Bathsheba by Jill Eileen Smith

Coming March 2011...

Description:

Bathsheba is a woman who longs for love. With her devout husband away fighting the king’s wars for many months at a time, discontent and loneliness dog her steps–and make it frighteningly easy to succumb to King David’s charm and attention. Though she immediately regrets her involvement with the powerful king, the pieces are set in motion that will destroy everything she holds dear. Can she find forgiveness at the feet of the Almighty? Or has her sin separated her from God–and David–forever?

Preview:

This final installment in the Wives of King David series could be the best one of all because the plot is already set up to be original. As long as Jill continues her knack for developing good characters and creating interesting outside elements, Bathsheba could be a hit.

Abigail by Jill Eileen Smith

Abigail has lived a life of oppression as the abused wife of the evil man Nabal. She has been trapped in this impossible situation ever since she was forced into a union with her father's tormentor. But little does she know that her life is about to be forever altered when a renegade band of warriors led by a young shepherd threatens to attack Nabal and his land to take it for themselves. In a desperate move to save her life, Abigail pleads with this shepherd to relent, which he does. Suddenly, by a supernatural turn of events, Abigail is freed from her life of misery and is whisked away by the romantic shepherd into a life she never bargained for. Little does she know that her life will never be the same.

Jill Eileen Smith said she began this series because of Abigail, which was actually the first book she wrote. She has always seemed to sympathize with this seemingly mistreated woman, but I do not. While the situation with Nabal did happen, Jill adds other unknown circumstances to Abigail's life, causing her to be a victim her entire life. This was the major flaw with this work of fiction.

While Abigail demonstrates some slight personality, she is mostly a perfect victim. David is an imperfect character with a slight personality, a fact that cannot be denied from the Biblical account. Joab and Abishai are perhaps the best characters. Nabal is a cheesy villain, as are some of David's other wives, which all serve to create a pathetic lifestyle for Abigail. As you can see, Jill was inconsistent with her character development; making her favorite characters perfect, making her hated characters evil, and giving personalities to characters she didn't care either way about. This is not the correct method of character development, to show favoritism in this way. The character development in Michal was much better than this.

There is one key character death near the middle of the book, which is one of the only highlights of the plot. There are many romantic subplots, most of them through polygamy, which is an interesting subject more explored in this book than in Michal. However, in the end, this issue does not matter. While Abigail does not hit on all the high points of David's life like Michal did, Jill took the liberty to add many plot points in order to make Abigail's pathetic. For some reason, most readers enjoy reading about perfect characters in hopeless situations not of their own making. I do not deem this good fiction because it is not realistic. There were many things Jill could have done to make this book more interesting, such as devoting time to every character's personality instead of just some. This would have done wonders for the book. Even though Abigail's real life seemed pathetic, there are better ways to write such plots.

All in all, Abigail is one of those works of art that is liked more by the artist than by the public.

2 stars

Michal by Jill Eileen Smith

She's in love with her father's worst enemy, but so is her sister. David returns her love, but the kingdom is unstable, and there is talk of him stealing the crown. Not only is she in love with him, but Michal does not want to become destitute if he does. Through deception and scheming, Michal finally gets her way with David, but at a price. By doing this, she subjects herself to an undesirable life, because her husband is a wanted man. Her love is torn away, replaced, and then reunited at a cost all because of her selfish choices. Now she wishes she had listened to the voice of Yahweh years before...

It's refreshing for an author to choose such an underused and under told Biblical story. Looking at a prominent Bible character through the eyes of another is certainly refreshing, yet Jill Eileen Smith colored outside the lines on some accounts. In the end, the book ends in the correct way, but not after a rocky start.

The characters are slow in developing, but eventually reach the point of personality, perhaps too late. For characters to be successful they must be developed from the start, though not too obviously. Michael is definitely an imperfect character from the start, as she was portrayed in the Bible, and slowly develops personality. At first, it looked like David was going to look like a saint, but Jill turned that car around before it could reach its destination. Often, authors portray such popular characters as perfect when they really were far from such an honor. Considering the fact that this book took ten years for her to finish, one can see why the characters are developed in this fashion. Jill will need to work on her characters in the future for sure.

Jill perhaps did too much skipping around in history, hitting on high points of David's story that Michal was probably not even part of. It would have been better if Jill had kept the story in one place for longer than she did, then perhaps Michal would have been a better character. Michal needed to be a first person character, and a first person account would have perhaps limited Jill's scope of writing. As it was, she tried to show the reader the highlights of David's life sort of through Michal eyes, rather than leave some of it for the reader to fill in by reading the Bible for themselves. Jill said she wanted to do this with this book, but I'm afraid she failed in her endeavour.

The best thing about the end of the book is that while Jill had the creative licence to fix something no one knows the answer to, she refrained and chose a realistic end rather than a plastic end. Once she reached the point at which the Bible tells no more about Michal daughter of Saul, Jill could have fixed something no one could have faulted her on for lack of information, but she did not. This shows how much potential she has as an author and that she is willing to try to be realistic.

I look forward to what Jill Eileen Smith will do in the future of her writing career. I presume she will continue to write books concerning Biblical women, since she has expressed interest in this subject. She may not need to leave these guidelines.

4 stars