CSFF Blog Tour - Angel Eyes by Shannon Dittemore

I guess angels must be popular these days. There's certainly some Disney-esque kids show with angels playing when we leave for the school run most mornings, if that's any measure. Nice that they've made a revival since the good old days when This Present Darkness was the sum total of the fiction shelves in the local Christian bookshop.

So, that being the case, it's good to see from a quick scoot around the tour that Angel Eyes takes a scripturally based view of angels - there's a pretty comprehensive look at angels in art and the Bible on Shannon McDermott's blog.

Elsewhere, Julie Bihn wonders if angels could be among us performing apparently random acts of kindness, perhaps even endangering themselves... I was once saved from being mugged at knifepoint for a handful of 12 inch singles by an unnecessarily burly black fella in Birmingham. I'm not saying that was my guardian angel... but I'm not saying it wasn't.

Other stops to make:
Meagan on being broken;
Becky and Jason review Twilight;
a nice review by Beckie Burnham;
and of course the rest of the participants (list on Monday's post)

CSFF Blog Tour vs Tuesday Tunes

Honestly, the lengths I go to in order to bring a little musical relief to the tour... at the moment I'm battling a teething baby, a snow-crazed seven year old and a dubious broadband connection to plunder the darker recesses of Spotify.... I just hope you appreciate it. Which you will; it turns out WetWetWet were a very long way from the only band to record a song called Angel Eyes (which, by a curious coincidence, is the name of the book being featured on the tour this week).

So here we go, in honour of Angel Eyes by Shannon Dittemore, the Angel Eyes Top Ten:

10. Clinark – Angel Eyes
Because it's, um, snowing, we'll start with a little reggae to get us feeling all summery and Berumdan.

9. Ella Fitzgerald – Angel Eyes
An old jazz classic that kept cropping up... and will crop up now and again in the Top Ten. I've gone for the Layo & Bushwacka Remix, but purists are welcome to hunt down an alternative.

8. Night Horse – Angel Eyes
I so wanted this to be a big-haired hard rock cover of an old jazz standard. But it isn't. 

7. Symmetry – Angel Eyes
According to his website, Symmetry is a songwriter/vocalist/producer from Earth. I don't think he wrote the chorus though.

6. Coldspell – Angel Eyes
Swedish metal Chris Martin tribute act. Possibly.

5. Psychostatus - Angel Eyes
An instrumental prog-rock number by an unsigned artist called Greg. I bet Shannon Dittemore didn't see that coming.

4. Sadistik – Angel Eyes
Sadistik is the second white rapper in this list. That Vanilla Ice has got a lot to answer for. (Contains swears.)

3. Worldwide Groove Corporation – Angel Eyes
A chilled out electronic reworking of that old jazz classic...

2. Submotion Orchestra – Angel Eyes
Kind of like Portishead, but from Leeds. Actually that doesn't really do this track justice, it needs to be heard.

1. The Czars – Angel Eyes
And we finish, predictably, with a sublime acoustic cover of.... an obscure Abba track. Trust me, it's better than the original.

Here's the Top Ten Angel Eyes in all it's glory, if you do nothing else, check out the top three. And then visit the rest of tour, following the links on yesterday's post. Then - and only then - can you go and listen to some WetWetWet, if you really must.

CSFF Blog Tour - Angel Eyes by Shannon Dittemore

Well, it would appear that another month has passed without me bothering the airwaves of blogoland, because here we are, once again, at the Christian Science Fiction and Fantasy Blog Tour, which this month will be highlighting the young adult supernatural fantasy Angel Eyes by Shannon Dittemore. So, let's take a look at the blurb shall we?

Once you've seen, you can't unsee. Everything changes when you've looked at the world through . . . Angel Eyes

Brielle's a ballerina who went to the city to chase her dreams and found tragedy instead. She's come home to shabby little Stratus, Oregon, to live with her grief and her guilt . . . and the incredible, numbing cold she can't seem to shake. Jake's the new guy at school. The boy next door with burning hands and an unbelievable gift that targets him for corruption. Something more than fate has brought them together. An evil bigger than both of them lurks in the shadows nearby, hiding in plain sight. Two angels stand guard, unsure what's going to happen. And a beauty brighter than either Brielle or Jake has ever seen is calling them to join the battle in a realm where all human choices start. A realm that only angels and demons-and Brielle-can perceive.

Ok, you lost me at ballerina. Sorry. It's a character flaw, this tendency to judge books by their covers. Maybe I should look at it through Angel Eyes, or at least through what this tour has to say about it. Which we'll come back to in a couple of days (once the tour has had a chance to say something about it), and in the meantime here's the linky goodness for the tour:

Author's website
Author Facebook page
Angel Eyes on amazon.com and amazon.co.uk
Tour Participants:
Gillian Adams Julie Bihn Beckie Burnham Theresa Dunlap Nikole Hahn Jeremy Harder Jason Joyner Carol Keen Emileigh Latham Shannon McDermott Meagan @ Blooming with Books Rebecca LuElla Miller Anna Mittower Faye Oygard Nathan Reimer Chawna Schroeder Jessica Thomas Rachel Starr Thomson Steve Trower Dona Watson Shane Werlinger Phyllis Wheeler