Eleventh hour, eleventh day, eleventh month

On April 15, 1918, Jack was ordered to advance his troops behind a barrage of British shells fired by big guns far behind the lines…. Jack ordered his men over the top of the trench parapet and led them straight towards the enemy as the barrage of high explosives riddled with shrapnel landed ahead of them, blasting the German trenches and soldiers. Then, suddenly, as they advanced with bayonets at the ready, the barrage stopped advancing and began to come back toward them. Soon Jack and his men were being bombarded by their own artillery from far behind them, and to his helpless fury Jack watched his men being blown to pieces in the constant roar of their own artillery support. Suddenly Jack saw a blinding light, everything went completely silent, and then the ground came up slowly and hit him in the face. Jack had been hit by both the concussion and shrapnel from a British shell. His trusted sergeant had been between Jack and the shell when it exploded and was blown to bits. Apart from his own efforts to escape, Jack remembered nothing more of the battle.

(Douglas Gresham’s account of his stepfather C. S. Lewis’s wounding in World War I, from his book, Jack’s Life.)

Today is Veteran’s Day, the commemoration that used to be called Armistice Day, back when everyone fondly hoped that the last war had been fought. A hearty thank you to all military veterans who read this post. I’m flying a flag for you.

Someone asked on Facebook today, “What one historical event would you change, if you could go back in history?” My answer was, “I’d stop the assassination of the Archduke Ferdinand in Sarajevo.” Continue reading Eleventh hour, eleventh day, eleventh month

Setting Fantasy in America

Author N.D. Wilson says he used to think you had to be in England to have a magical adventure like finding a forest inside a wardrobe. He is writing his Ashtown Burials series to invite readers into a fantasy that “connects global mythology to everyday Americana, with its roadside diners, truck stops and waffle irons.” He was interviewed by NPR’s Guy Raz, which aired several hours ago.

The Good Book Club, by Rick Dewhurst

When Rick Dewhurst’s new P.I. Jane Sunday is first hired, she is asked to acquire evidence on her senior pastor, who is alleged to be adulterous. For the good of his daughters and the congregation, the pastor must be found out. Within days, the junior pastor of the same Vancouver church is found naked and dead in his swimming pool. As the ugly church politics unravel, Jane uncovers some very twisted people in a large network of corruption.

Dewhurst’s third novel isn’t a comedy like the other two. Jane’s sarcasm spices up almost conversation she has, but the story is serious, straight-forward detective fiction mixed with 1/3 cup of chick lit romance. It all weaves together pretty well. The villains have too much vinegar, particularly the boss of the pack. He comes across as Jabba the Hut.

But I’m not sure this novel is essentially about the murder mystery or the development of the 40-year-old female detective. It’s title, The Good Book Club, draws attention to the dozen or so pages that describe a women’s book discussion group. They chatter about The Great Gatsby, The Shack, and The Grapes of Wrath while the mystery unfolds, each from distinct perspectives which may be meant to represent the schemes in the visible church. Continue reading The Good Book Club, by Rick Dewhurst

Short story review: "For Conspicuous Valor," by Darwin Garrison

Disclaimer: Darwin Garrison, the author of For Conspicuous Valor, is a friend and a reader of this blog.

A novelty in publishing which has come in with the e-book, almost unremarked, is the e-story. Where we used to go to the pulp (and slick) magazines for our short science fiction, today we can often find such stories at low prices for downloading to our Kindles or Nooks. The downside is that, in the absence of traditional editorial apparatus, we’re often not sure whether we’ll be getting good work or vanity-published dreck.

For Conspicuous Valor is good work.

The main character is Megan Williams, a 17-year-old girl growing up on a farm on a distant earth colony planet. The daughter of a war hero killed in combat, she dreams of being a Ranger herself, fighting the “Pexies,” or “Post-Expansionists,” a ruthless enemy that seems to be analogous to the Communists of our time.

As the story begins, she is babysitting her younger sister and baby brother when a genetically-engineered “direfox” sneaks into the yard and drags her brother off. Megan pursues them at a run, followed by her one-legged uncle Nate, who has been looking after the family. The peril is overcome, but Megan doesn’t cover herself with honor.

Her decision, later that evening, to go out and hunt the direfox down on her own leads to a frightening discovery and a night of personal testing.

My only problem with the story rises from my personal objection to the idea of women in combat. Other than that, the story is well-told and engaging, the characters realistic and multi-layered. I enjoyed it, and recommend it for all readers.

"Assassins" Novel Plagiarized Many Works

The author of a debut spy novel, praised as having a strong Ian Fleming influence, lifted “dozens of passages from multiple books, including one six-page stretch lifted from John Gardner’s License Renewed” Writer Macy Halford echoes the obvious question of how the author thought he could get away with it, but then suggests that perhaps he didn’t intend to. “If he is an artist whose intent is to dupe, he is a deft one.”

The right side of the tracks



Photo credit: Nutschig.

I saw my optometrist last night, something I do every year, because it qualifies me to get a touch-up job if my Lasik surgery ever goes horribly wrong.

He did a test where he held a little red ball on a handle in front of me, and told me to follow it with my eyes as he moved it around. Afterward he made a note, and said, “I can tell you’re a reader.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Because you track with your eyes so well. I only see that level in people who love to read, and kids who play a lot of video games.”

It was a completely new idea to me that there could be anyone who couldn’t track the little red ball easily.

How about that? I have one highly developed physical skill. I think it’s the only one, too.

The Gospel

“What’s the thing that’s supposed to captivate Christians, above all else?” Aaron Armstrong asks at the start of his review of Jared Wilson’s new book, Gospel Wakefulness. The answer, of course, is the gospel. Gospel wakefulness means “treasuring Christ more greatly and savoring his power more sweetly.” Aaron praises the book highly (I anticipate doing the same), but he takes issue with one point, giving Jared the opportunity to respond.

The Worldview of Fantasy

“Whatever the case, I think fantasy is not really bound to any religion so much as it is bound to a particular way of looking at the world. Somehow the faeries from the old English countryside infected the intellectualism of Oxford’s finest minds.” E.D. Kain talks about fantasy literature, having published a fantasy story in The Atlantic. (via Books, Inq.)

If Not GPS, Then Cloak

#76 - empty streetsFrom our legal desk, the U.S. Supreme Court is considering arguments over police use of high tech surveillance equipment, that is, GPS devices. It isn’t a question of whether cops can use GPS to track people. The question is whether they must get a warrant by proving they have a good legal reason to track someone before they do. Lawyer Walter Dellinger explains, “If the Supreme Court gave a green light [to warrantless GPS tracking, then] any officer can install any GPS device for any reason on anybody’s car, even if the officer thinks it would be interesting to know where Supreme Court justices go at night when they leave the courthouse. No one would be immune from having a GPS device installed on their vehicles.”

At first, I thought, no officer is going to recklessly tag and track cars, because the department resources would be too much. But then I wondered if it could happen in a small town, where the police department has only a few people. A power-hungry sheriff might start tagging and tracking as many people as he could buy devices for.

But there is a clear alternative. If the courts declare warrantless GPS tracking violates the amendment forbidding reckless search and seizure, police can develop their squad car cloaking shields and officer invisibility coats. That way they can follow suspects until they have reasonable … Oh, the courts will step in here, won’t they, saying you can’t follow someone while invisible unless you get a warrant. Of course, how will they know, eh?

Nordic Nights, by Lise McClendon

I have to assume that Lise McClendon, author of Nordic Nights, must be of Norwegian ancestry, partly because “Lise” is the Norwegian way to spell the name, and partly because her wry depictions of Norwegian-American (and genuine Norwegian) characters in this pleasant mystery novel are spot on.

It would be ridiculous to make plagiarism accusations, but I thought the parallels to my own novel (in a different genre), Wolf Time, were remarkable. As in my book, the home town (Jackson Hole, Wyoming here) is visited by a prominent Norwegian cultural figure (here a painter named Glasius Dokken), and the action comes to revolve around the discovery of a rune stone related to the Kensington Rune Stone of Minnesota.

But here the hero is Alix Thorssen, Jackson Hole art gallery owner. She has agreed to help organize the titular Nordic Nights festival, a civic winter celebration. Her own gallery will be the site for the display of an epic set of murals on Viking themes, painted by Dokken. But the first night of the festival, Dokken is murdered in a hotel room (not his own), and Alix’s stepfather is accused of killing him. Alix’s own suspicions lean toward a mysterious fortuneteller from Minnesota who claims to read mystic meanings in runes.

In my experience, mysteries written by women tend to be rather different from mysteries written by men, and I generally avoid the former. I picked this one up because of its Scandinavian themes, and I thought it was both well done and accurate in its research in things Scandinavian (even things Viking). Scandinavian reserve as a character trait is a constant, serio-comic theme. Still, it read like a women’s book to me (I was frequently disturbed by Alix’s disregard for her own safety), so I mainly recommend it for female readers.

Mild cautions for language and sexual situation apply, but most readers (especially female readers) will find a lot to enjoy in Nordic Nights.