Wednesday 23 March 2016

Reality Calling Christian Speculative Fiction Review Award: Janet Ursel

I am pleased to share this with everyone reading this and those who follow this blog. 

I share my reviews with author and fellow reviewer, David Bergsland, of Reality Calling


Reality Calling has as its vision to, 
.....provide resources for the Christian author, vetted books for readers, anointed materials to share with the Kingdom and the world, and a book review site with reviews from trusted reviewers.
Technical support and mentoring for Christian self-publishers is found in our companion site: The Skilled Workman. There you will also find Writing In InDesign Producing Books, the book on the best method to self-publish on a professional level.
Our twin focus is first to encourage authors to participate in the final harvest as we prepare for the Coming of our King. It’s a glorious time to be alive and the Lord is looking for authors to help Him save all possible before the Wrath which is to come falls on the Earth.
Second, we also need and serve readers, and commenters, both to help us stay on track, and to share these resources with their friends and acquaintances. As authors and creators, we must stay attached to the Head, Jesus, as well as the readers we serve. For having a call from God necessarily means we serve those we are given. Our readers are our flock with whom we are called minister. Jesus told us we will be held to account for everything we say [or write]. We take that seriously.
As a major part of this vision, I believe that the Kingdom needs more authors willing to lay it all on the line and share books containing the reality of the Christian life. We need books which go beyond mentions of church and vague faith statements. We really need books which share the reality of the power available to believers to bring love, joy, and healing to a world desperately needing hope. The darkness we see in the world today is but the birth pangs of the coming Kingdom on Earth. That’s our glorious hope. God, the Father of us all, is coming to live with us forever in an earth designed for us to share. Alleluia!
Evolving from this, David felt that authors needed to be encouraged and awarded for their efforts in writing according to what he outlined in the above paragraph. In conjunction with him, we have instigated the, 


Reality Calling Christian Speculative 
Fiction Review Awards


There are five awards: (click on their title for more information)

The purpose of this post is to award an author whose book I have reviewed recently that meets the previously mentioned criteria in her novel, but more specifically, the criteria developed by David for Christian Redemptive Speculative Fiction:
The basic redeeming portion of these books are characters who have been born of God, born from above, or reborn [as Jesus explained to Nicodemus in John 3]. This is done realistically, the way it actually happens in our lives. The key criteria is that lives are transformed when they encounter and believe in a Savior. This transformation is explained by Paul in Romans 12: 1-2 and in Ephesians 4:17 & following. John discusses it in I John 3, explaining the righteousness expected of all believers. 
This spiritual reality is just a normal part of the world view forming the background of the book. The basis of spiritual authority is found in God’s scriptures. God speaks to His people primarily through the scriptures. There is commonly a strong focus on baptism, usually by immersion. The believers in the book are led into a personal relationship with the Lord Messiah by scripture, circumstance, and experience. Wisdom and guidance are found in the Scriptures and in groups of believers who share experiences and knowledge under the guidance of elders or overseers.

After reading this author's novels debut novel recently, I was encouraged and uplifted by her inclusion of elements of the Redemptive Fiction criteria in her novel, therefore, I gladly award a Redemptive Fiction Award to: 


Janet Ursel





View my review here


















In this Christian fantasy, one young wizard with a hunger for wisdom and some dangerous secrets finds himself pitted against another ready to reach for power with the darkest forces possible. Wizards have never in the history of Coventree, renounced Wizardry. But Blayn Goodwin finds himself growing detached from the practice of Wizardry, even as he rises through the ranks to become the youngest member of the Supreme Council. He has lost interest in the usual gods in favor of a god without a name, not that he makes that fact public. Edgar Savile has his own traitorous secrets and kidnaps Blayn’s eldest son to prevent Blayn from probing into them. Meanwhile, the Supreme Wizard, suspicious of Edgar, sends Blayn to retrieve an ancient book from the Other World, hoping it will arm them against Edgar’s treachery. What Blayn finds is not what anyone expects, and threatens to tear Coventree’s fraying system apart at the seams.



Congratulation's Janet!

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