"I am a plant molecular geneticist by training, so understand a thing or two about population genetics and phylogenetic reconstruction using molecular data. Considering Jeanson is employed by Answers in Genesis, an organization that requires its employees to pledge to a set of beliefs that include that the universe only 6,000 years old and that a worldwide flood occurred about 4,500 years ago as a literal interpretation of Genesis suggests, I expected to be a little skeptical about some of his conclusions. What I was not expecting, however, was to see so many simple, yet profoundly devastating, errors in his understanding of population genetics, gene mutation rates, and the meaning of phylogenies (let alone the proper methods for constructing valid trees).

Suffice it to say, as a geneticist I would not recommend this book to anyone. It is so full of errors and faulty reasoning that one cannot depend on the veracity of anything he says. He also seems to have a poor grasp of world history and has no actual training in population or evolutionary genetics, which shows when he attempts to explain what his findings mean. He also grossly misrepresents the work of other legitimate evolutionary biologists doing similar kinds of research, researchers from whom he has used data since he has generated none of his own data. Besaides, most lay readers would likely not be able to make any sense whatsoever of his explanations. Even I, as a trained molecular systematist, couldn't make sense of many of his convoluted explanations, and have had to conclude that parts of this book are barely better than word salad.

Lastly, it should be noted that the research on which he based much of this book has not been published in peer-reviewed journals. Every one of his papers on the topic have been published in Answers in Genesis internal journals, which undergo no real peer review. If his results had any validity, their extraordinary conclusions would immediately be published in the likes of Nature or Science, but given the disaster his research represents, such papers would never pass peer review. Thus the reason he chose to share his work in a book like this, I assume."

"I’m an evolutionary biologist and pay close attention to the work that comes out of the major creationist ministries, such as Answers in Genesis, where the author, Dr. Nathaniel Jeanson, is employed.

“Traced: Human DNA’s Big Surprise�� Dr. Jeansons’s new book. In Traced, Dr. Jeanson uses Y-chromosome haplotypes to argue that the Y chromosome supports a Young Earth history, specifically the AiG version.

His argument works like this:

1. Establish a Y-chromosome mutation rate based pedigree studies to calculate a Y-chromosome time to most recent common ancestor (TMRCA) approximately 4500 years ago.

2. Reinterpret the Y-chromosome phylogeny and chronology based on this earlier TMRCA.

3. Correlate historical events, like migrations, to nodes in the Y-chromosome phylogeny.

4. Overlay the Y-chromosome phylogeny onto the pedigree for Noah and his sons derived from Genesis.

5. Do (3) for Biblical events (e.g. the Flood, Babel, etc.)

6. Claim you rewrote the history of humanity and confirmed the AiG interpretation of Genesis.

There are significant problems with the case Jeanson makes.

The first, which underlies much of his analysis, is that he treats genealogy and phylogeny as interchangeable.

They are not interchangeable. Genealogy is the history of individuals and familial relationships. Phylogeny is the evolutionary history of groups: populations, species, etc. A phylogenetic tree may superficially look like a family tree, but all those lines and branch points represent populations, not individuals. This is an extremely basic error.

There are additional problems with each step of the case he makes.

In terms of calculating the Y-TMRCA (that’s time to most recent common ancestor), he uses single-generation pedigree-based mutation rates rather than long-term substitution rates, which is not a valid technique, since many mutations are lost from populations due to natural selection and genetic drift. He even references a couple of studies that indicate the consensus date of 200-300kya for the Y-MRCA, but dismisses them as low-quality, and ignores that there are many, many more such studies.

He is constrained in an extremely narrow timespan for much of the Y-chromosome branching due to its claimed occurrence after Noah’s Flood (~4500 years ago) and running up against well-documented, recorded human history (he ignores that Egyptian history spans the Flood).

In correlating his revised node dates on the Y-chromosome phylogeny with historical events, he employs extremely amateurish “analysis��, such as “the ancestral population for sister haplogroups existed along the line between the geographic homeland for the derived groups, and the descendants migrated in opposite directions��. I’m not exaggerating; this is how he explains how and where E1b1a and E1b1b descended from E1b1.

He also ignores inconvenient data that refute his model. For example, Jeanson claims haplotype R1b arrived in Europe between 700 and 1400 CE, and specifically in Italy in the 14- or 1500s. However, we have DNA from a stone age burial in northern Italy dated to about 14,000 years ago, and that individual was R1b.

Even if we take Jeanson’s young-earth timeline at face value, a stone age specimen would be pretty close to the flood, about 4kya, which also directly invalidates his model.

To overlay the Y-chromosome phylogeny (with incorrect new dates incorrectly correlated to historical events) with the pedigree of Noah and his sons and their descendants derived from Genesis, Jeanson egregiously acts as though a phylogenetic tree and a pedigree are interchangeable, treating nodes on the phylogeny as specific individuals rather than populations.

And finally, he correlates the haplotypes on the phylogeny (now incorrectly overlayed with Noah’s family tree) with Biblical groups and events.

That’s how Jeanson rewrites the history of humanity.

There’s another serious issue Jeanson ignores entire: Neanderthals. Neanderthals interbred with Homo sapiens. Most YECs have Neanderthals (and Denisovans) as descendants of Adam and Eve, living post-flood. This means that Noah is also *their* Y-MRCA. The problem is that we have Neanderthal genomes, and their Y chromosomes are highly divergent. This necessarily pushes the MRCA back far beyond the YEC timeline, even using Jeanson’s incorrect mutation rates. Jeanson completely ignores these data that directly refute his model.

So Traced doesn’t do what we’re told it does. It’s too full of basic errors and shoddy analysis.

It’s not designed to convince real biologists that AiG is actually right. And I don’t even think it’s designed to convince non-YECs, Christian or not, that YEC is right. I think this is designed to reassure people already on board with AiG’s version of Genesis that they have “science�� to back up their beliefs. It’s to make a subset of YECs feel good, and not much more. There are too many errors, basic, obvious errors, for anything else."

"The 2nd book in The Empyrean series wasn’t as enjoyable for me as the 1st. The pacing was not great for this nearly 900 page behemoth and I did a lot of skimming, especially in the last quarter.
I still like Violet as a main character for the most part, but something is off for me on Violet’s and Xadan’s relationship and has been since the beginning. I keep expecting something more, I dunno. Even with so many pages and opportunities for depth, it just seems so superficial still between them. I haven’t clicked with Xadan and don’t like him all that much. 🤷🏽‍♀�� And the drama between them is dumb, honestly. They should never have gotten together in book one. I can think of several ways the author could have spun the story to drag the romance out which would have made this second book not feel like such a slog. With the romance not pulling me in, everything else just felt so blah.
I still don’t feel very connected to the dragons, either. It’s like Violet and Tairn were bonded and then immediately have this full relationship with hardly any in-depth interactions between them. I feel like I don’t know Tairn at all. He’s just some voice in her ear at times with a snarky comment and then helping out in a fight scene here and there. Andarna is asleep for basically the whole book and when she’s awake, she’s a brat.
I loved the side characters in book one, but in this one, they don’t shine as bright. By shutting out all her friends, they don’t come to the forefront of the story.
All in all, not a great follow up to Fourth Wing, I’m sad to say.

2.75/5 stars"

"I went in with pretty low expectations because the books that have been hyped up lately have all let me down in the end. HOWEVER, I can happily announce that Fourth Wing actually deserves the hype it’s received in my opinion. It’s extremely addictive with lots of action and suspense and good character development; it’s everything someone would want in a Romantasy. Does it have tons of elements similar to other books? Yes. But there’s a lot of uniqueness there, too, and anyway, even familiar tropes are fun when they’re done well.

I like Violet’s personality and basically all the side characters are fun and likable (or unlikable if that’s their role). Xadan was hit and miss for me. I wished it had been a more true “enemies to lovers�� rather than an “instant attraction and holding back the feelings�� situation. By the last couple of chapters I got pretty irritated with him, so I hope he gets better development in upcoming books.
I loved the dragons and was a little disappointed that we didn’t get a deeper look into their histories and personalities. I wished the author had written Violet spending some time getting to know them, which should have been fairly simple to throw some deeper conversations in given their telepathy. I’m eager to see the roll Andarna will play in the story arc.

Overall, Fourth Wing was a solid 4 stars for me and I recommend it highly!

It’s definitely rated R for nearly 250 F-bombs and several explicit scenes in the last quarter of the book. Adult readers only.
"