Sunday Book Review: The Crux of Salvation

Title: The Crux of Salvation 

Author: Michelle Warren

Date: 2016, 2018

Quote: "You are my brother. Shine the Light! Carry the cost."

For young Alex Kensington, to whom Joshua Davidson seems to be saying these words at the beginning of this novel, we must imagine the words feel a bit like coals of fire on his head. Though bright and diligent enough to finish a four-year degree in two years, Alex was the feeble little boy whose father, who was channelling the Evil Principle at the time, used him to recruit his best school friend into a satanic cult on whose behalf she would then help to kill her brother's friend, Joshua. Now his friend Selena is, apparently, dead. She died to protect him from his father--to stop his father torturing and killing other people. Alex can hardly feel much like the brother and heir to a religious teacher who healed people's bodies and minds. He's studying law, not medicine. 

But Joshua is the hypothetical Christian who's been allowed to channel the spirit of Christ so fully that he can revive people who appear to be dead...including himself.  In this novel most of Joshua's friends will appear to have died. 

And have they "died, been taken to Heaven, and lived happily ever after"? Maybe. The story is ambiguous. Nobody has ever doubted that part of Heaven has to look just like New Zealand. Maybe even the cities.

The year is 2032. Queen Elizabeth II, now 106 years old, is still on the throne in England. New Zealand still has a Socialist Party, which has "reorganized" and repudiated its former leader, Eric Kensington, who was also the leader of a Satanist cult. Prime Minister Mark Blake's opposition to the Socialist Party leader, James Connor, is strictly political and seems mostly pro forma. (Nobody in this trilogy has said much about the civil rights and liberties of the individual, because New Zealand is still at the stage of democracy where people take those for granted. Nobody has, for example, set up policies to ensure that Alex can't finish a four-year degree at age eighteen, such as we have in the United States.) Rachel Connor, still married and now a "specialist" doctor, still has motherly feelings toward young Tristan Blake and even younger Alex Kensington. Alex is still new to being a Christian and not very good at it; he testifies in religious meetings, sometimes, and then again he channels Evil sometimes. And the Evil Principle, having created unrest in New Zealand, has gone on to stir up old conflicts--the United States and Russia are at war. That tsunami Joshua Davidson warned everyone about will come when they start mucking about with bombs.

There is, Alex tells a crowd, an alternative to retaliation. Spiritual life is stronger than death! New Zealand doesn't have to track down and kill the terrorists who have added to the chaos. The United States doesn't have to drop a retaliatory bomb on Russia...

I don't see the alternative of national nonresistance ever being seriously discussed in the United States. We have a minority of Christians who believe that individual nonresistance is what Christ has called them to practice, a majority who believe that violent criminals have no real right or reason to live, though we've compromised on life imprisonment. Non-Christians have no reason other than loyalty to the enemy country, or mere cowardice, to consider national nonresistance to an act of war. Much as people living on the Pacific islands, including New Zealand, that might easily be destroyed by a war between Russia and the United States, wish we could consider the option of nonresistance and martyrdom, as a nation we probably never will.

What is possible is that each generation of Russians and Americans grows up, a critical mass of Christians in each country will choose not to start dropping bombs. For that I think we can reasonably hope. 

And so, on this most important religious holiday in all the Christian world, I pray. 

Good Friday's Book Review: The Price of Redemption

Title: The Price of Redemption

Author: Michelle Warren

Date: 2015, 2018

Quote: "Joshua is alive. I have seen him! I have touched him."

Joshua Davidson, the modern Christian who was allowed to do what Jesus did, took two bullets to each lung and one in the heart, and a "crown" that stuck poisoned needles into his scalp. He looked dead. He was buried. He was seen walking about a few days later, though not for long or by many people. Like Jesus of Nazareth. 

What you might not like about this trilogy is that Joshua seems to be a little too much like Jesus of Nazareth. Though we're all supposed to be doing what Jesus would have done if he'd been born in our time, with our bodies and our talents, the idea of anyone aspiring to copy the Resurrection and Transfiguration feels wrong to some Christians. We have to let that pass for the sake of the parable. (Or not.)

There's also the trendy use of "dark" to mean what young people don't want to admit is sin or evil. Some of the good characters in this trilogy belong to ethnic groups in which almost everyone has dark brown eyes. Their eyes are always described as brown, here. When a character in this trilogy has "dark eyes" the eye color is really blue, and the eyes are dilated, as Hitler's were by stimulant drugs, but in these books, apparently, by pure evil. Bah humbug. The position of this web site is that lack of moral enlightenment may be described as darkness in a non-judgmental way, but sinful, or evil, or even bad acts need to be described as sinful or evil or bad, not as "dark." Joshua's multiethnic eyes might be light brown but it would be surprising if Rau's or Eun Ae's eyes were not dark. And it's not a bad thing that they are. Readers who enjoy having dark eyes, as I do, have to pardon a lot of slurring about the way contact with the Evil Principle darkens the Blakes' baby-blues. They sometimes have dilated eyes.

Anyway, when Joshua was murdered, the crown with the poisoned needles was shoved down on his head by Selena Blake, the half-grown, otherwise innocent, daughter of the Prime Minister who ordered Tristan, as an army officer, to shoot Joshua. Selena's mockingly "crowning" Joshua "king" was not ordered by Mark Blake, though. Selena was the channel through which Blake was manipulated by a man his equal, Eric Kensington, leader of the Socialist Party. Kensington is not only a Socialist; in fact, as we meet him in this story, he's not even a Socialist. Socialists are otherwise normal human beings who do things that have horrible consequences because they believe Socialism can work for the benefit of their community or country. Most people who support the Church of Satan are basically normal human beings, with emotional issues, who often do themselves damage while they're just trying to flout the religion in which they grew up. Kensington has become a "true" Satanist, playing priest at "services" where people drink the real blood of living creatures they sacrifice to Satan. As Joshua was allowed to channel Jesus' ministry into a living body, Eric Kensington has been allowed to channel the Evil Principle into a living body. 

Eric Kensington has not acted alone. He reached Selena through a school friend, his son Alec, who serves Satan's cause because he's still young and small enough to be beaten and tortured. Through their children he hopes to gain control over Prime Minister Blake, although, immediately after Joshua's death, New Zealand has reached a level of chaos at which, according to their constitution, the Governor-General has taken over. 

This volume is the story of the confrontation between Blake and Kensington. It could be about civil liberties, but it's not. Blake has violated citizens' civil liberties by having the army kill Joshua. It's understood, too, that nobody objected to Kensington being a Socialist, if that had been enough to satisfy his greed. Ruinous taxes and an extravagant government are not quite the same as literally drinking people's blood.

The confrontation and those involved in it are very emotional. People hug and hit, brandish weapons, damage property. The point this part of the story is making is that even Judas and Caiaphas could have been saved by the redeeming love of God, but only through a sacrifice. A literal sacrifice. Since Joshua isn't dead, the characters' minds seem to crave and create another one. One of the children will die, or seem to die, to get that message through Kensington's thick head.

There's a sub-plot, or an additional element in the plot, concerning the medical students Rachel Connor and James Lester. They didn't know each other when they started their training at the hospital, and Rachel is married, but the way they work well together despite friendly rivalry and bickering, and something about their faces, convince Rachel that James is her long-lost brother. A more mundane issue--James's dipping into a patient's medication--causes them to act more like enemies than like siblings. How will Rachel, who is only just becoming a Christian through her admiration for Joshua (he rescued her from a boiling spring in volume one), deal with ordinary human sin? This plot interweaves with the main plot; these characters are all well acquainted with one another.

Despite scenes of joy this is a grim book. What Christians celebrate on "Good Friday" we believe to be a good thing, but the story as it really happened is much grimmer and gorier than this book--and this book is not for the squeamish. 

Book Review: Green Dolphin Street

Book Review: Green Dolphin Street

Author: Elizabeth Goudge

Date: 1944, 1973

Publisher: Coward McCann & Geoghegan (1944), Pyramid (1973)

ISBN: 0-515-02886-X (Pyramid)

Length: 640 pages

Quote: “That a man who had emigrated to the New World should after the lapse of years write home for a bride, and then get the wrong one because he had confused her name with that of her sister, may seem to the reader highly improbable; yet it happened. And in real life also the man held his tongue about his mistake and made a good job of his marriage.”

That’s basically the plot of Green Dolphin Street. Sisters Marianne and Marguerite lived on a small island where marriage prospects were scarce. William, an off-island bachelor, appealed to both of them. The one he warnted was Marguerite; the one to whom he mistakenly addressed his proposal was Marianne. Marguerite became a nun. And after forty years they all made peace with one another.

If you like tastefully written historical romances, you’ll like this one; it’s full of history and adventures, with some mortal danger but no risk of anything sordid happening. It’s unfortunate that Goudge had never actually been in New Zealand, but she wrote the story as best she could from the historical data she had.

If you’re a real novel reader, you may even appreciate this story stretching on for 640 pages. I’m not, and my feeling is that 320 or probably even 160 pages would have been enough. 

Book Review: Catching the Wave

Title: Catching the Wave

Author: Emily Selby

Date: 2022

Quote: "[T]hat girl had a strange power bill."

Amelia, the Internet security consultant at the Book by the Sea bookstore, is a real computer geek. She doesn't even recognize how bizarre and rude the phone call with the people yelling about the "strange power bill" is. She investigates, though, and finds herself doing real detective work, tracing the owner of the cryptocurrency "mining" operation and the resulting Bitcoins that are raising the bill. 

This cozy mystery introduces readers to the basics of cryptocurrency. Danger and gross-out levels are low. When not panicked by the inflated bill, even the landlords are reasonably polite. Solving the mystery depends on your ability to apply logic to the information about cryptocurrency Amelia provides to the other characters and you. 

This mini-book is a sort of trailer for a trilogy of detective stories, featuring Amelia, set in New Zealand. 

Book Review: Rangikura

Title: Rangikura

Author: Tayi Tibble

Date: 2021

Publisher: Knopf

ISBN: 978-0-593-53463-2

Quote: "she realised that life / was not going to be fair / but it could be /ferocious."

This is a short book of short essays and free verse about being young and mostly Maori in New Zealand. With lines that are sometimes rude, often funny, and sometimes sad, Tayi Tibble captures moments of growing up in a suburb, being teased and fighting back, loving too much, trying to stay connected to living people and feel connected to her ancestors. 

What some readers will enjoy and others will find unreadable is the way Tibble mixes cyberspeak, Maori, and Black American slang into a whole new form of English. New Zealanders seem to be interested in using Maori words, especially for indigenous food and wildlife, of which several are mentioned in this book. Other readers might actually prefer to read this book online rather than in print.

Tibble is young, and offers no special or new insights, but her word pictures are funny and sad and, yes, ferocious, condemning and celebrating, sweet and sour, and they show a poet's ear. If you finish this book you'll probably want to read the other ones she will undoubtedly write. (This was her second book and by now she's written a third one.)

Book Review: A New Kind of Zeal

Title: A New Kind of Zeal 

Author: Michelle Warren

Date: 2018

Publisher: Michelle Warren / Smashwords

 Quote: "Food to the poor, healing to the sick. It sounds like he'll put us all out of a job!"

Jesus lived among us in one place at one time. When He returns, we are assured, His return will be known around the world.

What if, just as a test of what Christianity has done for the world, another man was allowed to represent Christ, fully, in all particulars? Would we treat that man any better than the ancient world did Jesus?

That's the question this work of fiction raises. Its answer is at least a good story. The best of all stories, retold in modern guise. In Warren's literary vision, the Welfare State reacts to Christ exactly as the Roman Empire did. Only a few of the people who knew Joshua Davidson show a little more enlightenment, because they had some Christian teaching, than the historical persons in the New Testament did. 

In the trilogy that's grown out of this novel (I have the 2018 edition; there was a 2013 edition) Warren shares a prophetic vision for New Zealand, and for anyone else who has eyes to see it. 

It's less poetic, more directly addressed to social issues of our time, than The Singer trilogy, and it's well worth reading even though all Christians will know how the main plot comes out. While the first volume of the trilogy deviates from the Gospel story only in the invention of new characters who hear, and accept or refuse, the message of Joshua Davidson, those characters will shape the following volumes. 

E-Book Review: Sparkles on Water

Title: Sparkles on Water 

Author: Marja Blom

Date: 2015

Publisher: Marja Blom

ISBN: none

Length: 24 pages

Quote: "I grew up in the Netherlands and moved to New Zealand in 1997. In 2007 I set up a blog to show people the beauty of New Zealand. Some fellow bloggers...introduced me to the land of poetry. I discovered it, loved it and learned its language."

Few people dare to publish poems in their second language. It's been done well--some medieval songs in Latin are still loved and sung today--but it's usually done as a learning exercise, and the resulting verses have been published anonymously, or casually tucked into collections written in the author's primary language. (Somewhere on this web site there is a little song parody written in Spanish, yes.) Tolkien's songs in both of the languages he constructed for the Rings books come to mind, and Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz's ventures into indigenous Mexican languages. When whole books of verse by non-native speakers of the language have been published, as was done by Andrei Codrescu in his exuberant youth, they tend to be bought as curiosities; if the actual poems then strike readers as being clever, witty, pretty, innovative, moving (in any way except the poor-pitiful-me-is-a-refugee cliche), or funny (in any way except the foreigner-stumbling-over-language cliche), that's a bonus, a happy accident that readers are eager to rave about. The poems don't rank among the greatest in the language; they're in a special category, but they delight all who discover them.

So it went with the online writing groups that discovered Marja Blom and encouraged her to keep writing poems in English and publish this collection of some of her best ones. Blom's English is fluent, sometimes quirky, always readable. Her poems aren't even limited to free verse, which is easy to write in one's native language and translate into whatever other languages one knows. I kept waiting for the "Well that was interesting, I'm sure it sounded better in Dutch" reaction. It didn't happen. Blom writes English as if she's written poems in Dutch, but as if these poems were originally written in English. Some of these poems have traditional English-verse rhythm and rhyme patterns; some have their own patterns of assonance. 

At their best, poems written in someone's second language give native speakers a fresh sense of the possibilities their language offers. Some of Blom's poems have that quality, and may rank among the best poems written in English as a Second Language.

"Some love marigolds

some radiant roses with velvet folds

and then there is weed

It creeps on its knees

swallowing beauty..."

begins a poem celebrating the diversity of wildflowers. 

A poem about springtime begins with the Earth awakening from winter sleep--nothing new there--and then intrigues me with "the sun warps kisses on her cheek." "Warps kisses" is the kind of phrase that has to be mindfully chosen. The intriguing part is the variety of possible meanings: "warps" as an onomatopoeic variant on "plops"? in the sense of "warps as a loom," strings straight threads or lines across the surface? in the sense of "warps as a phonograph record," twists and wrinkles? (Does frost heave, in New Zealand, as it does in North America and Europe?) And what about the echo of "time warps," layers of time that might hypothetically be linked by the resonance created by the sunlight striking the same surface in the same ways, year after year?

What's not to love, for me and probably for some people who read this web site, is Blom's inclination toward a Zen-sanctioned rejection of "mind." We all know the kind of burdensome and distracting thoughts that need to be replaced with the neutral observation of "thinking" in either transcendental or mindful meditation, which seems to be what Zen types' dsparagement of "mind" is meant to mean. At the same time...pooh! Nobody just breathes out little felicities like

"Sunflowers dancing

in harmony together

rocking on a lullaby

waving in windy weather"

A mind was at work there, I quibble...happily. 

I enjoyed this little collection of pretty pictures and poems. You will too. It's currently available as a free download at dutchcorner.blogspot.com, where readers can find some of Blom's new pictures and poems as blog posts.

Book Review: Underrunners

Title: Underrunners

(Why is the picture blurry? Because Amazon is trying to sell new editions with different covers. This is what I physically own. I reserve the right to substitute newer editions if the first edition becomes rare.)

Author: Margaret Mahy

Date: 1992

Publisher: Penguin

ISBN: 0-670-84179-X

Length: 169 pages

Quote: “Tris would know Selsey Firebone was with him, moving as silently as only a trained outer-space alien-detecting secret agent can move.”

Eleven-year-old Tris has been making up the story of Selsey Firebone longer than he can remember. Now that his parents are separated, he and his father live near the beach, and he acts out adventures on the way home from school. He’s not told the story to his friends, though, so why does a new acquaintance from the local children’s shelter seem familiar with the story? Tris is about to become just a little bit of a detective and crimefighter, on a very junior level.

Part of the story takes place in the “underrunners,” tunnels of erosion along the coast of New Zealand. It’s possible, though dangerous, to play in these tunnels. Tris has played in them. In this story he’ll be caught up in a real adventure, in the tunnels, with the orphan, and an unpleasant person who really is out to get them...

For his age and size Tris ends up giving a good account of himself, showing both physical and emotional courage. Selsey Firebone turns out to be a real person, and Tris becomes “his” sidekick—although in the reality of the novel Selsey Firebone turns out to be a “her.”

I’m tempted to call this one a coming-of-age story, although Tris is still only eleven at the end. If Tris hasn’t quite become a man, at least he’s made a good study of two role models and learned how a man should or should not react to rejection by the woman he loves.

Shorter and simpler than Mahy’s brilliant Memory or numinous Tricksters, Underrunners might seem juvenile to some of Mahy’s teenaged readers. I’d guess, though, that any older teenagers who are willing to read about an eleven-year-old and a thirteen-year-old won’t be disappointed. Even adults who are in the mood  for a gentle, if not cozy, mystery where no one is actually murdered but the main characters are in some danger, may enjoy Underrunners.

As always when choosing a book to give to a child, know your student. Some eleven-year-olds or even nine-year-olds will be delighted by a Young-Adult-type novel with an eleven-year-old protagonist. Some eleven-year-olds enjoy stories that present people their age mainly as role-models-of-the-future for six-year-old readers, and others will like the teen-level vocabulary, the abstract thought, the dangers, and the insights in this book.

Unfortunately Margaret Mahy no longer has any use for the dollar she'd get if her books were still Fair Trade Books (if she were still alive). Her writing career seems painfully short to U.S. readers because she was quite old when she broke into the U.S. market. Anyway, most of her books can still be purchased from this web site for the usual price of $5 per book, $5 per package, and $1 per online payment. To set up a special multiple-book package, e-mail salolianigodagewi at the address shown at the very bottom of the screen. To pay by U.S. postal order, send $10 (for this book) or $25 (for four books of this size, shipped together) to Boxholder, P.O. Box 322. To order only this book with the convenience of Paypal, click: