{"id":6016,"date":"2012-11-27T17:44:22","date_gmt":"2012-11-27T22:44:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/unequallyyoked\/?p=6016"},"modified":"2012-11-27T17:44:22","modified_gmt":"2012-11-27T22:44:22","slug":"the-invisible-church-youre-worshipping-in","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/unequallyyoked\/2012\/11\/the-invisible-church-youre-worshipping-in.html","title":{"rendered":"The Invisible Church You’re Worshipping In"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I ordered a copy of\u00a0Three Parts Dead<\/a><\/em> (and cajoled three friends into having a book club) when I read the ever trustworthy Alyssa Rosenberg\u2019s glowing review<\/a>. \u00a0But I just found out that the author is doing an AMA on Reddit<\/a>, and his intro alone is probably enough to attract the interest of some of you folks.<\/p>\n

Three Parts Dead<\/a><\/em> follows Tara, a junior associate in an international necromancy firm. She\u2019s been hired to resurrect a dead fire god, but as she investigates (with the help of a chain-smoking priest, who\u2019s having an understandable crisis of faith), she learns the god may have been murdered. Skullduggery and calamity ensue.<\/p>\n

The idea came from the sky-is-falling terror I saw back in 2008 at the start of the financial crisis, which made me ponder the extent to which we\u2019re tied to an invisible world (market) of powerful immortal entities, who sometimes go to war and sometimes die.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I had no idea this was the genesis of the novel, so you needn\u2019t worry it\u2019s a ham-handed allegory. \u00a0A lot of the book is about\u00a0dependence<\/em>. \u00a0The sentinels of the city subsume themselves in the hivemind Justice, and that power and grace can make their lives seem grey in comparison. \u00a0The dead god sustained a city, not just in prophetic dreams, but through satisfaction of practical concerns like heat and transportation. \u00a0One of the priests, in homage to his fire god, smokes constantly, and its hard to tell which is more physically wracking, his occasional abstinence from tobacco or the withdrawal of his god\u2019s gaze from his life.<\/p>\n

And then there\u2019s the protagonist and Craftswoman, Tara Abernathy. \u00a0Here, human magic is contrasted with divine puissance. \u00a0While gods have power as part of their being, practitioners of Craft (magic) need to draw their fuel from something \u2014 their own life and will, or that of others (willing or unwilling). \u00a0[As a sidenote, the word\u00a0puissance<\/em> really came alive for me, once its root turned up in my French class in the\u00a0subjunctive\u00a0conjugation of\u00a0pouvoir<\/em><\/a>, which my teacher defined as \u201cto be able to.\u201d]<\/p>\n

The characters in Three Parts Dead<\/em> spend a lot of time struggling with constraints on what they are able to do, or the limitations they might need to put on the power of others to be able to act freely. \u00a0These dependencies aren\u2019t in the pattern of the Creator-Creature model we were just discussing in\u00a0Frankenstein<\/em><\/a> \u2014 they\u2019re unmoored from duties, responsibilities, and love. \u00a0And that does sound a lot like the financial system we belong<\/em> to.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I ordered a copy of\u00a0Three Parts Dead (and cajoled three friends into having a book club) when I read the ever trustworthy Alyssa Rosenberg\u2019s glowing review. \u00a0But I just found out that the author is doing an AMA on Reddit, and his intro alone is probably enough to attract the interest of some of you […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":127,"featured_media":6017,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6016","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-reviewsrecommendations"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Invisible Church You're Worshipping In<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"I ordered a copy of\u00a0Three Parts Dead (and cajoled three friends into having a book club) when I read the ever trustworthy Alyssa Rosenberg's glowing\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, 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