A Christian's opinion of Dekker's Circle trilogy

I finally finished reading Green, the last book in the four book trilogy (quartet?) by Ted Dekker. And wow, I did not like it at all. Spoilers abound in the following review.

Ted Dekker is a Christian author. The Circle trilogy is about a guy named Thomas Hunter who falls asleep in our world and wakes up in another world, a paradise where God ("Elyon") plays with sinless human beings as a little kid. Thomas gets to be the Adam who brings about the downfall of this paradise, by releasing the black bats, which are the epitome of evil.

At the same time, on our world, Thomas is the vessel for perfecting and releasing a killer virus that will wipe out everyone living. So Thomas jumps back and forth between worlds, trying to save them both. In the end he sort of does. At least, he stops the killer virus and goes to the other world to stay.

The story seemed finished, but Dekker apparently couldn't leave it alone, because along came Showdown.


The Circle trilogy introduced these things called the Books of the Histories, where if you write in them, whatever you write actually happens. Showdown, while gripping, disgusted me to the extreme, and I wouldn't recommend anybody reading it, unless they don't mind seeing children horrible mangled, abused, and killed.



After that was Saint, an actual good book about an assassin guy with telekinetic powers. It, too, tied back into Showdown and the Circle.






The sequel to Saint was Sinner, an alarming book in which Christianity is outlawed in the United States, and the heroes of Showdown and Saint come together to do battle. It has a downer of an ending.

So, after slogging through all of this, along comes Green, the fourth book of the Circle "trilogy", attempting to wrap up the entire series. The series is riddled with plotholes and inconsistencies, and in my opinion it's because Dekker wrote them way too quickly, taking three or four months per book. That's definitely not enough for a second or third draft, and it shows.

Green opens up with Thomas again, who, since we last saw him, has become a spineless whiny wimp who doesn't have any more faith. The bad guys, who doubt Elyon and want to kill each other, are much more interesting than Thomas. Even Elyon isn't as interesting as the evil bats.

The villain from Showdown and Sinner reappears, and connects everything back to the beginning of Showdown. And he is much more interesting to read about than the good guys. A vampire chick shows up (she's somehow half bat), and she's also more interesting than the good guys. In the meantime, the good guys are weak, wavering, whiny and weepy, to the point that every time we jumped back to them, I groaned inwardly. "Not more of these saps! I wish the bad guys would just kill them off or something!"

The good guys never do grow spines. Elyon has to deus ex machina them to safety. The world ends with sort of a whimper, and even Armageddon just becomes tedious. I found myself skipping the slaughter scenes with characters I didn't care about.

Dekker keeps going back to the same cliches and retelling of Bible stories, so reading Green was akin to watching a Disney cartoon in which you know all the Disney cliches and can predict what is coming. "Oh boy, he's gonna kill the son like he did in the last two books ... LOOK! THE SON DIED!"

It doesn't help that Green opens with a retelling of Elijah on Mount Carmel. Which is automatically boring, because we know the story and we know what's going to happen. The main difference is that he also worked in Abraham's sacrifice of Isaac, while removing the punch from both original stories and coating them in Boring. And we sit and watch Thomas cry about it all. Seriously. All the dude does is cry.

At the end of the long, tedious journey, we discover that Thomas is actually locked in a time loop, and gets to start all over again at the beginning of Black.

So you've actually read this entire series for nothing. Because nothing is resolved. And nothing will be resolved. Ever.

As a Christian, I see what Dekker is doing. He's trying to shock Christians by retelling familiar Bible stories in an unfamiliar way. He's trying to shock Christians by portraying evil as ugly and disgusting and in your face. And he does succeed at those.

What he fails at is making Good seem desirable. Sure, Elyon is all about love. But that doesn't mean much when the good guys are getting mindlessly slaughtered by the bad guys. There's no comfort, and redemption is something shoved down your throat instead of something coaxing and comforting.

I know that it's hard to tie up so many loose ends and write the end of the world. But if you're gonna end the world, man, END IT. Have the Earth explode and the stars fall and the sun go black. None of that happens. Know what happens at the end of the world in Green?

They all go swimming.

I'm not kidding.

Dekker's most effective stories in this series, so far, have been about a bad character who gets redeemed. Saint and White are about redemption of bad characters. But what Dekker seems to want to spend his time writing is about good characters who turn bad. And reading about these disgusting traitor characters for pages and pages and books and books is not entertaining. It's not even instructive. It's just loathsome. Kind of like trying to wash your hands in a sewer.

So yes, if you want entertainment, read the whole shebang. But stop at Sinner. Don't read Green. It doesn't solve anything at all.

Minimalist Cooking: How to cook beans

My husband is between jobs right now, so my cooking situation is rather ... interesting, to say the least. I try to cook meals with almost no ingredients. I think of this as minimalist cooking.

I have a pantry full of beans, given to me by a generous neighbor. When she first gave them to me, I had no idea how to cook beans. I vaguely knew that you soaked them, then boiled them for a while, then added seasonings and things, and you had beans. Right?

Turns out it's not that easy. I ruined many pots of beans, and we had several meals of boring, bland, crunchy beans. I learned to make toast or rice as a side to my beans, since they usually turned out better than the beans did.

I scoured the internet for tips on making beans, recipes, pictures, anything. And I finally found a fool-proof method of making beans.

The slow-cooker.

Dump in your dry beans and enough water to cover them, then set it on high and cook the heck out of them for about eight hours. Keep checking them as they cook, because some kinds of beans cook faster than others. Pink and pintos are very nice, and get done in four to six hours. Red and black beans have to go for eight or ten.

There's a commonly-held misconception that adding salt to dry beans will make them take longer to cook. This is not true. I read an article (somewhere) about how salt does nothing to toughen the fibers of beans, and actually if you put salt in them while they're soaking/cooking, they absorb it and have better flavor. I've been putting salt in mine ever since, and some kinds of beans cook slower and some cook faster. It depends on the bean, not the salt content.

Also, cooking them with some chopped onions and garlic gives them a wonderful flavor base. Cooking them with other seasonings afterward doesn't always instill bland beans with flavor, so you want to put in the flavor early on.

So, to cook beans:

1 slow cooker
2 cups dry beans
4 cups water (adding more as needed)
1 tsp salt
1 tsp black pepper
1 small chopped onion
1-3 cloves chopped garlic

Put the cooker on High and check it periodically to make sure the beans don't run out of water.

Pool days

Took the kids to grandma's yesterday, where they played in the wading pool with their cousins.

The pool had a little fountain attached to the hose, which they found more entertaining than the pool itself.

Meanwhile, Holly stayed far, far away from the water. She mainly enjoyed chewing on plums, sitting in various laps, and grinning at her youngest cousin, who is her age.

It was a good day. Summer is here at last!

Sunday barbecue

I went outside Sunday afternoon to take out the trash, and discovered a table with a bunch of barbecue fixings laid out. I asked if they were having a party, and discovered that my next-door neighbor was technically giving a party for my across-the-way neighbor's son's graduation, but she was inviting the whole apartment block.

Off the hook for DIN-NAH BABY!

I wanted to contribute, though, so I went in and whipped up an apricot cobbler from a bunch my grandma had given my mom, who gave them to me.

Alex thought the barbecue was awesome.

He badgered me for an hour about "go outside barbecue?" Finally people arrived, so I let him out.

I let Holly out, too, but she wasn't as big on it.

For one thing, it was about 4 PM and it was full sun and very hot.

About fiveish, the Lakers game came on, and the group split to swim and watch the game.

About six, the cable went down. Through the whole block. People were coming out of their apartments and calling, "Hey, is your cable out? Not the power, just the cable!" We lost our cable internet, too. It didn't come on again until after eight. This made for some pretty irritated game-watchers, so they went and turned on their radios.

The folks who had been swimming returned from the pool about 7:30, and with no TV, socializing ensued. It was actually really nice! Hurrah for the cable going out!

I brought the kids in at 8, bathed them, and popped them into bed, where they were out like lights. Talk about a great evening!

Also, The World's Easiest Cobbler recipe:

4 cups chopped fruit (peaches, apricots, berries, anything)
1 cup flour
1 cup sugar
1 tsp baking powder
1 egg, slightly beaten
1/4th cup butter

Preheat over to 375. Butter a 9x9 baking dish and put the chopped fruit in the bottom. In a small bowl, mix flour, sugar, and baking powder. Beat egg and mix into dry mixture until crumbly. Scatter over fruit. Melt butter and drizzle over top, coating thoroughly. Bake 25-30 minutes or until golden brown and bubbly.

Internet fail

Haven't had a lot of interesting pics to post lately. But I was looking at various stupid things I've taken screenshots of on the internet, and thought they might give you a chuckle.

Some are misspellings ...

Some are things that wound up on the page together purely by coincidence ...

And some are from the ads on Facebook, which make you scratch your head.

"Get in shape the hooker way!"

Attack of the contrails

The other evening I put the kids to bed, but I noticed that the sky outside was really lit up. So I walked out with my camera.

Looking west.

Contrails! Contrails everywhere! And so lit up!

So I waited another twenty minutes or so, and checked out the sunset's progress. To the west it had cleared up, but to the east were some gorgeous UFO clouds.

I looked up the names of these, and they're called standing lenticularis, a variety of alto cumulus.

We only get these sorts of skies when it's about to get really hot, and sure enough, it's supposed to be in the upper 90s this weekened. I hope the power doesn't go out, or I might have to borrow our neighbor's barbecue to cook dinner.

On second thought, that might be pretty cool.

How to amuse children

Holly came in today all fussy because she was bored. She was all hot, too, and kept pulling at her sweaty hair on her neck. So I found a hair rubber band and a hairbrush.

She was all smiles by the time I finished. The ponytail actually lasted a good fifteen minutes before she pulled it out. I thought she was too cute by far. She just needs a little more hair ... it's still very thin and wispy.

And then this afternoon, I gave my babies cups of water because they were thirsty. Then I looked up and saw this.

Alex merrily taking mouthfuls of water and spitting them out the screen door.

When they heard the camera, they gave me such angelic smiles. Little punks.