Hunter Brown and the Secret of the Shadow 3: Weak Points and Conclusion

I said yesterday that the Miller brothers' Hunter Brown and the Secret of the Shadow has some major strengths that mingle with some of its weaknesses. (I've decided to re-organize my original presentation to avoid unnecessary complexity.) The tricky part in what follows is addressing the problems without committing a spoiler. So I'll start with an easy one that others may disagree with. (Yes, that constitutes permission.)

Hope. Hunter's female counterpart from Sanctuary, that is, not the roommate of Faith and Love. I have no good explanation for this; she just annoyed me somehow. I suspect that I, who am hardly ever bothered by a cover illustration, just didn't like her expression there. But that point aside, her entire arc in the story is a problem for me, especially the conclusion.

Hunter Brainless? There are times when he's reasonably bright, but there are also times when he's frustratingly thick. I still find it hard to believe he doesn't know what happened to his dad, though sheer incredulity may explain that. Then there's the place where he has a chance to neutralize an enemy and accomplish a major goal--but he refuses. If he were an outright coward, I could accept this, but he has shown too much courage by that point. And I would claim that any videogamer would've completed the mission first.

The Setting Paradox. The relationship between Solandria and the Veil is complex. In a way, they interlock as a single reality, but in other ways they don't. The Veritas sword functions in the Veil, though it is apparently invisible to anything purely of the Veil. People can exist in only one place or the other, and the setup isn't allegorical. Yet Solandria seems to be a more spiritual variation on the Veil, a place where something's general nature is more visible for those who look.

With this in mind, I find the situation in Solandria odd. The triumph of Evil is largely an appearance, not a reality, so the predominance of the Shadow is puzzling. That's not to say that Evil does not appear pervasive, but it is miles broad and not even an inch deep--by its very nature. In the Bible we read that the darkness is fading, that the Enemy has already been defeated, that a few saints can put an army to flight. So the view from a spiritual perspective will be very different indeed. The arrival of Aviad, like that of Aslan, should have set things largely right.

The Hunter Paradox. As a related matter, Hunter's spiritual position is both ambiguous and paradoxical. He is friendly to Aviad and company, but not truly under the Author's authority. Yet he uses the Veritas sword, which is presumably a spiritual weapon, to say nothing of the Code of Life. It's possible to be generally in submission to God while remaining rebellious in some areas, but there's no sign that Hunter truly has a relationship with the Author. (There's an ambiguous bit that probably does point to the beginning of such a relationship, but it comes too late to affect his actions in the story proper.)

The Training Paradox. The warriors of the Resistance train using the Revealing Room (rather like the Holodeck in later editions of Star Trek) or the Tempering Stone (a fast-healing, geologic masochist).

It wouldn't work.

I've explained the main problem before: God doesn't seem to believe in sparring practice; he believes in learning in the field. So if you try a training exercise, he probably won't show up, leaving you to learn to trust in your own amazing abilities. So this section takes a modern, mechanistic view of spiritual matters--the sort that reduces faith to magic and God to a machine. You won't find that in the text directly, but it's where the view inevitably leads.

The Bloodstone Paradox. POTENTIAL SPOILER ALERT!! I'll try to steer around a spoiler, but this involves something that is revealed at the end of the story. The paradox involves the nature of and relationship among the Bloodstone, Venator, and Hunter. (This is partly where Latin will give you a Major Clue early on.) As a rule, everyone is who he is and nothing more: there is one Sam, one Hope, and so on, and you don't even have a Solandria twin/Veil twin situation. So how do we explain the relationship that's eventually revealed?

The simple explanation is that Solandria is Hunter himself writ extra large. But then he shouldn't have all the other people traipsing around inside. It would also mess up the identification between Solandria and the Veil. So the simple explanation doesn't work. What's the alternative?

Right off, I don't know. There's also the problem of death, which wouldn't be an issue under the simple explanation but otherwise is. When a character dies, God either does a temporary resurrection (as with Lazarus) or puts him in a whole new story (the resurrection). Yet it's implied that a character can be reintroduced as is, while the resurrection is transformative, not a re-run. The paradox remains unresolved.

Conclusion. I still recommend the book. Although there are numerous paradoxes or contradictions, the kids this is intended for probably won't pick up on them. Noting the problems isn't silly--this is presented as a serious story, not something with anthropomorphic talking animals, for example--so examining the deeper levels is reasonable. But it's primarily spiritual edutainment for kids, and on that level it works well enough.

The rest of the CSFF bloggers probably aren't reading the book with a microscope, so you might want to check them out:
Brandon Barr
Keanan Brand
Melissa Carswell
Valerie Comer
Amy Cruson
CSFF Blog Tour
Stacey Dale
D. G. D. Davidson
Shane Deal
Jeff Draper
April Erwin
Karina Fabian
Marcus Goodyear
Todd Michael Greene
Katie Hart
Ryan Heart
Timothy Hicks
Jason Isbell
Cris Jesse
Jason Joyner
Carol Keen
Mike Lynch
Magma
Rebecca LuElla Miller
Nissa
Wade Ogletree
John W. Otte
Crista Richey
Chawna Schroeder
James Somers
Rachel Starr Thomson
Steve Trower
Speculative Faith
Fred Warren
Phyllis Wheeler
Jill Williamson

Hunter Brown and the Secret of the Shadow 2: Good Points

The Miller brothers' Hunter Brown and the Secret of the Shadow has some major strengths. Curiously, some are in the same slots as some of its weaknesses. Go figure.

Kid appeal. The book should work really well for its demographic and even beyond. In fact, I'll even pronounce the dread comparison and say that it actually could be a Christian equivalent for the Harry Potter books. (No, the Potter books aren't Christian. They aren't particularly demonic, either, but their Christianity is mostly an accidental tag along on some medieval material, and Rowling demonstrates a remarkable ignorance of Christian belief.) The reason people dread the comparison is that it generally means the book is a knockoff or the one making the claim knows nothing whatever about the Potter books. Hunter Brown is not a knockoff--there are practically no obvious similarities with the Potter books--yet the feel is similar, with a boy who finds himself in a world effectively tucked just out of sight. There he is confronted with a radically different view of his old world and his past. There's no magic as such, but there are swords rather like lightsabers only far more versatile.

Yet Hunter Brown is more coherent than Potter. My initial reaction to Philosopher's Stone was puzzlement that it had succeeded despite a major plot hole or two and some unevenness in the writing. Hunter Brown has no such problems. (There are three logical or theological flaws in the story, but of a sort most people will never notice. We'll look at them tomorrow.)

Language. No, not the blankety-blank kind. This is probably a minor point, but as a language geek, I appreciate people who get into language. The Millers evidently like Latin: one of the prominent symbols Hunter encounters (and early on, too) is a triple V representing Via Veritas Vita, or in English, Way, Truth, Life, which should sound suspiciously scriptural and even dominical. For some reason this turns into "the way of truth and life," which should be via veritatis et vitae, but perhaps the Millers decline declension. Maybe they gave it up for Lent. The main bad guy is Sceleris, the genitive singular of scelus, which means "crime, sin, curse, wickedness." Unfortunately, this trick works against the story, because anyone who bothers looking up a certain name will get the mother-in-law of spoilers, and quite early in the story. But how many people know Latin these days?

Extra credit: "Aviad" is presumably Hebrew--"My Father is perpetual/eternal."

Theology. Tune in tomorrow for the problem twin, but right now let's consider what went right. Probably the biggest positive here is the insistence that the Author always acts purposefully: there are no accidents. A lot of Christians act as though they don't believe that. Actually, chapter nine ("The Revealing Room") in particular has a lot of good, practical theology, more than I can adequately cover here. For example, there's a remark about the need to fear the Author, even though he's good, that reminded me of the initial exchange in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe about Aslan: of course he isn't safe--but he's good. The theological content of the story as a whole is well above average, which combined with its readability makes it a good choice.

Tomorrow: some problem areas.

Well, let's see what the others have to say...
Brandon Barr
Keanan Brand
Melissa Carswell
Valerie Comer
Amy Cruson
CSFF Blog Tour
Stacey Dale
D. G. D. Davidson
Shane Deal
Jeff Draper
April Erwin
Karina Fabian
Marcus Goodyear
Todd Michael Greene
Katie Hart
Ryan Heart
Timothy Hicks
Jason Isbell
Cris Jesse
Jason Joyner
Carol Keen
Mike Lynch
Magma
Rebecca LuElla Miller
Nissa
Wade Ogletree
John W. Otte
Crista Richey
Chawna Schroeder
James Somers
Rachel Starr Thomson
Steve Trower
Speculative Faith
Fred Warren
Phyllis Wheeler
Jill Williamson

Hunter Brown and the Secret of the Shadow 1: Intro

The Miller brothers' Hunter Brown and the Secret of the Shadow is about Hunter Brown (large surprise), a fairly normal high-school student who discovers a twin universe (Solandria) oddly intertwined with our own (called the Veil). The book even begins with a cheerful note from Hunter saying that it tells about his death. (He got better. What a trouper!) This is the first installment of The Codebearers series.

Anyway... The story begins with an ill-conceived prank that imparts a life lesson to the reader: if you pull a prank on a major bully, always have an escape route set up. Preferably two or three.

Hunter and his friends Stretch and Stubbs aren't that foresighted, however, and they predictably wind up being rescued from a bad situation by a mysterious guy with an apparently minor quest. It mushrooms into a major quest, of course, in the form of a mysterious book, mysterious monsters, and more face time with the mysterious guy, leading inevitably to a dunk in a lake full of corpses. (You saw that coming, didn't you?)

So Hunter finds himself in the company of Hope, a girl roughly his own age, and Sam, a rather louche object roughly the age of Hunter's dad. They take him to Sanctuary, an idyllic floating chunk of rock. (All Solandria is made up of floating chunks of rock since arch-bad guy Sceleris brought a curse on the place.) There Hunter learns the Ways of the Force, or rather of the Code of Life, and he picks up some backstory.

The Backstory So Far: The Author creates everything for his own purposes, but one of his underlings, Sceleris, decided to claim a world for his own. He talked a kid into grabbing the Bloodstone, which unleashed a curse on all and sundry. The kid became Venator (you have five seconds to hiss the villain...), who with the help of Sceleris has nearly obliterated knowledge of the Author from Solandria and cast its twin world, the Veil, into ignorance even more abysmal than the media can generate. So the Author wrote up the truth about Life as the Code of Life and sent his son Aviad to organize the Resistance. The bad guys, known collectively as the Shadow, have a secret, and it's not that they know what evil lurks in the hearts of men. (Well, they probably do, actually.)

Hunter soon finds that he has been chosen to give Venator a cosmic wedgie and set things more or less right again, despite being his own worst enemy. Along the way, he will discover the Secret of the Shadow. Will the journey involve gross, frightening, and sometimes inspirational moments? Yup. Will Hunter get to use his lightsaber, I mean Veritas Sword, a lot? Soit'n'y!

Yes, you're right: if you're a kid, the preceding paragraph was the only one you should've bothered reading. Perhaps tomorrow's post on the good points of Hunter Brown and the Secret of the Shadow will be more conveniently organized, though I doubt it.

In the meantime, check out the other blogs on this conveniently organized list:
Brandon Barr
Keanan Brand
Melissa Carswell
Valerie Comer
Amy Cruson
CSFF Blog Tour
Stacey Dale
D. G. D. Davidson
Shane Deal
Jeff Draper
April Erwin
Karina Fabian
Marcus Goodyear
Todd Michael Greene
Katie Hart
Ryan Heart
Timothy Hicks
Jason Isbell
Cris Jesse
Jason Joyner
Carol Keen
Mike Lynch
Magma
Rebecca LuElla Miller
Nissa
Wade Ogletree
John W. Otte
Steve Rice Yeah, you're looking at it. I enjoy self-referential humor.
Crista Richey
Chawna Schroeder
James Somers
Rachel Starr Thomson
Steve Trower
Speculative Faith
Fred Warren
Phyllis Wheeler
Jill Williamson

Eretzel 5: Hope and Change

As a matter of being the first with breaking news, I thought I'd take a moment to mention that William McGrath has made a slight change in Eretzel, naming one of the Antichrist's sillier minions (and Minister of Finance) Lrak Xram as a tribute to the President's program to make the US look more like Europe. (Burning banlieues, anyone?)

Now, for me this raises a few questions. As I noted earlier, while the President has disturbing ideas and traits, his scariest feature is his astounding enthusiasm for abortion. He is now on the verge of re-opening an unnecessary line of research involving embryonic stem cells--unnecessary not only because there is no known benefit from such research, but also because the cells can be obtained in innocent ways, without killing. This move further cheapens and commodifies human life--and for nothing. It is this shedding of innocent blood that could take our country past the point of no return.

That said, McGrath's concerns about the effect of Obama's policies are well-founded. For example--

Murray the Alchemist: Are you trying to turn this into the conservative version of a PBS special? Let's talk about the important thing--the cover-up!

Ansric: What are you doing back here? I thought the League of Superheroes sent you over to Frank Creed to blow up the One State.

Murray: He's got picky rules about not blowing up cities. I mean, I don't mind blowing people up one at a time, but you don't get the really good fireballs that way. And you're still not dealing with the important change.

Ansric: If you mean the claim that "Lrak Xram" is too obvious and hard to pronounce, I'll agree with the first part. It's not that hard to pronounce, though. It's just a pity that McGrath didn't spell out the "x": then he would've had "Skram," which is easier to say and a bit more amusing.

Murray: You can pronounce the thing?

Ansric: Maybe it's because I've studied Russian, but yes, I can say it. Can't you?

Murray: One of the reasons I became an alchemist was so I wouldn't have to say stuff like that. You could turn into a cabinet nominee or something. But what really bugs me isn't this change. He got rid of an explosion in an earlier version!

Ansric: Because it didn't work right. You complained about that yourself.

Murray: Yeah, but he didn't fix it! I always say, "Any explosion you can walk away from--

Ansric: Is a good one?

Murray: Is a dud! I mean, a real explosion will hurl you several feet at least. I've wound up in another kingdom a few times! That's the kind of excitement a book needs. If the Anakim had just blown up Antiochus and his buddies, they would've gotten away with it.

Ansric: Somehow I doubt it, but it might've blown Lrak's name right. But I guess all this--and I'm back to politics, now--proves that if you want real "hope and change," the magic phrase isn't "Lrak Xram" but "Maranatha!": Come, O Lord! Maybe if we had more people saying that, the country might endure. As it stands, though, Eretzel provides a warning that unfortunately many will ignore.

Don't ignore Eretzel or the tour! For more information, check out the following this week:

Eretzel 4: League of Super Readers

(In case you wonder where the first three installments got off to, they're here, here, and here. You should've been paying attention.)

For today's installment, I thought it would be appropriate to ask the League of Superheroes what registered geeks think about William McGrath's Eretzel, since it's a bit of a he-geek novel. We'll also have Rod Davies' dad along to make sure the testosterone level is high enough.

Ansric: So, Mr. Davies, you read Eretzel yourself?

Mr. Davies: 'Course I did. I wouldn't give Rod trash to read, so I thought I'd see what it was like.

Ansric: Good book, then?

Mr. Davies: Yeah, it's kind of like Tom Clancy before he got politically correct. But McGrath is a Christian--I mean a real Christian, not one of these wimpy "sorta" Christians where you gotta guess a lot--and he's doing swords and stuff, not the high-tech gear Clancy's into.

Ansric: Anything else?

Mr. Davies: I think McGrath could whip Clancy's--

Ansric: Let's watch the language.

Mr. Davies: "Rear end." Is that okay? Do I have to hold my pinky out too? 'Cause back in the old days, I'da held out another finger and said it the way I wanted.

Ansric: I appreciate your restraint. So apparently it's manly enough, and I guess the geeky stuff wasn't a problem either.

Mr. Davies: He's a manly geek, anyway. Kinda like my brothers--they could do all the explainin' and still use your face for a mop. But like I say, McGrath has better values than that. It's the kinda thing I want Rod to read, especially since he's got that Titan suit.

Ansric: That's a good segue to Rod and the others. Comments?

Rod/Titan: I like the geek/macho balance. Some of the theology seemed a bit weird, but Tom's dad says there's nothing harmful there, just unusual.

Mr. Davies: The guy is a bit confused about the end times. We're supposed to be out of here when the Antichrist shows up.

Tom/Darklight: Dad said there was a mix of old and new ideas. The oldest teaching about the Tribulation is that the Church goes through it. In the Bible "tribulation" practically always means "persecution of the Church."

Allen/Tachyon: Which is why the Church has taught that all along.

Mr. Davies: Well, Tim LaHaye knows his stuff, just like McGrath knows the technical stuff.

Allen/Tachyon: And could whup up on LaHaye too, I bet.

Mr. Davies: Just like I got authority to whup up on any smart mouths. That bit still stands, you know.

Allen/Tachyon: Yessir.

Charlie/Micromegas: This is why we don't discuss Bible prophecy that much.

Tom/Darklight: It's also why Dad scheduled our trip to the Grand Canyon so we'd miss the eschatology festival at Rod's church. He wasn't happy when they rescheduled and we came in on the last half of it anyway.

Allen/Tachyon: And it scarred you so much that you had all the prophecy references in League of Superheroes, which began almost two months later.

Ansric: Putting eschatology on hold, what about the book as such?

Allen/Tachyon: It was an interesting mix of Protestant and Catholic. He doesn't beat up on Catholics like a lot of Protestants, but he's definitely Protestant. We believe in the Body of Christ, with everyone in his place. Protestants like the lone wolf idea, which is like having an arm or a leg wandering around on its own. But maybe this is a good way to bridge the gap. The Dante stuff at the end was kind of cool for a Protestant, though I have to admit Tom knows more about that than I do.

Tom/Darklight: It's like the eschatology--a mix of old and new. I don't care for some of the new stuff, but if it makes a bridge so modern readers can appreciate the older teachings, it's a good thing. I'm for anything that can get people to stop and think--or start to think--without messing up their theology.

Charlie/Micromegas: There was a bit more emphasis on human action than on the power of God, but from the ending, I think that will change. We tend to lead with our fallen nature anyway.

Ansric: Closing remarks?

Mr. Davies: It's not for wimps. That's the problem: there are too many wimps out there who are too lazy and scared to read it.

Ansric: And your advice?

Mr. Davies: Advice is for wimps too. I'd just say, "Read Eretzel, or I'll use it to whup your--"

For more information, check out the following this week: