Jason Albertson

Beyond the Circle is a two-volume story written by Ted Dekker and published in 2018. The story is set in the same fictional universe as the Circle series ( Black , Red , White , and Green ), along with about ten other Dekker books. If you've read any of the Circle or its spinoffs before, you would find the setting familiar: the bad guys ("the Horde") have distinctive skin and live in the desert, and some characters fall asleep in our world, but they wake up in another one, then when they fall asleep there, they wake up here. You've seen all the story props before. What sets this duology apart from the original Circle series is its theology. Dekker excels at writing theology into his fiction, both through dialogue and just plain story. These books are the primary example, but other examples include  Outlaw ,  Showdown ,  Sinner ,  Heaven's Wager ,  When Heaven Weeps , and  Thunder of Heaven , all of which I recommend. There's lots to say about t...

This post begins a short series on ways in which a few of my favorite authors use solitude in their fiction. The topic caught my attention partly because of some reading on the spiritual disciplines I did this last year (Richard Foster's Celebration of Discipline  and several of Dallas Willard's books). In this first post, I'll talk a little about my experience and my current understanding of solitude's uses (positive and negative). That will provide a background for where I'm coming from as I comment on uses of solitude in fiction. I have experienced solitude in some positive and some negative ways. Four of the five jobs I have worked have involved extended periods of solitude, whether as a librarian, landscape technician, or secretary. The stretches of solitude occasioned by that work have often been spiritual deserts in which I have faced temptations that wouldn't emerge in the company of others. That probably says something about the value of fellowship,...