Alastair Fuad-Luke

Advantages: fills in a lot of gaps
Disadvantages: some weaker stories

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Ciao members have rated this review on average somewhat helpful

Advantages: A good tool for understanding parables and storytelling
Disadvantages: -

...Barbara Reid's books on `Parables for Preachers' follow the Revised Common Lectionary. Because of this, the book for Year C concentrates primarily on the texts of the gospel of Luke. Before getting into the heart of the texts, Reid presents introductory material on parables, preaching, and the gospel of Luke. Reid states in her introduction, `In the Synoptic Gospels, Jesus rarely explains his parables. They are meant to be wrestled with by each generation of hearers who allow themselves to be disturbed and challenged by Jesus' subversive stories.' Subversive stories? One of the things that comfortable Christianity has sometimes forgotten is the revolutionary and radical character of Jesus and his teaching in the first century. Perhaps this is because the teachers are so familiar. How does one find new meanings in familiar parables... Read review

Ciao members have rated this review on average very helpful

Advantages: Spectacularly imaginative space opera
Disadvantages: Slow going at first

...“Space,” as Douglas Adams once wrote, “is big.” And faced with the mind-bogglingly vastness of it, most science-fiction writers will invent a method of faster-than-light travel; thus did hyperspace, ultraspace and the warp drive come into being – not to mention various methods of wormhole creation and manipulation. How else are the writers’ heroes and villains going to travel the vast distances between stars? However, there are a very few authors out there that take Einstein more literally. Alastair Reynolds is one of the few – not surprising really, considering that the Netherlands-based Welshman has also published several scientific papers, has piled higher and deeper in Astronomy, and currently works for the European Space Agency… His debut novel, “Revelation Space”... Read review

Ciao members have rated this review on average helpful