Category: Reviews of My Books

“The Siren Song of Treason” a Review of The Palace by Robert Knight

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The Palace, by Lee Duigon, Storehouse Press, Vallecito, California, 321-page large paperback

Reviewed by Robert Knight

If you take Mark Twain’s The Prince and the Pauper, place it in a post-modern world of donkey carts, add magical characters and unexplained mysteries, and, most importantly, put God at the center, you have Lee Duigon’s latest fantasy novel.

As with the first five books of his Bell Mountain series, The Palace can stand on its own for new readers, since Mr. Duigon deftly folds in background.

Evil once again masquerades as good, with usurpers to the throne of the kingdom of Obann offering to appease a neighboring tyrant named the Thunder King, whose face no one has seen.

One of the more fascinating aspects of human nature is when traitors attempt to rationalize treason. Mr. Duigon does a wonderful job baring their souls, illustrating the temptation to which we are all vulnerable – excusing our own sin.

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Treks and Tricks Galore in Lee Duigon’s New Bell Mountain Book, The Palace

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Check out Forrest Schulz’s review of The Palace

A Review of Lee Duigon The Palace[Book 6 of the Bell Mountain Series] (Storehouse Press, 2013)
321 pp $18.00 ISBN: 978-1-891375-64-4

Reviewer: Forrest W. Schultz

If I were to sing, instead of write, this review, the first verse would be “whole lotta trekkin’ goin’ on” followed by a second verse “whole lotta trickin’ goin’ on”. Read it and see if you can make up an appropriate third verse. The trekkin’ is similar to the treks in the previous stories — military movements, abductions, people sneaking around, and the like. What really stands out in this, most recent, Bell Mountain book is the two examples of “trickin”. The bad guys keep talking about a Thunder King (who actually does not exist), who supposedly is ordering them to do certain things and send (in his name) various decrees. And the good King, Ryons, who actually does exist, has two people impersonating him, leading us to say, as they used to on that famous TV show from days of yore, “Will The Real King Ryons please stand up??!!”.

As with the previous stories, this one moves along with fast-paced exciting action and dialogue and is suffused with various Biblical principles and analogies. And, as with the others, it is written for juvenile readers but is also interesting, perhaps even more so, for teen and adult readers. Jack and Ellayne are back, and it has now been two years since the beginning of their adventure and some time is spent by them looking back over them. The picture on the front cover shows Jack’s most hair-raising experience in this tale, climbing up the outside wall of a palace to escape from the room in which he was being imprisoned.

I highly recommend this story as I have the previous ones.

http://newsciencefictionandfantasyreviews.blogspot.com/2014/04/treks-and-tricks-galore-in-lee-duigons.html

This is Frustrating!

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Ever since the summer, I have been trying to contact Meghan Cox Gurdon, the children’s book reviewer for The Wall Street Journal. Why? Because she gave a speech at Hillsdale College, published in the college newsletter, in which she made “The Case for Good Taste in Children’s Books.” In it she discussed “the increasingly dark current that runs through books classified as YA, for Young Adult–books aimed at readers between 12 and 18 years of age–a subject that has, in the four decades since Young Adult became a distinct category in fiction, become increasingly lurid, grotesque, profane, sexual, and ugly… too many books for adolescents act like funhouse mirrors, reflecting hideously distorted portrayals of life.”

And so on, amen.

But when she discusses what she thinks YA fiction ought to be–well, the only way she could get anything closer to that standard than my Bell Mountain series would be to write it herself.

Naturally, I want to get my books into her hands. I’m confident she would like them a lot. But this is precisely what I am unable to do.

None of my contacts have any contact with her, so I haven’t been able to find anyone to  drop a word for me into her ear. As for initiating contact myself–well, as Zacherley used to say, “Ha, ha, HAH!”

Every week I get dozens of emails inviting me to read and review books I never heard of. Meghan Gurdon must get thousands of them. So, although I have sent her emails, the chances approach zero that she will ever see them, much less wind up answering.

Having been a reporter of one kind or another for going on 40 years, I can truthfully say that media bigwigs are the most insulated people in the world. If I wished to interview a governor or a senator or a cabinet secretary, I could do it. It might take some time, but I would get that interview. But with Meghan Cox Gurdon, I can’t get my foot in the door. I’m just another faceless fan in a sellout crowd at Yankee Stadium, way up in the bleachers.

Somehow I need to achieve this impossible thing. I haven’t found a way to do it yet, and it’s driving me nuts.

There has to be a way…

Are My Books Biased?

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A dear friend has pointed out to me that my fantasy novels do, indeed, display a certain “Protestant” slant. This is not an unfair observation; but there’s more to it than meets the eye.

The Temple in Obann–that is, the Religious Establishment–is riddled with corruption. Under Lord Reesh’s direction, the Temple has given itself over to worldly concerns and has no real connection to God. Although the Temple is corrupt, the worst thing about it is that it is ossified.

I never meant the Temple to be analogous to the Roman Catholic Church. The First Prester is more like the Archbishop of Canterbury than a Pope, and he has a seat on the High Council of the nation’s oligarchy. What’s really wrong in Obann is that the Temple doesn’t preach and teach the word of God and has led the people into an empty, ritualistic semblance of religion.

In that respect it resembles many churches and denominations in our own world, Catholic and Protestant alike. In that the Obann Temple has substituted man’s words and traditions for God’s laws, it resembles the religious establishment in Jerusalem as characterized by Our Lord Jesus Christ: for instance, “Thus have ye made the commandment of God of none effect by your tradition” (Matthew 15:6). There was no RC Church when Our Lord spoke those words, but there was a religious establishment.

I’m sure that if one reads all the books in the Bell Mountain series, it will be easily seen that the Temple in Obann does not represent any particular church in our world, but rather an established religion in general, an institution whose interests have become an end in themselves.

The difference is that there are probably more good individuals in the Temple than there are in the three branches of the United States government.

Book Review: Unthinkable treachery, Unfathomable Grace

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Lee Duigon, The Last Banquet (2012) and The Fugitive Prince (2013), Storehouse Press, Vallecito, California, books four and five of the Bell Mountain series.

When I was a child, my father read to us aloud L. Frank Baum’s Sky Island, the fanciful tale of a boy and girl who, with a colorful old sailor, visit an island in the sky populated by warring tribes of blue and pink people.

It held us spellbound. While Sky Island, like any good children’s literature, has a moral center, Lee Duigon’s more textured Bell Mountain tales have a distinctly Christian sensibility, much like C. S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia.  They are also addictively good yarns.

The remarkably well written, Christian-grounded fantasy series begins with the namesake book, Bell Mountain. In  a post-modern, medieval world, two brave children –Jack and Ellayne – escape an assassin, climb Bell Mountain, ring King Ozias’s ancient bell, and usher in a new age where strange creatures lurk and tiny children prophesy.

Meanwhile, in the land of Obann, a Temple-run theocracy holds sway over an easily fooled populace. Against the power of the false religion, the children find allies in wandering prophets, a repentant assassin, newly converted heathens and a little, manlike creature named Wytt who wields a sharpened stick and saves them time and again.  Wytt is one of the best things about the books. He is consistently fascinating and steals any passage that he’s in.

The action is fast and furious, and it isn’t bloodless, although never graphic. People die. Crimes are avenged. Good and evil grapple. As unthinkable treachery unfolds and battles are fought to the death, lifelong foes become friends and new alliances are forged.  The Last Banquet, apart from being packed with adventure, shows the need for forgiveness and the transformative power of God’s unfathomable grace. 

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So What’s ‘Bell Mountain’ All About?

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I’m always asked this question when I give an interview; and so far I’ve been very simple about answering it. “It’s about these two children who believe God has called them to climb a mountain and ring a bell on the summit…” Well, yes, that’s true enough. But it’s also just a peek at the plot. It’s like saying “Moby Dick” is about a whaling voyage. True, but terribly incomplete.

I have finally realized what my books truly are about.

“Bell Mountain” is about a human race that has grown deaf to God’s voice. It’s about how they learn to hear God’s voice, and how they learn to call on Him. Above all, the books are about restoring the human connection to the Living God–learning to know Him, to love Him, to obey Him, to trust Him.

In other words, the fantasy world depicted in the book is an indirect way of looking at our world, the one we live in here and now.

See what people do, these days, and hear what they say. We as a nation, as a whole civilization, don’t hear anymore; nor do we see. We proceed as if there were no God–worse, as if we ourselves were gods. This is how we wind up worshiping fornication and every form of filthiness.

The church in the world of “Bell Mountain” is a dead church which has severed its connection to God (for only God can give it life). That description fits most of the institutional churches of our own world.

To connect to God is to live. To carry on without Him is to die.

That’s what “Bell Mountain” is about.

Thunder King Review by Rev. Stephen R. Wilson

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Originality – 4/5
Writing Style – 5/5
Plot – 4/5
Characters – 5/5
Aesthetics – 4/5
The dog Cavall and First Prester Reesh steal the show.
I’ve been a big fan of the Bell Mountain series since reading the first volume. In book 3, the Boy King’s formerly-Heathen army continues to grow in their faith in the One God under the tutelage of the Old Prophet. But is the Boy ready to be King?
As the action and characters in this novel shows, God more often than not calls us to do things that are much bigger than ourselves, and hardly ever reveals how He’s going to help us accomplish them.

BOOK GUIDE: “The Thunder King” @ Movie Guide

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Third in Bell Mountain series takes readers to the brink of apocalypse

By Robert Knight

In tough times, it’s difficult enough to convey hope without sounding like Pollyanna, the ridiculously upbeat heroine of the Disney movie of the same name.

But, how about offering real hope while the world is coming apart at the seams, evil is on the march, and prophets are predicting doom?

It’s all there in The Thunder King, Lee Duigon’s third installment of the Bell Mountain series, a fantasy of epic proportions set in a medieval world that arose on the ashes of a sophisticated civilization.

Duigon, who wields one of the sharpest and funniest pens as a cultural/political columnist, keeps the action crisp, the characters believable, and the reader guessing where it will all end.
Read More”

The Cellar Beneath the Cellar Review by AT Ross

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“The Cellar Beneath the Cellar is better than the first, and flows with a tighter, more focused narrative. The characters all come into their own, the scope and details of the world are more fully fleshed out, and we learn more about Obann and its history.”

Read more HERE.

 

The Thunder King: The Plot Thickens (A Review by Forrest Schultz)

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A review of  Lee Duigon The Thunder King (Vallecito, CA:  Storehouse Press, 2011)
$14.00   289 pp   ISBN: 978-1-891375-56-9

Reviewer:  Forrest W. Schultz

Like the second book, the third one in the Bell Mountain saga adds more plot elements to the mix and provides deeper discussions of their significance.  Perhaps there are some critics who may judge the result to be too advanced for a juvenile reader, but, in the immortal words of Mortimer Adler, “We need something over our heads to lift us up!”.

We learn more about the significance of the ringing of the Bell and about the decadence of t he Temple, especially that of its First Prester, who is first in wickedness, not in piety.  And we see ever more clearly the parallel between the teaching in the Secret Scrolls and the doctrines in the Bible, and between the history of Obann and the history or Israel and the Church.

But it needs to be borne in mind that the story is a fantasy — a story in its own right — not an allegory. As the biographical sketch of the author on the rear jacket makes clear, Lee Duigon loves both fantasy literature and sound theology.  And, contra much of popular opinion, there is no discord between the two because, after all, God is the greatest story-writer of all — history is His Story, because it is His fantasy that became reality when He created the world.  Amen!