Review: Millie Maven and the Bronze Medallion was New Age Trash.

Last Christmas, I asked for a series of books that a friend of mine suggested called “The Millie Series”. According to Amazon, that series is about a Christian farm girl growing up during the time of the Civil War, having to learn lessons about trusting God while growing up or something. I ended up not reading the series since there was another Millie series in town that the gift giver got instead and that was the Millie Maven trilogy by Ted and Rachelle Dekker. I was fine with this as the cover art looked great and I thought that it would be a short, fun fantasy tale. Little did I know that this trilogy would be one of the dumbest trilogies that I’ve ever read, having stupid yet ham-fisted analogies for Christianity and plot twists that were so easy to spot that even Dora the Explorer wouldn’t have had any trouble finding them. Let’s start with the first book.

Not only does this book raise some massive questions about the theology of the authors (which is something that the entire series does really well), but it is so incredibly tropey that I was finding myself waiting to see a love triangle occur somewhere (which we luckily never got since it’s a story that centers around 12-year-olds.)

The book opens up with Millie Maven on her 12th birthday, an orphan who is currently working hard at scrubbing her aunt’s home in hopes that she might be nice and give her a present and some cake. She isn’t fed well, only has two pairs of clothing, is mentally abused by her aunt, seen as an ugly blotch on the wall by her uncle, and is forced to live in the attic when she isn’t working. However, on the night of her 12th birthday, the weird neighbor, Aggie of the Woods shows up and takes Millie to a glowing pool of water in the middle of nowhere and encourages her to jump in because it will transport her to FIGS (the FairPointe Institute for Gifted Students). While there, she makes some friends and is immediately thrown into a series of difficult trials to determine which gift she has, which kick starts the series (more on those gifts in a second).

Now, if you’re wondering where you’ve heard this story before, I was too. The answer to this question is: almost every single young adult novel ever written. While some of these tropes can work and not sound like something that has been regurgitated several times, Millie Maven fails miserably at that. It feels as though most of the plot relies on those tropes to the point where it feels soulless, but don’t worry. It gets worse.

Remember how I said earlier that there were “Christian” analogies throughout this book? Well, the gifts are one of those ham-fisted analogies that had me wondering why I was even reading the book. The main plot of the book if you want to get into FIGS, you have to get a medallion that shows your gift and Millie is trying desperately to get hers. The gifts are Nurture (which is a green medallion), which can be split into two subcategories of Healing and Growing; Transformation (a blue medallion), which can involve the transformation of either physical objects or minds; and Strength (a golden medallion), which can manifest itself as sheer speed or actual brute strength. However, we find out that there’s also a fourth, red medallion which Millie gets at the end of the book that means that she’s the special Chosen One (another trope from every YA novel ever; stay tuned for tomorrow’s post to see the reason as to why she’s the Chosen One.)

Now, these gifts are obviously supposed to be representative of spiritual gifts and we learn in later books that the physical manifestation of these gifts that the kids get during the FIGS initiation are supposed to teach them about how they can use their other gifts back in the regular world. While this would’ve been fine if it was in any other book, the Dekkers unfortunately decided that they needed to write a God/Jesus figure into this book, and he’s called “the Great Teacher” and is the one who gives the kids their gifts. Having come out of and seen churches that put heavy emphasis on spiritual gifts, especially those that are supposedly apparent in the physical realm, my fake-Christianity buzzers started going off. While I can give kudos to the Dekkers for at least acknowledging the elitism that comes with the heavy emphasis on spiritual gifts in New Age/Prosperity/Pentecostal churches, they completely nuked a potential, much better plot line when Millie gets her special red medallion. It would’ve been a better book if they focused on Millie having the true gifts of the Spirit: peace, patience, kindness, faithfulness, love, gentleness, self-control, joy, and goodness instead of “You get a medallion because of stupid reasons.”

This gets even worse when Millie unlocks her power by being told by the Great Teacher that she is made perfect and whole and loved by him. While it is good Christian doctrine to know that we are loved by God (because it is a fact, even though many of us sometimes struggle with believing it), the idea that we are made perfect and whole is stupid and is the basis of the very heretical view that it is our shame that separates us from God, not our sin. In fact, the idea that it’s our shame that separates us from God is even confirmed in the book because Millie never even repents of anything when she decides to follow the Great Teacher, but rather gets her power because she finds out that she has nothing to be ashamed of, thus defeating the villain with that knowledge. This is portrayed as somehow being loving, and instead of being a representation of the truth, it just makes the Great Teacher look like the father of narcissists and Mary Sues.

It doesn’t just stop with Millie, either. The other kids also get their medallions and get to go to FIGS (which we later learn is Eden renewed or something in Book 2), despite the fact that most of them suck and have repented of absolutely nothing. This theology was so bad that I actually wrote an email to the authors several months ago when I finished this book, asking them to explain their theology and where they’re getting it, and I never got a response.

For those of you who are wondering why I’m so upset about this, the reason why I don’t like this is because this is a kids’ book that attempts to present the Gospel but instead sends a message that is completely detrimental to the faith and is not true Christianity. It’s this type of stuff that leads to either deconstruction or a path that will ultimately be detrimental to the person. And unfortunately, we have two more books to get through.

Until next time,

M.J.