Scan barcode
A review by dark_reader
The Dragons of Faith by Daniel Penz
2.0
(I won this in a Goodreads giveaway promotion).
Ehh. There are no dragons, only some sea serpents, told of but not seen in this short fantasy Christian story. The writing is okay in terms of dialogue, characterization, exposition, and pacing. It's not without irritants; each section opens by setting the scene for that time of day on the fishing docks and you'll hear about the sun, the birds, the boats, and dockside activity. It got a little tiresome after a while. The book suffers from a touch of "first sentence problems", which I think I ought to make a new GR shelf for:
Worldbuilding is achieved reasonably well, and the story has a consistent voice, as told through the perspective of children. It's not our Earth, but it has our Earth's Christian conception of a supreme deity, and the main purpose of the story is to discuss why an omniscient and omnipotent being allows bad things to happen to people. The story's answer for this is utterly unsatisfying. It comes down to, "maybe some day in the future, through the power of selective retrospection, you can choose to think that something good came out of this terrible thing." The inciting event in this story is a severe head injury. What good might come of this? "It might be something as simple as her learning to be more careful or thoughtful in the future," because only a life-threatening head injury can teach such a lesson. It seems to me like "faith" is used here to cover the inability to accept that events can occur randomly.
That cover art . . . the children pictured are handsome and I would not be surprised to learn that they were the author's own, but the overall effect is a little cringey:
Some wag added the book to the "Humorous, Weird, Shocking and/or Plain Awful Book Covers list (https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/2963.Humorous_Weird_Shocking_and_or_Plain_Awful_Book_Covers). It wasn't me! I don't think it's quite that bad, but there is a notable disconnect between the cited artist's work on their webpage (which is WAAAYYYY better; https://www.archwayportico.com/) and this image.
Ehh. There are no dragons, only some sea serpents, told of but not seen in this short fantasy Christian story. The writing is okay in terms of dialogue, characterization, exposition, and pacing. It's not without irritants; each section opens by setting the scene for that time of day on the fishing docks and you'll hear about the sun, the birds, the boats, and dockside activity. It got a little tiresome after a while. The book suffers from a touch of "first sentence problems", which I think I ought to make a new GR shelf for:
The cries of a thousand seagulls fill the early morning sky, as the sun peaks its way over the cliff-tops."Peaks its way"? Possibly the author meant "peeks", because the sun doesn't peak in the early morning, but even "peeks its way" is awkward and not a thing that anything does. Possessives are missing their apostrophes throughout the story. E-book text formatting is appropriate.
Worldbuilding is achieved reasonably well, and the story has a consistent voice, as told through the perspective of children. It's not our Earth, but it has our Earth's Christian conception of a supreme deity, and the main purpose of the story is to discuss why an omniscient and omnipotent being allows bad things to happen to people. The story's answer for this is utterly unsatisfying. It comes down to, "maybe some day in the future, through the power of selective retrospection, you can choose to think that something good came out of this terrible thing." The inciting event in this story is a severe head injury. What good might come of this? "It might be something as simple as her learning to be more careful or thoughtful in the future," because only a life-threatening head injury can teach such a lesson. It seems to me like "faith" is used here to cover the inability to accept that events can occur randomly.
That cover art . . . the children pictured are handsome and I would not be surprised to learn that they were the author's own, but the overall effect is a little cringey:
Some wag added the book to the "Humorous, Weird, Shocking and/or Plain Awful Book Covers list (https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/2963.Humorous_Weird_Shocking_and_or_Plain_Awful_Book_Covers). It wasn't me! I don't think it's quite that bad, but there is a notable disconnect between the cited artist's work on their webpage (which is WAAAYYYY better; https://www.archwayportico.com/) and this image.