Faith Done Well

The Serpent King was one of those rare books that does faith really, really well.  And even more well because there were SO many opportunities to turn this book into an anti-faith book.  Dill being the son of a preacher who handled snakes before he ended up in prison for child porn and corruption of minors.  But this book...wow.
I can just imagine Jesus reading this book and thinking, "Man, that was really, really well done.  Thank you, good and faithful servant, Jeff Zentner.  I learned a lot about snake handling when it comes to churches, too!  How interesting!

In Perfect Harmony

Nic Sheff is a very interesting person and writer.  This is the second of his books I have written.  I read this one because of his name and also the cover looked fabulously scary.  Harmony House was scary.  I liked the way that he handled the religious aspects of the book.  I have complained about writers and movies that are inconsistent in their inclusion of religion in a book.  You know, the movies where houses of Baptists have crucifixes on the walls, that kind of thing.  But this was consistent.  This book does have a lot to do with religion.  And it doesn't really bash faith.  It just bashes faith that has turned bad.  Obsessive and twisted faith.  Radicalized Roman Catholics in this case. But as a person of faith, I wasn't offended by the material here, because it was clear that the depiction of faith in this case was to point out what happens when it goes awry.  The language was rough here, but I think people do sometimes talk this way, so it wasn't gratuitous, but if you can't handle bad language, you probably do want to skip this one.