Book Review: Blood Tithe

bloodtitheWhispers from Forbidden Earth: Blood Tithe by Mark Venturini is Urban Fantasy suitable for the middle grades reader in your family and anyone looking for a clean read. It makes use of familiar, well-known creatures of legend without ripping off Tolkien as well as the Seelie/Unseelie fae courts only familiar to me as H. A. Titus uses them in her urban fantasy, too. The pre-release copy I received contained some typographical errors that I’m going to hope have been fixed.

This is a sequel and while it can be read and enjoyed alone, the references to past events from the previous book are more appreciated and the reading experience enriched if you’ve read it. Both books together make it clear Mark has spent some time developing the primary fantasy world in his series and the various ways to make journeys from there to Earth and back again.

A few elements of the good guys’ magic reminded me of paganism uncomfortably; if you are especially sensitive take note, but folks who don’t like stories with Christian influences should be advised it does have faith elements. Melchizedek the High Priest is borrowed from the Bible and turned into a mage from Eversong (the fantasy world). He’s so far only back story. I’m curious if that character will eventually turn up in this series as the Christ-figure his name implies. The magi’s staffs are the most refreshing, unique element—those critters are pieces of wood with eyes and an ability to talk and think and communicate with the characters with a gift for telepathy, like the elf with a dragon friend rightfully annoyed she’s treated like a free taxi. The young heroes are likable, flawed but clearly good, which is nice to see in this day and age.

Note, this is volume one of a serialized novel so it contains only the first seven chapters/episodes. I look forward to the rest.

[tweetthis]Review of Whispers from Forbidden Earth: Blood Tithe by Mark Venturini [/tweetthis]

2 Comments

  1. After looking a few days on the dilemma of how and when the human race was born, I gave birth to these hypotheses, thanks also to the differences found in Genesis between two stories that seem different, namely the creation of man on the sixth day and then the telling of the story about Adam and Eve. If we read the part of the genesis which explains the creation of man on the sixth day, and then the creation of Adam and Eve, you may notice a detail that differs between the two parts, suggesting that they are two completely different stories. In fact, in Genesis 1:26, we can see that man was created on the sixth day in the image and likeness of God, as in Genesis 5:1 (referring to Adam and Eve after 7 days of creation) the text of the Bible omits “image”, the fact that “image” and “likeness” indicate two similar concepts but different. I think “image” means human nature able to conceive the evil, so the suffering too, instead “likeness” denotes the inherited attributes of God as love, reason and they are both still together. Hypothetically speaking, the man of the sixth day is a creature evolved from animals or some other thing, then, over time has developed the reason as we know it today, while Adam and Eve were created in the Garden of Eden and as the Bible says in Genesis 2:7 (And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground) this means that God took their dust from the young earth and has created them in the Eden where the concept of time did not exists or was limited to the 7 days, this event happened before the creation of trees as written in Genesis 2:4,5,6: (These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created, in the day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens, And every plant of the field before it was in the earth, and every herb of the field before it grew: for the LORD God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was not a man to till the ground and God formed man of the dust of the ground). In this perfect reality there was no concept of evil, so they were only a “likeness” of God. After that they were created, were expelled from Eden, only to find themselves in this situation where had passed perhaps millions of years (because in the Eden the time for them had not passed), a situation in which the man who was created in the image and likeness did not exists anymore because of a mass extinction caused by some natural catastrophe or by “something else”, or perhaps still he existed, and the descendants of Adam and Eve hybridized this species, confirmed in Genesis 6:1,2,3,4, in which it says that the sons of God married the daughters of men (but may also be refers to the descendants of Cain, who turned away from God). The spirit of God will not dwell forever with the man because he also is flesh, living up to 120 years (mean that men of God who lived up to 900 years later live up to 120 years because of the fact that hybridizing with the daughters of men they are “contaminated” at the genetic level, partially losing genes that enabled him to live a lot longer). According to the Bible, Adam and Eve were the first humans created by God, who lived approximately 6,000 years ago. According to the science, humans existed a long time before. The two lines of thought can be easily united, thanks to the omnipotence of God, who in the beginning created humans in a reality where there was no concept of “evil”. Metaphorically speaking, Adam and Eve were expelled from this heavenly reality, find himself in another reality, namely in today’s reality that we all know, where there is the concept of evil, as well as that of the well, a reality where they were the first humans who experienced firsthand the life God had reserved for them (so they were the first humans in the “perfect” reality). From here it is clear that the story of Adam and Eve does not upset in the least bit the evolutionary linearity, and the seven days of creation relate to a creation took place in the reality of Adam and Eve, where everything was possible, even just create the stars, animals and everything else, without the scientific method and the time needed to have their share. In practice, they were the first men of God, whereas prehistoric man lived before Adam and Eve was a man, but it could be considered as an animal evolved from animals or by something else, which had two arms and two legs, and that may have hybridized with the descendants of Adam And Eve after they were “moved away” from the “perfect reality”. God has endowed man about the concept of “infinity” and “eternity”, as well as other questions can not be explained through the use of the scientific method, thus making humans free to believe in God or not, in a reality for us tricky and necessary for the construction and continuation of his project.

  2. Please keep comments relevant to the post, thank you. This is not the forum to debate the origins of man and dispute the plain claims of scripture and I won’t allow it to go further. It is misguided to distort scripture to fit the views of an opposing religion’s origin narrative. The religion of Evolution claims to be scientific fact but the theory is really an unprovable, religious interpretation of the data as much as the young earth/Noah flood is a religious interpretation of the data, however godless the evolutionists’ beliefs are. It is a common false conception that only religions that feature a God are religions. Buddhism is one example of a godless religion that is honest that it is a religion.

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