#CSFFBlogTour 3: Merlin’s Nightmare, the Review

The Review:

I just finished reading Merlin’s Nightmare a couple of hours ago. And what struck me about the book is that for Merlin, this is a time of making choices. He had reached a point where his life was pretty good. He and his wife had taken in the orphan child Arthur and were raising him as their own child, to keep him safe from the killer of the child’s family. In addition, Merlin and his wife had two children of their own.

But as Arthur reaches the age of manhood, Merlin is faced with the question of when he will tell the boy about his true heritage. His hand is forced when young Arthur, instead of going off to fight the Picts in the north, responds to an appeal to fight Saxen invaders to the south. Merlin must ride after him to prevent Arthur from presenting himself to the killer of his true father, and possibly being recognized by him.

When Merlin catches up, Arthur’s not pleased to learn that everything he believes about his family and heritage are not true. He goes on to win a victory against the Saxens. But Merlin recognizes that neither the Picts nor the Saxens are the most urgent enemy to fight. The Druidic forces controlled by Morgana, Merlin’s younger sister, are the most dangerous force and must be fought— even though those forces are lead by a werewolf.

The final battle is Merlin’s true nightmare, and is a thrilling bit of fiction. I will not reveal the spoilers, but simply say that the story of the Merlin Spiral trilogy winds up, and the Arthurian tale is set to continue in the Pendragon Spiral— something I am looking forward to.

The faith factor— Christian values are fully present in the story, but not in an intrusive or preachy way. It also rates high for being Catholic-friendly. The monks and the abbeys in the story are presented in a positive light. The Holy Grail is treated with great respect. And there is even a sequence when prayers in Latin are given! I did not notice anything that would present a doctrinal problem for the faithful Catholic.

Tour Links:

Merlin’s Nightmare –  http://www.amazon.com/Merlins-Nightmare-Merlin-Spiral-Treskillard/dp/0310735092/
Author Website – http://www.KingArthur.org.uk

Blog Tour participants:

How many of these blogs have you visited? I’m hoping to visit and comment on them all by the time the tour is over, and I heartily recommend that you take up the challenge and do the same. And after the blog tour is over? Don’t lose this list! When you are looking for blogs to comment on, this list is a handy one to use. Remember, there are those out there who comment on as many as 100 other blogs a day. I’ve been doing 5 a day, and recently tried to get up to 10 a day. And if you do that, some good blog lists are helpful.

Beckie Burnham
Jeff Chapman
Vicky DealSharingAunt
April Erwin
Carol Gehringer
Victor Gentile
Rebekah Gyger
Carol Keen
Krystine Kercher
Emileigh Latham
Jennette Mbewe
Shannon McDermott
Meagan @ Blooming with Books
Rebecca LuElla Miller
Mirriam Neal
Joan Nienhuis
Nissa
Writer Rani
Nathan Reimer
Audrey Sauble
Chawna Schroeder
Jojo Sutis
Robert Treskillard
Phyllis Wheeler
Elizabeth Williams

Twitter!

I must here give my mea culpa. I said the appropriate Twitter hashtag for the blog tour was #CSFF. Actually, a better one is #CSFFBlogTour. Sorry about the misinformation.

On to the Insecure Writers Support Group blog hop!

The next blog event on my schedule is the IWSG blog hop on the first Wednesday of next month. There are a number of Christian authors on the blog hop list, so it’s a good opportunity if you are looking for new blogs to comment upon. (Commenting on other blogs is the best way to get attention to your own blog.)

 

#CSFF blog tour 2: Writing a Book Review – The Existential Horror

How do you write a book review when you can’t see the forest for the trees? That’s a question that pops into my mind every time I do the Christian Science Fiction & Fantasy blog tour.

Some people have this gift: they can read through a book and write a paragraph about it that sums it up exactly. And when I read it, even if I’ve read the book myself a dozen times, I say to myself, ‘so that’s what the book is about.’

Maybe it’s my Asperger Syndrome (autism spectrum disorder), but I just can’t see books like that. (Perhaps having Asperger Syndrome means I’m doomed to artistic failure— you know, like aspies Herman Melville and Vincent van Gogh were.) And so I have to find another way to do reviews. Because I won’t take the easy way out and cut-and-paste the official book description from Amazon.com on this blog— that seems like cheating, and since the blog tourers visit more than one blog, Everyone Will Know. So here are some alternatives:

1. Use a quote from the book. “Morgana scowled at King Gorlas’s back as he dug into the grave.” (That’s from the Prologue of Merlin’s Nightmare. You can use a more extensive quote as well. Let the author do the work for you!
2. Tell something interesting about the author. For example: Robert Treskillard is descended from a Cornish blacksmith and knows how to make swords.
3. If you can’t see the forest, describe a good tree— some detail that caught your attention. Example: Ganieda, Merlin’s nine-year-old half-sister. A little sister is someone that you are expected to protect. But Ganieda, also called Morgana, goes over to the dark side…
4. Kvetch about something. It can be something big, or something trivial. In the description of Ganieda, it says she has an ‘affinaty’ for wolves’. At least, the Kindle version says that. Should be ‘affinity’.
5. Rate the book on some scale you create. For the Christian reader that might be on the degree and correctness of the Christian content. For the secular reader, it might be whether the Christian content was intrusive to the story. You might rate the degree of violence or of ‘edgy’ content. Or the presence or absence of zombies. Whatever’s important to you.
6. Give your personal reaction. Did it catch your attention so you couldn’t put it down to make dinner? After you finished, did you find the book so delightful that you immediately read it again? Try to be very specific. Avoid the words ‘nice’ or ‘interesting’. Don’t call it a ‘page-turner’. Example: I’ve only read the Kindle sample as yet, but am attracted enough to the story that I just bought the book even though I’m low-income and really shouldn’t buy books— or anything else that isn’t food, electricity or property tax.
7. Compare to another similar or dissimilar book— I did that yesterday, in comparing the Merlin Spiral with Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Mists of Avalon. (As you may know, I’m an obsessed MZB fan, though ‘Avalon’ didn’t wear well with me.)

So there are my suggestions. I hope that helps the ‘book review impaired’. Do give some suggestions of your own in a comment if you have them!

Tomorrow: an actual review of the book. Which I have to read before tomorrow morning. There go my plans to fix the pasture fence today!

 

Robert Treskillard’s web site: http://www.KingArthur.org.uk

There is a contest going on there. You could win Excalibur! Or a Kindle!

View/Buy the book on Amazon.com ($5.12 on Kindle):  http://www.amazon.com/Merlins-Nightmare-Merlin-Spiral-Treskillard/dp/0310735092/

Touring the Blog Tour Blogs:

I visited every single blog on the blog tour list (given below) and I commented on the ones that had their blog tour posts up already. There were a lot of good posts. And a lot of posts by bloggers who could use some encouragement— perhaps from YOU. I hope that everyone reading these words will accept the challenge and go down the list, visiting all the blogs and commenting. Today I am going to be revisiting some or all of the blogs, depending on how far I get in reading Merlin’s Nightmare.
Beckie Burnham
Jeff Chapman
Vicky DealSharingAunt
April Erwin
Carol Gehringer
Victor Gentile
Rebekah Gyger
Carol Keen
Krystine Kercher
Emileigh Latham
Jennette Mbewe
Shannon McDermott
Meagan @ Blooming with Books
Rebecca LuElla Miller
Mirriam Neal
Joan Nienhuis
Nissa
Writer Rani
Nathan Reimer
Audrey Sauble
Chawna Schroeder
Jojo Sutis
Robert Treskillard
Phyllis Wheeler
Elizabeth Williams

#CSFF blog tour 1: Merlin Fatigued or Merlin Happy?

This is a post for the Christian Science Fiction & Fantasy blog tour. Please rate the post above— 1 to 5 stars depending on your mood or your cat’s opinion on this post.

This month on the blog tour we are featuring Merlin’s Nightmare, third book in The Merlin Spiral by Robert Treskillard. And, yes, it’s about that Merlin.

And when you hear that I’ll bet you have one of two reactions: either you are saying “Hooray, another Merlin book!” or you are saying “Not another Merlin book!” Extra points to those who managed to have both reactions.

The story of Merlin and Arthur is a classic childhood tale of our culture, like Cinderella and Snow White and Frankenstein and Night of the Living Dead. The child in us wants to hear these tales again and again.

But as we become adult we develop this dreadful thing called judgment and we can begin to see that not every retelling of a beloved tale is worth  doing.  Some are lifeless, and others distort a tale too much either to fit an agenda, or to be shocking.

An example of this, in my opinion, is ‘The Mists of Avalon’ by Marion Zimmer Bradley, which adds feminism, Neopaganism and the worst of the Sexual Revolution to the Arthurian legend, seen through the eyes of Morgan LeFay. When I read this book, I myself was a feminist and Neopagan and I liked the book for that.

But when my ideology became more mature, the book lost its appeal for me, and now that I am a Christian I have no desire to read that book again. Though I still devour MZB’s Darkover series in spite of its having the same degree of Neopaganism and feminism as ‘Avalon’. Perhaps it’s because Darkover has spaceships?

Back to Merlin’s Nightmare. Now, I have not read the books in The Merlin Spiral other than the free samples for Kindle— it’s fun making ends meet on SSI disability— so I can’t fully evaluate the book. So what is your opinion? If you have read the book, do you think it’s a worthwhile retelling of the Arthurian legend? Does it have something unique to contribute? Does it also stick close enough to the original to please fans of Arthurian fiction? Please do give your opinion in a comment.

Blog Tour participants list:

For the next 3 days— the 25-27 of August— these people will be posting about Merlin’s Nightmare. If the past is an indicator, there will be a number of gems among the posts. I intend to visit all the blogs on this list today, and comment on every one that has a ‘Merlin’ post already up. Bloggers, I challenge you to do likewise. I’ve met some really nice people on the blog tour, you can, too. (And there is no rule that you have to be a Christian to visit the posts on the Christian science fiction & fantasy blog tour— I read Christian fiction back when I was a Neopagan, after all. And now that I’m a Christian, I’m still willing to read fiction by non-Christians.)

Beckie Burnham
Jeff Chapman
Vicky DealSharingAunt
April Erwin
Carol Gehringer
Victor Gentile
Rebekah Gyger
Carol Keen
Krystine Kercher
Emileigh Latham
Jennette Mbewe
Shannon McDermott
Meagan @ Blooming with Books
Rebecca LuElla Miller
Mirriam Neal
Joan Nienhuis
Nissa
Writer Rani
Nathan Reimer
Audrey Sauble
Chawna Schroeder
Jojo Sutis
Robert Treskillard
Phyllis Wheeler
Elizabeth Williams

 

Twitter!

Do you tweet? Isn’t Twitter awful? I’m @nissalovescats on Twitter. If you follow me, I’ll probably follow back. I make exceptions for commercial Tweeters.

If you are a blog tour participant and intend to tweet your blog post, I’d suggest using the hashtag #CSFF as some of the blog tourers are doing, and also #christianfiction. I will be checking the #CSFF hashtag for some blog tour posts to retweet— they will be picked randomly from the posts using that hashtag, so even if you think your blog tour post isn’t great I could retweet you.

Facebook!

Nissa Annakindt, poet, Aspie, cat person is my FB author page, which you are welcome to ‘like’. You are also welcome to request my ‘likes’ for your page.

Sci-Fi, Fantasy and the Christian Faith is a brand-new FB page I started. You might notice that the book cover for Merlin’s Nightmare is the current profile pic there. I’m hoping to use the page to get the word out on Christian sci-fi and fantasy books. It’s also a place to qvetch about Doctor Who and The Walking Dead from a Christian point of view.  If you have a book out that might be of interest, let me know how I can help. (You can help me by ‘liking’ and ‘sharing’ the page.)