The Falling Away by T.L. Hines

The Falling Away is another gold star in T. L. Hines' career. I enjoyed Waking Lazarus, got twisted with The Dead Whisper On, looked in the cracks of the walls after reading The Unseen and got surprised by the ending of Faces in the Fire.

Falling Away tells the story of Dylan Runs Ahead. An Iraq War veteran who was injured by a roadside bomb.

We pick up with his adventure as he and a friend named Webb make a transaction of prescription pain medicine over the Montana/Canada border.

Things don't go smoothly and Dylan finds himself running from the police, the drug czar and into the "safe" hands of a earth-loving cult who wants to help him detox from his addiction to the pain meds.

Tailing Dylan is a mysterious girl named Quinn who seeks those who are "chosen".

This is another tale of "Who can you trust?" Quinn's already killed a man and strangled a police officer.

Dylan has a decision to make that may have world-wide implications.

The story ties together nicely by the time Quinn and Dylan meet in that you are expecting a nice dialogue of exposition to explain the bizarre things happening. Hines has a knack for the bizarre and slightly off-center stories and he plays to all the strengths.


This book was provided for review by Thomas Nelson Publishing.

The Fourth Kind

Continuing on the string of horror movies supposedly based on actual events is the film The Fourth Kind.

The movie begins with Milla Jovovich walking up to the camera and explaining that she will be portraying the real Abbey Tyler. Tyler is a psychologist who documents the events with her video camera and tape recorder.

The film includes the "actual video and audio recordings" to make the film more authentic.

Something is happening with the residents of Nome, Alaska. At least 3 people are having trouble sleeping. They wake up around 3:33 AM and claim they see an owl looking at them. It's just that they don't think it's an owl.

We learn, through the video recordings that these poor people have had a very traumatic experience and Tyler begins to believe they may have been abducted by aliens.

Will Patton plays the sheriff who is having a hard time keeping the peace of his town. He ends up revealing some troubling news to Abbey Tyler concerning her husband. (Who was also involved with this disturbing investigation)

The movie takes a troubling turn when, while under hypnosis, a patient appears to be possessed by whatever creature is terrorizing the town. Near the end, Tyler herself appears possessed.

It is quite disturbing.

While claiming to be true, this film, while scary, is entirely a hoax.

Back on Murder by J. Mark Bertrand

I was given this book because I enjoy Steven James. (The Bishop).
 
Back on Murder (Roland March Mysteries) reads like an episode of CSI, Law & Order, etc... It's a police, crime procedural with many characters and a number of dead ends.

The main character is Roland March. He's known as the Suicide Cop because he is the one the department calls on to investigate police officers who kill themselves.

He wants to get back into homicide, but there are many hurdles to jump through. Of course, he isn't friendly with his superiors and his relationship with his wife is on the fritz. You get to connect the dots as you read.

As March attempts to make it back on the homicide scene, a girl is abducted while a drug gang is wiped out. March discovers a clue that might link the two cases. However, no one believes him.

Is this started to sound familiar? Just like every crime television show right?

The book is decent. If you like that sort of procedural and guessing who the bad guy is. Bertrand will keep you guessing as he allows March to be wrong. Dead ends are to be expected. I suppose this makes the story more realistic.

My biggest issue was the number of characters in this story. The case is so wide, that there are too many people to follow. Whenever March talked with someone on the phone it took me awhile to remember who this person was in relationship to the case.

This is the first of a Roland March Mystery series. So if police/crime procedurals are your cup of tea, you will enjoy Mark Bertrand and his conflicted cop, Roland March.


This book was provided for review by Bethany House Publishing.

Kick Ass

Kick Ass is not quite the movie I was expecting. After watching this pseudo-Superhero movie, I thought I had just watched my first Quentin Tarantino movie. With all the F-bombs and extreme violence, I will not recommend this movie for anything.

Seriously, the characters say the "F" word about 100 times! That is enough to sicken me - for any movie.

The violence and gore is over-the-top. Simply not needed. I don't care if this is based on a bloody graphic novel.

This movie stars a bunch of no-namers who desire to be superheroes (you can tell by the cover of the DVD. I haven't read the graphic novel so I wasn't sure what to expect.

The only -ONLY- redeeming value of this movie was the storyline of Nicolas Cage's character, Big Daddy. His superhero costume resembles Batman's and he even talks like Adam West's version of Batman.

It was fun to see Cage beat up the bad guys. But again, the blood and gore was too much.

As a taste of what's in store for the gore: they microwave a guy!

Insane and a waste of time.

Do not watch this movie.

Essential Peter Parker The Spectacular Spider-Man vol. 1

Seeing as I have read all the Amazing Spider-Man volumes in print, I decided to pick up the next set: Essential Peter Parker The Spectacular Spider-Man vol. 1.

This volume is a collection of the first 31 comics in The Spectacular Spider-Man line. The stories are typical Spider-Man - where things never go the way Parker plans and the villains just aren't up to par with the classic Amazing villains.

The biggest addition to these comics is the references to other comics published during the same time. You will see a number of references to Amazing Spider-Man, The Fantastic Four, The Champions and other comics in each Spectacular comic.

This is a brilliant ploy to get readers to purchase the other comics - because you have to follow up with the story!

The titles in volume 1 are: (by clicking the link, you will see the cover image)

"Twice Stings The Tarantula!" (part 1)

"Kraven Is The Hunter!" (part 2)  
"...And There Was Lightmaster!"  
"The Vulture Is A Bird Of Prey!"  (part 1)
"Spider-Kill!"  (part 2)
"The Power To Purge!"
"Cry Mahem..Cry Morbius!"  (part 1)
"...And Only One Shall Survive!"  (part 2)
"...Like A Tiger In The Night!" (part 1)
"Tiger In A Web!"  (part 2)
"A Life Too Far"
"Brother Power, Sister Sun!" (part 1) 
"...The Coming of Razorback!" (part 2) 
"Killing Me Softly...With His Hate!" (part 3) 
"The Final Rage!" (part 4) 
"The Beetle and The Badge!" 
"Whatever Happened To The Iceman?" (part 1) 
"My Friend, My Foe?" (part 2) 
"Again, The Enforcers!"  
"Where Were You When The Lights Went Out?"  
"Still Crazy After All These Years!"  
"By The Light Of The Silvery Moonknight!"  (part 1)
"Guess Who's Buried In Grant's Tomb!" (part 2)
"Spider-Man Night Fever" 
"Carrion, My Wayward Son" (part 1)
"Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory" (part 2)
"The Blind Leading the Blind"  (part 3)
"Ashes to Ashes" (part 4)
"Dust to Dust"  (part 5)
"Secret as the Grave!" (part 6)
"Till Death Do Us Part!"  (part 7)

You'll find classic characters like, Daredevil, The Scorpion, and Kraven the Hunter. You're introduced to The White Tiger, Brother Power, Sister Sun and the huge arc of Carrion!

While the stories may be lacking compared to the past, it's still nice to have all the comics in one collection.

This Is It

This Is It is a fascinating documentary-style behind-the-scenes video of what would have been Michael Jackson's final concert tour.

With multiple cameras and angles, you will watch Jackson rehearsing with the crew and then mixed together to the actual songs.

Say want you want about Michael: weird, bizarre, etc... the man had a great talent of dance and song. He made a huge impact on popular culture. If you have any doubt, just look at the number of awards he won throughout his career.

Outside of this being about Michael Jackson, the video itself is fascinating to watch how a would-have-been blockbuster concert event was put together.

The special featurettes show how they selected the 11 dancers out of hundreds of applicants, and how the concert would have ended with Jackson taking off in a jet. You get to see how every outfit was created for this concert and just how much he loved crystals.

My favorite part, of course, was the music. Nothing can stop you from moving (in some fashion) to songs like Bad, Beat It, Thriller, Billy Jean, etc...

This is a great video for fans and casual listeners of Michael Jackson.

Sweat, Blood, & Tears by Xan Hood

Sweat, Blood, & Tears is the coming of age story written by Xan Hood.

Coming from a polished, well-to-do family, Hood decided to skip his college graduation and relocate to the rugged fields of Colorado.

There he takes a job painting houses, goes on hikes, learns to hunt and fly fish all while learning valuable lessons.

The subtitle is "What God uses to make a man". Hood confesses his issues with his father and not quite being what some would consider to be a manly man.

He's always had enough money to play with until he strikes out on his own.

There are 30 chapters to this book but they average about 4 pages per chapter.

Sadly, I wasn't completely engaged with this book. While there seems to be a trend of male authors confessing their failures and mistakes in their books, I grow weary of reading about men crying and experiencing God by killing deer.

Of course, this is exactly the frame of mind Hood writes against. So take that as you will.

At least he learned how to change the oil in his car.


This book was provided for review by David C. Cook Publishing

Demon: A Memoir by Tosca Lee

I picked up Demon: A Memoir because I found out that Ted Dekker would be co-authoring his next series with Tosca Lee.

And when you learn something like that, you have to find out what qualified her to write with the best.

Told is first person, Demon is about a editor named Clay who has just gone through a divorce and still has trouble dealing with it. He enters a diner after work one night and is joined by a man who knows things about him.

They begin to have several conversations in which Clay realizes this is a demon who calls himself Lucian.

Lucian wants Clay to write and publish his memoirs.

Beginning before The Fall of Lucifer and the other angels, you'll get the story from the perspective of a fallen angel who views humanity with contempt.

While Clay meets with Lucian, life continues to unravel for him and he begins to realize that this memoir may be closer to reality than it sounds.

Demon is an interesting look at the full story of reconciliation from the viewpoint of the fallen. It asks the question, "How would you feel if you could watch those "chosen" people take such a gracious gift and spit in God's face over and over".

This would make a great Book Club read.

True Religion by Palmer Chinchen

Take a man, raised in Africa, and hot on the topic of social justice and you'll get True Religion.

Dr Chinchen is the Pastor of The Grove in Arizona. He writes about hell on earth and how, as Christians, we are supposed to bring heaven to those areas.

The book is divided into 5 parts (Expatriate, Conflict Diamonds, Do Work, Desire and Embrace) with 2 chapters in each part. And each chapter is full of personal stories from around the world, mainly Africa, and some parts of America where injustice is occurring.

A group of people travel on missions trips to Cuba, Africa and other parts of the world to share "pieces of heaven". The stories are meant to upset you and cause you to have compassion. This word, Chinchen shares, is meant to be action not just words or pitiful feelings.

I appreciate how this isn't a book about doing things to get saved. This is a book about the opportunity Christians have to be Jesus where Jesus is needed most.

Some of those opportunities are rather extreme, but Dr Chinchen would say that it's supposed to be extreme. It's what we're called to do.


This book was provided for review by David C. Cook Publishing

Immanuel's Veins by Ted Dekker

Ted Dekker is closing out his Thomas Nelson publisher run with Immanuel's Veins. From here on out he will be published by Hachette.

Immanuel's Veins tells the story of two men (Toma & Alek) tasked with protecting a family for the Russian Queen Catharine. Toma is the hero who has won many battles, Alek is the womanizer.

Once on the family's estate, the men are introduced to some bizarre neighbors who reside in the Carpathian Mountains. Led by one named Valerik, these neighbors have a thing for biting lips...and drinking blood. (Yes, this is Ted Dekker's version of Twilight but this isn't your typical vampire novel.)

Alek is quickly seduced by the beauty of the women and escapes to the castle in the mountains where all kinds of debauchery occur. In their defense, these vampire-like-people admit to simply acting on their great love for life.

Toma must rescue not only his friend, but also the two daughters he is ordered to protect and having fallen madly in love with one of them, you'll read Dekker's signature battle of good vs. evil surrounded by love.

This isn't Dekker at his best. It is a new perspective as he writes in first person (something brand new for Ted Dekker). The setting is new and different, (Russia in the 1700s) and you will definitely get caught up in the story. Ted has a unique ability to capture your attention from the get-go and hold it throughout the novel. Sadly the overall plot is one that Dekker has used far too often.

Man falls in love with girl. Bad guy wants to seduce girl. Girl falls for bad guy. Good guy confronts bad guy to win girl's heart.

We've seen this in the last 5 or 6 novels by Ted Dekker.

One a really positive note: fans of The Circle Series and The Books of History Chronicles will get some well deserved answers in this story.

Give this book to your vampire-loving friends then do a compare and contrast book club.


This book was provided for review by Thomas Nelson publishing.

From the Corner of His Eye by Dean Koontz

You can never get a continued line of success from Dean Koontz. From the Corner of His Eye proves to be a story built around an intriguing concept, yet leaves you exhausted from all the excess story.

This is a very thick book; there are over 700 pages to be devoured. The majority is typical Koontz with a detestable villain who believes himself to be perfection and the purely good character(s) whom the villain wishes to destroy.

Following the vanishing of the bad guy, Junior Cain, Koontz attempts to continue the story as if we care what happens to the other characters. And we don't. Once the bad guy is defeated, we don't care what happens 20 years into the future.

I did enjoy the thoughts behind the use of quantum physics and all of the "other places" that could exist. I just didn't enjoy flipping through the years. Going from the 1960s to year 2000 makes a reader as tired as if they were viewing them in a slide-show.

Bottom-line, the story is good until the villain exits. Then the story becomes a waste of time.

The Miracle Man by Maggy Whitehouse

Author Maggy Whitehouse has written a re-telling of Jesus in a modern context. What if Jesus arrived on earth today and he was a judge on a talent show similar to American Idol?

The book is called The Miracle Man and it begins with a couple who get in a car accident. The wife is killed instantly but the husband somehow survives and gets this Christ-complex. He can heal people and he actually follows the actions of Jesus.

He doesn't claim to be Jesus, he doesn't claim to be divine; he just feels a special connection to The Source (his way of referring to God). He feels called to a special calling.

He draws people near him, his disciples are more like bodyguards than fishermen and he has no issue with promoting what he can do.

I felt like I was reading a book Oprah would love to promote and with how the television show Lost ended, I felt like this book connects with the current postmodern feel for religion.

Christians will find this book ultra-controversial.

This book was provided for review by O Books Publishing.

Breaking the Rules by Fil Anderson

Want to read another book on how religious devotion is bad but a vibrant relationship with Jesus is good? Allow me to suggest Breaking the Rules by Fil Anderson

How long has this been a rallying cry: It's not about religion, but a relationship?

Following on the style of Brennan Manning (who writes the Foreward BTW), Anderson is very transparent in his failings as a human and as a follower of Christ.

He details how aspects of his religious activities trumped his relationship with Jesus.

Inside you'll get 10 chapters that cover:

Is Your Faith in God or Religion?
The Myth That Jesus Thinks Like Us
Beauty in Brokenness
What's a Picture Worth?
Right Rules or Right Relationship?
Worse Than Blindness
Why This Waste?
Doing What We Can
The Gift of Memory
Throwing in the Towel on Religion

Over and over again you see the focus away from organized religion and toward an intimate relationship with Jesus. Through his own stories, Anderson calls on us to admit our brokenness, our failures and to stop appearing as if we have it all together.

As many in the American Church are prone to do.

I didn't find this to be a book that promotes self-pity or self-bashing but aligns the truth about who we are as sinners with who Jesus call us to be.

It's a little, thick book so it may take you some time to get through it, but the personal stories and insight on the life we can live in Jesus will get you through the chapters.


This book was provided for review by InterVarsity Press

Apocalypse and Allegiance by J. Nelson Kraybill

J. Nelson Kraybill offers a look at worship, politics, and devotion in the book of Revelation.

Apocalypse and Allegiance provides the context of First Century life to aid in understanding the symbols and icons that we read about in the last book of the New Testament.

Kraybill throws his hat in with the crowd who believes that John wrote this Revelation for his audience and not people living 2,000 years into the future.

Each segment that some Christians believe refer to today, actually had their true meaning found with the Roman emperors who considered themselves to be divine.

You'll read how John took the words used to worship the gods and emperors of Rome and twisted them to point to the worship of Jesus and Yahweh.

Filled with illustrations and images of the items he refers to, Kraybill's book is for anyone who wants a challenge with how to read Revelation.

It is a great introductory book for the every-man.


This book was provided for review by Brazos Press.

Never Let You God by Erin Healy

Author Erin Healy has been editing novels for Ted Dekker for a number of years. She's co-authored 2 novels with him before going solo with Never Let You Go.

Lexi Solomon is struggling to deal with all the problems that come with being a single mom whose husband abandoned them because of drugs and having the drug boss harassing her about an unpaid debt.

Years later, her husband has returned with a request to see their daughter, the man who murdered her sister is up for parole and her mother is back to add insult to injury.

With that long introduction alone, how many of you feel totally depressed?

Healy knows how to write a woman's heart and mind. (At least I think she does since I am not a woman.)

One thing you walk away from this book with is an appreciation for the kind of life a single parent may lead.

I would call this a supernatural thriller (without giving too many spoilers away) because the tag is "Hell is determined to loosen her grip."

It seems as if everyone wants a piece of Lexi and her life is unraveling throughout the novel.

There are some great scenes of conflict and suspense. The characters are well fleshed out.

The only concern I had was the twist. If this book was supposed to carry a twist about a couple of the characters, I had them figured at the first introduction of Michael Angelo in the diner.

Hopefully the idea was "the writing's on the wall" and it wasn't meant to be too hidden.

Either way, if you like books by Frank Peretti, you may be wise to pick up Never Let You Go.


This book was provided for review by Thomas Nelson Publishing