Flashpoint Blog Tour

Flashpoint by Frank Creed

Here are some more links:

Daniel I. Weaver Interview
BlogCritics Interview
Novel Journey Interview
Yellow30 Sci-Fi Review
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FREE preview of Chapters 1-3

Here's a short list of reviews for Flashpoint:


David Brollier
Grace Bridges
Karina Fabian
Daniel I. Weaver
Karen M.
Cathi Hassan
Caprice Hokstad
Amazon Customers
Various Others

If you have written a review of Flashpoint and I don't have it listed, please leave a comment with your review link and I'll add it.

Flashpoint by Frank Creed

Flashpoint by Frank Creed

This book ought to come with a warning like the one on amusement park rides. People with hypertension or heart problems should exercise extreme caution when reading Frank Creed's Flashpoint because it's an edge-of-your-seat, thrill-seeking, action-packed ride. Strap in, keep your limbs inside the vehicle, and hold on with white knuckles. Frank absolutely excels at action and he's chocked his under-200-page volume to the very brim with it. Excitement is an understatement. In fact, my old-fashioned, middle-aged brain could have used a little more contemplation to give me a chance to catch my figurative breath here and there.

Confession time. I was quite reluctant to read this book at all because of the name of the genre. "Cyberpunk" sounds like something that would glorify cop-killing and gang-rape. Sorry, that's the image conjured by the word "punk". Adding "cyber" to it doesn't help because I know too many people who use "cyber" as a verb. To "cyber" means "to engage in cybersex". Probably not what everyone thinks when they hear it, and surely not a desired meaning in this case. I know it's not Frank's fault for either root in the compound. He didn't name the genre. I almost let those negative connotations in that word stop me from even trying this book. I'm glad I took the chance. Ignore the word, no matter what it makes you think, and just try the book anyhow.

While it appeals to all ages, Flashpoint will be highly appealing to anyone under thirty, and especially to those of the male persuasion. The Matrix has nothing on Flashpoint which Keanu Reeves couldn't easily surpass were he to play Frank's hero, Calamity Kid. In all fairness, and just so you don't think I'm gushing through rose-colored glasses, I did feel that Flashpoint was slightly obsessed with descriptions of weapons, and being female, and not hip to weapons even in the present day, that wasn't my favorite aspect. I admit my eyes glazed over every now and then when extensive descriptions of the various high-tech, futuristic arsenals came up, which was kind of often. I suspect most guys would find this an asset rather than a drawback.

Others have covered the plot quite well, so I won't duplicate that. Frank even offers a free excerpt on his website, www.frankcreed.com. I do want to mention how impressed I was with the theology and the depth of characters and situations. Even with so many weapons flying it makes your head spin, the battle was STILL in God's hands and Calamity Kid, the uber-hero, knows it. Like Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, he knows God is powerful enough to preserve him but sovereign enough that He doesn't have to do the bidding of His creation. Calamity is confident, but not in a stuck-up or superior way. This is not some canned Sunday School lesson with a Deus Ex Machina saving the day either. And furthermore, the good guys kick-butt throughout the entire volume, and yet they still manage to LOVE and even PRAY FOR some really nasty enemies. And speaking of enemies, yes, a good number of them are cooky-cutter bad guys (as is often the case with the average pawns of any dictator's army), but regardless of what it seems on the surface, the REAL battle is not against flesh and blood, and the REAL enemy is no comic-book caricature one can just swat with the newest weapon so everyone lives happpily ever after.

Now we get to the part where we discuss my opinion, no matter how utterly inconsequential it may be. Don't care, you say? Click a link or hit the back button! This is the best book I have read in years. And that is really saying something considering it's a dystopia. As a rule, I'm not fond of dystopian plotlines. I find them depressing and they usually run counter to my main motivation for reading, which is mental escape to a better world. You could not pay me any amount of money to visit Mr. Creed's version of the world in 2036. And yet, there was one very cool plot device which took the edge off all those horrors: Reformation.

I'm sure it's no coincidence that the church has used this term in the past, most notably pertaining to the movement precipitated by Martin Luther nailing his 95 theses to the door in Wittenberg. But when members of the Body of Christ in 2036 use the term, they are talking about something else entirely. It's a process by which the brain is enhanced in some very cool ways:

			1. Infodump. You get a top-notch university education in seconds! Plus, while they're at it, they give you full fluency in several foreign languages and the ENTIRE Bible. That alone would be worth the price of admission, but wait! there's more... 2. Better, stronger, faster. Reformed saints can do lots of things out of the range of normal human beings. It's not quite Superman, but in many cases, pretty darn close. No one leaped over an entire building, but four stories is nothing to sneeze at. And if a reformed saint sees bullets coming, their mindware hardens the skin's entry point at the molecular level to make it impenetrable. And they CAN see bullets coming because all their senses are ultra-heightened. Their minds can slow down split-second events like a slo-mo camera. They can hear heartbeats down the hall and they can smell the minute changes that signal a change in sweat secretion due to fear or lying. How cool would it be to be able to detect lies by smell? 3. Spiritual enhancement. Having the entire text of the Bible at your instant disposal would be great by itself, but that's only the beginning. Reformed saints can literally see angels and demons and most of them can even sense the presence of the Almighty. Some of them can even see souls of mortals, both Christian and non. 4. Telepathy, i.e. mind-speaking. Talking to other reformed saints without opening your mouth or even looking at them. You don't even have to be in the same room. I think there was a range outside of which the brainwaves couldn't travel, but it's still absolute-zero cool.

Add to all these brainwave goodies a bunch of futuristic gadgets that Bill Gates would give his left hand for (com-vision: computers mounted on the insides of eyeglasses, boots that allow you to climb any surface, electrocuting gloves, etc, etc) and you've got a very compelling world where I didn't seem to mind spending time despite the fact that it was frighteningly realistic in numerous very bad ways.

So do I recommend this book? Absolutely. I got a free review copy, but I also paid to get an autographed copy for my collection too. Plus, I'll be buying at least two more copies (and probably more) for some of my Books For Soldiers buddies. I have every confidence that guys dodging real bullets in Iraq would cheer Calamity Kid with gusto.

	Buy from: Amazon Barnes & Noble Books-A-Million

If you order before Oct. 15, from this link only: The Writer's Cafe Press, then you get a signed copy and free shipping in North America!

True Light by Terri Blackstock

True Light is a suspense thriller which asks the question: what if nearly every invention we rely on suddenly didn't work? Terri Blackstock has created a nightmare scenario where intermittent "pulses" from a supernova knock out all electricity, all over the planet. No vehicles (all electronic parts are fried and gasoline can't be refined or pumped without electricity). No phones (cell or land-lines). No computers. No running water or sewage (because the water treatment plants run on electricity). No refrigeration. No heat. And worst of all, no end in sight.

Now if this were science fiction, I, being a science geek extraordinaire, might balk at whether so many diversely-powered inventions could be affected by any one hypothetical phenomenon. However, this is not science fiction and therefore the premise must be given greater latitude. If you can suspend disbelief that such a thing could happen and just assume it did, then all the other details are frighteningly believable. In fact, I personally think American society's reaction to such a catastrophe would be much worse than described in this fictional tale (and worse than TV's Jericho, too, by the way). However, in all fairness, I must point out that True Light is the third book of the series and when it opens, this global "pulse" problem is already eight months old. So it is highly possible the picture Ms. Blackstock painted in the first book was indeed worse.

Speaking of the series, I should mention how distressed I was to discover I was reading book three of a series without a chance to read books 1 & 2. I really hate doing that. I don't skip chapters. Why would I skip books or read them out of order? But here I was starting with book three and wondering what I missed and how lost I might be. Yes, there are some references to past events, but they are mentioned the same way characters talk about an unwritten past in brand new stories. I didn't feel completely lost for not having read the first two books. One thing that was a little jarring was the onslaught of so many characters all at once. Someone else must have realized this was a problem, because there is a cast-of-characters list at the front of the book. This was helpful, but I doubt that a few lines of explaining who is who could possibly endear the characters to the reader as much as two full books worth of plot and dialog.

Case in point: It seemed to me that the main purpose of the female protagonist, Deni, was to go around verbally defending the male protagonist, Mark. Now Mark is Mr. Perfect in just about every conceivable way except his father and step-brothers are scum-of-the-earth criminals. This earns Mark undeserved suspicion which Deni tries to dispel. Without the benefit of the other books, I got the distinct feeling Deni wasn't really in Mark's league as far as Christian character and maturity, but she's attracted to him. Well, OF COURSE she is! Why wouldn't she be? He's PERFECT! The questions was, why weren't all the rest of the girls in town attracted to him as well? And for some reason I couldn't fathom, Mark didn't think he was good enough for Deni! Naturally, this only made him all that more attractive.

Perhaps it is my predilection for fairy tales which wants to see Mr. Perfect find a Miss Perfect. An average female reader from the real world can feel comforted for not landing a real-life Mr. Perfect (were such a thing even to exist) when she knows she is not perfect. But if fictional Mr. Perfect is going to settle for fictional Miss Average, then we imperfect readers are going to feel envy for fictional Miss Average. Have I lost you yet? This is my convoluted way to say: It was hard to feel anything towards Deni but envy.

So I've covered the premise and some characterization. Let's get to the plot. With nearly all vehicles crippled by the "pulses", grocery deliveries stop, so hunting and gardening become necessary to survival. On a stormy, freezing morning, young Zach lands a 10-point buck with one shot, but someone else finds this large hunk of meat irresistible and shoots Zach in order to steal his deer.

Mark is also an excellent hunter (and inventor and philanthropist and volunteer deputy sheriff...) and he happens to shoot a deer the very same morning as Zach. He was nowhere near where Zach was shot, but no one saw Mark, so he has no alibi. Mark's family affiliations bring instant suspicion. As if that wasn't enough, someone is actively framing him, paying false witnesses to lie about Mark's whereabouts and trying to stop Zach's ventilator while loudly asserting to the sight-impaired hospital roomie, "Tell Zach that Mark dropped by." The town vigilantes try to lynch poor Mark and these guys aren't even satisfied of Mark's innocence when Zach eventually wakes up and says he saw the shooter and it was NOT Mark. I guess that is rather the point though: to vigilantes, evidence is irrelevant. Act on suspicions and take the law into your own hands.

It's hard to talk about the story without giving away too much. It's a page-turner. And perhaps this is as good a time as any for me to mention this book consists of very short chapters. The story is only 270 pages, but is divided into an astonishing 72 chapters! If I wrote the same number of pages, it would probably be 25 chapters or less. Yet I dare anyone to accuse Terri of giving her readers too many opportunities to set it down. So what? After said reader has had his little potty break, he WILL pick it up again.

Another gem I discovered in this book. Critics, listen up: Terri Blackstock changes POV characters. Often. In fact, she does it even more than I do! I am so glad someone proved it is useful and compelling and doesn't "ruin" a story. Next time I hear one of those POV-snobs whining that we "must" pick just one character who has to be part of every scene, I plan to hit said snob over the head with a hardback copy of True Light.

	Visit Terri Blackstock's website. View the Restoration Series Trailer. Buy True Light at: Amazon Barnes & Noble Books A Million Christianbook Parable Wal-Mart Others

Read Grace Bridge's Review of True Light.
Read Frank Creed's Review of True Light.
See more reviews on the Christian Fiction Review Blog tour, running July 1-7.

The 3rd Covenant by David Brollier

Before I get to the book, I must talk about ignorance. Not the author's. Mine. This ignorance has a very important bearing on the story, so perhaps my enlightenment will save you the confusion I suffered.

See the book cover? See how the word "covenant" has a knife forming the letter 't'? If you were to ask me before I read this book what kind of knife it was, I would probably have said, "a hunting knife". You see, I am female and really detest weapons. My dad was a cop and though he kept guns in the house, I always felt it was a necessary evil for his job. I was not the least bit tempted to touch them or to learn how to shoot them. I affirm the constitutional right for citizens to bear arms, but I personally would rather never see any weapons. At all. Ever. Those who live by the sword will die by the sword. No thanks, I pass.

However, I do watch movies on occasion, and I saw a very similar knife in the movie "Crocodile Dundee". You might remember the scene. In the New York subway, some gang-type pulls a switchblade on Dundee and his New Yorker host/girlfriend. The girl is appropriately scared and says, "Give him whatever he wants. He's got a knife." Then Dundee laughs and says, "That's not a knife. This..." and here he displays his massive hunting knife which he has used to slay crocodiles (and which looks exactly like the knife on the book cover), "is a knife." Would-be mugger turns tail and runs. Audience laughs.

Okay, so what's the problem? Well, at the very beginning of this book, we have a murder of a priest and the murder weapon is left in the victim. The weapon? A bayonet. All right. I know what a bayonet is. I have read history books. Bayonets were invented in the French town Bayonne. They were long spikes added to the ends of muskets because early firearms required so much time to load that the enemy could overrun you while you were loading your next shot. Bayonets were weapons of last resort, for use in hand-to-hand combat when you couldn't shoot.

I even knew what bayonets looked like. Illustrations from the American Revolution are positively brimming with these because the point is to show how mismatched the Patriots were to the much-better armed Redcoats. So this is what I picture when I read the word "bayonet":

But fairly early in The 3rd Covenant, they start talking about the handle of the bayonet having fingerprints. Wait a minute. Handle? I'm thinking they must mean a rifle of some type, but that doesn't seem to fit. Furthermore, the blade is stuck and the rib bones won't let go until it is twisted. But aren't bayonets more or less like an ice pick? How could one lodge between two ribs in such a way that twisting would make it release?

Well, to make a long story only slightly shorter, I finally had to look up the word. Evidently, English has expanded bayonet to mean just about every kind of military blade ranging from what I would call a "saber" to what I would call a "hunting knife". No firearm required. Great. Why didn't I get the memo? That t-substitute on the book cover is actually called a bayonet. It isn't the author's nor the cover artist's fault that I didn't know what that knife was called. But you, dear reader, may now be spared the embarrassment of suffering the same ignorance, because I have educated you. Forget history. Forget French towns and American Revolutions. In this book, a bayonet is a honkin' big knife with a wide, thick blade and a handle. Now that I have labelled the cover illustration so you don't have to consult "Knife Names for Dummies", we can get on with the review.

First of all, The 3rd Covenant by David Brollier is not a typical mystery. We know whodunit from the very beginning. The main characters know whodunit very, very early in the story too. And despite there being a CSI character in the book and the setting being New York City and environs, this is not a CSI: New York type of story either. If I had to relate this to something known, I would say this was like Columbo's Memoirs.

Remember the trenchcoat-clad Peter Falk from the old ABC Mystery of the Week series? Lt. Columbo almost always knew who committed the crime right from the start, but knowing and proving are two different things. Unlike Columbo, who spent every episode asking suspects the hard questions, investigating, and then going back to ask more, The 3rd Covenant's CSI and cop team have the disadvantage of not being able to find all the people they would like to question. So it's not a "whodunit" or even a "howdunit", but more of a "where-are-these-dastardly-culprits" and "how-can-we-prove-they-did-it-so-we-can-put-them-away" kind of mystery.

I say it reads like a memoir because The 3rd Covenant is written in first person, told from the point of view of the cop character, Nathan Adams. But the narrator is omniscient and tells us details Det. Adams couldn't possibly know. It is as if Adams asked his buddies over the years, and then guessed the thoughts, motivations, and actions of the criminals to put together this story at some point after the fact. This wouldn't be my choice for point-of-view, but who am I to talk when I myself decline to use commercial fiction's darling, i.e. Deep Limited POV. Non-authors probably wouldn't notice. Deadly Ink sure didn't care. They nominated The 3rd Covenant for the David G. Sasher, Sr. Award for the Best Mystery Novel of 2006.

So what is the story about? A cult leader who calls himself "the bishop" is using his "congregation" of ex-cons and miscreants to commit serial killings with big honkin' knives (aka bayonets). During the investigation, Nathan's wife gets kidnapped and the cop's kung fu buddies volunteer to find and rescue her. Having a member of a cop's family stalked and kidnapped sure pushed all my "worst nightmare" buttons. Being a cop's daughter, I lived a good portion of my life in fear of that very scenario. I don't want to ruin the book's ending, so I won't tell any more of the plot. Suffice it to say, there are plenty of surprises, all the way to the end.

	Read a professional review from the Times Herald-Record. View the book trailer. Buy The 3rd Covenant at: Publish America Amazon Barnes & Noble Books A Million Direct from the author

See more reviews on the Christian Fiction Review Blog tour, running June 3-9.
Visit David Brollier's ShoutLife profile and his website.