engaged me, but I wouldn’t call it compelling. It did educate me on an aspect of the history of the Danelaw with which I hadn’t been much familiar.

The book is published by Conciliar Press, an Orthodox publisher, and was sent to me by an Orthodox friend. Considering that fact, along with the monastic elements of the story, I would have expected there to be a lot more promotion of monasticism in it than there is. In fact, none of the main characters becomes a monk or a nun in the course of the story, which surprised me. Evangelical readers won't find the sacramental aspects offensive, I think (unless the idea of saints' miracles offends them).

I’d say Bearing the Saint is a good, wholesome book that might be especially useful to homeschooling parents who want to teach their children some history.

Otto Penzler writes about noir fiction (via Joel Miller)

Look, noir is about losers. The characters in these existential, nihilistic tales are doomed. They may not die, but they probably should, as the life that awaits them is certain to be so ugly, so lost and lonely, that they'd be better off just curling up and getting it over with. And, let's face it, they deserve it.

The big news in Christian popular culture today is that Anne Rice, the bestselling vampire author who announced her conversion to Christianity a couple years back, has unconverted.

The 68-year-old author wrote Wednesday on her Facebook page that she refuses to be "anti-gay ... anti-feminist," and "anti-artificial birth control."

She adds that "In the name of ... Christ, I quit Christianity and being Christian. Amen."

There was a surge of debate about this on a Christian SF/Fantasy e-mail discussion list I subscribe to. Part of the scuttlebutt (who knows how reliable?) was that she had a bad business experience with a Christian company that planned to film her novels about Christ, and that that may have contributed to her disenchantment. If that's the case, it wouldn't be the first time. The history of celebrity converts in my lifetime hasn't been a happy one. And it's not just a matter of the celebrities' immaturity. Christian enterprises are rather notorious for their shoddy business practices and promise-breaking. Sad but true.

But if the Facebook posting really reveals her heart, it would seem she simply found the gate too narrow and the way too straight. She appears to be one of those many who want a Jesus who'll accommodate their preferences. Being in the church involves a certain amount of doctrinal teaching and accountability, which they find offensive and intrusive.

I think of the rich young ruler from Luke 18—“When he heard this, he became very sad, because he was a man of great wealth.”

Discipleship has a cost. The cares of the world often choke out the seed that has been sown.

Let's pray for Anne Rice.

(Photo credit: Getty Images)

A while back I reviewed Dick Francis' mystery, Decider, and said I'd be reading more. So I picked up the collection Triple Crown (comprising Dead Cert, Nerve, and For Kicks) and read it last week. It was an intriguing reading experience for me.

I have a hard time pinning down what's so compelling in a Dick Francis mystery. Most of the stories revolve around the sport of racing (with the corruption that racetrack betting invites), and that's a field of endeavor in which I've never had much interest (though I'll admit that if I have to watch a horse race, I'd prefer a steeplechase, which is the kind of racing Francis concentrates on, at least in the novels I've read). I can't say that he's a brilliant stylist—in fact I'd characterize him as the kind of author who disappears totally, which isn't a bad way to get your reader invested in your characters. I can't say he's especially skilled at crafting vivid characters. And yet I found myself horizontal on the couch for hours, turning page after page, absolutely under the spell of the stories.

Dead Cert, I understand, was Francis' first published novel. It's good, but I think he was still feeling his way. Nerve was his second book, and by then he'd already found his pace. This was possibly the most satisfying tale of revenge I've ever read. And For Kicks amazed me. It was the compelling adventure of a man who takes a dangerous job for money, endures great suffering and violence, and in the end learns something about himself that changes his life.

I think what I particularly like is that Francis writes about manly men. Men blessed, and burdened, with strength, integrity, and courage, Churchillian in their resolve never to give up.

What a joy to discover an author you didn't know before, who has a long list of published works you can look forward to!

I decided not to review a novel a few weeks ago, because what I was reading got under my skin. Maybe I'm thin-skinned, or maybe I couldn't adjust to the genre. I didn't know it was a historic romance until a couple chapters into it. That's entirely my fault. A few clues on the cover and in the general description should have been enough, but no, I thought it was historical fiction, maybe even a bit of fantasy. I even said to myself, "I hope this doesn't become a romance," a few pages before the book swatted me in the gut.

A woman, taken from her home as a child, raised by nurses in a distant land, and well-trained to survive and hide in the wilderness, sees a prince who is searching for her without a clear sense of her. She is hidden in the trees on the mountain side. The wind whips around the prince, pressing his cloak to his skin, and this medieval sylan thinks to herself (paraphrase), "Wow, is his face as handsome as his body?"

Maybe I'm a puritan, but this strikes me as completely out of character.

Later, when the prince is badly injured and she begins to nurse him back to health, the narration dwells on her need to wash him, and bodies have unseemly parts . . . It's distasteful. It was all written indirectly, because it is a Christian novel, and maybe overall the story accomplished its goal, but I didn't want to take it in. I've read worse, that is, more vulgar narration, but I wouldn't have it this time. I'm not sure why.

Reviewer Craig Ferhman writes, "Every so often, spurred by some kind of creative liberal guilt, someone will ask: Where are the conservative novelists?" He reviews a first novel from a conservative novelist, and I have to ask, looking at this review, if foul language is required for publishing serious stories today?

S. T. Karnick at The American Culture ably responds to Malcolm Gladwell's recent attack on To Kill a Mockingbird.

Gladwell’s notion that To Kill a Mockingbird, first published in 1960, is insufficiently hateful toward white Southerners and is unsophisticated in failing to embrace radical politics is a truly breathtaking instance of ignorant bigotry. It is also not original, and it is wrong.

Our friend Dale Nelson sent me a link to this New York Times column by Ross Douthat, all about why many “literary” authors are turning to writing historical novels, rather than setting their stories in contemporary settings. His interesting conclusion is that modern culture just doesn't present the kind of conflicts that made the family sagas of old work so well:

You can write an interesting contemporary novel based on the “Anna Karenina” template in which the heroine gets a divorce, marries her modern-day Vronsky, and they both discover that they’re unhappy with the choices they’ve made — but the last act just isn’t going to be quite as gripping as Tolstoy’s original. You can turn the Jane Austen template to entertaining modern purposes, as Hollywood did in “Clueless” and “Bridget Jones’ Diary,” but the social and economic stakes are never going to be as high for a modern-day Elizabeth Bennet as they were for the Regency-era version.

I think he's got something there. If you want to write a novel about, say, an unwed mother, you can suggest that your plucky heroine's Neanderthal, Bible-thumping parents don't want her to have an abortion, but there's really nothing they can do to stop her. The only other problem her romantic passions are likely to get her into is that of sexually transmitted diseases. In that case, she either takes medication to get better, or she's stuck with the problem for life. There's little scope for her to heroically defy convention and shame the small minds; there is no convention to defy.

P. G. Wodehouse wrote stories about couples being kept apart by unsympathetic fathers and guardians, well past the point in history when such parental figures had “sunk to the level of a third rate power” (to quote “Uncle Fred Flits By”). He was able to get away with it because his stories were light confections, not intended to reflect real life in any serious way. If he'd been forced to be realistic, the fun would drained out like water from a lion-footed bathtub.

Is it an indictment of modern society to say that it doesn't offer scope to certain forms of fiction? Probably not.

But I often think of the popularity of Amish stories in the Romance genre, as I've mentioned here before. I don't think it's unrelated to highbrow authors writing historical novels. I think there's a hunger out there to be able to live in a society where people care enough about you to tell you when they think you're messing up your life.

The autonomous life, in the end, is a pretty lonely one.

Reviews are starting to come in for Mark Bertrand's Back on Murder.

Dark Light is another installment in Randy Wayne White's Doc Ford series. I was quite pleased with it. The author has positioned this series so as to let his marine biologist/covert ops agent hero play around in both the international thriller and the mystery genres. This one's a mystery, with the intriguing addition of a (possibly) supernatural element.

In the wake of a devastating hurricane that wreaked havoc on the economy and ecology of his Sanibel Island, Florida home, Ford gets drawn into a dispute between an acquaintance—an old fisherman he doesn't even like a whole lot—and a property developer. The developer, as it turns out, is not only a crooked businessman but a serial rapist and killer. Ford and his friends end up competing with the developer and his henchmen in the exploration and salvage of a World War II wreck. This attracts the interest of an enigmatic neighbor, an beautiful old woman who sometimes doesn't seem old at all, but is disturbingly seductive either way.

The supernatural element was what intrigued me most, fantasist that I am. Is the old woman the goddaughter of a famous beauty supposed to have drowned in the shipwreck, as she claims, or is she the woman herself, some sort of ghost?

Doc Ford and his friend Tomlinson are like the extreme poles famously described by Chesterton—one doesn't believe in God; the other believes in anything. Ford's unsettling experience with the mystery woman can be satisfactorily explained in purely materialistic terms. And yet, even Doc himself doesn't entirely believe that.

You used to see this sort of story more than you do now, I think. Stories framed as realistic, but with the door left open just a crack for other possibilities. I like such stories.

Dark Light was an engaging mystery, with a pleasant aftertaste. Cautions for language and adult situations.

Yesterday I wrote about a couple Stephen J. Cannell novels I'd just read, including Cold Hit. Thinking about the book some more, I came up with further thoughts about something I'd praised Cannell for—his handling of characters.

The book is oddly dated by its presentation of a worst-case scenario based on aspects of the Patriot Act. Remember back around 2005, when everybody was scared that George Bush was turning the country into a police state, and how all the powers given to Homeland Security would have progressives herded into concentration camps for crimes of sedition? All that stuff's still in force, right? Apparently, now that the Democrats are in charge, those same laws are suddenly benign.

Anyway, much of the tension in Cold Hit arises from friction and territorial infighting between the local police and federal agencies. One character in particular, a federal agent whom Cannell spends a lot of time teaching us to hate, turns out—in the end—to be a decent public servant, one who'll never be the hero's best buddy, but who deserves and gives respect.

It seems to me one of the weaknesses of contemporary Hollywood (I know I'm jumping abruptly from novels to movies. That's because I think fiction sins far less in this regard these days) is that characters in movies almost never surprise us anymore. Hollywood has become all about stereotypes. All southerners (I'm sure you've noticed) are gap-toothed, undereducated bigots (except for Tommy Lee Jones). All preachers and priests are hypocrites at best, and probably sexual predators. If someone hunts, or votes Republican, they will be unsympathetic. All Latinos are “simple but proud” (to quote a good line from Thomas M. Sipos' Hollywood Witches, which I reviewed not long ago), all Native Americans are simple but proud with mystical powers added, and all African Americans are wise. Young white males are drunken slackers. Young kids are smart-mouthed, and more intelligent than their parents. The moment a character appears, you already know all about them.

If you're writing a story, surprise us with your characters. Find good in the ones you don't like. Find flaws in your heroes. Your work will gain a lot of depth.

Over the holiday, I read a couple more of Stephen J. Cannell's Shane Scully novels, Cold Hit and Three Shirt Deal. It would be pointless, I think, to give either of them full reviews, unless one of them was bad (neither is), since I'm already on record as enjoying the series. So I'll just post some thoughts, thought while reading.

1. Does the Los Angeles police department really allow an officer to be their spouse's immediate superior? If they do, I think they're nuts.

2. At one point in Cold Hit, Scully as narrator talks about the integration of female officers into the force. I thought the passage was interesting, because he listed good arguments the old guard used against deploying smaller, weaker female patrol officers. He largely answered them, not with a strong counter-argument, but by saying “It's done, there's nothing you can do about it.” I find that suggestive (in the inviting-of-thought sense). Probably it's just me.

3. In spite of his theoretical advocacy of a co-ed police force, Cannell makes heavy use of the inherent pressures, interpersonal and job-related, that come from men serving alongside women in dangerous situations. One could, if one wished, read the whole series as a subtle argument against female recruitment. Again, that's probably just me.

4. When I first picked up a Cannell novel, I didn't expect much in the way of character development. Cannell is a television writer/producer, and that medium isn't famous for the depth of its psychological insight (though The Rockford Files, one of Cannell's shows, featured some of the best character writing ever done in the medium). I was pleasantly surprised. Perhaps as a relief from the constraints of the one-hour series, Cannell goes very deeply into the psyches of his characters. Indeed, in Cold Hit, he probably took it a little too far at one point, having a certain character make a personal disclosure worthy of Oprah's show, in the middle of a gun fight. But that's a rare misstep.

5. One drawback of the series format is that it's hard to allow the heroes to change as much as classic story structure demands. Cannell has done a wonderful job of solving that problem by making surprising changes in his hero's relationships, especially in Three Shirt Deal. What does Scully do when his wife/superior officer, previously the prudent one in the relationship, now becomes the crazy risk-taker, and he has to act like the grownup? The results are amusing.

"Is the idea of the Great American Novel the worst thing that ever happened to great American novelists?" asks Malcolm Jones. "Some days it does seem that way."

I'm not sure this writer has the right frame of mind. In fact, it probably doesn't matter if an author hopes his work will be the next G.A.N. If it is, we will discover it for ourselves.

The winners of the 2010 Locus Awards have been announced. Winner of best fantasy novel is this metaphysical mystery by London author China Miéville:



The best science fiction novel is this steampunk tale called, Boneshaker, by Cherie Priest, who earned her college degrees in my part of the world (I just learned).

Also of note: there's a new contest for new novelists of the U.K. and Ireland. It's The Terry Pratchett Anywhere But Here, Anywhen But Now Prize. Wild acclaim and fortune will attend the winners of this soon-to-be prestigious honor.

What 'To Kill a Mockingbird' Isn't

Allen Barra writes, "Georgia had Flannery O'Connor and Carson McCullers; Mississippi had William Faulkner and Eudora Welty; Louisiana inspired the major works of Kate Chopin and Tennessee Williams. Alabama had. . . Well, while Zora Neale Hurston and Walker Percy were born in Alabama, those two great writers didn't stick around my home state for long. And as for Harper Lee—Alabama born, raised and still resident—she doesn't really measure up to the others in literary talent, but we like to pretend she does."

The Thinklings report that there's a deal to film C.S. Lewis' The Great Divorce. The people who made "The Stoning of Soraya M." are part of the project. The links are a rabbit hunt, so I'll just link to their post.

I have a hard time thinking of a more naturally un-cinematic novel than The Great Divorce.

But they have my good wishes.

For the record, I received a copy of Thomas M. Sipos’ comic horror novel Hollywood Witches by way of S. T. Karnick of the American Culture, for review purposes.

I love a good Hollywood story. The town’s like an old trollop with a million tales to tell, proud of her very corruption. Not for nothing is the Hollywood fable a traditional setting for morality tales (a triumph of hypocrisy in itself).

Thomas M. Sipos’ novel shows considerable promise and delivers a number of laughs, but gets weighed down by its lack of narrative discipline.

The chief eponymous witch of the story is Diana Däagen, a figure of satire, gargantuan in her vices and terrifying in her lack of self-awareness. A failed actress, she now works as “development executive” in a movie studio. She believes herself intensely spiritual and full of love for all humankind, but that doesn’t prevent her from treating her underlings like dirt, using black magic to thwart or kill her enemies, and planning to murder thousands of people at once—all for enlightened, politically correct purposes, of course.

There is no subtlety in Diana’s character. If you like characters in novels, even bad characters, to have sympathetic sides, you won’t find one here. Diana is pure black-hat witch, evil all through.

But of course she’s a Hollywood production executive, so that doesn’t strain credibility much. Read the rest of this entry . . .

Our friend Dale Nelson has sent me the text of an article he wrote for the Tolkien 'zine, Beyond Bree. I know of no way for you to get it without subscribing, but I can quote a bit here (I hope), and point you to his source material, the book Austerity Britain, by David Kynaston.

Everybody knows that hobbits love to eat good food. Tolkien's attention to butter, bread, strawberries, potatoes, and other good things has bothered some readers. It isn't just that hobbits display a childish greediness, but that the author seems mostly to approve of their passion for food. Moreover, some readers may feel that Tolkien makes too much of other creature comforts, such as hot baths, tobacco, and comfortable beds....

Kynaston's book, drawing on diaries, letters, Mass Observation interviews, and other documents, superbly evokes the dismal condition of postwar Britain (1945-1951). This is the period in which Tolkien was finishing the writing of The Lord of the Rings.... The postwar austerity period became so grim that, in spring 1948, “as many as 42 percent of people wanted to emigrate, compared with 19 percent immediately after the war” (p. 249). I don't suggest that this is the reason that departure (from the Shire; from Middle-earth itself) is such an important theme of LOTR, but I do think the theme would have a poignancy for Tolkien and his fellow citizens that readers today, especially Americans, would not suspect....

Reading Austerity Britain may prompt Tolkien's readers to reconsider before criticizing or mocking his celebration of the creature comforts that were in such short supply while The Lord of the Rings was being written. And although the Shire is restored by the book's end, I now see that LOTR is a book about emigration—think of the Elves' departure, but especially of Frodo's, at the Grey Havens. I will always think of The Lord of the Rings, hereafter, as an “austerity” book.

Algis Valiunas at Commentary writes on the legacy of Norman Mailer.

Capote showed Mailer the way by sympathetically detailing the character of one of the murderers, who like Gilmore seemed fated to suffer and inflict hell on earth; but Capote also did what Mailer did not, which was to portray the victims in their appealing humanity, to render the full horror of their final moments, and to emphasize what was lost by their deaths. With the rapt intensity of a man staring into a cobra’s eyes, Mailer gazes into and cannot look away from human malignancy, which seems the most riveting subject a writer can have and which he congratulates himself for searching so boldly again and again. If only he did not love it so.

I just wish Valiunas would stop holding back, and tell us what he really thinks of Mailer.

Caution for disturbing subject matter.

Tip: The Paragraph Farmer.

Loren Eaton at I Saw Lightning Fall reviews Andrew Klavan's Dynamite Road, and--to my horror--is not entirely sure what to think about it.

It makes sense, then, in telling such a story to join tough-guy mystery with breakneck thriller. What seems a little odd is the unabashed romanticism infusing the proceedings.

I'll tell you what to think about it, Loren! It's brilliant! It's a timeless masterpiece! It will outlive us all!

I'm sure he'll come over to my view once he's read the rest of the trilogy.

If not, I have ways to persuade him...

We had bad weather in Minnesota last night, but it came not near me. Here at Blithering Heights we had rain and clouds, and weird light that would do a Broadway stage production proud, but nothing serious. However, down in Rochester where I had supper Sunday night, they did have serious property destruction (three people were killed in small towns in the area).

I thank God it wasn't worse. One feels a strange, irrational chill when a disaster happens somewhere you recently visited, even though technically it wasn't anything like a near miss. Strange to think that there was wreckage strewn across Highway 52, on which I drove.

But I've given it a lot of thought and have concluded (tentatively) that it probably wasn't my fault.

The Washington Post thinks it is. Steven Levingston, senior editor of Book World, states Glenn Beck's purpose for The Overton Window is not educational fiction, but to incite rebellion. Levingston states, "If the book is found tucked into the ammo boxes of self-proclaimed patriots and recited at "tea party" assemblies, then Beck will have achieved his goal. . . . The danger of books like this is that radical readers may take the story's fiction for fact, or interpret the fiction -- which Beck encourages -- as a reflection of a reality that they must fend off by any means necessary." Books like this, he claims, are what end up inspiring people like Timothy McVeigh.

A book for terrorists. Really?

In related stories on Beck's novel, Newsweek's reviewer only read ten pages and talks about another book in the article.

The legend of Saint Julian the Hospitaller seems to have risen in the Middle Ages, and is today considered entirely folklore. Possibly inspired by the story of Oedipus, it tells of a young man of noble family cursed to commit an appalling, shameful crime. As with Oedipus, his very efforts to make the crime impossible actually bring it about, but Christians added the element of redemption, a demonstration that no crime is beyond the mercy of God.

Author and clergyman Walter Wangerin Jr. has written Saint Julian, a version of the legend (published 2003) in his own dreamy, poetic style. It's not his best work, but it's worth reading for those with eyes to see.

Medieval Christians believed that Julian lived at the beginning of the Christian era, but Wangerin places it in the epoch that produced it—somewhere in the Middle Ages, apparently during the Crusades. His book combines the classic style of the hagiographical tale with the allegory of Pilgrim's Progress. Julian is a sort of Everyman, or Everychristian. Born to many advantages, blessed with physical beauty and rich natural gifts, he falls—almost innocently, one might say—into the sin of pride, seeing no need to curb his desires. His immoderation leads to a great sin, which brings upon him the curse of the tale. And when he commits his crime, it is again because of his intemperance. What follows is a long journey to discover the miracle of grace, a journey in which God is always guiding, generally unseen, along hard and painful roads.

Saint Julian lacks the emotional peaks and valleys that broke so many of our hearts in Wangerin's greatest novel, the delightful The Book of the Dun Cow. In his attempt to mimic the style of medieval chroniclers, the author starts the book slowly, and probably loses a lot of readers along the way. The very universality of his themes tends to make the characters one-dimensional, like figures in a Gothic church painting.

Fans of Wangerin will enjoy Saint Julian, but not consider it his finest work. Those new to him would do best to start with The Book of the Dun Cow.

Mrs. Yates' 3rd Grade Class Receives A New Message From Space, a funny monologue from Christian Lynch.

Sarah Clarkson has a good take on the attitude some have taken when reviewing Twilight. She says, "Thing is, I know, and rather adore, quite a few teenage girls. I remember being one (and have moments when I feel like one still). And I can guarantee you that most aren’t harboring a dark desire to be worshiped by a man. What they do want very much is to be loved. Are the lot of them boy crazy? Pretty much. And I’m sorry, but isn’t that part of how God made us?"

Dean Koontz is a bold writer when it comes to experimenting with genres. In Relentless he gives us a comic horror science fiction thriller. It's a very enjoyable and compelling book, but I'm not entirely sure all its parts work together.

I've said in other reviews that I admire Koontz's general avoidance of the common (lazy) writer's trick of telling stories about writers. But Relentless is about a writer (and his family). It could hardly have been otherwise, given the premise.

If horror means basing plots on our greatest fears, there can be no greater horror premise for a writer than a sociopathic critic. Negative critics are the enemies against whom there is no defense. Fighting a critic is a loser's game. But how much worse if that critic wants you (and your family) dead? Read the rest of this entry . . .