Lando - A Short Review

For the first time, I felt like L’Amour allowed his main character, Orlando Sackett, to fail. Unlike all previous Sacketts, Lando suffered from a lack of connection to his parents, his mother having died when he was young and his father abandoning him to be cared for by an evil man. He ran away from his guardian and lived alone in his parents’ cabin on a Tennessee mountainside, but he hadn’t benefited from the training in woodcraft and combat that other Sacketts had received from their fathers. Sure, he was still self-reliant and skilled due simply to surviving the wilderness alone.

The second great difference is that Lando was captured by crooked Mexican outlaws/police in his efforts to recover his share of a sunken treasure off the coast of that country. He suffered years of abuse and torture, though he never broke. Even so, unlike Orrin or Tyrel, his distant cousins, he would never be a ladies’ man or a successful leader of men. Lando became a sort of fighting brute.

In the end, Lando was successful in getting revenge on those who had crossed him and sent him into the dark hole of torment. But, unlike the other Sackett novels, that is all the redemption or blessing the reader gets from this novel. Sure, Lando works hard, but his is always made to – it isn’t an ethic that we can uphold as pure and for emulation.

As a book, the differences were somewhat refreshing to me. It gets old to see the characters always luck into perfect situations and never suffer from their mistakes or those of others.

Sackett - A Short Review

In this book, L’Amour introduces us to the older brother of Tyrel and Orrin from The Daybreakers – William Tell Sackett. Tell, as he’s known, stumbled across a gold mine in the mountains, and the rest of the book is about him trying to protect that gold (and the future it could buy him) from several groups of outlaws looking to steal it from him. In the meantime, he also found a nearly-starved girl in the same mountains. He saves her, then almost loses her due to the hard way he deals with those seeking to rob and murder him. In the end, when she finally learns the necessity of responding ferociously to such dangers, she falls for him.

Like all of the Sackett novels, the men are hardened to difficulties and deeply fair in their treatment of others. They work hard for what they want, and that hard work is rewarded with success. I am attracted to this sort of dynamic. I want to work hard and see the profit from that work. Tell avoids killing when he can, which is saying a lot. He even saves the life of a man who had intended to kill him but broke his leg in the mountains and was left by the other bad guys. This is a good ethic for men to live by.

Transformational Discipleship - A Short Review

In this follow-up book to Transformational Church, the three authors propose a framework for discipleship that leads to life transformation. This framework is shown in a sort of Venn diagram in which there are three circles: Truth, Posture, and Leaders. Life-transforming discipleship is said to occur at the conjunction of these elements.

Truth includes: Gospel, Identity, and Disciplines. Each of these is a screen or lens through which we see the world. The Gospel, the good news of Jesus Christ, must become part of the way we see and understand everything in life. Our true identity in Jesus Christ must be maintained, as we are constantly tempted to assume a false identity. Disciplines are usually what discipleship efforts are made up of. Here, they are another important lens for understanding the truths of life. They aren’t the end of discipleship, as if getting a person to daily read the Bible and pray are the goals. No, the goal is to use those disciplines to move someone closer to the God all of this is really about.

Posture refers to the sort of attitude a person must adopt to be in position for life transformation. We see this with the Rich Young Ruler – religious pride and material independence do not lend themselves to the humility and dependence we need to be molded by God. The book calls for a recognition of our weakness and rejection of a sort of John Wayne-ish bootstrap way forward in our own strength. It calls for interdependence within the body of believers seeking to be discipled. It also calls for an outward focus, on the mission of God and on the needs of others, instead of the inward, selfish focus our sinful hearts adopt naturally.

Healthy leaders are those who can help other disciples find the truth and adopt the posture that will lead to life transformation.

In the end, if God is real and the Bible is true, we should be seeing awesome changes within the hearts, minds, and actions of every believer in Jesus Christ. This is the goal of all ministry. I do believe that this book has hit upon an important framework for getting into position for transformation. Just like a sailing ship had to set the sails and wait on the wind, this framework helps us to be in a position to cooperate with the Holy Spirit in His time to make the change He desires in His people.

Fields of Fire - A Short Review

I’ve been reading this series of sci-fi novels for a couple years now, getting the newest one soon after it hit Amazon. It’s inexpensive, for a new novel, I supposed because it is only being distributed as an ebook. These books do have some difficult language, but not too much, in my opinion. They deal with sexuality in a very non-explicit way, which I hope is the only way it is ever mentioned in future books. The author is a veteran, and the military culture expressed in the novels feels incredibly authentic.

This book was the story of the various human militaries (North American Commonwealth, Sino-Russian Alliance, and European Union) combining their remaining might to strike back at the Lankies on Mars. The hope was that the humans would be able to completely defeat the aliens and regain control of the Red Planet, but this was not to be. The forces involved in the attack suffered terrible casualties, though our main characters did survive. Many civilians who had been trapped on Mars were saved. The biggest development in the novel was that humanity learned that the Lankies were far smarter and more complex than they had seemed. The aliens laid excellent traps and thought in tactical and strategic concepts. They learned from their past encounters with humans how to counter their technologies. They are also able to reproduce their powerful starships in a sort-of organic manner, which means that defeating them will be like stopping an incoming tide.

This was a fun book. For anyone interested in the sci-fi genre. It is sort of like Starship Troopers, without the comedic element.

Wolf Hall - A Short Review

This is an award-winning book about Thomas Cromwell’s role in the events surrounding Henry VIII’s overthrow of papal power in England. This is the first book in a series of at least three, with the third still being written, I believe. It definitely feels like a part of a series, since its conclusion is hardly satisfying. It points toward the next volume. I prefer that books I read in a series be more able to stand on their own.

The other issue I had with this book was that it was sometimes difficult to determine who was speaking. I guess part of this comes from the simple fact that there weren’t a ton of different surnames used in those days. There are lots of Thomas’s and Henry’s in the book. The other thing is that the book is written from Cromwell’s perspective such that he is rarely identified when he speaks or thinks. The result is that, normally, if you can’t quite tell who is speaking, it is safe to assume that Cromwell is the speaker.

Those gripes aside, I did enjoy the book. That period of English history was a dark one, and reading this book further convinces me of it. As an American, the social difference between the nobility and the peasants on display in the book is fascinating and disgusting. Cromwell, born a commoner and a self-taught, self-raised individual, becomes the most powerful man in England (arguably, beside the king) in spite of his background, and he is hated for it.

I look forward to reading the other volumes of the series in order to see the conclusion of the unfolding tale.