If you like thriller-based fiction, you're going to be hard pressed to find someone more suited for it than James Byron Huggins. He's put out more consistently top-quality novels than any other Christian fiction author in recent years. As a matter of fact, his short trip into mainstream fiction with the novels Cain and Hunter found their movie rights purchased by Bruce Willis and Sylvester Stallone respectively.

After a two-year hiatus, Huggins is back with Nightbringer, and the story was worth the wait. A group of tourists are visiting a monastery in Europe inhabited by a small number of rather suspicious-looking monks. While there, a snow storm sets in, trapping them for several days. Then something goes terribly wrong, and they realize that they are not alone. Something is stalking them... something evil patiently waiting to kill them all. As the story progresses, we find that even the monastery itself hides a terrible secret.

His latest book is called Epic (review), and it spells out the grand story of life that is being told by God, in which we are the players. The book has a great deal to say about the power of story and why stories resonate with us so deeply. These are some of the foundational principles that Fuse Magazine was founded upon, so I was extremely excited for the chance to talk to John about them.

Lacey himself performs the entire audio production, employing his skills as an actor and his ability to create numerous voices (his Barry White is hysterical) to shed new light on these ancient stories. He's accompanied by British musicians Bill and Rachel Taylor-Beales, who create background strains and tunes that help flesh out the drama.

The Essential Word on the Street grabs your attention from its first words -- a dramatic retelling of the Genesis account of creation. It follows through with every major story from the Bible, all the way to God's final reign over everything in Revelation. Lacey injects plenty of his own personality into the audio recording, showing us his emotional side as well as his sense of humor.

Lacey's compressesion the entire Bible into a single, seventy-two minute recording allows him a surprising advantage: a single narrative emerges from these smaller stories that we might not otherwise see. Instead of feeling the absence of what's been left out, we're instead left with a much-needed reminder that the stories of God working among his people are all part of one story, and it's the same story we're a part of today.

His idiosynchratic tendency to "modernize" biblical names -- complete with last names -- can be distracting, but I suppose that's the whole point: to make us look at the Bible in a novel, cutting-edge way (without muddying any of its inherent truths). If it's just business as usual, we're not going to take notice anyway. Everything about what Lacey does here seems to beg us to hear God's story as if we're hearing it for the very first time.

Electrifying as it is entertaining, The Essential Word on the Street lives up to its title.

Nick Polchak (a.k.a. The Bug Man), is an entomologist with more quirks than you can shake specimen tweezers at. He's a professor at N.C. State, but he hates teaching. The lenses of his glasses are thicker than the bottom of a milk bottle, but he's the most popular professor on campus. And while it's clear he prefers bugs to people, his wit and loyalty have almost universal appeal.

When Nick is suspended from the University -- a common occurrence for him -- for the aforementioned pretend vivisection, he returns to his hometown outside Pittsburgh, PA. Forced to pay penance by giving PSA lectures to second graders, he meets a kindred spirit who is also doing the same kind of grunt work. Riley McKay is a pathologist with suspicions- and a secret. With Nick's help she tries to discover why her boss at the coroner's office is behaving strangely. Together the two amateur sleuths uncover a multi-tiered operation that has far reaching medical, physical, and spiritual ramifications.

There are so many things to enjoy about this novel it's difficult to know where to begin. For entomology and CSI fans, this book is a little slice of heaven. For people who crave a good, solid story to get lost in, Chop Shop fits the bill. And for those higher thinkers who ponder such questions as, "Should the few be sacrificed for the greater good?" this novel is crammed with plenty of ethical conundrums to ponder.

But perhaps what makes Chop Shop stand out above other Christian fiction is that no single element overwhelms the other. It's a perfectly woven tapestry; there's no outrageous color or dangling thread to knock the piece off balance. Characters are flawed and drawn in shades of gray, just like real life. Nick is an intelligent, obnoxious, funny, emotionally closed adult with a strong moral center. He's also an adventurer and a pain in the neck, even to those who care about him. Riley is a strong protagonist, but just like Nick, she's myopic in her view of life and the people around her. Villains are hardly carbon copies of Snidely Whiplash- they are varied, complex, and have clear -- and clearly twisted -- motivations for what they do. Tension is kept high throughout the book; the characters (and this reader) feel like they're in a pressure cooker the entire time. Moments of humor offset acts of horror and violence. There's even a touch of romance, which ends rather unexpectedly.

Another refreshing aspect of Downs' writing is the lack of preachy-ness, and even the lack of the word "Christ" in his book. What? A "Christian novel" with no mention of Christ? That must be an oxymoron, right? On the contrary. Through exceptional dialogue, interaction between characters, and the ethical questions the story itself poses, Christ clearly shines through. The take away value of this book is that no matter how noble the intentions, how selfless the motivation, it's all null and void without a moral compass. And the true North on our compass? Christ Himself.

I highly recommend Chop Shop, even to squeamish readers like me. Who knows, since this book is the second in The Bug Man Novel series, I may end up developing an affection for the little critters myself.

On second thought, I doubt it. But that won't keep me from reading more about Nick Polchak and his future adventures.

Now, the "Year of the Trilogy" is almost behind us, and the Trilogy itself is done. So it seems fitting that at the end of this journey, we talked to Ted again. With the entire story told, we got his thoughts on how the Trilogy turned out, the questions that were left unanswered (which he answers here), and the incredible stuff he's got up his sleeve next.

Be aware that this interview contains spoilers for the first two books in the Trilogy. There are also spoilers for White, the third book, but they are clearly marked and can be avoided if necessary.

At this point I should probably interject that there's no way to properly review this book without referencing events in the first two, so... beware of major spoilers.

Thomas Hunter has been through quite a lot since his life took a strange turn in the first few pages of Black. The former missionary's kid got knocked out by a bullet that grazed his head, and woke up in a strange place -- a fantastic colored forest that provided bliss and perfection to its inhabitants. Whenever he fell asleep in one world, he would wake up in the other, and he soon discovered that the two worlds shared deeper connections than he could have ever imagined.

As the only person able to traverse between the two realities, Thomas soon became the pivotal figure in both. But the virus plot, which was so central to the first two books, becomes something of a subplot in this left-turn of a finale that follows a sweeping, powerful love story instead. And while Black and Red were fantastic, armchair-gripping reads, one gets the sense that White is the part of the story that Dekker was most eager to tell.

Because here we get to the heart of the "Great Romance," which we've really only heard about until now. Before he even understands what's happening, Thomas somehow finds himself caught up in a great romance of his own -- a story unexpected at this phase of the trilogy, when you'd expect all of the story's plot points to be building to a pulse-pounding conclusion.

But somehow, Dekker accomplishes the impossible, lacing the outcome of this romance with just as much suspense as he used in the high-energy action scenes in the first two books. Meanwhile, the virus is beginning to affect the population of the other world, while Thomas and the world's leaders race to stop the inevitable. And remarkably, we the reader care more about the romance than we do the potential world destruction. It's the Great Romance, after all, and it's the perfect picture of Jesus' love for his bride, the church. It resonates deeply within us all.

Black used the colored forest to depict a rewritten paraphrase of the Garden of Eden, showing us the fall of a perfect creation. Red's version of the colored forest, many years later, showed us a new society based around Old Testament-style laws of ritual, which was then uprooted by the arrival of Justin, the Christ figure. White shows us the life of the church, as well as depicting this "Great Romance" that creation has always been about: the creator pursuing his creation with deep, passionate love. It turns out to be the perfect conclusion to this one-of-a-kind trilogy.

My only qualm with the book is the way in which Thomas miraculously recovers from his apparent death at the end of the second book (which I won't spoil here). The method in question feels like a bit of a cheat, because it's never explained to us how or why such a thing is even possible. Similarly, the book ends on a note that left me scratching my head. But then, Dekker has never been one to leave us dangling without good reason, so I'm willing to trust that all will be explained at some point.

In the meantime, my advice is to sit back, curl up, and savor White for the triumph it is. It's so rare that we get stories as well plotted, perfectly paced, and told with real heart like this.

This collection of musings gives considerable insight into the life that Tan has led: growing up the daughter of a Chinese Baptist minister and a mother who believed in fate rather than faith, moving no fewer than a dozen times to cities throughout California, with a sojourn to the most picturesque chalet in all of Switzerland thrown in for good measure (all of which were seemingly done on a whim), the journey that led to her becoming a writer, and the many unusual things that have come to pass along the way.

We are treated to the various events surrounding the making of The Joy Luck Club into a film, the pattern of important people in her life dying very close together, and the CNN interview she was about to begin the moment everyone discovered what was going on the morning of September 11th. This is to say nothing of publishing novels, trekking around the world on book tours, being out of with her husband the day their friend was murdered in their own apartment, having the one cabin in Tahoe that survived a particular mudslide and flood, playing in a band called The Rock Bottom Remainders which included authors like Stephen King and Barbara Kingsolver, and being held up at gun point while working at a pizza joint during college. To be sure, Tan has lived an event-filled life that to some would seem like nothing more than highly-imaginative fiction, but as she herself admits in a couple of parts in this book, she's not as clever with her writing as some have suggested she is, so we can rest assured that she is telling us the truth.

Whether she is talking about the struggles she has endured in recent years since being diagnosed with neurological Lyme disease, or recalling fights she had with her mother as a teenager, Tan consistently gives her writing a conversational tone, which is one of the aspects that makes this book more entertaining than, say, the autobiography of Benjamin Franklin where every other sentence reads like a peacock proudly showing you how beautiful it is. For example, she recalls an early argument with her mother about why she had to practice the piano all the time, and after quoting her mother's question concerning whether she wanted to play the piano and be famous or just play outside and be a nobody, Tan gives this response not to her mother, but to us, "Guess what I said." Even in this work of non-fiction, Tan imbues her work with a certain attitude and moxie which help to keep us entertained when the mood calls for such a response.

What comes through perhaps most clearly in this book is Tan's sense of being the writer that she is, rather than the one that others might want her to be -- life might be uncontrollable to some extent, but she has the power to create what is in her heart to create, and so she does it. She decries various labels that are slapped on her ("writer of color" and "Asian-American writer" for example) and simply shrugs off those who feel she has let down the Asian-American community by not writing more politically-charged works; instead she recognizes her voice and her strengths in writing and plays to those, knowing that to do otherwise would be an even greater disservice to the reading population.

This collection has one major flaw, though, and that is the fact that she repeats herself on more than a few occasions in these vignettes; to some extent it can be forgiven because at times these pieces are simply copies of e-mails that were sent to folks or interviews in newspapers, so the fact that these mention the same information we have seen elsewhere is not entirely her fault. This does, however, cause the reader to stop for a moment and perhaps lose track of what is going on in a particular piece.

Tan is very frank with us as we read. She'll laugh at herself periodically, and she doesn't mind getting on her soapbox occasionally or relaying to us in frightening detail (for example) just how close her mother might have really come to killing her one evening when she was a teenager (the shock is heightened further when we see along with Amy the irony of her mother threatening to kill her, when her mother is always threatening to kill herself). Imperfect, neurotic and proud of it, Amy Tan paints various pictures of who she is, what she thinks, and just what life means to her. These and so much more are what help to make Fate such an interesting read.

Bestselling author John Eldredge tackles territory similar to what Bruner addressed in Epic, a small book that weighs in just over 100 pages. (Side note: I love itty bitty books like this. They're about all I have patience for in nonfiction.) Eldredge takes a slightly different tack on the subject, constantly referencing modern films and other media to show us why we are so drawn to stories, yet the message is the same.

Sure, most of us love stories of all shapes and sizes. But have you ever looked at your life as a story? And not only your life, but all life? God is the grand storyteller, telling the biggest, most incredible story of all time, and we are players in his mega-production. It's a provocative thought, isn't it? The idea that life is a story, constantly unfolding and being "told" around us and even through us.

Eldredge cornerstones his book on the notion that deep within us all lies a hunger for a great plot. This plot has to not only be great, it has to resonate with our hearts. Our hearts want to be rescued, we want to be made whole, we want sacrifice and personal redemption. It's almost like a requisite for the human condition.

As we've discussed many times before here at Fuse Magazine, these are the very reasons we are so drawn to stories and movies like The Lord of the Rings or Spider-Man -- they are epic tales, rooted in the conflict between ultimate good and ultimate evil, and they carry redemptive values. These three things always touch a trait deep within us that many never actualize and most can't explain.

But the longing is there, nonetheless. Eldredge traces four major "acts" common to both great stories and life itself -- Eternal Love, The Entrance of Evil, The Battle For the Heart, and The Kingdom Restored. His treatise is sure to ring true with every reader, because these four "acts" ring true to life. We all want a happy ending, don't we? Fall in love, get married, have 2.4 kids, get the perfect job, and drive an S.U.V.? Most of those kinds of desires come from the society we live in, but digging deeper reveals that at their core, longing for that "good triumphs" happy ending -- in whatever form it may take -- is part of what it means to be human.

As Eldredge explains, the human heart was made to appreciate drama. And the reason is simple: we're in one! If you want to understand the meaning of life, or even if you just want to know why you get a little obsessed with stories of mythical proportions, Epic explains it all.

Set at the Tallis Estate one hot July night in London in 1935, the novel begins with Briony eagerly putting together the finishing touches on a play she has written to commemorate her older brother Leon's return from college. Exceptionally creative yet na�ve, she holds to all too idealistic notions of what people are like and how the world works. By the end of the night, she will have seen her older sister, Cecilia, in two shockingly compromising situations with her friend Robbie Turner that will leave the young Briony very confused, and while the entire house searches the grounds later that night for her missing twin cousins, she will unwittingly happen upon her other cousin, Lola, being raped. But because of the darkness of the night and the anger and uncertainty that is boiling within her because of the day's events, Briony will finger the wrong man for the crime. As a result of all of this, at the age of thirteen, she suddenly begins to grow up overnight.

Told in four parts, the audience subsequently learns of the plights of Robbie and Cecilia roughly five years later in the middle of World War II, followed next by the life Briony now lives just at the very end of this same time period, before ending with a long jump forward to the year 1999 where the reader is allowed to see more fully how Briony has spent all of these years trying to atone for her mistake all those years ago.

McEwan takes the reader on a detailed journey through the lives of these men and women, giving ear to their thoughts, passions, and feelings, while filling our collective eyes with vivid images (be they beautiful or gut-wrenching) and our noses with powerful smells (equally pungent or repugnant). Much background is given on the family estate, various parts of the city, and other scattered characters that come into view, so that nothing and no one seems superfluous and falls just short of being overly detailed. A dictionary would certainly be good to have at a few points in the novel, but McEwan thankfully avoids digressing into arrogant word-posturing, and so the reader is allowed to keep up with the story without becoming too distracted by post-graduate level vocabulary.

Depending on your preferences and notions concerning how a book should be ended, Atonement may or may not be to your liking. I found it to be akin to Orson Scott Card's conclusion of his novel, Ender's Game, though I would argue that in the case of Atonement, I am accepting the ending more begrudgingly and with considerably less enthusiasm. In both cases, the endings make sense, and I had to chew on both of them for a bit, but this one here felt rushed. The fifty-plus year jump from the third part of the novel to the end is indeed very quick considering that only a handful of years pass between parts one and three, so this might be jarring to the audience. We're left to wonder why more time was not devoted to some of the years in between and why this book seems to end in a hurried and somewhat disjointed fashion, when more time could easily have been spent. It would have made for a longer novel, sure, but this is not a short novel to begin with (nearly 375 pages), so anyone who was willing to go this far would have been able to handle a few more pages.

Parts of this novel are very engaging and creative (the first part of the novel is told in chapters from the viewpoints of Briony, Cecilia and Robbie, all of which recall the dreaded day's events, overlapping only slightly as they are connected together), and a lot of the time the novel is quite lush in its various descriptions. The intriguing beginning to the story draws the reader in and follows an interesting path for a time, but almost seems to grow tired of itself by the end, which is a shame because more could have been done with this work. Atonement is a good book, but not a great one; worth reading, though its pay-off may disappoint you.

I'd go so far as to call this one of the most important interviews I've ever published. Wait until you hear what Rob has to say about the modern church and why it's not being effective... This is huge, paradigm-shifting stuff that everyone needs to hear.