All posts by Lars Walker

Fiction

Non-review: The Shadow and Night, by Chris Walley

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One of our readers asked for my reaction to The Shadow and Night, the beginning of a science fiction series by Chris Walley. I gave it a try. Perhaps I didn’t give it enough time.

The story is set in the distant future, in a universe where (as far as I understand it) the Lord has established His millennial Kingdom. The story starts on a distant planet, which has been terraformed and colonized by humans. A demonic rebellion is coming, but I didn’t read that far.

I’m sure I should have given the book more of a chance than I did, but I found nothing in what I read that engaged me. The writing seemed to me entirely lacking in any spark, the characters dull, the dialogue lackluster. This was supposed to be a more or less sinless universe, as I understood it, and sinlessness here seemed boring. Stereotypical soft-serve Christian storytelling in a bland setting.

Judging by other people’s reviews on Amazon, it may well be that the book improves as it goes along. But looking ahead at the number of pages yet to read, and judging by the small amount of fun I was having at the beginning, I gave up on it.

Don’t judge the book by my experience.

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Personal update

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Good afternoon, and thank you for your patience.

As you’ve noticed if you’re a regular reader, my blog posting has been light for more than a year now. You may also be aware that I’ve been keeping dog’s hours (is that a real saying? Sounds right, but most dogs I know generally sleep when they like and work very little) studying online for my Master’s in Library and Information Science.

This, of course, explains my frequent absences. I’m stuffing my head full of high-falutin’ book-larnin’ notions, and now figure I’m too good for simple folk like you.

No, no, no, of course not. The sooner I can get away from academics, the happier I’ll be. I’m a pin-headed Middle American yahoo, and the stress of trying to blend in with my classmates (even online) may kill me before I get through to graduation.

But I’m doing OK. Generally good grades, especially on my papers.

This week was spring break. I didn’t actually relax much because the Norwegian publisher I’ve been translating for, with exquisite timing, dropped some more work on me. I’ll get the translation back to them later today, so that worked out. The book, by the way, is supposed to be titled The Viking Legacy now, and seems to be coming late spring or in the summer. I’ll keep you posted.

In other news, my bad hip continues to improve under a regimen of stationary bike riding and mobility exercises.

So life could be worse. Thanks for your interest.

Fiction, Reviews

The Inspector Skelgill mysteries, by Bruce Beckham

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This is spring break week in my graduate courses, so I thought I’d be able to slow down a bit (since of course there’s still class work to catch up on), and do a little blogging.

But lo, I have a translation job to do which is just large enough to maybe fit into the time I’ll have.

But blast it, I’ve been meaning to write this short review, and I’ll write it.

The Inspector Skelgill mysteries, set in England’s Lake District, are another in the currently fashionable sub-genre of the Difficult Detective. The Difficult Detective is brilliant but hard to get along with. Sherlock Holmes was the prototypical Difficult Detective, but Inspector Morse and TV’s “House” (who was indeed based on Holmes) are popular iterations.

Inspector Skelgill is a police detective who might be called “good in the field” — quite literally, since he’s an outdoorsman who resents any minute spent indoors. His favorite spare time activities are fishing on the lakes (he rows his own boat) and “fell running” — that is, running in the mountains. As a result he’s generally running a calorie deficit, which leads him to constantly steal other people’s food — “Are you going to finish those chips?” He also almost never picks up a check. He appear to be moderate on the autism spectrum, a little callous to the feelings of either crime victims, criminals, or his colleagues. He also generally ignores the orders of his superiors, but his success in solving cases secures his job for him — a little past the point of credibility.

The best thing about this series (I’ve read the first three, Murder in Adland, Murder on the Edge, and Murder in School) is the descriptions of the Lake District scenery, lovingly portrayed.

The worst thing, all in all, is Skelgill himself. I got kind of tired of his act after a while, although in the third book he showed some signs of moderating his selfishness. Still, I’ll probably give him a rest for a while.

The usual cautions for language, violence, and adult themes, though nothing excessive by contemporary standards.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Werewolf Cop,’ by Andrew Klavan

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He parked in a little neighborhood near the service road. He sat behind the wheel with his eyes shut, his fingers pinching the bridge of his nose. He told himself that this would pass. He’d track Abend down. He’d “confront” the dagger, whatever that meant. After that, he’d be free to turn himself in or die or… do something to make this stop. Meanwhile, though…. The guilt and horror were like thrashing, ravenous animals in him. Guilt and horror – and grief too. Because he’d lost something precious, something he’d barely known he had: he’d lost his sense of himself as a good person. Even death wouldn’t restore that. Nothing word.

As you know if you’ve been following this blog for a while, I’m a confirmed fanboy when it comes to Andrew Klavan. I discovered him after he’d become a conservative, but before he became a Christian. I consider him one of the foremost thriller writers – and one of the best prose stylists – of our time.

Still, although I’ve praised all the books he’s written since then (specifically since the Weiss-Bishop novels, which I consider unparalleled) I’ve honestly thought he’s been kind of treading water, not quite sure where to go with his art.

Who’d have thought he’d hit his next home run with a horror-fantasy book? But Werewolf Cop, in spite of its William Castle title, is an amazing reading experience. Klavan has moved in on Dean Koontz’s turf, and done the genre proud.

Zach Adams is the hero of the book and the titular werewolf cop. He’s a Texas native relocated to New York City, where he works for a shadowy government police agency called “Extraordinary Crimes.” Along with his partner, “Broadway Joe” Goulart, he’s become a legend and a sort of a celebrity. He has a beautiful wife and a family he loves. But his life isn’t as great as people think it is. He’s worried about his partner, who has come under suspicion for corruption. He’s afraid of being blackmailed by a woman over a mistake he made. And he’s got the murder of a gangster by a mysterious, almost legendary European criminal to solve.

And that’s before he gets mauled by a werewolf.

I could quibble a little about the fantasy element in this story – werewolves here are pure Universal Pictures, rather than the genuine folklore article. But Klavan mines that old movie scenario for amazing psychological – and spiritual – insights. I was riveted from the first page to the last, and deeply moved at the same time.

You should be cautioned – there’s rough language, as in all Klavan’s books, and the gore element is what you’d expect in a werewolf story.

But if you can handle that, and wish to see old material raised to new levels, Werewolf Cop has my highest recommendation.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Chasing Shadows: Back to Barterra,’ by J. M. N. Reynolds.

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The college president pointed to Maximos as an example of the diversity of the college and Maximos would not-so-quietly note that the college had hired nobody else like him since the day his Berkeley degree had fooled them into a bad guess about his views.

A couple weeks ago I “met” Prof. John Mark N. Reynolds, provost of Houston Baptist University, when he and some others interviewed me for a podcast (which will be posted in early March; I’ll let you know). I had such a good time that I decided to check out his books, and found that he’d published a fantasy novel. I bought it for my Kindle, though well aware that academic achievement does not necessarily a good novelist make.

I’m happy to report that Chasing Shadows: Back to Barterra is extremely good.

The main character is Peter Alexis, a university instructor in Rochester, NY, plagued by recurring dreams about the deaths of Czar Nicholas II and his family. A seeming seizure pulls him back to that event so vividly that his friends fear he’ll never regain consciousness in the present. But when he does return, he has begun to remember what happened in his 16th year, when he was king of Barterra, a world in another dimension.

What Reynolds does here (and generally very successfully) is to merge a Charles Williams story with a Narnia story. The events on our world, in the first section, are extremely Williamsian, and convey the same atmosphere. They center on Peter and his Inklingesque circle of friends, a fellowship of Christians. Then they travel to Barterra, faced with the task of undoing Peter’s great failure from his last visit. The book ends with promises of at least one sequel, which I hope will be forthcoming. An odd feature is the considerable use of Eastern Orthodox elements.

I have some criticisms. There were some narrative bumps — confusing scene jumps and occasions when interior monologue went on too long. But taken all in all it was a very good read in the tradition of Williams and Lewis, and I think both those authors would have approved.

Recommended.

Fiction, Reviews

The D. C. Smith novels, by Peter Grainger

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It’s been a week or two since I finished reading the D. C. Smith mystery novels, and I’d better review them before I forget them completely. Not that they’re forgettable — they were quite impressive.

D. C. Smith is an interesting continuing detective character, and has been compared to another English police detective, Inspector Morse, by reviewers. But after reading An Accidental Death, But For the Grace, and Luck and Judgement, I would say that a closer parallel would be the American TV cop, Columbo. Smith is the kind of man who tends to be underestimated by suspects, witnesses, and even other cops. He’s small, shabby, and unprepossessing. He knows this and uses it to his advantage. In fact he’s generally the smartest person in the room, and has commando fighting skills. He also plays a mean rock guitar, though not often since the loss of his beloved wife to cancer.

His name is kind of a joke. “D.C.” in English police slang means “Detective Constable.” This is what everyone calls him, but he’s actually a Detective Sergeant. He used to be a Detective Inspector, but voluntarily took a demotion to be closer to street-level puzzle solving.

As is my wont, I was more interested in the character than in the mysteries as such. I found the D. C. Smith books very enjoyable. No great moral lessons here — Smith the character is an open skeptic about religion, and But For the Grace deals with the question of assisted suicide in a pretty ambiguous manner.

One odd thing is that I found the books very slow in places. Sometimes I wanted to tell the author to just move things along. Nevertheless, I liked the books and stayed with them to see what Smith would do next. I recommend them with the usual cautions.

Blogs, Socials

Shameless quid pro quo

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Yesterday I linked to Anthony Sacramone’s announcement of a new edition of the Intercollegiate Review, over at Strange Herring.

Today, entirely by coincidence, he links to my interview at Issues, Etc.

Oh, who am I kidding? He goes into the Norman history of his Sicilian ancestors, and we Sicilians are all about scratching each other’s backs.

That’s a nice photo of me at the top of the blog post, too.

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Magazine plug

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Anthony Sacramone is a friend of this blog, proprietor of the Strange Herring blog (where he’s posting again, happily), and an editor of the Intercollegiate Review. The IR has just released a new issue, and I thought I’d pass along Anthony’s pitch:

The Spring 2015 issue of the Intercollegiate Review has arrived. I don’t know how. It’s like a miracle.

Live on IRO are essays by Peter Thiel on “The Competition Myth” and Daniel Hannan on “The Privilege of Freedom.”

Soon to go live is Mary Eberstadt’s takedown of college bullying and its effects on the religious commitments of students (“From Campus Bullies to Empty Churches”) and an assessment of JRR Tolkien’s politics (“Lord of the Permanent Things”).

Also in the lineup is my own “The 12 Funniest Books Ever Written,” which, of course, was the only reason to publish this d*mn thing in the first place. There’s also an apologia for smoking, one of our counterintuitive reports on longevity, entitled “You’ve Lived Long Enough Now Please Move Along.”

Our friend Michael Medved also wrote the God on the Quad department this issue: “Vital Lessons in Vile Smears.”

You can find our entire TOC as well as the digital edition of the IR here.

As we’re trying to reach as many young minds as humanly possible in order to undo some of the damage done by their filthy communist atheist nihilist indoctrinators, I would appreciate it if you would share these links with every single person you know. I will be eternally grateful–within strict limits, of course.

I thank you. And America thanks you.

Anthony

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On the air, like a bear

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Short notice, but I just found out myself. I’ll be interviewed this afternoon, at 4:30 p.m. on the Issues, Etc. radio program. We’ll be discussing the story of the new heathen Norse temple in Iceland.

You can listen live at the web site, and I believe you can also listen to an archived version if you miss it.

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Of androids

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Thoughts thought this week:



Somebody mentioned androids — those all-but-human robots we see so often in modern science fiction — on Facebook.

I don’t think we’re likely ever to see androids.

Not because the technology is too complex (though it may be). But because the technology will probably be unnecessary.

We already have a source of perfect humanoid organisms that we can exploit as servants and slaves.

In time it will probably be possible to alter their brains to render them compliant, and no more intelligent than we want them to be.

The organisms I mean are unborn human beings. Aborted babies.

Legally, they have no standing as persons. So technically, it would not be illegal to enslave them. Is it very unlikely that in a utilitarian future, aborted babies will not be disposed of, as they are now, but recycled, as labor-saving devices?

Seems almost inevitable to me, unless our hearts are changed.

I’ve thought about working this idea into a story, but it’s too Science Fiction for me to handle properly.

Somebody’s probably already done it anyway.