Full of Grace: Tuesday’s Child Earns It!

Title: Tuesday’s Child

Author(s): Dale Mayer
Publisher: Valley Publishing
Copyright: 2010
ISBN-13: 978-1-927461-31-0
Format: trade paperback & ebook
Genre: Paranormal/Romance
Part of Series: Book #3 of Psychic Visions
Rating: 4 out of 5 Stars

A Gift I Wouldn’t Want Either

We’ve often heard that psychic “gifts” can be a curse, but Tuesday’s Child takes the cursing part to the extreme. Dale Mayer creates a compelling paranormal/romance novel, where the main character is reclusive psychic Samantha Blair. Sam’s psychic gift isn’t just an audio-visual or emotional connection to the subject; she has a physical connection to murder victims. Sam lives through each ghoulish detail with the victims in real time, including their bleeding. She gains our sympathy in the opening scene while experiencing one of these psychic episodes: “The attack became a frenzy of stabs and slices, snatching all thought away. Her body jerked and arched in a macabre dance. Black spots blurred her vision and still the slaughter continued.” Experiencing these horrific episodes leaves Sam physically depleted, often with wounds that heal at a paranormal rate. We see how frail and vulnerable she is in a wide world that doesn’t accept her strange ability. Where police suspect her involvement if she tells them about the murders and where harassment or rejection is what Sam expects from everyone. Mayer compels us to want to see Sam nurtured with vivid descriptions. We want someone to come to her rescue, to help her, protect her and offer her some repast from the brutality she lives.

Dale Mayer creates the perfect compatibility in the form of Detective Brandt Sutherland. Brandt is researching cold cases he believes are related to a series of murders he’s been investigating. Brandt isn’t the stereotypical hard-nosed cop we’ve come to expect. He is an intelligent and capable member of Law Enforcement, but he is also open-minded. Hints of his previous work with a psychic gives us hope for Brandt working with Sam. There is the added bonus of the patient way he handles his mother when she gets in trouble at the assisted living facility. We feel confident that he can nurture Sam in the same way. So even though Sam doesn’t trust Brandt, we do and we root for their successful union through the period of mistrust that’s bound to occur.

A Plot That Moves With Intelligence

Tuesday’s Child combines a dichotomous plot of both fast-moving murder investigation and the importance of friends and family that keeps us reading to the end. Brandt’s gentle interactions with his mother combine with Sam’s helping dogs at the local vets to create a loving backdrop in which a serial killer strikes at select victims with horrifying violence and blood-letting. The murder has the glee of a naughty child who doesn’t get caught with his hand in the cookie jar. This contrast of gentleness versus violence, love versus hatred continues throughout the novel’s plot and subplot giving us the real-world feel of both the safety and danger around us and reminds us why we fight to keep the world safe. Dale Mayer creates an interesting read blended with a formula romance to produce the perfect book to read on a rainy night or at the beach.

Rapture Trilogy: Not as Enrapturing as Hoped

An Author-Requested Review

Title: Rapture

Author(s): Phillip W. Simpson
Publisher: Arete Publishing
Copyright: 2010
ISBN-10: 148394963X
ISBN-13: 978-1483949635
Format: ebook
Genre: Young Adult Dystopian
Part of Series: Part I of Rapture Trilogy
Rating: 2 1/2 out of 5

Phillip W. Simpson’s young adult novel, Rapture Trilogy, paints a dystopian world after the Biblical Rapture has occurred and the believers have been taken to heaven. Written in third-person, limited point-of-view we follow the teenaged protagonist, Sam, through a demon-infested landscape where the sun is blotted out, the moon is red as blood and ash continually falls from the sky, contaminating exposed water and food. Sam’s goal is to reach Los Angeles from his home in Jacob’s Ladder, Utah. Along the way he battles demon’s, trying to help the unbelievers left behind and fights beside the survivors holed up in caves and old businesses that remain standing after the earthquakes. But Sam is up to the challenge because he’s half-demon, half-human so has superior strength and speed coupled with life-long training in martial arts using the katana (long blade) & wakizashi (short blade). Of course, he has horns, which makes gaining survivors’ trust more difficult. Along the way, Sam befriends Joshua, who agrees to travel with him to Los Angeles, and together they save a girl named Grace from a group of roughen survivors. This unlikely trio makes their way across the brutal, post-Rapture landscape.

Simpson uses alternating chapters to give Sam’s background, which works well in telling us about Hikari and his daughter, Aimi who Sam loves, but slows the action a bit. His descriptions of both the setting and the fight scenes are engaging, but his characters lack depth. For instance, Sam is raised by Hikari, his sensei or teacher/foster-father who is, by all accounts in the novel, perfect. We learn through the flashbacks that Hikari takes Sam in as an infant from a Christian mother who was seduced by a demon. Hikari devotes his life to Sam’s martial arts training and Biblical education. Though Hikari was once a teacher, we have no idea how he supports Sam and Aimi. He seems to always be at home, that is when he’s not at church. How he provides for his family is a complete mystery. Aimi is also portrayed to perfection. She’s an obedient daughter who happily takes on the responsibility of cooking and cleaning for two men. On top of her household chores, Hikari trains Aimi in the martial arts almost as rigorously as he trains Sam, and all the while she maintains academic excellence and superior cheerleading skills. Excelling at everything she does is a bit unrealistic. No wonder Sam loves her, she is perfection incarnate. Neither Aimi nor Sam displays the rebellious nature that occurs in 98% of American teenagers. As an ex-high school teacher, I found that lack a little disturbing. Teenaged rebellion is part of growing up and developing self-identity.

While Phillip W. Simpson’s Rapture Trilogy provides us with a good escapism story, it lacks the depth and breadth of realism to make it worth a second read. Though the main character is the picture of social isolation, he lacks the rebellion, “to liberate himself or herself from childhood dependency on parental approval for always being the "good child." (Carl Pickard, PhD., “Surviving (Your Child’s) Adolescence”, Psychology Today December 6, 2009). Neither does Aimi, the quintessential “good child”. I doubt whether the teen population which Simpson’s targets will identify with either character.

Tent City: No Malingering in These Hills

An Author Requested Review

Title: Tent City

Author(s): Kelly Van Hull

Publisher: Kelly Van Hull
Copyright: 2013
ISBN-10: 1482754533
ISBN-13: 978-1482754537
Format: ebook, paperback (340 pages)
Genre: Young Adult, Speculative Fiction
Part of Series: Yes
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Not Quite a Dream Come True

 Who hasn’t wanted to run away from home? Like most teenagers, I dreamed about freedom from parental rules and taking charge of my own life. However, none of those dreams included my parents telling me to run away or insisting I take my younger siblings with me. That would have turned the dream into a nightmare! Yet that is exactly what happens to 17-year-old Dani and her 5-year-old brother, Brody, in Kelly Van Hull’s novel, Tent City.  This young adult fiction weaves a story realistic enough to be believable with a dystopian future. The story, in first person point of view, tells how  the Army, renamed the Council, under the leadership of General Burke controls all resources to “protect” citizens from starvation after locusts destroyed most of the crops. And now they want to “protect” children between the ages of five and eighteen.

Van Hull captures our sympathy immediately with the opening line, “It feels a lot like the night my brother Drake died.” In one line Van Hull ties creates reader empathy as well a scene tension as Dani’s parents sit her at the kitchen table and tell her she needs to run away with her little brother. Uncle Randy, who’s “high up” in the Army, has warned them that the Council “fears if too many more deaths occur, the human population may be in danger of extinction.” The answer, of course, is to put the children in safety camps where procreation may be assured. Van Hull shows us lingering uncertainties through Dani’s statement, “The year they took over is when most people died. Doesn’t that seem weird to you?” Hesitant to take on the sole responsibility of her brother, she’s given a choice between hiding in the cellar and running off to hide in the Black Hills. Dani chooses the latter. But she isn’t some self-assured, arrogant teenager. She questions her ability to take care of Brody on her own and insists that her best friend, Kit, comes with them.

The Ride of a Lifetime

This fast-paced ride begins as Dani, Brody and Kit head for Black Hills on the family’s four-wheelers. As they follow a map Dani’s father marked to their cabin and Kit proves her value by being the only one who can actually read it. The plot is riveting, regardless of your age, as we follow the trio deep into the woods. Dani gets her four-wheeler stuck in the river and the group is rescued by a mysterious travelling teenager named Jack. While Kit is flirtatious, Dani is cautious and sends him on his way post-haste.  Dani and Kit create an interesting dichotomy of characters. Kit’s practical skills are coupled with playfulness and Dani’s guardedness is combined with curiosity. These contradictory skills come in handy when the trio reaches their destination, only to find the cabin already occupied and surrounded by a small city of tents.

Tent City is of full of dichotomies. There’s Bentley, the hard-nosed community leader and the previously mentioned, mild-mannered Jack. They obviously know each other and don’t like each other, but denied this to Dani. Jack and Bentley are as opposite as Kit and Dani. Where Bentley is a harsh, Jack is compassionate; where Jack focuses on helping others with his healing skills, Bentley focuses on fighting and conducting raids for supplies. They are an irresistible puzzle to Dani, who must find out the secrets which seem to surround them both.

Kelly Van Hull crafts a compelling story filled with puzzles and opposites. Who are Jack and Bentley and how do they know one another? How can they both have such exceptional yet opposite skills? What does the “spiritual awakening” after the locusts have to do with the Council’s control? How can Dani protect Brody when she feels barely about to take care of herself? Will Dani, Brody and Kit ever be able to bet back home? The ride is worthwhile, so read Tent City and learn, as Dani does, that answers sometimes yield more questions.

Ask Yourself, “What If?”

A movie review by Rhodes FitzWilliam

Title: By Dawn’s Early Light
Author(s): Teleplay by Bruce Gilbert, based on the novel, Trinity’s Child, by William Prochnau
Director: Jack Sholder
Copyright: 1990
ASIN: B00021R7CG
Format: Made for TV Movie, Available on disk
Genre: Speculative Fiction
Rating:4 ½ out of 5

Stars Nuclear Uncertainty

We live in a generation once removed from the Cold War between the United States and the former Soviet Union and its ever-present threat of nuclear war. Our children and grandchildren don’t watch fearful adults stocking food in the basement or neighbors building bomb shelters. They don’t practice the emergency “duck and cover” in school. And that’s a good thing. It doesn’t, however, mean that those nuclear warheads have been decommissioned. On the contrary, according to an April 2013 Update from the Arms Control Association, the United States and the former Soviet Union have over 8,000 nuclear weapons. And, let’s be clear, accidents can still happen. The check and balance system in place can still fail to function. And now we live under the threat of terrorists, who may gain access to those nuclear weapons. That’s why I believe the Bruce Gilbert’s teleplay, By Dawn’s Early Light, is just as relevant today as it was when it aired on television in 1990.

By Dawn’s Early Light features an exceptional cast. Powers Boothe plays the hard-core B-52 pilot, Cassidy, and Rebecca De Mornay plays his co-pilot, Moreau, who acts as the voice of conscience. James Earl Jones stars as Alice, the general in charge of Looking Glass (an Air Force command plane), and Martin Landau as the President of the United States. But it’s not just the cast that makes this movie good. It’s the premise that terrorists might be able to access nuclear weapons and that a response system that depends heavily on computer-coordinated attacks can break down, which happens in this movie. The situation is set when a dissident group within the Soviet military uses a nuclear warhead on a Soviet city. The Soviet’s computer-controlled response system automatically sends bombs to pre-set targets within the United States. The President is warned about the ensuing attack by General Renning, played by Nicolas Coster, who is in charge of NORAD (North American Aerospace Defense Command). Renning needs “the codes” to initiate the counter-attack. Luckily, the Soviet leader sends a teletype directly to the President telling him the attack was automated and not an intentional act of war. The Soviet leader agrees to accept an equally devastating attack from the United States in order to stop a full-scale nuclear war. The President agrees, against the dire warning of the General Renning that he is “being conned on a level unprecedented in history.” But the President stands firm as he gives NORAD the codes with orders to limit the first counter-attack. Thus begins a dialogue between the two super-power leaders to stop an inevitable full-scale automated war. The objective is set: to “turn off” the nuclear war. Like all quests, complications and deterrents stand in the way.

To War or Not to War, That is the Question

The story complications grow when NORAD informs the President that the Soviet Union has launched a second attack. They can’t tell where these missiles are targeted, but he says, “With god as my witness, it makes no difference…” because in accordance with the current treaty, the Chinese will now automatically attack Russia. General Redding tells the President that all communication with the Soviet Union is down and the Russian President may not even be in control. Then NORAD is destroyed and the President’s helicopter is downed by an off-track missile, leaving the Secretary of the Interior in charge of the primary command plane as Condor. Condor accepts the direction of Col. Fargo, Rip Torn, and wants to “win” a nuclear war. Thus two factions emerge within the chain of command, an injured President without proper codes trying to stop the war and Condor who has them trying to escalate it, each vying for legitimacy. Each member of the military, from the rank-in-files to the generals must now choose which orders they believe are correct.

Scenes change rapidly within this face-paced movie, making it a terrific watch. Even though it contains some profanity, it’s within the context of accepted military dialogue. I’ve shown By Dawn’s Early Light to a high school class to stimulate class discussion because it makes the audience think about what they would do if they were given orders to destroy a city and the penalty for disobeying was death? Like questions about those who stood by as the Nazis committed genocide against the Jew, it forces you to think, where would you stand? By Dawn’s Early Light is definitely on my “Must Watch” list and, believe me, you won’t be disappointed. In fact, I can’t wait to read the book on which it’s based, Trinity’s Child, to compare the two.

Reviewed by Rhodes FitzWilliam

Coming to a Host Near You!

The Host by Stephenie Meyer is reputed to be a hybrid of science fiction and romance. As a fan of both genres, I found myself disappointed. Now don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed the novel and found many surprising qualities in it. It’s just that the strong attraction and sexual tension usually associated with romance isn’t one of them, and the fear of alien invaders taking control plus understanding of science associated with scifi isn’t the other. So what kept me reading this hybrid?

The novel opens during the “insertion” of an alien into a human host. What caught my attention immediately is that the process is not depicted as the scary, oh-my-god, violent act of pen etseeration that is considered norm for most body snatchers-type stories. Instead the alien occupation comes in the form of a gentle operation, with a Healer implanting a being called “a soul” into the human host. This “soul” is already respected and admired by others of her species because she has lived on more worlds than others of her kind. Hence they name her Wanderer. The conflict is spelled out directly by the Healer in the opening. This wonderful, gentle soul is being inserted into one of the most violent and irrational human host, Melanie Stryder, who threw herself down an elevator shaft trying to avoid capture and occupation by the aliens. The setup is beautiful. It puts the reader on the both sides of the proverbial coin. We admire and are curious about this well-traveled alien who awes her own kind at the same time we empathize and appreciate the strong-willed, rebellious human. Here is a different approach to the body snatching story.

The beauty of the story is the internal conflict which occurs between Melanie and Wanderer. Melanie is cunning, insinuating her own emotions into the Wanderer through dreams and selectively chosen memories about her brother, Jamie, and her lover, Jared, while at the same time keeping specific information about their whereabouts hidden. That information must be kept secret because the Seeker who is assigned to Wanderer follows her, constantly questioning the memories she is able to recover. It is the Seeker’s job to find the remaining rebel humans and bring them back to be occupied by souls. She is obnoxiously aggressive in these duties. In fact the distaste that both Melanie and Wanderer feel for the Seeker is the first thing they agree on. Melanie’s fear for Jamie and Jared’s safety and her desire to be with them is strong enough to eventually infiltrate the Wanderer’s body and mind, slowly making Melanie’s feelings dominant enough to manipulate Wanderer into searching for the concealed camp of Jebediah, Melanie’s survivalist uncle.

Additional conflicts arise when Wanderer is captured by Jeb and his band of human survivors. Wanderer is held hostage in an extensive cave system with humans who want to kill her, but Jeb’s curiosity is peeked by her. He seems to see something in Wanderer, aka Wanda, which the others don’t, so Jeb keeps her alive against popular opinion. Melanie’s beloved Jared hates Wanda even more than the other humans do. This amplifies the inner conflict between Melanie, who wants to touch Jared, and Wanda, who wants to avoid Jared’s violent reactions. The situation is complicated because Melanie is actually jealous of Wanda. Melanie doesn’t want Jared to touch Wanda! Under Jeb’s orders, Wanda participates in the daily chores of living in the community, planting crops, cooking food, etc. Wimpy Wanda is terrified to come out of the hole in which she’s been kept, but likes the thought of contributing to the common good, an idea that permeates the book. Wanderer reacts nonviolently to all the human violence while battling the inner conflict of Melanie’s desire to strike back or reach out. One by one, the humans begin to tolerate Wanda’s presence, then accept her. One human, Ian, even falls in love with Wanda…not Melanie. This creates a strange love square instead of a love triangle between Melanie, Jared, Ian and Wanda.

Wanda eventually wins the trust of the vehement humans with her unflinching nonviolence and desire to promote the common good. This dichotomy of violence-pacifism and egotism-altruism is the story’s strength and its weakness. Wanda acts with such perfect pacifism that she makes Gandhi look like a thug. Even Melanie becomes a compatriot, a friend, and then a sister to this alien intelligence possessing her body. When Wanda insists that she must forfeit her own life to give the body back to Melanie, Melanie rejects the idea. If this doesn’t test the limits of believability enough, the solution does. The humans hunt for and find another human body who is younger and hence more malleable than Melanie. They insert the parasitic soul into this body, which is frail and beautiful with long golden hair. Think of fairytale princess and you’ll have the general idea. Anyway, Jared gets Melanie back, Ian gets to keep Wanda, and all is right with the fracked up world.

This is apparently Ms. Meyer’s first attempt at writing for a mature audience, so we need to be tolerant of the simple sentence structure, vocabulary and happily-ever-after ending. Because, let’s face it, the ideas are fresh against the stale back-drop of body-snatcher mentality. However, as an adult reader I’d like to see a more creative approach to naming than calling doctors “Healer”, alien analgesics  “No Pain”, antibiotics called “Heal” and scar minimizers named “Smooth.” I’d also like to see more complexity in the alien personalities. After all, we expect an alien race that has taken control of at least nine different planets to be more sophisticated and to have a more mature attitude toward the multitude of life-styles presented by species that are Bats, Dolphins, Spiders and Flowers.

There is now a movie based on this book and I’m curious about how they will handle and change the story line of this would-be science fiction/romance. I’ll let you know my take on it after I’ve seen it. In the meantime, I still recommend reading this book.

Rhodes FitzWilliam

Digital Winter: A Book That Won’t Leave You Cold

Digital Winter by Mark Hitchcock & Alton Gansky (Harvest House Books, 2012) is an attention-getting, face-paced read that keeps you turning the page. What more could you ask from a piece of speculative fiction? Yet some people seem bothered by the fact that Mark Hitchcock is a Biblical prophecy expert. However if you enjoy reading dystopia fiction as I do, who better to write it? Couple Hitchcock’s frightening vision of the future with Alton Gansky’s award-winning skills as a novelist and you have a real winner.

I found Digital Winter to have a realistic present-day setting full of the probable military linguistics and security precautions that are appropriate in our digital world according to my readings in the Federation of American Scientist’s Secrecy Blog. There’s the initial discovery of an self-replicating computer virus, suspicions of terrorists, the rush of the President to a secure location and the crumbling infrastructure of a computer-dependent society post-computers.

The story begins with the introduction of Stanley Elton, a successful CEO for San Diego’s largest CPA firm, and his college professor wife, Royce. They are the parents of an elusive central character, Donny. Donny Elton is a 22-year old, monosyllabic computer savant who appears to be a silent central character throughout the novel. The story then moves in quick, short scenes that take us from the upper-class suburb of Coronado Island in San Diego to College Park, Maryland and introduces us to Dr. Roni Matisse and her husband, Colonel Jeremy Matisse, PhD, who is a major figure in the USCYBERCOM division of the NSA, who is by the way a Christian. Life through Jeremy’s eyes shows us the backstage story of the coming digital disaster. It includes enough description and brief history of the setting to give the reader a sense of place without becoming bogged down in excessive details. We follow these characters through standard dystopian events such as losing power, water and the general breakdown of civic order as officials try to stave off social disaster and restore some semblance of order.

Even though those of us familiar with the genre know the story line, we keep reading anyway because we are curious to see where the story will take us and how Shadow, a recurring symbol throughout the novel, plays into events. For instance, why is Donny suddenly making full sentences after years of saying only one word? It is Donny’s opening line of “Shadow, shadow on my right, / Shadow, shadow on my left, / Shadow, shadow everywhere, / Shadow has all the might,” that  reappears at critical points throughout the story, leaving us to wonder about its meaning and Donny’s relationship to it.

The only aspect of this novel that felt surrealistic to me are the main characters. Both the Eltons and the Matisses are professional couples with long-term marriages who are still deeply in love. Maybe it’s just my personal history of being raised in a single-parent home, becoming a single parent myself and not knowing many couples with a long-term love, but their relationships did make me question their character’s validity.

Other than that, I loved the novel enough to read the entire thing one Saturday morning. Though the battle between good and evil is not as flamboyantly obvious as Steven King’s The Stand, but I think that works in the Digital Winter’s favor. I definitely recommend it and look forward to reading the sequel.

Rhodes FitzWilliam