The Queue

"Any book which inspires us to lead a better life is a good book."
—Venerable Fulton Sheen (1895-1979)

From "The Queue: Post-Christmas Edition," published ten days hence, not "The Queue: Advent Edition" (a "Better Late than Never" post), also published ten days hence.

I met the authoress, Sara Shanning, at the green gorcer… & bought Rise of the Antichrist as an impulse purchase… When we were chatting, she referenced the Left Behind series; so, reading this book, let alone buying it, might well turn out to be a terrible mistake. We shall see.

Reading Rise of the Antichrist was a terrible mistake, buying it an even more terrible mistake. The characters are broadly drawn & one dimensional, even the protagonist, who careens from being a staggering moron to a sublime genius & back again, as the plotholes demand. There is a sense of neither time nor place in the narrative, not in a way that suggests timelessness & universality, but in a way that suggests incompleteness & incoherence, as if the fictional world is not thoroughly thought through. Even if thoroughly thought through, Seal One's fictional world is certainly not thoroughly realized, but left vague & undefined. The antagonist is almost invariably referenced by his given name not his surname, even in in-story media accounts, a jarring authorial choice that took me right out of the narrative each of the innumerable times I encountered it.

The book's theology is also dodgy. Rise of the Antichrist presents a generic "God" without a Christ. Good angels & bad demons—only once described as "dark angels"—appear throughout the narrative as cartoonish verifications of characters being good or bad. These caricatures are maybe half a step up from the pop-cultural image of an angel in white on one's right shoulder & a devil in red on one's left shoulder. The protagonist identifies himself as a "good guy," without irony & without any admission of fault or act of reparation for his own conscious & active participation in the antagonist's evil scheme. Why explicitly Christian media (literature & film) has the baleful reputation it does is on full display herein.

There is a classic joke, of which I am very fond.

Restaurant-goer 1: "The food here is terrible!"
Restaurant-goer 2: "Yes, & such tiny portions!"

Thus, yes, I am aware of the tension, if not outright contradiction, in my last beef: Rise of the Antichrist is less than two hundred pages. A seven-volume series of books, none of which are actually book-length? I call shenanigans! Just because one is writing a series of books "inspired by" the Seven Seals from the Apocalypse of John/the Book of Revelation, does not require that that series be seven books long, not if one doesn't have enough plot for seven books. Less than two hundred pages for the purchase price of $14.95 is fraud.

Seal One: Rise of the Antichrist is a terrible book. We shall never speak of it again.

Recently
Fathers of Vatican II, Sacrosanctum Concilium (from The Word on Fire Vatican II Collection)
Earl Swift, Across the Airless Wilds: The Lunar Rover and the Triumph of the Final Moon Landings
Fathers of Vatican II, Luman gentium (from The Word on Fire Vatican II Collection)
Fathers of Vatican II, Dei verbum (from The Word on Fire Vatican II Collection)
Sara Shanning, Seal One: Rise of the Antichrist

Currently
Pope Benedict XVI, The Pope Benedict XVI Reader

Devotionally
Kevin Belmonte, editor, A Year with G.K. Chesterton: 365 Days of Wisdom, Wit, and Wonder
Peter Kreeft, Food for the Soul: Reflections on the Mass Readings—Cycle A

Presently
Pope Benedict XVI, Deus Caritas Est (God Is Love)
Pope Benedict XVI, Sacramentum Caritatis (The Sacrament of Charity)
Fathers of Vatican II, Gaudium et spes (from The Word on Fire Vatican II Collection)
Heather Augustyn, Ska: An Oral History (SKApril 2023)
John W. O'Malley, What Happened at Vatican II
Xavier Rynne, Vatican Council II
Christopher Carstens, A Devotional Journey into the Easter Mystery