Fantastical Truth

The Wheel of Time turns, and ages come and pass leaving memories that become legend, then fade to myth. In one age, called 2022, the Wheel of Time TV show recently concluded season 1. Yet this season finale of this show was not an end, because there are no beginnings or endings in the Wheel of Time. But it was an ending—an ending of the hopes of many. For it shall come to pass that what men made s...

Last year at this time, Lorehaven went all-digital: new articles every month, podcasts on Tuesdays, reviews on Fridays, plus news updates and other resources to help Christian fans explore fantastical stories for God’s glory. Today, we’re exploring which stories made the biggest impact on you, and catch up with the story creators who react to your reactions. Subscribe to Lorehaven arti...

Fantastical Truth from Lorehaven has begun season 3! As we exit the holidays, we’re echoing another livestream replay from earlier this month. Marian Jacobs and James R. Hannibal join us again, not just to discern the nonsense and nastiness in fantasy stories, but to thank God for the chance to find great stories and receive them with thanksgiving and holiness. That’s our mission at Lorehaven, esp...

“I amar prestar sen … han mathon ne nen … han mathon ne chae … a han noston ned wilith.” Well, it’s some form of Elvish. In the Common Tongue, it reads, “ The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring film released twenty years ago this month. So don’t you feel older than a Dúnedain ranger?” This film truly changed our world forever. Now we...

What if horses could breathe fire? What if other horses could swim in the ocean, or vanish into the shadows, or rain lightning from the sky? Or, if you’re human, what if you were a king’s daughter in a Rohan-like kingdom, exiled from the palace to guard the borders—and then your land was invaded? Naturally, author Gillian Bronte Adams can answer these questions, in her new novel from E...

Mr. and Mrs. Evangelical, of number 316, Piety Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much. Then their children (some of whom supposed they had been living in a cupboard under the stairs) learned about a world of witches, wizards, and schools for both: J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series. Now, twenty years after the first Potterverse film premiered in theate...

Tales for teens-and-older show us fabulous worlds and fantastic heroes. Yet people can twist these powerful gifts to serve insidious evils. In this episode we replay a livestream from the RealmSphere, featuring Lorehaven’s E. Stephen Burnett, James R. Hannibal, and Marian Jacobs, wielding faith over fear to battle fiends. Subscribe to Lorehaven articles • library • reviews • podcast • gifts Episod...

Christians love engaging fantastical worlds, right down to the real world Jesus calls us to serve. But what kind of world do we truly engage? Do we live in an amazing “positive world,” where most people think Christianity is great? Or do we live in a world that’s neutral toward Christianity—or even a world where most people despise our faith? Our answer helps us stay realistic ye...

“Keep the spice flowing.” “I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer.” New fantasy-fandom catchphrase unlocked! Yes, like a lot of you, we’ve found Dune , the movie, the book, the fandom we’d somehow missed all this time. Just like a young man discovering his purpose on a desert planet, new fandoms can be amazing, yet also come with a few dangers slithering below...

Should Christians celebrate Halloween? What if we call it a “harvest festival”? We’ve all heard the jokes, but whether we engage or escape the thing, we must take seriously how our neighbors perceive the occasion. Right down to our lawn decor, Halloween’s trappings can encourage us to celebrate good things like fall and fandom. But these things can also provoke us into flip...

Episode sponsors Andrew J. Chamberlain’s The Centauri Survivors Novel Marketing podcast See all sponsors Dragons. Light. Raiders. Lightraiders! One shepherd boy with four companions, plus a talking silver wolf, begin their quest to restore the Lightraider Order, destroy a portal, and stop an invasion. So begins novelist James R. Hannibal’s Lightraider Academy series book 1, Wolf Soldier . It...

Episode sponsors Andrew J. Chamberlain’s The Centauri Survivors Novel Marketing podcast See all sponsors “Christian fiction is so cringe and cheesy, so let’s ignore it.” Some critics talk like this. But today’s guest challenges this line: Daniel Silliman, Christianity Today news editor and author of the new nonfiction book Reading Evangelicals . He surveys five bestselling...

Episode sponsors Andrew J. Chamberlain’s The Centauri Survivors Novel Marketing podcast See all sponsors Some years back on Twitter, a novelist shared a strange boast. “Sometimes I lose sight of why I want this whole Being an Author thing,” she said. “It’s easy to get overwhelmed … and forget the whole point of it all. Which is, of course, to wreck you, the reader.&#8...

Episode sponsors Andrew J. Chamberlain’s The Centauri Survivors Novel Marketing podcast See all sponsors Charlotte Madsen has issues, all the issues, all at once, and getting worse. They include but aren’t limited to: infertility, anxiety, medical trauma, postpartum depression, judgmental friends, a beautiful yet sinful toddler, and—just in time for this spooky season—a ghost that cree...

You musn’t go outside. If the plague doesn’t get you, the toxic culture will. Let’s be serious: worldview sewage pours out from your TV screen, and new generations of parents (not just grumpy Christians!) are waking up to nasty notions about sex and self-worship in the kids’ stories. That’s dirty stuff infesting our world. Do we need “clean reads” to keep...

What if you went hunting in the woods and found a Louisiana girl who had just been dropped off by a UFO? Then you tried to help her out while reconnecting with your past, and dropped into that crazy world of conspiracies and possible preparation for the end-times? Will Satan, or perhaps his human agents, use extraterrestrial myths to warm us up for a tribulation? Darby Kern, writer and producer of...

This week marks the twentieth-year anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in the United States. Maybe you dimly recall these terrible events, but both of us remember them quite well. We also recall the stories and other images we used while trying to understand how people could do this. We will explore not just Sept. 11, and similar events today, but the greater question of how we use fanta...

What if you hated the idea of Peter Pan, then learned that your own skin sheds the fairy dust you need for traveling to Neverland? That’s the magical start of Kara Swanson’s Heirs of Neverland series, which began last year with the fantasy novel Dust . That book won three Realm Awards last July , and today Kara Swanson flies into our window and helps guide us to fantastical truth. Episode sponsors...

Last month at Lorehaven, readers were buzzing about a two-part article series from Josiah DeGraaf, which we called Should Christians Cancel Woke Stories? In short, Josiah suggests Christians must watch our for our own propaganda , and approach stories not as “culture warriors” but as students . That raises a big question hiding behind many readers’ questions about the series. Whe...

Last month, social-media citizens criticized the Romance Writers of America for nominating a Christian-made historical romance novel for its 2021 Vivian Awards. We’re looking at a surprising plot twist, when secular readers are feeling strict about a book like this. How can readers respond when secular critics fault Christian-made fiction for being too gritty and realistic? We explore the backstor...

What if your father died and made you the emperor, and you had to use your own bloodborne power and your empire’s traditional cult of human sacrifices to keep control of your sun—that is, the sun, S-U-N? Then you learn the sun is fading away, and the gods might oppose your new marriage? That’s the story of Lani Forbes’s Mesoamerican-inspired fantasy The Seventh Sun . Lani already appeared on...

Last month the Ark Encounter attraction, by Answers in Genesis near Cincinnati, announced they would build the Tower of Babel. Of course, this won’t be a replica, lest God confuse our languages even more, but an exhibit. We’re joined by Tim Chaffey, who’s not only an expert in biblical apologetics, but one of the architects who helped build the backstory of Ark Encounter. Concession st...

Earlier this summer, the U. S. Director of National Intelligence released a nine-page report that chronicled 144 encounters between military pilots with unidentified aerial phenomena, or UAP. Many of these extraordinary objects defy scientific explanation. What are the fantastical possibilities for UAP? Have pilgrims from other planets, or other dimensions, ventured to our own? And how do we as Ch...

Just this month, two wealthy business owners, Richard Branson and Jeff Bezos, took two different private vehicles on flights beyond Earth.[1. GPS III-5 Mission photo (June 17, 2021) courtesy SpaceX on Flickr . Licensed under Creative Commons .] Now people are saying: the age of lower-cost space flight is finally here, not only from government agencies but from private entrepreneurs! Others wonder...

We’re back from the Realm Makers conference in July 2021! Over 400 people arrived in St. Louis or watched the streaming video at this premier Christian-led conference for faith-based creators of fantasy, science fiction, and beyond. What keeps Christian fans and authors assembling at this annual event? Fanside chats at the Lorehaven booth 1. Realm Makers executive director Scott Minor RealmM...