Jonathan Lovelace's Blog

“But thanks be to God”: A Seventeenth Reflection

Today is the day once designated by the civil government of these United States to be devoted to public thanksgiving to our Creator for the gracious gifts his divine Providence has lavished upon us. It is thus fitting for me to, as I have done each year since my first Thanksgiving reflection in 2009, publicly express my gratitude for specific blessings, especially those newly experienced or newly remembered since my last such expression.

Introduction

I have begun each year’s post with a statement that “Today is the day designated …” or “Today is the day once designated …”, but this year I feel I should expand on that slightly. In 1789, George Washington began a proclamation of the fourth Thursday of November of that year as a national day of thanksgiving with the statement, which by the grammar of the proclamation he understood to be “a truth universally acknowledged,” that “it is the duty of all Nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey his will, to be grateful for his benefits, and humbly to implore his protection and favor.” He then went on to recommend that day “to be devoted by the People of these States to the service of that great and glorious Being, who is the beneficent Author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be—That we may then all unite in rendering unto him our sincere and humble thanks … and also that we may then unite in most humbly offering our prayers and supplications to the great Lord and Ruler of Nations and beseech him to pardon our national and other transgressions—[and] to enable us all, whether in public or private stations, to perform our several and relative duties properly and punctually.”

First and foremost, I hope I will never cease to be grateful that

the eternal Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who out of nothing created heaven and earth with all that is in them, who also upholds and governs them by his eternal counsel and providence, is for the sake of Christ his Son my God and my Father. I trust in him so completely that I have no doubt that he will provide me with all things necessary for body and soul. Moreover, whatever evil he sends upon me in this troubled life he will turn to my good, for he is able to do it, being almighty God, and is determined to do it, being a faithful Father.

I am learning to trust that, as a favorite hymn says,

Whate’er my God ordains is right,
Here shall my stand be taken;
Though sorrow, need, or death be mine,
Yet am I not forsaken,
My Father’s care
Is around me there,
He holds me that I shall not fall,
And so to Him I leave it all.

Writing

As so often in recent years, the points of gratitude that come next most immediately to mind have to do with my writing.

In God’s sovereign provision, I found a designer and commissioned a cover for Dreams and Prayers, my second poetry collection, and then about a month ago I finally released the book to the world. Regardless of how the book fares (or not) in “the marketplace,” I am grateful for God’s grace in all this.

I am also grateful that God continues to give me poetry to write, so that I have managed to post twenty-five poems on this blog since this time last year, I have poems scheduled at the same pace through next September, and I have more than fifteen completed poems waiting to be added to that queue. I hope that he will grant more inspiration, so that I can get somewhat further “ahead” and can clear some of my backlog of fragments by completing them, and I am praying for guidance as to the thematic direction and title of a possible third collection, but what he has enabled me to write so far is already more than I had dreamed in my youth.

On the other hand, I am grateful for God’s help that enabled me to finish my draft of The Invasion this past spring, after several years of neglect and then a few years of more focused effort in my “free” time. I am also grateful for the encouragement and critique that I have received from several sources in this year—critique which I am currently endeavoring to apply as I revise.

Relatedly, I am grateful for the opportunity and means to attend the “Realm Makers” Christian writers’ conference in Grand Rapids this past summer. While not exactly everything that I had hoped, I was blessed and encouraged, and if it be God’s will I hope to attend next year’s (nowhere near as conveniently located) conference as well.

Employment

I am once again grateful that God has provided me with employment in satisfying work with skillful colleagues and supportive managers—by which he has ordained that many of my needs be supplied, and that others’ needs (in a different sense, and under the current regulatory regime) be met.

Given recent events, I am grateful that this employment is (humanly speaking) fairly secure, and on terms generous enough that I could view the recent government shutdown as an enforced vacation with minimal impact on my personal finances.

I am once again grateful that God permits me to live, and work, “in the bosom of my family” for this season of my life.

I am grateful that earlier this year (if I am remembering correctly) several projects I had had a hand in were finally released to our customers, and were well received.

Perhaps most of all in this area, I am again (or still) grateful that God has chosen to provide for me with such abundance that I am able, and he permits me the honor, to share in the support of the work of his kingdom.

Conclusion

I have much to be grateful to God for, far more than my time and space today permit me to tell, and far more than my finite and incompletely-sanctified mind can remember. Despite certain aspects of my life these past years that I would describe as “bitter,” God has in everything dealt far more mercifully and graciously with me than I deserve, so that I am still (when I am honest) obliged to confess, “The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places.”

As I have for the past several years, I will again close with this verse from another favorite hymn:

Praise him for his grace and favor
To our fathers in distress;
Praise him, still the same as ever
Slow to chide and swift to bless:
Alleluia! Alleluia! Glorious in his faithfulness.

Poetry Archive Series 2: Introduction

From late 2011 through early 2013, this blog had a series of posts I called the “Poetry Archive.” The list of poems I had posted here was by then of “daunting size,” I had seen an increase in subscriber counts in the relatively recent past (though there is of course no way to tell how many of those actually read my posts …), and I was desperate for reader input on what poems to include in my first collection (which eventually became A Year in Verse). In this series, each week I “featured” (linked to) a half-dozen or so poems from the archive, asking readers what they thought and which they liked best. At first I listed poems in the order I had posted them on the blog in the first place, but later on (after catching up to the present) I began selecting poems “for the Archive” by theme or subject.

It is now more than a decade later, subscriber counts are even higher (though “view” traffic and other engagement is significantly lower), I have probably posted more poems since the end of the first run of Poetry Archive posts than I had at the time I started it, and having published not only A Year in Verse but Dreams and Prayers I’m again in early thoughts of what to include in a third collection. So I thought I’d dust off this category and begin what I’m calling “Series 2” of the “Poetry Archive.”

In what I’ll now call “the first series,” Poetry Archive posts appeared every Thursday (possibly unless preempted by something like my annual Thanksgiving post), alongside the other “departments” of the blog that had their own days (poems on Fridays)—a post in every department every week that I had something for that department. These days I have rarely posted anything but poetry, at the slower rate of every other week or so, and to avoid the appearance that I’m actively posting to the blog “on company time” I usually schedule posts for Saturday morning. So this second series of the Poetry Archive will appear at that same time in weeks that a poem (or other post) isn’t scheduled.

In the first series, I basically took lists of poems and “divided them into more manageable groups,” so “Volume IV” was poems relating to “Love”, “Volume V” was poems relating to “Nature”, and so on. My method this time will be somewhat similar, in that I expect to present a group of poems connected thematically in each installment, but I do not expect to try to exhaust the list of poems relating to any one subject before moving on to the next. For example, in the coming weeks I will begin with poems related to Advent, winter, and Christmas.

My intention is to primarily focus on poems that are not included in my two collections. As part of preparing the collections, I polished many of those poems with edits and in a few cases fairly substantial revision, and the blog posts in which those poems originally appeared saw very few of those changes, so the way to see those poems in their best light is in my books. I may, however, begin or end some “Poetry Archive” posts by mentioning a poem that is in one or the other book.

For the purpose of selecting poems for a third collection my Psalm settings and Arthurian poems are a little redundant, as I intend for each of those to eventually become its own separate collection, but I will still include poems from those series in Poetry Archive posts as they fit the theme of the day.

Within each post, I hope that you will follow the links to the poems, read them, and let me know what you think—which you think is the best, which if any you would like to see in a collection, or maybe how you think a poem could be improved. At this point I have only the haziest of ideas for a third collection, so any suggestions from readers may well influence the direction that the collection develops.

The first “issue” of the second series of the Poetry Archive should appear “in this space” the first Saturday of December. I hope you will enjoy dipping back into my poetry archives.

Dreams and Prayers Public Release

After years in the making, and more than a decade since the release of my first book, Dreams and Prayers: Verses from a Wandering Mind is finally available to the public, in print, on Kindle, and for other ebook readers.

My second poetry collection is much like the first: seventy-five poems (up from fifty-nine in A Year in Verse), most but not all blank verse, each paired with at least one public-domain drawing, woodcut, or illustration. But where A Year in Verse is organized based on the concurrent cycles of the year and thus places poems about spring, the Resurrection, and school graduation together, Dreams and Prayers is divided into three thematic sections:

Metaphors contains poems drawing imagery from nature, literature, history, and more. The title of the section was suggested by the inclusion of a couple of “Untitled Metaphors,” but every poem is built around at least one image of some sort.

Memory and Dreams contains what that title suggests: poems based on or inspired by moments that I can never forget, happy times that I wish I could never forget, and “strange and wonderful” dreams. (As I write in the preface, “There are dreams, and then there are dreams …”)

Finally, Higher Things consists of poems that turn to look upward, either about or addressed to God. This is the longest of the three sections, in part because it ends with my series of poems based on the “O Antiphons.”

The cover was designed by Hannah Linder; her prices are expensive for a “very small indie” author like me, but since she was basically able to “spin straw into gold” they were well worth it, and if I publish a third collection (or end up self-publishing any of my fiction) I plan to make her the first designer I consider for its cover.

Like A Year in Verse, Dreams and Prayers is also full of public-domain illustrations chosen to complement the poems. Readers of the paperback will, I hope, especially enjoy the way a few poems’ words and accompanying illustrations are arranged for even greater effect; my skill with the typesetting tools I use, and the features I’ve implemented in my poetry_ebook_utils toolkit, have significantly improved since Dreams and Prayers was released. (Unfortunately, such instances of hopefully-charming layout and typography cannot be included in an ebook, given the constraints of reflowable layouts for ebook readers.)

Take up and read, and explore the images and memories, dreams and prayers.

Dreams and Prayers is now available in print, on Kindle, and for other ebook readers.

“Revision”

If there’s a word or line you fondly think
Your fledgling poem cannot live without,
Some turn of phrase you could not bear to cut,
Then steel yourself and cut it nonetheless
(And save it in your archives if you must);
‘Tis nearly certain that your heart was wrong,
And fond affection did your verse no good,
So cruel pruning must have strengthened it.
Many an author loves the book she writes
Almost as though it were her child—but, then,
For a much-cherished child to be indulged
And neither disciplined nor ever checked,
Such treatment is as harmful as abuse
And does the child no favors at adulthood.
So too, O poet, take the higher view
Developing your work with balanced growth
Till you present the world a seamless whole.

I began this poem in August of 2016, probably after a discussion on the Holy Worlds writing forum, made a slight revision in early 2018, and then finally sat down and worked out a fitting conclusion a little over a year ago. (The central idea is one that is often repeated, one might even say proverbial, in books about the craft of writing, though I only recently discovered that the pithiest expression of it I often hear ought to be attributed to one Arthur Quiller-Couch; this poem is but my attempt to frame that idea into a less concise and more poetical form.)

I always welcome your comments, questions, or other feedback about this or any other part of my work. If you’d like to read more of my poetry, you can get my book, which contains over sixty of my best poems; browse my archive, much of it also broken down into more-manageable groups; or follow this blog for new poetry (among other things)—at least two poems per month through December. You may also share this poem with others, subject to my sharing policy.

Dreams and Prayers Cover Reveal and Release Date

It’s been a long time since the last formal announcement in this space about my second poetry collection, but the wait is finally (almost) over. Dreams and Prayers is complete, except some final proofreading, and plans for its release are underway.

The Collection

As that post from 2017 explained, and several of the intervening “year-in-review” posts have mentioned, Dreams and Prayers is my second collection of my poetry. It consists of seventy-five poems, divided thematically into three sections … about which more below.

Much like A Year in Verse, my first collection, which I published in Advent 2014, each poem is accompanied by at least one public-domain engraving, drawing, or other illustration. (For a few that are “particularly hard to illustrate” the illustration is a generic divider, but most are chosen specifically for the poem they accompany. There are also a couple of images that I used in A Year in Verse, but the vast majority are “new to me.”) The typesetting has also improved since A Year in Verse: instead of every image being either completely above, completely below, or on the page opposite its poem, in this collection a few poems bring text alongside part of their illustration, and in one case where the illustration was originally designed as a “frame” the poem is set inside it.

All the poems have appeared before on this blog, but nearly all have seen at least some revision, and some have been substantially revised, since then. Also, each poem that didn’t originally have a title now has one. (The poems with titles like “Untitled Metaphor #3” have not had that changed, but there are no poems identified solely by their first line, which made distinguishing them from a new stanza of the previous poem difficult.) None of the poems in Dreams and Prayers previously appeared in A Year in Verse; this is the first appearance in print of every poem.

Dreams and Prayers is divided into three sections: The first section, “Metaphors,” contains the “Untitled Metaphor” poems and several others built around the application of metaphorical images; it is also the part of the collection where I placed any poems that involved imagery but didn’t fit into the more narrowly defined scope of either of the other sections. The second section, “Memory and Dreams,” contains poems drawn from reminiscences or sparked by dreams. And finally, the third section, “Higher Things,” consists of poems either about or addressed to God.

The Cover

After coming up with a basic concept, collecting a few public-domain paintings that could conceivably be used to implement it, and then spending many months either intermittently trying to put them together without making significant progress or just procrastinating, I commissioned Hannah Linder to design a cover.

Here is the design she created for me:

I’m quite pleased with the result, and with this designer’s process—which would have been even smoother if this were a more standard book (such as a novel).

Release Timeline

Since some (admittedly cursory) research suggests that poetry books are most successful when launched in either the spring or the fall, and my preparations are not far enough along for a release before the end of spring without everything going perfectly, I plan to release Dreams and Prayers to the public this fall.

To be on the safe side, I am tentatively planning to release the collection in mid-to-late October, hoping to bring it forward as timelines permit. Two prominent possibilities due to literary resonance are October 14, the birthday of e. e. cummings (whose work on the whole I like, certainly more than most of his contemporary imitators I have had the misfortune to read, but is otherwise unrelated), and September 20, the birthday of Charles Williams (who has been highly influential on my work, but more my Arthurian poems than this collection), but nothing has been settled yet. I will announce a more precise release date once I have it, and any advancements of the timeline as I decide them.

I plan to make the ebook available for preorder some time in advance of the official release date. (Unfortunately, Amazon KDP does not provide that option for print books, so I will only be able to offer preorders for hard copies if I choose another print-on-demand “publisher”.) Once I’ve set that up, I will make a further announcement of that here as well.

The content of the collection is finalized, except perhaps for final proofreading, so I am no longer in need of beta readers for this project … but if you are a reader of poetry, particularly of the kind of poetry I write (which I am well aware is not to every reader’s taste!), I would be happy to provide you a (digital) copy in exchange for an honest review, so please get in touch.

I hope you will join me in anticipating the release of Dreams and Prayers.

“Remembering the Height”

There was a time I read unceasingly:
Never without a book, and sometimes three,
I found delight in learning and in words
And so devoured—even, almost, inhaled—
Page after page, book after lengthy book.
I sipped with pleasure from sweet knowledge-springs
And, deeper still, their fountainhead, the Scriptures.
But now, to read more than old favorites
That stoke, then salve, my melancholy soul
Demands such effort, discipline, and will
That all those books, of late, but gather dust
That I most ought to and most need to read.
God help me! be so firmly in the Word
And in your servants’ edifying words
That I may grow again toward your light
And linger so in lethargy no more.

There was a time I wrote effusively:
In moments between classes or at meals,
And longer undistracted spans at home,
Page after page filled up with pencilled text.
Both fiction—prose—and verse flowed easily
(Though neither any good most of the time),
And lofty goals seemed just within my reach.
But now, these days, though I still feel the call
And sense the story I must try to tell,
A hundred words seems strenuous exertion,
A metered line almost a grueling slog,
And story falters, lifeless, in my mind
Ere I can even think to set it down.
God give me grace! to write as I am called,
Not only when I feel the inward urge,
To bring these tales with which my soul is burdened
Into some form that almost does them justice
So someday those you call to read them can.

There was a time I prayed with fervency,
My supplications daily, if not hourly,
Lifted up to heaven in the confidence
That God, the gracious Father, chose to hear.
But now my melancholy chokes my prayers,
So that my fickle heart cannot but wonder
If my few, half-articulated prayers
Are listened to, or will be ever answered
(Though daily conscious of prevailing mercies).
Lord, I believe—but help my unbelief!
Teach me to pray, and persevere in prayer,
To ever seek the favor of your face
Whether in days of happiness or woe,
Like one communing with a faithful friend,
And teach me to obediently trust
That you both hear and listen to my cries
And are determined, as a righteous Father,
To do in answer what is truly best.

This poem has been a long time in the making. If my notes are to be believed, I began it “probably well before” October 2014, and by March 2015 the first stanza was substantially complete and the second stanza almost so. The poem then sat in that state in my files, with notes about what more I wanted to do with it, for over seven years, at which point I finished the second stanza, and then over the following months wrote the final stanza and made revisions to the rest.

I always welcome your comments, questions, or other feedback about this or any other part of my work. If you’d like to read more of my poetry, you can get my book, which contains over sixty of my best poems; browse my archive, much of it also broken down into more-manageable groups; or follow this blog for new poetry (among other things)—at least two poems per month through December. You may also share this poem with others, subject to my sharing policy.

2024 Year-in-Review, Hopes for 2025

A year ago, I summarized 2023 as a “continuation” of this blog’s “return to activity” after “its most silent hiatus yet,” “enough that readers who missed a post at the time might not notice it scrolling back.” And while I’m nowhere near back to the four-times-weekly posting schedule I managed in the early days of the blog (and have no plans to return to that posting that frequently), 2024 saw almost thirty posts on this blog and a great deal of progress that hasn’t made it to the blog yet, which I will briefly summarize below, along with some of my hopes for the year to come.

Poetry

As in 2023, the vast majority of my posts in 2024 were poetry—none previously published—at a rate of about two a month.

About half of these poems were Psalm settings:

Psalm 29Psalm 30Psalm 31Psalm 32Psalm 33Psalm 34Psalm 35Psalm 36Psalm 37Psalm 38Psalm 39Psalm 40

The other poems were:

TurningWinter TwilightSleepFour Questions“Oh, let me write no more”Bloom of DelightSilence and ShadowA Wistful RemembranceMerlin to Mordred in the Hour of His TriumphBlanchefleur at WinchesterTremblingSail AwayAdvent Invocation

More poems are already scheduled to appear in this space about every other week into December (the next two weeks from today—I think I had hoped to write a “New Year” poem to run today, but if so that idea got lost along the way), and once I finish the half-written Christmas poem (and take the time to find images to accompany it and the poems that are ready but not yet in the queue) that list of pre-scheduled poems will extend quite a bit further.

Red Rain Reviews

Since this blog returned to somewhat-regular activity, the second-most-frequent topic has (probably) been book reviews, and specifically reviews of each new entry in (my friend) Rachel Newhouse‘s Red Rain series. These releases were less frequent in 2024 than 2023, as they have grown significantly larger over the course of the series, but except for the “half book” that received a “stealth release” on the same day as the final “main book”, I reviewed each of the new works in the series:

“Book 7”, Jonah, in February“Book 8”, Queen Sacrifice, in June“Book 9”, False Flag, in November

A review of “Book 8.5”, “Green Dragon”, which as I mentioned was released simultaneously with False Flag without any prior announcement, should be forthcoming once I’ve had a chance to read it; I also plan to read and review her future work. And I hope to get back to writing reviews of other books I (have) read … but we’ll see.

Holiday

This past year, the one holiday that I marked with more than a seasonally-appropriate poem was Thanksgiving, for which I wrote my sixteenth annual reflection. (I did mark both Holy Week and Advent with seasonal poems, however.)

I hope to write more holiday and seasonal posts in 2025, as I have done in past years, but we shall see.

Dreams and Prayers

Dreams and Prayers, my second poetry collection, did not (as I mentioned hopes of a year ago) reach (self-)publication in 2024. But it should, God willing, come to that point in 2025: I could receive a first mockup of the cover I have commissioned any day now, and I have resolved nearly all the “laundry list of mostly-minor issues” that I mentioned a year ago. A more formal announcement to follow once I have a cover.

The Invasion

After spending 2018 making a detailed outline, and briefly starting in 2019, God upended my plans for that year—and then world events forced me to think carefully about reworking my the “future history” that is the story’s background. In 2023 I resumed steady work on the draft, and got about 26 chapters and 33,000 words in, with the help of encouragement and critique from a dear friend. That continued through 2024, until I paused about the beginning of December to write Christmas letters and the like; the draft currently stands at 45 chapters and 58,000 words, with perhaps 17 more chapters to go.

I’m hoping to finish the draft this year, God willing; once I do, I will review my “for revision” notes, make plans for next steps, and possibly make further announcements then.

Task Management

The tool that I have been using to track my tasks since 2009 will, its current owners have announced, be closing down for “non-enterprise” customers in the spring of 2025. In previous years I’ve mentioned working (intermittently) on a “front-end” program to adapt that tool to better fit my needs, but this news makes finding a replacement service the more urgent task.

Conclusion

Thus the year that was, as best I can recall it at the moment, and thus my relevant hopes and plans for the year to come. But may God’s will be done.

“But thanks be to God”: A Sixteenth Reflection

Today is the day once designated by the civil government of these United States for public thanksgiving to the Creator for his gracious gifts lavished upon us in divine Providence. It is thus fitting for me to, as I have done each year since my first Thanksgiving reflection, publicly give thanks for specific blessings, especially those newly experienced,or newly remembered, since last year.

But first and foremost, I am grateful that (in the words of the Heidelberg Catechism)

the eternal Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who out of nothing created heaven and earth with all that is in them, who also upholds and governs them by his eternal counsel and providence, is for the sake of Christ his Son my God and my Father. I trust in him so completely that I have no doubt that he will provide me with all things necessary for body and soul. Moreover, whatever evil he sends upon me in this troubled life he will turn to my good, for he is able to do it, being almighty God, and is determined to do it, being a faithful Father.

I am also grateful for his continued grace in contentment, so that despite so many of my hopes coming to nothing, and despite the ordinary discomforts of life, I am even more confident that everything that happens does so according to God’s eternal plan and is thus for the best. This is not to say that he has yet cured me of complaining, but I have learned to believe that, as the hymn says, “Whate’er my God ordains is right.”

Second, I am still grateful for God’s gracious help in my writing, both in poetry and prose. In last year’s reflection I mentioned that I had poems scheduled to run in this space twice a month through that coming July; by God’s grace I have been not only able to continue that pace through this whole year, but to schedule them out to nearly the end of next year. (There is one spot on the calendar for which I want a seasonally-relevant poem, which I haven’t yet finished, but once I do and can make the time to find accompanying images, I have enough in my “presentable” backlog to either immediately extend that lead by several more months or increase the pace to three poems a month.)

A large proportion of the new, rather than newly-polished, poems have been Psalm settings; I am grateful for God’s grace in leading my thoughts when considering the texts to wording that feels both pleasing to my poetic sensibilities and sufficiently my own (not merely copying a translation or some other setting).

On the prose front, I am grateful that God has given me the will to keep at the draft of The Invasion. As I mentioned last year, I had planned for this to be my major project for 2019 before God turned my life upside down, but I finally resumed it last year. At this time last year it stood at about 32,000 words and 26 chapters; to my amazement, it now stands at about 58,000 words and 45 chapters, and the end is definitely in sight. More about this in the coming months.

I am particularly grateful for the faithful encouragement, wise counsel, and sensible critique of my dear friend who has taken time from her own very busy schedule to read each chapter as I finish it.

Third, I am grateful for meaningful work with a supportive and skilled team, by which God has both abundantly provided for my financial needs and given me the means to both have a part in the advancement and service of his kingdom and seek to delight friends and family.

Finally (in the brief time I have today), I am grateful that God’s kindness and favor is not conditional on anything in me or that I do, in response or otherwise: I have (as I have noted in many previous reflections) always failed to give God the thanks his magnanimity deserves, even in my most effusive praises, and have often squandered his gifts. But because I know him to be my Father for the sake of his Son, while this is no excuse for high-handedly wilful neglect or rebellion, I can trust that his mercy and grace will be the same for me through all my life and beyond, as they have been for those who went before.

Praise him for his grace and favor
To our fathers in distress;
Praise him, still the same as ever
Slow to chide and swift to bless:
Alleluia! Alleluia! Glorious in his faithfulness.

False Flag Signals Greatness

The Red Rain series by Rachel Newhouse has covered a lot of stylistic and thematic ground, from the eerie minimalism of the original novella, to madcap action, to intensive recomplication, to sympathetic backstory for a villain, to romance, to suspense … and I could go on. In my review of Blue Fire, “#5” in the series, I wrote:

I’d say she’s again “added another string to her bow,” but at this point it’s better to say “how many strings does her bow have?”

But for False Flag, released today, the question is more “How many strings can she use in one story?” There’s suspense, action, politics, arguments, conviction, repentance, forgiveness, and oh, so much more …

Mrs. Newhouse has, a few times in the past, written stories that felt “in the moment” like they weren’t significant, but that left me with a feeling of substantial themes as I closed them, a feeling I first put words to when I met it in Meet the Austins by Madeline L’Engle. But I think that False Flag is the first time that the thematic weight has both been palpable at moments during the story and left me saying at the end, “Oh. Ohhh!” Her alternate-history novel Peter’s Angel (now out of print for revision) had a similar “weight” in its pages, but less cohesively, conclusively, and effectively.

As (almost) always, Mrs. Newhouse continues to demonstrate mastery of compelling narrative voice, making this yet another story I didn’t want to put down and stayed up far too late finishing. There are perhaps some touches of advanced characterization to distinguish the two point-of-view characters’ voices, which are (as I’ve noted in reviews of previous entries) on the whole far too similar, but regardless, the narrative gripped me from beginning to end. Mrs. Newhouse is the one author who can overcome my severe dislike of dystopian fiction, and in this story she again does not disappoint.

I hesitate to mention specifics of the plot, both to avoid spoilers of either this book or previous entries, but I will say that False Flag both brings the greatest deepening of character development (in both senses of that term) the series has seen yet, and a level of “intensive recomplication” that may be nearing that of Andromeda, and a series of logical but unexpected twists even greater than the madcap adventures of “Prisoner 120518”.

As an example of this character growth, in my review of Crook Q I wrote, to explain why I thought that novella was lacking compared to “Prisoner 12058”:

In Crook Q, we see Philli again caught up in events she did not initiate, she does not understand, and the text does not (yet) explain, mostly facing choices of whether and how much to go along with others’ plans outside her control that present (at times complex) challenges to her morality.

Much of that is technically true in False Flag, with “the text does not (yet) explain” as the notable exception, but here she knowingly chooses to, at times, act in ignorance; her innocence has grown from childish naiveté to mature (or at least maturing) humility.

In my review of the previous entry in the series, Queen Sacrifice, I mentioned concerns about that novel’s handling of “increasingly explicit Christian themes”. One of my two primary concerns there is not really an issue here: this story does not contain any instances of questionable characters making theological arguments, whether of a “plausible but unsound” variety or not. The conflict comes either between characters whose loyalties and backgrounds are sufficiently known (and in one key case spelled out in the pages here) but which give them different perspectives, or from characters arguing with or consciously trying to resist God. The latter, however, do illustrate my remaining concern: For both of the point-of-view characters, it is “normal” to have verbal conversations with an unheard “Voice”, and the only time this is ever questioned it is by a minor character who thinks it might be a sign of mental illness. Setting aside the question of whether God ever does converse with Christians in the modern world in this way, I feel that the more knowledgeable characters (and quite possibly even Philadelphia by this point) should be aware that other more hostile spirits exist that are capable of misleading the unwary.

On the other hand, just about everything else in the themes and religious aspects of False Flag (that I noticed) is both appropriate to the story, appropriate to the times, appropriate for the nominal audience (more than some of the superficial “content” would be judged to be by a reviewer who was legalistic about the standard guidelines), and masterfully handled within the story. Some of the themes (it would be a spoiler to be more specific) feel more like delightful modulations than mere repetitions of themes that earlier stories already explored extensively—“from a certain point of view” it could even be argued that this is essentially the same story as the original novella at more than twice the word count, but to me this makes False Flag all the more satisfying.

I hesitate to say that False Flag is the most enjoyable story so far in the Red Rain series: the series grew so large so fast, and then slowed again, that my impressions of the early-post-hiatus entries have begun to blur together in my memory. But with False Flag, in my opinion, the Red Rain series has begun to take on the sort of lasting thematic “weight” that I’d seen glimmers of in Peter’s Angel and more telling signs of in her Erde worldbuilding, but not in this series previously. Brava!

I received a “free” electronic copy of *False Flag as a supporter on the author’s Patreon.*

Queen Sacrifice Brings Complications

Rachel Newhouse has now released Queen Sacrifice, the next book in her Amazon-bestselling Red Rain series … and like Jonah, it leaves the story feeling palpably closer to some inevitable and irreversible conclusion.

Jonah ended with one of the biggest cliffhanger endings the series has seen yet (which is saying something); Queen Sacrifice picks up moments later, opening with a resolution of that cliffhanger involving what seems to be, quite literally, a miracle. For me, this used up most of the “willing suspension of disbelief” credit Mrs. Newhouse has built up over the course of the series, coming far too close to what Patricia Wrede called the “hack writer’s gambit”—but as it ends up causing Our Heroes even more trouble over the course of the book, it works here.

Queen Sacrifice continues the trend of increasingly explicit Christian themes, as the escalating tension of the series brings the characters through spiritual crises. I’m of several minds about this, however: the church gatherings we see “on screen” are invariably of a charismatic strain, and a fair amount of the arguments spoken using religious premises come from characters whose loyalties are strongly in question (and these arguments are generally of the “seemingly plausible but not entirely sound” variety) … but this series is aimed at the “middle grade and young adult” market, and “seductively dangerous theology” is a particular danger to such readers. (I recently discovered the “for parents and teachers” page on the author’s website, which enumerates “content warnings” in the typical categories in surprisingly detailed fashion; I’m of the mind that parents should consider “dubious theology” as another category similar to “violence” or “sexual content” when deciding what to allow growing minds to consume, but unfortunately identifying instances would be an all-but-impossible task for an author even aside from the divisions that seem to make one denomination’s heresy another’s core teaching, and listing them without giving spoilers would be almost impossible as well.)

As (almost) always, Mrs. Newhouse’s command of narrative voice shines through in Queen Sacrifice, so that once I got going I could scarcely put it down. However, as with Jonah and “Laodicea”, the characters’ “voices” were far too similar; if the chapters weren’t labeled with the name of their point-of-view character, deducing whose “head” the story had us currently “in” would require a fair amount of detective work on the part of the reader—especially early on.

As the series has gone on, the length of each entry in the series has tended to grow. Red Rain was distinctly a novella (the original cover even said “A Novella”), but at nearly twice its length Queen Sacrifice is clearly a full-length novel (if perhaps somewhat short by modern SF standards). The increased length is a definite improvement, and offers the author structural opportunities that would otherwise only be possible between books (and that Mrs. Newhouse had mostly not left herself time to plan for) … but it also means that any defects in the structure can stand out to some eyes. In this case, it felt like several of the events (each taking a scene or two or three to describe, possibly interspersed with other threads) could have been rearranged with little change to the story. As much as I appreciated the extra lead time to read the novel and write this review before the official release, some additional revision might have been helpful.

As mentioned above, Jonah ended on a major cliffhanger, which in my review I said was “perhaps Mrs. Newhouse’s biggest cliffhanger ending yet”; Queen Sacrifice matches or exceeds it. If your opinion of cliffhanger endings is like mine, I would suggest waiting to read this until the next book is at least formally announced.

Finally, about the title: I am not entirely sure what in the story it is primarily intended as a description of, but that’s in part because I can think of several possibilities that would all fit. Since the title is also a more directly evocative one than some previous titles in the series, I certainly can’t think of a better title for this novel.

On the whole, I consider Queen Sacrifice a worthy addition to the series, well worth reading (for adult readers of strong faith, as alluded to above), but it’s not quite up to the standard set by previous entries. Even so, however, I’m looking forward to finding out what happens next.

I received a “free” electronic copy of *Queen Sacrifice as a supporter on the author’s Patreon.*