Auralia's Colors: Wow, it doesn't suck!

I finally finished reading the book 'Auralia's Colors' last night and guess what? It doesn't suck! This is a surprise because normally when I start to read a book several times and never finish, suckiness is pretty much guaranteed.

I suppose this book fooled me because it starts out kind of slow, when the main character is a baby, and then there is a rather overly poetic bit on the theme of 'colors'. But as you go on the book grows on you, like a fungus only not so icky.

The story is about a kingdom in which the former queen has made a proclamation forbidding the wearing or owning of colorful items. All such items must be given to the king to be locked up in his vaults.

Auralia is raised by Gatherers--- criminals condemned to life outside the walls. She spends her time in the forest, finding colors of her own. And this is what gets her in trouble.

Auralia creates colorful items which are more than just beautiful. They have power. In one case, one of Auralia's items cures a woman of blindness.

The world Auralia lives in is full of dangers, from the half-human beastmen in the woods to the tyrannical king and his agents. But she isn't afraid, and one reason she isn't is because she has dreams of a creature called 'the Keeper'. It is revealed the everyone dreams of the Keeper, at least in childhood, but that grown folk don't believe that the Keeper is real. But Auralia does.

The Keeper is about as close as the book gets to Christian content, which will displease some, but the book is very beautiful and artistic and may even please many who are not (yet) Christians and who would not be open to more overt Christian content.

I won't go into any more detail lest I reveal 'spoilers', but I'm very glad I took the time to finish this book. And I'm very glad the book has a sequel, Cyndere's Midnight: A Novel (The Auralia Thread). I hope to be able to afford to buy it someday soon.

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If you are interested in Christian science fiction and fantasy, scroll down my sidebar until you find the blogroll entitled 'Here Be CSSFBT Blogs'. These are the blogs of members of the Christian Science Fiction and Fantasy Blog Tour. These blogs are likely to have content of interest to you, please visit them!



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Socks Clinton Currie, 1989-2009

Last Friday Socks Clinton Currie, the former Clinton cat who was given to Betty Currie when the Clintons left the White House, died. He had throat cancer.

Socks was given away by the Clintons when they got a dog, Buddy, who didn't get along with Socks. Buddy was hit by a car not long afterwards, but no one ever proved Socks had anything to do with the hit.

Having lost two cats of my own, Claudius and Germanicus, not so long ago, I really sympathize with Betty Currie in her loss.

To prevent bumming everyone out, here is a video of kittens.

Kittens On a Roomba @ Yahoo! Video

And you thought Esperanto was weird....

Today's blog post is dedicated to Volapük, the John the Baptist of constructed languages. Volapük was invented 1879, about 10 years before Esperanto was. Esperanto has 2-4 million speakers worldwide, Volapük has a total of 25-30 speakers only, most of whom learned about the existence of Volapük through the Esperanto movement.

The main reason for learning Volapük is the weirdness factor. On a more practical note, I've always thought that Volapük would make a great language to use in a novel as an alien/exotic tongue for science fiction or fantasy works. That's because though the vocabulary of Volapük is based on English, the words are truncated and weird-looking--- as in 'nim', derived from animal, or 'fat' derived from father.

There are two versions of Volapük, the original language published in 1879 and 'modern Volapük' based on a revision of the language made in 1930. Volapük is also used as the name for a system of encoding the Russian language in Latin characters, but this has nothing to do with Volapuk the language. In the Esperanto language, the phrase 'It's Greek to me' is translated 'It's Volapük to me'.



Volapük links

Handbook of Volapük -- in the original version of Volapük
O Fat obas The Lord's Prayer in Volapük, which is also at Christus Rex
'Volapük' in Wikipedia (in English)
Volapük Online Resource which has lessons and reading material in the language, plus English-Volapük dictionary.
Ten Lesson postal course in modern Volapük
Volapük links list
The New Testament in Volapük
Vükiped - Wikipedia in Volapük
Volapop a page entirely in Volapük. I have no clue what it is about.
Menefe Bal Püki Bal a blog in Volapük
Volapuk a Yahoo group about and in Volapük
Karl May article in Wikipedia, which mentions May's work being translated into Volapük.

Cyndere's Midnight

This month's book on the Christian Science Fiction and Fantasy blog tour is Cyndere's Midnight by Jeffrey Overstreet. This is the sequel to Auralia's Colors by the same author.

Cyndere's Midnight is the story of Cyndere, the heiress to a great house. She and her husband Deuneroi want to help the beastmen, until Deuneroi is killed by the very people he's trying to help. Cyndere forms an alliance with the beastman Jordam, who is enchanted by Auralia's Colors and inspired to fight the curse of his nature.

To learn more about the book, visit amazon.com to see the reviews and also visit the other members of the blog tour, listed below.

I don't have much to say about Cyndere's Midnight myself as I haven't been able to afford the book. (One can sometimes get books free from the blog tour, but the last TWO I asked for never arrived for some reason, possibly eaten by the postman) I do have the previous book, Auralia's colors, and I read the first few chapters in preparation for the blog tour for that book, and re-read those chapters in preparation for this blog tour. I just couldn't get into it.

I think the reason for that is that the 'colors' theme of the book is just too overwhelming and overstated for my taste. The 'colors' thing kind of sucked the energy out of the story that needed to be used in establishing the characters as people I could care about.

I hope I am not being too critical here, I did like what I've read enough to want to finish the book and read the next one. I've just become more distractable as I get older and don't finish a lot of books I've started.

Another reason I don't want to be too critical is that in a writing project of my own I am at risk of doing the same thing as Overstreet did. Instead of the 'colors' thing I'm using the 'five elements' of Chinese tradition. I'm hoping to tone it down enough to keep it subtle, however, but who knows if I will succeed.

Some of the folks blogging on the tour have a criticism that the Christianity in this book is too subtle and may be missed--- that the work might be mistaken for a secular work. Personally I am OK with this. For many years of my life I was a Pagan by religion, and certainly would have preferred to read Christian fiction that was more subtle. (I did read Christian fiction back then, including the Left Behind series). I think that both subtle Christian fiction, and fiction with overt/obvious Christian content both have a place.

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Please pray for Ellie, my mom's friend (and mine) who at 80-something years old has just had emergency heart surgery and is not recovering well, isn't breathing on her own, needs dialysis and possibly will have a leg amputated due to diabetes complications ( and her children are looking for the living will, I've heard). Also pray for Ellie's daughter Anna who has bipolar disorder and is very close to/dependent on her mother. THANKS.

Update: Feb. 22, 2009 Ellie passed away a couple days ago, her funeral is today. Please do pray for Anna, this is very hard on her.
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*Featured book, Cyndere’s Midnight - http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1400072530
Jeffrey Overstreet’s Web site - http://lookingcloser.org/
Jeffrey Overstreet’s blog - http://lookingcloser.org/category/journal/
Jeffrey Overstreet at Facebook - http://www.facebook.com/people/Jeffrey-Overstreet/42902959


Please visit the other members of the blog tour and see what they have to say.
√ Brandon Barr
√√√ Keanan Brand
√√ Rachel Briard
√√ Melissa Carswell
√√√ Valerie Comer
√√ Karri Compton(not on the original list)
√√ Amy Cruson
CSFF Blog Tour
√ Stacey Dale
D. G. D. Davidson
√√√ Shane Deal
√ Jeff Draper
√ April Erwin
√ Karina Fabian
√ Marcus Goodyear(not on the original list)
√ Todd Michael Greene
Katie Hart
√√√ Timothy Hicks
√ Jason Isbell
√√ Jason Joyner
√ Kait
Carol Keen
Magma
√ Eve Nielsen
Nissa
√√√ Wade Ogletree
√√√ John W. Otte
√√√ John Ottinger
√√√ Steve Rice
Crista Richey
Alice M. Roelke
√√ Chawna Schroeder
√ James Somers
√√ Rachel Starr Thomson
√√√ Robert Treskillard
√√ Steve Trower
√ Speculative Faith
√√√ Fred Warren
√√√ Jill Williamson

And a bonus post from CSFF member Hanna, who didn’t sign up to participate in this tour.