Book Review - Coming Day

Coming Day - by Rachel Starr Thomson

The Final Battle

Treachery and division are tearing apart the Seventh World.  Evil factions right and left are seeking to capture the Gifted and steal their powers, wipe out those dear to them, and destroy all freedom and hope and mention of the long-absent King.  

The evil Morning Star is coming, bringing all the hordes of Blackness with him. 

The last straggling bands of Gypsies and the few brave farmer rebels of Pravik prepare for the final battle. But only the King can save them.  So Virginia the blind seer sets out on a fool's errand to find him.

What follows is a race to find the King and unite the Gifted to usher in his coming.  And that coming is something they never could have expected.  

"...all ends here are only beginnings."

Last night I stayed up till about 4 a.m. to finish reading Coming Day.  Sobbing.  Laughing.  Closing the book, turning out the light, and seeing from my pillow the clouds sail past black branches and a lone bright planet in the sky.  

Crying with joy in the dark.  

It was so good, I hardly dare write about it, for fear I'll get it wrong.  Yet I must - for myself, for Rachel, for my blog readers, for anyone else who might enjoy this epic tale of good against evil. 

As far as the plot goes, I confess it went by in a bit of a blur.  Captures followed by wild escapes, battles, wounds,  friends dying.  Walking in darkness to find a fabled King, when instinct says to run and help imperiled friends.  Seeing the world ending... and then beginning afresh.  

I don't think I've been this spiritually encouraged by a book in a long time.  I felt that I turned a corner in the last few chapters, and found that the story which began in a strange land, a land vaguely similar to my own but the stuff of legend, had ended up all the way in my own room at 4 p.m.

It was not a startling jolt from a world of wonder back into my own dull life.  Rather, it was like waking from a glorious dream to find that the best parts have been true all along.  The King tapped me on the shoulder, and his eyes are laughing still.

I closed the book with a thrilling, aching joy.  And the prayer of Rehtse, "both prophecy and petition," echoes through me:

Your kingdom come, we pray.

Come soon.

~

Book 1 - Worlds Unseen  | Book 2 - Burning Light

What I did with my Friday

Today I got to stay at home mostly - yay!  I confess, I was a bit lazy.  Here's some of what I did: 

• reading
• blogging about my book
• cleaning kitchen
• more reading, reading, reading...
• making dough for challah and cinnamon rolls
• having a splendid time seeing Tangled with my lovely mother
• coming home to bake my breads
• eating cinnamon roll
• next up - more reading!

Tangled was fun.  Aside from a possible jab at stay-at-home daughters, or rather, "horrid over-protective mothers who repress them and keep them from following their dreams"... sigh.  Poor girls like Rapunzel don't get to do anything but clean kitchens and make cinnamon rolls and read and blog...

;-)

Yes. Anyways.  I don't want to make a huge deal of that, since the repressive "mother" was a actually a witch, and not Rapunzel's mother at all.  And real stay-at-home daughters are rarely locked inside their houses!  Home is base of operations, not a pretty prison like poor Rapunzel had. But Rapunzel thought she was running away from home, from her mother, and even though she clearly felt wrong about it some of the time, it might need more discussion with little kids. 

Otherwise I liked it very much.  Aside from the above possible problematic interpretation, it's a classic story of a girl who longs to see the beautiful, wonderful things in the world, has adventures, falls in love, and eventually discovers she's a princess and has a family much better than her vain, fake, lying kidnapper.

I suppose it's a bit like we Christians, when we find we're royalty and children of God.  How can we go on living the same way once that's clear, and continue to submit to our old tyrants of safety and comfort and sin?  And perhaps even non-Christians suspect there's more to life than meets the eye, that greater powers are at work "outside the tower," beyond what they can see and touch.

If only we could get out and see the flying lanterns!  They can't be just stars.  We have a feeling they mean something.

Alright, enough rambling.  Good review here.  Have a lovely Saturday!

P.S. The horse was tremendous.  

P.P.S. I really shouldn't do two posts in one day, especially when I have such trouble doing even semi-weekly posts.  This is not a regular thing.  End of public service announcement. 

Andrew Peterson's "Counting Stars"

This came in the mail today.

Walked outside into the evening air to check, because I've been waiting long... and there it was, in crisp manila packaging, waiting behind the other envelopes.  For Rael.  From the Rabbit Room. CD-shaped.

And I jumped up and down like a kid at Christmas in front of our mailbox. And carried my treasure into the house, and let it sit in its cellophane packaging, and did some other stuff. Almost afraid of the first listen, because there can only ever be one.
 

Finally I did listen, headphones on and lyrics before me, to take in the stories and songs Andy had to tell.

Well told. Beautifully, sorrowfully, full of love and children and ache. Darkness that we cannot shake. Hope that lives on in the night. Stars shining forever beyond Sauron's reach.
 

Andrew Peterson's done it again. How does he keep writing this stuff that gets better and better? 

I beseech thee, good reader, if you have any love for acoustic and intimate songs that whisper of God through the beauties and sorrows, songs of this world where God waits just around the corner and watches from the blackest sky, ready to hold you up when you've almost forgotten hope - do give this a listen. 

And then another. 

And another.

Because Andy's music is like that. There can only be one first listen, yes, but like any good story, every song is better with each telling. There's always more to those words than can be caught right off. Listen long enough, and they start to soak into your soul's skin and tell you stuff.

May the telling go on and on until the stars we count with Abraham become breathing things we hold.  

Until faith is sight. 

Until the waiting is over and the Reckoning done.

Echo

You call me beloved.
I echo, till
weak, faint, fading away,
dying, trying, I say, still,
what You, Beloved,
first put into Word,
battered against your Father’s mountain,
sounding the perfect echo
that began the avalanche of saints' songs.

~Rael~

written in 2007

Hope Comes Galloping

I long to see him face-to-face. I long to put my hand in his side, and touch the scars. I want to thank him and to worship him without this confounded veil between us. Just fighting to believe can make you weary, and faith is hard to hold. 

But we are given moments of reprieve. Easter comes around and the pews are full of every-Sunday sinners and once-in-a-blue-moon saints. The ice melts. The daffodils glow like little suns. We remember the earth-shaking fact of the resurrection of Jesus, and hope comes galloping in from the east, trumpeting the tune of victory.

~ Andrew Peterson ~

Read the rest, and listen to an achingly lovely song, here:
Easter Song of the Day: "Risen Indeed"

He is risen!

Psyche's Longing

"What is it?" said I, looking down at her lap where our four hands were joined.

"This," she said, "I have always - at least, ever since I can remember - had a kind of longing for death."

"Ah, Psyche," I said, "have I made you so little happy as that?"

"No, no, no," she said.  "You don't understand... It was when I was happiest that I longed most.  It was on happy days when we were up there on the hills, the three of us, with the wind and the  sunshine... where you couldn't see Glome or the palace.  Do you remember?  The colour and the smell, and looking across at the Grey Mountain in the distance?  And because it was so beautiful, it set me longing, always longing.  Somewhere else there must be more of it.  Everything seemed to be saying, Psyche come!  But I couldn't (not yet) come and I didn't know where I was to come to. It almost hurt me.  I felt like a bird in a cage when the other birds of its kind are flying home."

~ from Till We Have Faces by C. S. Lewis ~