Review: Arm in Arm with the Holy Spirit by Patrick Day

Arm in Arm with the Holy Spirit
by Patrick Day

Paul Chambers is perplexed and frustrated. He wants to experience more of God in his life more of the time but is thwarted by his flawed humanity and the demands of the modern world. At every turn, he has to choose between his way or God's way, and God's way too often comes up short - until he learns to listen to the Holy Spirit.

He starts telling the story of his spiritual journey the day he is diagnosed with an aggressive cancer. As he looks back, he sees that his busy life, demanding job, and tendency to do things his own way have interfered with experiencing a consistently close relationship with God. 

But Paul is not on his own. The Holy Spirit shows up in a series of encounters, revelations, and metaphors that transform Paul's faith and empower him to walk arm in arm with the Holy Spirit every step of the way.

My Take:

The author's personal battle with cancer and struggle to reach a point of walking with God most of the time, sound loud and clear in this story, which is both a fictional account and a reflection of the author's path of discovery.

Paul Chambers uses the devastating news that he has terminal pancreatic cancer as the catalyst for him to write his memoirs, with the help of his loving wife Molly. The news affacts all the poeple who do life with him, and their input is invaluable in helping him along this dark path to the brilliant light of Heaven.

 Content:

Violence:
PG-13 - The only violence in this book is the ravages that cancer performs on the body of its victim. In that respect, it's painful to read as I empathize with the experience, having watched several close family members and friends succumb to the disease. The book realistically describes the pain, the nausea, the treatments, and their side effects.

Language:
PG - There are very few curse words in this novel.

Drug Content:
PG -  The effects of morphine are described, and other drugs used in the treatment of cancer and its symptoms. Drinking is discussed and the main character was an occasional drinker prior to his conversion.

Adult Content:
PG - One minor character appears to objectify women. Most all other dealings in the book are squeaky clean.

Christian content:
Very heavy. The story covers a spiritual journey over a span of thirty years in the life of the main character. Scripture is quoted and metaphors are sometimes drawn from other works. One of some concern is Watchman Nee. There was a misquote of Eric Liddell's famous line, "...when I run I feel His pleasure." However, what I read in the book seemed grounded.
While the main character seems to listen and follow the inner leading of the Holy Spirit through the revelation of visions, he is warned by wise friends to be cautious, because every inner voice is not from God. Examples are given where the Spirit leads Paul, and others where he discovers the voice and thought was his own. The admonishment is given that we should be striving to be 'with' God, rather than asking Him to be 'with' us. After all, He's always with us, He promised in Heb 13:5, but we are not always 'with' Him.

Final analysis:

Arm in Arm with the Holy Spirit was an encouraging, thought-provoking life journey in growing closer to God and hearing His still small voice. Coupled with brilliant insight into our struggle to be like Christ or be IN the world but not OF the world, Patrick Day immerses the reader in the life of one dying of cancer, and dealing with the brevity of life, the mortality of our flesh, and the hope beyond death. While some portions seemed to drag for me, the meat for my daily walk is impossible to miss and dangerous to ignore. Clear, memorable metaphors abound that help the reader determine whether they are listening to God or hearing from the world, the flesh, and the devil. There's life application that can be gleaned here, that leads me to give this book Five Stars.


About The Author
Patrick Day's active Christianity has seen him work as a church elder, prison minister, Sunday school teacher, mentor, and long-time Gideon. As a cancer survivor, he has first-hand insight into the healing power of God and the enduring human spirit.

His passion for writing grew from a Master's Degree in English Literature at the University of Minnesota and encompassed his twin careers of education and advertising.

He is an author of two previous novels: Too Late in the Afternoon and Murders and Genealogy in Hennepin County. He also writes a weekly blog entitled the Melody of the Holy Spirit, which you can access at www.melody33.com.

Review: Arcpoint Traveler: Book One by John Wozniak

Arcpoint Traveler: Book One
by John Wozniak

Arcon Franklin has grown up in ArcPoint, a community isolated for over two centuries by an impenetrable mass of tangled briars, as well as an enormous chasm known simply as "the Rift." The people of ArcPoint believe they have created a utopia: no crime, no greed, no unmet needs, and no worries. They do not care to re-connect with the outside world-to them, it is a place of anarchy and terror. Arcon once felt the same way-but no longer. Defying tradition, he establishes communication with the outside world-specifically, a girl named Elaina. Over the years, their rebellious connection blossoms into a desire for a lifetime relationship. Soon, Arcon is risking his life to make his escape. Major religions, ancient civilizations, and even modern day sociologists all point to a coming age of mass terror and chaos. But what happens after that age-after we escape into our own isolated communities, our own versions of ArcPoint? Is a time coming when we put down our weapons? Can evil be stopped, or is it an inescapable part of human nature? In ArcPoint Traveler, John Wozniak examines evidence from the Bible and current events to create a frighteningly realistic scenario of the future. Concise and fast-paced-because time is short-this debut novel reminds us of what can happen when one man is willing to risk it all.

My Take:
Nestled in a remote part of the Mojave Desert, the tiny Christian community of ArcPoint seems like the perfect, isolated utopia. The genetically modified Arc Trees, a source of food and fuel for the community, also creates an impenetrable region of massive needle-sharp briers. Nobody gets out, and nobody gets in. And that was a good thing, as two hundred years ago, the world had gone crazy, murdering one another and devolving into total anarchy. Then the radios went silent. But the ArcPoint community thrived in its isolation.
But that was back then. Now, the society of ArcPoint is in trouble. With inexplicable declining birth rates and a critical lack of females, the small Christian community is about to die off. And Arcon Franklin, descendant of the founder, isn't satisfied with life in the community. He feels an unquenchable drive to leave, to pass the barrier and meet the girl he's contacted on the outside. Will he find love, and purpose, in the world outside? Or will he bring about the destruction of the world he's known?

Content:

Drug Content:

G - if there's anything alcoholic in the novel, it's not obvious. 

Violence:

PG - There's a very real danger from the four inch long thorns forming a deadly barrier around the community, and risk from the coyotes living in the perimeter of the barrier. There's a risk of death in the bottomless rift protecting the community, and some minor descriptions of the violence in the world outside. In one scene a couple is blown up from an accident involving a pressure cooker. Arcon bears the scars of many falls into the thorns.

Language:

PG - there is not any cussing that I recall in the book. The D word might be dropped a time or two.

Adult Content:

PG - The father of the girl Arcon has been communicating with has a discussion with the Ranger about sleeping arrangements and the risks involved in that. There's some discussion of fertility and barrenness.

Christian content:

The community is strongly Christian, if isolationist. Most of the characters in the book wear their faith like a comfortable cloak. The book is set during the Millennium Reign of Jesus, so for the most part there is virtually no evil except in flashbacks to the past. God gives guidance and orchestrates the lives of individuals, and they depend on His provision, guidance, and grace. I'll give latitude on the possible divergence of the plot to biblical prophesy in Revelation, as there are varying views as to when and how the Tribulation is to take place, etc. As a whole the book is wholesome and solid and an example of God's provision, guidance, and the faith of the believer.

Final analysis:
The genetic enhancements of the ArcPoint trees is well-thought out, and interestingly described. The world inside the utopian society is well-constructed and the plot is interesting. The novel is a fast-paced, encouraging read, and the world building is excellent. The characters are real enough, and the book is clean and uplifting. Five Stars!

About The Author(s):

John Wozniak is a retired international trouble-shooter in a mechanical trade.  He joined Mensa at age 28, and is currently owner of Elisha Records. He enjoys the lapidary and jewelry hobby with his wife of 30+ years in their home in Oregon.

As a trouble-shooter, he was tasked with creating multiple “what if” scenarios to protect millions of dollars worth of equipment against damage. He researched every option and contingency, because failure was extremely costly. When he transitioned from being an atheist to belief in a Creator, he utilized those skills in his faith. He discovered new terms like end of days, rapture, tribulation, and millennium. Like other buzzwords, their use was widespread, and their meanings were convoluted. In this book series, Wozniak examines life in a world after these events have happened. Actually, two lives and two worlds, that are about to collide.

Review: How Two: Have a Successful Relationship by Phil and Maude Mayes

How Two: Have a Successful Relationship
by Phil and Maude Mayes

Back Cover Blurb:
Do you and your partner argue too much? Are you always fighting about who is right? Are you feeling estranged and distant? In How Two: Have a Successful Relationship, experts Phil and Maude share their process and their radically different approach to relating. They insist that conflict is not inevitable and that it is possible to have a passionate and peaceful relationship.

Phil and Maude share a simple step by step understanding that is easily accessible to everyone. Their strong desire to make their direct experience available to all couples shines through their writing and will renew your faith in what is possible and attainable. In these pages you will learn:

* How to find mutual solutions to decision making and problem solving
* How to remain an individual within the relationship
* How to break the vicious cycle of anger and recrimination
* How to avoid the pitfalls that create separation and estrangement
* How to keep that original loving connection to your partner

This book is a gem. It's short, it's practical, it's based on real life experience. If you want to improve your relationship, this is the book for you.

My Take:
Phil and Maude Mayes have taken their peaceful relationship over many years and built a platform to assist other couples in achieving the same level of harmony, acceptance, and oneness in a relationship.

They have  a thriving ministry, if you will, to couples through youTube and an online blogs on their website, www.PhilandMaude.com

The book covers the art of communication, acceptance, conflict resolution, intimacy, peace, and respect for one's self and one another pretty candidly through personal experience and interviews of other couples. Each chapter begins with a quote from people like John Denver, Dr. Phil McGraw, Dr. Wayne Dyer, Maggie Scarf, and Donna Quesada, contains information from Phil and Maude's personal story, and a conversation back and forth between them, ending in a question and answer session from other couples at various stages of their relationships.

Content:

Violence:
As this is nonfiction, I expected none, and got none - not even a description of domestic violence. ;-)

Language:
None. It's clean.

Adult Content:
PG - The book covers sexuality and intimacy but there's nothing graphic at all in it. Even the question and answer sessions don't devolve much into any real details of the couples sex lives, only about the intimacy of sharing touch and time together, cuddling and watching TV, that sort of thing. One statement from a couple was that 'We see sex as an act, and intimacy as a connection.'

Christian content:
Oh my. From a Christian perspective, this book is rife with issues. It has plenty of spirituality and faith embedded inside but it's New Age and Eastern Mysticism. Zen and Karma make appearances in places, and the quotes are from mostly followers of that worldview. If that's your cup of tea, you probably would get something out of this, but from a Christian perspective, you might get more confusion than answers.

Final analysis:

There aren't many typos in this book, and the organization of the subject matter is solid. The topics are relevant and it covers important ground. However, I found the 'Conversations' portions to be merely a recap with simple agreement from the other partner back and forth. So I found the 'yes man' feedback unnecessary, and the book would have improved if those were simply stricken from the conversation. Some of the couples interviewed did not even cohabitate, so I found their input irrelevant, and from a Christian perspective, the subject of marriage, weddings, commitment, and vows to be almost lacking. And that's disheartening. The presence of a different worldview was another thing that made it difficult for me to complete this book, but setting differences aside, the book has some relevance. Four Stars.

About the Authors:
Phil Mayes lives in Santa Barbara, California, having started in London, England. Phil is a software developer, photographer and writer. He likes cats, movies, chocolate and quirky people. He is married to Maude Mayes, a fact that continues to amaze and delight him.







Maude Mayes lives in Santa Barbara, California, having started in New York City. Maude and her husband and co-author Phil Mayes have been writing and speaking about spreading peace one relationship at a time for many years. They wrote the book Secrets of a Successful Relationship Revealed, and write a weekly relationship newsletter, as well as a weekly blog available on their website http://PhilandMaude.com. Phil and Maude are the producers of a number of relationship videos, as well as the series Kit and Kat Relationship Experts, all of which are to be found on their YouTube channel The Couples Project. They have been featured in a number of live interviews and write articles, both online and in print.

Review: Inevitable Ascension by V.K. McAllister

Inevitable Ascension

by V.K. McAllister 

The innocent never waver from doing what’s right, even if it means drowning the world in fire. 

Violina had been burned and betrayed by mankind ever since she sprang into existence. They named her a heretic and condemned her to a pit to live and die in agony. Though she sat stranded, starved and bloodied, she would not submit. Violina, the girl who had been mocked and hunted for rejecting the warped ideals of artificial authority, would lay down her own law. 

Inevitable Ascension — The rapid-fire action/adventure novel packed with a host of twists that will make your mind explode! But not literally, otherwise that would be really gross.

My Take:

In Inevitable Ascension, plot twists and non-stop action make for an amazingly fast and enjoyable read. The main characters, Violina and Lux, begin as 'hunters', mainly poaching for live animals for a post-apocalyptic advanced society in a sprawling mega-city called Eden. 

Their last job, however, didn't go as planned, as they were stiffed their fee to retrieve cloned 'Reichoden', a fluffy form of dinosaur long extinct, with soft down and razor sharp teeth. Cloning is illegal, and the Enforcers or Wardens are coming to shut down the scientific lab that is experimenting with the new acquisitions, so Violina and Lux decide to steal the cuddly monstrocities back, leaving the lab to explain to the authorities how they 'lost' the dangerous specimens.

As is often the case, things don't go as planned, and the two girls are propelled back in time, where an inadvertent act of kindness sets things in motion to destroy their future world and possibly end their own existence. Every attempt they make to correct the past seems to end up making things worse, and the resultant far future seems to end in a toxic world that ends Mankind.

Violina uses her amazing tech and resourcefulness combined with an incredible inability to die to try to save the people of each time era, while they try to end her by any means possible. Their depravity and ingratitude leaves her wondering if the human race is even worth saving?

Content:

Drug Content:

PG - There is some drinking in the book, and a few heavily inebriated minor characters. 

Violence:

R+ - This book seems bent on ending the human race. Lots and lots of people die, in explosions, war, poisons, and flamethrower immolation. A practice called 'Separation' by a group of fanatics in the far future involves ripping a person apart, separating bones, flesh and blood. This results in a tower of bones, a fountain of blood, and a flesh pit. I won't say this book isn't graphic. 

Language:

PG - there is not any cussing that I recall in the book. The D word might be dropped a time or two.

Adult Content:

G - I really don't remember any at all, not even innuendo.

Christian content:

Well... This book is rife with parallels to scriptural stories, just a bit 'off'. The main 'god' in the book is the Second Sun, a glowing hot orb that is a satellite of the planet. It eventually leaves the planet with a message, pulled partly from Revelation, that leaves no hope for humanity and they are left to perish in a toxic atmosphere on a relatively desert planet. People from the biblical account show up, like Adam, Eve, Cain, Enoch, Noah, the A.R.C. The total depravity of Man is pretty well explored, but rather than having a Savior it's pretty well condemned. People can attain immortality, at a high cost. There is a strong culture of death as liberation, and there is some discussion about life after death.

Final analysis:

Inevitable Ascension was written by a husband and wife team, writing in secret apart from each other and combining their stories when done. One would think this would result in a train wreck, but the book didn't have one of those. Instead, it's a cohesive, entertaining (if graphic) post-post-post-apocalyptic thriller that is immersive and thought-provoking. The epochs covered during Violina's and Lux's adventure reminded me a lot of Chrono Trigger, and I considered that the story would do well as a video game. Just hopefully with less blood and gore. Well-written, fast-paced, adventure-packed, I couldn't put it down. Five Stars!

About The Author(s):

We're a husband/wife duo with a unique approach to writing. We work simultaneously and in secret before combining what we come up with, resulting in dramatic and unexpected twists! Crazy? Yes, yes it is.

Review: The Ivory Caribou by Caroline McCullagh

The Ivory Caribou
by Caroline McCullagh

Is it a love story? Or is it an adventure story? Or is it a commentary on the tragedy of war? It is all of these, and more.  Caroline McCullagh weaves a thrilling and dynamic story around Anne O’Malley’s genealogical search for the story of her late husband’s father that takes her to the far North of Canada to find new relatives among the Inuit culture, to Europe behind the lines in World War I, and back to the small Inuit village where she finds romance.

My Take:
When Anne O'Malley's husband died, her world seemed to come to an end. As so often happens when a spouse dies, her world collapsed in on itself, and she was caught going through the motions of just surviving.

After about a year of this mourning, her lifetime housekeeper Carola encouraged her to break out of the depression and pursue her husband Robbie's goal of finding out more about his long dead father.

The genealogical research leads her to Ottawa Canada, and from there to the far North, searching for answers. Little did she suspect that what she would find there was romance and a new future.

The Ivory Caribou is a story of romance and adventure in the frozen North among the Inuit, as well as a journey to the past, replete with espionage and tragedy overseas during World War I. It gives the reader a solid understanding of the life and times of the Inuit, or Eskimo, peoples in their battle to survive in the frozen wilderness around the Arctic Circle.

Content:

Violence:
PG - While this book covers some of the atrocities of WWI there is actually little wartime violence on screen. Natural predators, weather conditions, and plague are the major antagonists in this novel, and while violent, their ravages are not given in graphic detail.

Language:
PG-13 - There are a few curse words scattered sporadically in this novel, and the F-bomb is dropped once in a critical plot point.

Drug Content:
PG-13 -  Drinking occurs to excess in a few places. One incident involves a few overly drunken locals causing trouble. Several scenes occur at bars, and one person has to be escorted to their hotel room repeatedly because of their inebriated state. Harder drugs do not seem to make an appearance in the book, at least that i recall.

Adult Content:
R - The main character ends up in multiple sexual encounters, and their accounts give significant detail, mainly over the foreplay. A woman at a bar is a known 'easy target', and two female characters compete over a male companion. Adultery occurs in several scenes, though it has consequences, and there is some frank discussion about the value and status of women in the Inuit culture. Some shopping for undergarments occurs in preparation for a tryst. One character lies to cover up an affair.

Christian content:
In the world of World War I, a character consults a priest and takes classes to become Catholic so he can marry a woman. His respect for the priest is genuine, but he already has a wife back home that he despairs of ever returning to. Guilt over sin occurs in multiple places, but is never taken to the cross. The gods of the Inuit are explored somewhat, as well as amulets and rituals to protect from their wrath. Most of the characters in the book have little or no faith exposed.

Final analysis:

The world of the frozen North, its challenges for survival and its rich history are explored and displayed in immersive glory, and it's where this book really shines. The quality of the writing is strong, and the characters are believable. The world of the past in WWI is clearly described, and the challenges of life as a spy in wartime are intriguingly portrayed. The romance permeating this book was too much of a focal point for me, but I suspect I'm not a regular target reader and that the indulgence in romance would be attractive to other readers. The action wasn't really gripping to me, but the characters were real and their emotional scars raw. What really stood out was the world building, and that earned this book Five Stars.

About the Author:
Caroline McCullagh, award-winning author of The Ivory Caribou, coauthor of American Trivia & American Trivia Quiz Book with Richard Lederer, earned a master’s degree in anthropology from the University of California, San Diego. Her diverse writing projects include five novels, a cookbook, a memoir, a student opera (under the auspices of San Diego Opera), fourteen years of monthly book reviews for the San Diego Horticultural Society, and one year as Books Editor for The American Mensa Bulletin. For the past three years, Caroline has written a weekly column for the San Diego Union-Tribune with Richard Lederer. As a professional editor, she teaches creative writing two days a week.  The Ivory Caribou, then titled Fire and Ice, was a past Winner at the San Diego Book Awards as Best Unpublished Novel. Caroline has won twice and has been a finalist once.