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Elysium
Gunther Lueschen, a particle physicist, gets pulled through a mysterious portal and transported two hundred years into the future to an exotic underground world inhabited by other humans from earth. Despite the society's advanced technology, the people are unable to find a way to return home. But when Gunther himself develops the technology, it is taken from him by a malevolent force and modified to be a powerful weapon. With the aid of an unlikely mix of companions, Gunther seeks to take back his invention and re-open the portals. Standing in his way are genetically altered soldiers, technologically enhanced humans, and corrupt government officials. Yet even greater than these obstacles are the questions that arise about the nature of truth - questions that challenge the very core of his beliefs. "A thoroughly enjoyable read with great characters and a compelling, suspenseful story propelled by lots and lots of action. For me, the icing on the cake is the enlightening apologetics information masterfully woven into the story." Joe Barruso Emmy Award Winning Director/Producer Keith Robinson has dedicated his life to teaching others how to defend the Christian faith. Since the release of Logic's End, his first novel, he has been a featured speaker at Christian music festivals and churches, as well as appearing as a guest on numerous radio shows. In addition, he is also the Extensions Director of the Creation Science Society of Milwaukee. When not writing or speaking, Mr. Robinson is a full-time public school orchestra director at Indian Trail High School & Academy, he serves as the Principal Violist of the Full Score Chamber Orchestra in Zion, Illinois, and he is a professional freelance violist and violinist in the Southeastern Wisconsin/Northeastern Illinois area. He currently resides in Kenosha, Wisconsin, with his wife, Stephanie, their five children, an old-English sheepdog and a Rottweiler puppy.
- GenresAdventure
240 pages, Paperback
First published March 28, 2013
6 people are currently reading
13 people want to read
About the author
Keith A. Robinson
24 books19 followersKeith A. Robinson has dedicated his life to teaching others how to defend the Christian faith. He is a public speaker and author of apologetics fiction—a new genre that incorporates apologetics into the plots of sci-fi and action/adventure novels. He is also the audiobook narrator of his own novels and those of other authors.
Since the release of Logic’s End, his first novel, he has been a featured speaker at Christian music festivals, homeschool conventions, and apologetics seminars and churches, and been a guest on numerous radio shows.
He is currently the Publicist for Defender publishing with a passion about countering secular culture in the church. He is a professional violist and musician with a love of the outdoors. In his spare time he enjoys woodworking and spending time with his wife kayaking, hiking, and chasing chickens!
Since the release of Logic’s End, his first novel, he has been a featured speaker at Christian music festivals, homeschool conventions, and apologetics seminars and churches, and been a guest on numerous radio shows.
He is currently the Publicist for Defender publishing with a passion about countering secular culture in the church. He is a professional violist and musician with a love of the outdoors. In his spare time he enjoys woodworking and spending time with his wife kayaking, hiking, and chasing chickens!
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
October 1, 2019
Well folks, this was a ride.
Now I'm going to note that Christian sci-fi is definitely not my typical genre. But I wanted to go into this with an open mind. And really, in the beginning, this was at worst cheesy and a little lacking on the world building, but at best engaging and entertaining. Until it hit a big old wall of religion and ditched our main character for someone else.
There was a lot about this that felt like a very basic sci-fi set up. Mysterious portal. Purple mist. Future!! Okay, fine. But at least the world will be cool and expansive! Well, no. Not really. Our main character Gunther and his nephew are transported to a world called Elysium that they are (pretty sure) is not Earth. From what I gathered it's . . . in a big underground cave? And there's purple rocks? And a sun that's actually some giant globe that's never really explained how the heck they managed it? Alright, fine, I guess. The beginning was at least, like I said, entertaining as we enter this new place, time jump a little to see our main character more settled in, though not happily so, and working on a way to get home.
Something that really confused me was that the description of this book says that Gunther invents a way back but then it's stolen from him. Except, we never really see if his invention worked? It was a prototype, and Gunther himself never said they got the machine to work. Also, it was a government project, and the government shut down the program (because bad government, of course) so is that REALLY stealing? I don't know, but point being is this whole book is crazy over this machine that we didn't even get confirmation works.
Still, like I said, it was entertaining seeing Gunther trying to do some snooping and getting involved in your classic high speed chases and what not. But then, suddenly, we decide to stop and have this big conversation about worldview. (Which by the way, thinking your audience is dumb enough to not know the definition of worldview and having it over explained to them is not it, chief.) Gunther is then, quite aggressively, questioned about his worldview. Because he's an atheist, so obviously, we gotta correct that. They also bring in what they believe is a homeless addict, because it's the Christian thing to do, and Gunther is very hostile to him, which is completely out of character, as we've seen Gunther as nothing but a kind, compassionate man thus far. Does the author know that you can support Christianity without trying to make the atheist character seem like an uncaring asshole?
Now listen, I'm not going to deduct merit from a book for involving Christianity when it's marketed as such. However, I WILL deduct merit when it's literally shoved into the story while having absolutely zero impact on the plot. We get out of this huge action scene, and there's plenty to discuss about where we go from here, yet we're discussing our worldview??? It added absolutely nothing to the story and felt so, so preachy because of it. If you wanted to write a book where Christianity is a theme, make it make sense to the narrative! Make it important! And good GOD have you ever heard of symbolism?
And also, because the author refused to let the atheists respond to the questions asked in a logical manner that many would, let me put in a counter to the claim that the morals we have (like murder is wrong) does not match up to the theory of evolution because it's about the survival of the fittest. Sir, you're missing the key part of it all, evolution. We evolve with our environment. We survive. Could we survive if we just murdered people whenever we felt like it? No. As an actual good writer once said, "The lone wolf dies, but the pack survives. " I'll leave it at that.
Moving onto the next big problem. This story, from the beginning, from the description, is Gunther's story. We follow him (in third person, but still) and are given his thoughts, develop an emotional connection to him. But then halfway through, the author decides were going to focus more on someone else, a man named Raptor that Gunther encounters. And really, the only reason I can see for shifting the focus is because Raptor is also going on a spiritual journey (which includes, I shit you not, an apparent direct message from God given to another character who relies the message to Raptor). Now truly, I can see how a religious turn could be a significant part of Raptor's story. Key word, RAPTOR'S. While the first half of this was entertaining, it all went to hell once we shifted this narrative. Why should I care about Raptor when this story was supposed to be about Gunther, the one we already have emotional connections to? I could actually see a way to make this more cohesive had Raptor's narrative been brought up at the beginning of the novel and we switched back and forth from Gunther to Raptor's perspectives, giving us a connection to both, but that's not how it went. And for me, it comes down to one key thing: laziness.
There are just so many lazy parts of this story. From the lackluster world building, to forcing religion into a story that really had no reason for it, then trying to make the reason stronger by shifting the narrative to a character that might be impacted by it. The writing itself was lazy, relying on dramatic prose in which no one actually speaks like in real life, and a horrendous use of ellipses and exclamation marks. All it was missing was an audible "dun dun DUN" when anything dramatic or shocking happened. The world itself was never well described and we kept discovering different technologies along the way, which were also never well described, and therefore we never had an idea of what the limitations are in this world. The fact that the different territories in this book were named Elysium, the European States, Dehali, New China, Bab al-Jihad, and the United African Nations is another sign of how lazy this was. Making it all basically the same as our world now except the United States is Elysium? And you just HAD to make the bad guys jihadist terrorists? You made an ENTIRE NEW WORLD and still this is what you come up with? I can't tell what's showing the most with that one, laziness or Islamophobia.
And don't even get me started on the lack of women in this book. There's one woman in the group that Gunther runs into, but other than that, all roles for women are minor and service related/act only as significant others. Yikes.
So in conclusion, this was a mess. And the sad part is that it didn't have to be. Were it written in a way that allowed for the religious aspects to weave into the story naturally instead of just dropping it in like a boulder, and given Raptor the main character treatment at the beginning instead of completely ditching Gunther in the middle, this might have been half decent. But it's not even somewhat decent. It's just full on bad.
Now I'm going to note that Christian sci-fi is definitely not my typical genre. But I wanted to go into this with an open mind. And really, in the beginning, this was at worst cheesy and a little lacking on the world building, but at best engaging and entertaining. Until it hit a big old wall of religion and ditched our main character for someone else.
There was a lot about this that felt like a very basic sci-fi set up. Mysterious portal. Purple mist. Future!! Okay, fine. But at least the world will be cool and expansive! Well, no. Not really. Our main character Gunther and his nephew are transported to a world called Elysium that they are (pretty sure) is not Earth. From what I gathered it's . . . in a big underground cave? And there's purple rocks? And a sun that's actually some giant globe that's never really explained how the heck they managed it? Alright, fine, I guess. The beginning was at least, like I said, entertaining as we enter this new place, time jump a little to see our main character more settled in, though not happily so, and working on a way to get home.
Something that really confused me was that the description of this book says that Gunther invents a way back but then it's stolen from him. Except, we never really see if his invention worked? It was a prototype, and Gunther himself never said they got the machine to work. Also, it was a government project, and the government shut down the program (because bad government, of course) so is that REALLY stealing? I don't know, but point being is this whole book is crazy over this machine that we didn't even get confirmation works.
Still, like I said, it was entertaining seeing Gunther trying to do some snooping and getting involved in your classic high speed chases and what not. But then, suddenly, we decide to stop and have this big conversation about worldview. (Which by the way, thinking your audience is dumb enough to not know the definition of worldview and having it over explained to them is not it, chief.) Gunther is then, quite aggressively, questioned about his worldview. Because he's an atheist, so obviously, we gotta correct that. They also bring in what they believe is a homeless addict, because it's the Christian thing to do, and Gunther is very hostile to him, which is completely out of character, as we've seen Gunther as nothing but a kind, compassionate man thus far. Does the author know that you can support Christianity without trying to make the atheist character seem like an uncaring asshole?
Now listen, I'm not going to deduct merit from a book for involving Christianity when it's marketed as such. However, I WILL deduct merit when it's literally shoved into the story while having absolutely zero impact on the plot. We get out of this huge action scene, and there's plenty to discuss about where we go from here, yet we're discussing our worldview??? It added absolutely nothing to the story and felt so, so preachy because of it. If you wanted to write a book where Christianity is a theme, make it make sense to the narrative! Make it important! And good GOD have you ever heard of symbolism?
And also, because the author refused to let the atheists respond to the questions asked in a logical manner that many would, let me put in a counter to the claim that the morals we have (like murder is wrong) does not match up to the theory of evolution because it's about the survival of the fittest. Sir, you're missing the key part of it all, evolution. We evolve with our environment. We survive. Could we survive if we just murdered people whenever we felt like it? No. As an actual good writer once said, "The lone wolf dies, but the pack survives. " I'll leave it at that.
Moving onto the next big problem. This story, from the beginning, from the description, is Gunther's story. We follow him (in third person, but still) and are given his thoughts, develop an emotional connection to him. But then halfway through, the author decides were going to focus more on someone else, a man named Raptor that Gunther encounters. And really, the only reason I can see for shifting the focus is because Raptor is also going on a spiritual journey (which includes, I shit you not, an apparent direct message from God given to another character who relies the message to Raptor). Now truly, I can see how a religious turn could be a significant part of Raptor's story. Key word, RAPTOR'S. While the first half of this was entertaining, it all went to hell once we shifted this narrative. Why should I care about Raptor when this story was supposed to be about Gunther, the one we already have emotional connections to? I could actually see a way to make this more cohesive had Raptor's narrative been brought up at the beginning of the novel and we switched back and forth from Gunther to Raptor's perspectives, giving us a connection to both, but that's not how it went. And for me, it comes down to one key thing: laziness.
There are just so many lazy parts of this story. From the lackluster world building, to forcing religion into a story that really had no reason for it, then trying to make the reason stronger by shifting the narrative to a character that might be impacted by it. The writing itself was lazy, relying on dramatic prose in which no one actually speaks like in real life, and a horrendous use of ellipses and exclamation marks. All it was missing was an audible "dun dun DUN" when anything dramatic or shocking happened. The world itself was never well described and we kept discovering different technologies along the way, which were also never well described, and therefore we never had an idea of what the limitations are in this world. The fact that the different territories in this book were named Elysium, the European States, Dehali, New China, Bab al-Jihad, and the United African Nations is another sign of how lazy this was. Making it all basically the same as our world now except the United States is Elysium? And you just HAD to make the bad guys jihadist terrorists? You made an ENTIRE NEW WORLD and still this is what you come up with? I can't tell what's showing the most with that one, laziness or Islamophobia.
And don't even get me started on the lack of women in this book. There's one woman in the group that Gunther runs into, but other than that, all roles for women are minor and service related/act only as significant others. Yikes.
So in conclusion, this was a mess. And the sad part is that it didn't have to be. Were it written in a way that allowed for the religious aspects to weave into the story naturally instead of just dropping it in like a boulder, and given Raptor the main character treatment at the beginning instead of completely ditching Gunther in the middle, this might have been half decent. But it's not even somewhat decent. It's just full on bad.
July 25, 2023
I feel like the beginning story with Braedon could have been given more depth. His conversion to Christianity was almost missed. It picks up around chapter 8/9. I really like the way he weaves apologetics in to the story. I think it's a good book for teens who want to think on truth in an engaging way
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews