Winning Fiction: Last Light freebie

I've recently been converted to ebooks.  I've dabbled with them before - especially when travelling - but always preferred the "real" thing. 

Until I recently realized a HUGE advantage - you can read the ebook in the dark!  (and in the park, and on the train, and on a plane, and in a box, and with a fox, and here or there or anywhere...)  This works perfectly in winter morning hours as a sweet, gradual way to get into the day...

(I've got the Amazon Kindle app on my iPod Touch - and it works great for me.)

Anyway, I just wanted to mention that Terri Blackstock's book, Last Light, is currently a Kindle Freebie on Amazon, and I HIGHLY recommend this book.  I just read through it today in the midst of all the other busyness, and it is well worth the read.

It's got a murder mystery for entertainment value, and I can't critique the scientific element of the story at all, but in terms of evaluating the essence of human nature (including my own), I found this to be a life-changing book.

We live in an age of entitlement.  American especially, we are raised with inalienable rights...  We have the right to food and clothes and happiness and equality and medicine and safety and security and transportation and education.  We have the right to high speed internet, good customer service, reasonable pay for our work, and a whole host of things that lead to HUGE culture shock when we travel to other countries and realize other people don't have all these entitlements...  And often, in our arrogance, we think we are worthy of more than others in third world countries, and we somehow rationalize, or ignore, all the discrepancies between what our rights are and what their rights are. 

This book highlights what happens when the apple cart gets upset - where those entitlements are suddenly taken away.  How do people react?  How would WE react?

Christ calls us to deny ourselves, our rights, our entitlements, and take up the cross.  It's easy to say this, and maybe even to act upon it, as long as we reserve the right to "give" - because giving itself presumes the entitlement that something was ours to give in the first place.  The reality is - God is the owner of all, and if He calls upon us to pass something on that was in our grasp momentarily, it's not OUR generosity that's at play.  Even scarier - our own lives, our families' lives, are not really OUR own. 

To grasp that which is eternal - the only thing we are indeed entitled to as heirs with Christ, we need to let go of the self-preservation - of our own lives and our families' lives.

Don't worry - all this pontification isn't in the book.  It's really an entertaining read, if that's what you're looking for.  But I find its value to be so much more than entertainment, and I'm still musing what its impact will be on my life.

BULLETIN BOARD

Do you have any recent clean fiction book reviews or other clean fiction-related post?  Here's your place to link up!  (Christian fiction especially welcome.)  Check the rules if you've got questions.

And be sure to check out some of the other great reviews linked up here!