This month’s CSFF Blog Tour book features the fourth and final installment in Jeffery Overstreet‘s “The Auralia Thread” series, The Ale Boy’s Feast. If you have not read the other three books in the series, Auralia’s Colors, Cyndere’s Midnight, and Raven’s Ladder, don’t even try to read this book. Start with the others first. In fact, I suggest you read them one right after another now that they are all out.

Like the other books in the series, The Ale Boy’s Feast contains a rich, intricate plot with deep characters in  a beautiful, but dangerous world. But the thing I noticed most about the series is the writing. Overstreet strings words together so beautifully that at times I wanted to read sentences out loud to hear the sounds together. There is not one awkward phrase is the whole series!

If you are looking for a fantasy novel by a Christian author that is an allegory or is somewhat of a mirror of the trinity we have in our world, you will not find it. This is not an overtly “Christian” novel, although it has many themes that we Christians enjoy: redemption, sacrifice, forgiveness, love.

The story swept me away and kept me thinking, but this is not a book for light reading. You really have to concentrate on it because Overstreet’s style is closer to literary fiction rather than popular or genre fiction.

While reading the series, I felt like I was reading through a mist. Although the story is wonderful and entertaining, I kept feeling like I was missing something. Some of the other blog participants mentioned that a central theme of the series is the power of art to change the world. That could be it. I’m not very artistic and while I appreciate art and pretty things and the stunning beauty of God’s creation, I do not see the world through a lens of an artist and beauty, colors, lines, etc. do not speak to me the same way it does to them.

Check out what other blog participants are saying:

Gillian Adams
Red Bissell
Grace Bridges
Beckie Burnham
Morgan L. Busse
Valerie Comer
CSFF Blog Tour
Shane Deal
Chris Deane
Cynthia Dyer
Andrea Graham
Katie Hart
Ryan Heart
Bruce Hennigan
Jason Joyner
Carol Keen
Dawn King
Inae Kyo
Shannon McDermott
Shannon McNear
Karen McSpadden
Rebecca LuElla Miller
Eve Nielsen
John W. Otte
Sarah Sawyer
Kathleen Smith
Donna Swanson
Rachel Starr Thomson
Robert Treskillard
Steve Trower
Fred Warren
Dona Watson
Phyllis Wheeler