Quick thoughts: So I've read David Maine's two Genesis-retold books, The Preservationist and Fallen, and I liked them, the latter more so. They're both quieter books than I think I was expecting--they really focus on people more than Epic Events Of Biblical Proportions. Which is interesting. At heart, both books are family dramas--albeit, ones in which God has a speaking role. They're both family dramas about ancient happenings, told quite straight-forwardly with a healthy injection of modern sensibility; rationality, feminism, the like. They both deal with people as quite literal beings in literal situations--ejected from the Garden, Adam and Eve have to learn how to hunt and forage; commanded to build a boat, Noah and crew have to wonder just how well the boat will hold all those creatures (and how to stow the creatures). In doing so, the books strive to ask--without providing or reaching any definitive answers, the books generally refusing to judge or pre-judge the characters--quiet but important questions about the nature of humanity. What is it to be evil, to have evil inside you? What is it to deal with family and/or the loss of family? Are we getting better or worse as people? What are the ways in which we see, and react to, and act upon, the world? And yet for that, the books don't stride too far from their main charge: telling good stories, stories that many of us know, stories that these books seek to tell in new ways.
I'd love to see these books fall into the hands of kids; I think there's challenges there the elders of us are probably less prone to accept.
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