WOW! It has been ages since I've written a book review. Perhaps needless to say, I've been very busy with community theater, work, and getting ready to move to a new city! I've still been reading, but rather than try to remember every book I've read since my last post and review it for you, I'll detail this latest series that I really enjoyed. Happy reading!
Read on my Kindle!
Genre: Fantasy
Book Summary: This series of 3 books, titled The Wretched of Muirwood, The Blight of Muirwood, and The Scourge of Muirwood, chronicles the adventures of Lia, a wretched who grows up as an orphan at Muirwood Abbey, one of the centers of learning and religion in this fantasy world. One stormy night, she meets Colvin, an exiled prince and "maston" (magic user), and in efforts to save him, is thrown into a world that's in political, religious, and moral turmoil, only to find out who she really is and her own part to play in saving the world on the brink of destruction.
Indulgent Book Talk: Three cheers for the Kindle Lending Library! I was able to read all three of these books entirely FOR FREE. I really enjoyed them. They're adventurous, have interesting characters, plots with all the promises of fantasy and few of the cliches, and were fairly well-written.
Glorifying Elements: Author Jeff Wheeler is part of the LDS church, which means these books are clean and promote generally good morals. While I am no fan of the LDS church, I can appreciate that its members generally hold morality in high esteem and I can usually trust what they produce will be safe in that sense.
As far as the content of the story, I appreciated the struggle for good and evil, Lia's determination to overcome her own evil desires, which were her worst enemy, and the emphasis on the importance of working together to overcome adversity.
The magical force called the Medium is very God-like.
Worldly Elements: Wheeler's membership in the LDS church is a two-sided coin. On one hand, it meant that these books were morally safe; on the other hand, some of the descriptions of the magic and the Medium were a little too Mormon. One scene reminded me so forcefully of what I've read and heard about Mormon temple ceremonies that I almost felt proselytized. Discernment and a strong knowledge of the Biblical God and how He manifests Himself in a Christian's life are important to maintain while reading these books, because there are some great departures from truth and Biblical Christianity.
General Recommendation: Yes, but read them as fiction. Wheeler might have found truth in some of the religious descriptions; Christians should be wary and skeptical.
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