Wednesday, May 29, 2013

Magnificent Malevolence: Memoirs of a Career in Hell

In the tradition of C.S. Lewis's The Screwtape Letters

C. S. Lewis, who introduced Screwtape, a senior devil, to the world in 1942, knew that evil is powerful and personal. He understood that its main thrust was against God and the people of God. There can be no doubt that Lewis would agree that Screwtape and his diabolical colleagues have not ceased their operations in the last seventy years. As the human decades have passed, the same war has been fought, with new weapons and different battle tactics.

How fortunate, then, that the following account, rescued from the archives of the Low Command's Ministry of Misinformation, has fallen into our hands. This remarkable manuscript outlines the career of the prominent devil, Crumblewit SOD (Order of the Sons of Darkness, 1st Class). It was in a much mutilated state and has only, with difficulty, been cut and pasted together to make a reasonably coherent narrative of the activities of a post-Screwtape generation of devils. It is not, of course, "true" in the sense of being an objective appraisal of the struggles between good and evil which dominated human affairs in the period from 1950 to 2000. The account is distorted by Crumblewit's truly diabolical conceit and also his ability for self-delusion. However, it does shed fresh light on the ups and down experienced by the church throughout this period.
 
Crumblewit's energies were entirely deployed in the religious arena. He was employed exclusively in undermining the attempts of Christians to bring to bear upon world events the prerogatives of love, peace, and justice and to carry out the mission entrusted to them by Jesus . . .
 
It's always interesting to read different views and opinions people have about things which are happening in the heavenlies. The book is hard to read at times but, as I said, it was interesting. I don't know how people get so much information out of so little written. If you like to read things that are outside of the box, then this book is for you.

Thank you Kregel Publications for a complimentary review copy of this novel.

A Sound Among the Trees by Susan Meissner

A Sound Among the Trees


A house shrouded in time.
A line of women with a heritage of loss.

As a young bride, Susannah Page was rumored to be a Civil War spy for the North, a traitor to her Virginian roots. Her great-granddaughter Adelaide, the current matriarch of Holly Oak, doesn’t believe that Susannah’s ghost haunts the antebellum mansion looking for a pardon, but rather the house itself bears a grudge toward its tragic past.

When Marielle Bishop marries into the family and is transplanted from the arid west to her husband’s home, it isn’t long before she is led to believe that the house she just settled into brings misfortune to the women who live there.

With Adelaide’s richly peppered superstitions and deep family roots at stake, Marielle must sort out the truth about Susannah Page and Holly Oak— and make peace with the sacrifices she has made for love.    



Author Bio:
Susan Meissner cannot remember a time when she wasn’t driven to put her thoughts down on paper. Her novel The Shape of Mercy was a Publishers Weekly pick for best religious fiction of 2008 and a Christian Book Award finalist. Susan and her husband live in Southern California, where he is a pastor and a chaplain in the Air Force Reserves. They are the parents of four grown children.

My review:

I really enjoyed this book.  I picked it up one Sunday morning and I just about finished it that evening.  The book has several different story lines happening at one time but none of them leave you hanging or confused as to what all is happening.  I enjoyed getting to know each of the characters and reading how their stories all related to each other. I highly recommend adding this book to your library.

I received a free copy of this book from Multnomah in exchange for a review of the book.

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