Pretty Terrible

Pop Culture Criticism by Natalie Luhrs

Bad Life Decisions: Chapters 15 & 16

capable

Fundraising status: $1,800/$2,000! So close to the goal!

War in Heaven, Theodore Beale

Chapter 15: The Green Rider

(general Twitter consensus was that this is wacky and non-Biblical nonsense.)

So basically like every other chapter in this book, it’s about 90% standing around and talking and 10% stuff happening. And I like books where people sit around and talk–Addison’s The Goblin Emperor, Cherryh’s Foreigner series–but those people are talking about things that make sense and aren’t just infodumps obliquely addressed to the reader.

Bleah.

 

Chapter 16: Shattered Crystal, Broken Glass

More than halfway through the book and still no Jesus. Not much God either, but we do have some smiting and wrath, so I guess that’s something?

And there’s still not a lot of action. Even the escape from the Tower was routine and not that exciting. Jami and Holli are basically observers in a pantomime that doesn’t really seem to have any real consequences for them.  Everything is badly staged, and I am trying to find things I like about this book and I can’t really find any.  I could see this being an interesting and compelling book in the hands of a more competent writer, but Beale is not that writer. And this is not exactly the most original of stories, either. There’s a hollowness to it, it feels like there’s a checklist somewhere of things that Beale has to include for this book to be theologically correct according to his beliefs and I really don’t feel like religion and belief is a paint by numbers sort of things. It’s eerily soulless, for all that it’s stuffed full of religion.