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.