Tomorrow (Saturday, Aug. 10) I plan to be (God willing) among the Vikings at the Crow Wing Viking Festival in Brainerd, Minnesota. More information here.
I will have books to sell, and may be persuaded to sign them for you if you ask nicely.
Silver, livestock and thralls will be accepted in payment.
I must have enjoyed The Ethics of Magic, the first book in Robert Arrington’s “Haunted Law Firm” series. Because I bought the second book, The Pathways of Magic, and read it in one day.
Our hero (though, oddly, he’s not part of the law firm), college instructor Mitch McCaffrey, has a surprise visit from a strange woman – a very strange woman – at his office. She wears a shirt of mesh mail and is carrying a short sword, which they use together to dispatch a werewolf that’s following her. Then the woman makes the werewolf disappear.
Her name is Alyssa McCormick, and, like Mitch, she has magical skills. She is in fact the niece of Mitch’s magical mentor, and she’d like to look at the books of magic her uncle left to Mitch. He’s happy to show them to her. It turns out they’re very rare and valuable.
In fact, they’re so valuable that both the FBI and the CIA (who employ magic in their investigations) want to get their hands on them, and are willing to break all the rules to secure them. Which only gets Mitch’s and Alyssa’s backs up, and they fight back, both with spells and lawyers (this is where the Haunted Law Firm comes in). The stakes get even higher when Monica Gilbert, Mitch’s old Woke enemy from the first book, shows up as an FBI consultant.
The story moves right along, alternating legal give-and-take with scenes of action and spell-casting. The prose remains unremarkable (with an annoying number of typos), but the storytelling worked. And the values are conservative.
I liked The Pathways of Magic.
Here’s a light, fun novel, aimed primarily at conservatives and Christians. And it works pretty well.
Mitch McCaffrey, hero of The Ethics of Magic, teaches at a community college in rural North Carolina. He enjoys his work and is dating a woman he hopes to marry.
But he has an enemy. Monica Gilbert, the Compliance Officer at the college, has it in for him. He’s a white male, in the first place, and he teaches the classics in his courses. She suspects him of holding the “wrong” opinions, something she feels must not be tolerated in higher education.
But her motivations go deeper. First of all, she once made a pass at him and he turned her down. Nobody does that. Worse, his girlfriend is a woman she knew as a girl, and hated.
But worst of all, Mitch is a magic practitioner. Monica can tell because she is one herself. She’s eager for a showdown, to awe him with her power.
When a few students make a complaint about Mitch, he’s soon facing a hearing to determine whether he’ll be dismissed. That’s when he retains the services of lawyer Kathryn Turner. All this begins the first adventure in Robert Arrington’s “Haunted Law Firm” series.
I had some quibbles with The Ethics of Magic. The prose was adequate, but there were frequent misspellings and typos. I thought the villains were painted a little broadly – they reveled in evil too much. Most people – even the Woke – honestly believe they’re doing the right thing.
And, although most of our good characters here are Christians, and attend church, Mitch and his girlfriend are sleeping together outside marriage. I suppose that sort of thing flies in some churches nowadays.
But outside of those things, I must say I enjoyed reading The Ethics of Magic very much. It was a lot of fun, sort of John Grisham meets Harry Potter.
Okay, I’ve capped my superhuman achievement of watching the Vikings series all the way through, by watching all 5 seasons – plus the final 2-hour movie – of the Netflix series, The Last Kingdom.
As I opined in a previous post, The Last Kingdom benefits from a previous viewing of Vikings, because it looks better by that comparison. But, as is the way of this world, things deteriorated as they went on.
The first two seasons followed Bernard Cornwell’s original novels fairly well – or so I’m told. (I haven’t read the books myself.)
Starting with Season 3, one seems to discern the influence of the Vikings series. One imagines studio executives gathering the writers in a shadowy dungeon, threatening them with racks, iron maidens, and thumbscrews, and telling them, “Make it more like Vikings. Which means more like Game of Thrones. Give us more treachery. More betrayal. The shortest distance between any two points ought to be through a knife wound in the back.”
Thus (aside from the obvious – such as the hero Uhtred’s adoption of Ragnar Lothbrok’s ahistorical rooster’s comb haircut), we see characters changing their personalities abruptly, for no particular reason. They make unreasonable demands, tell lies for the fun of it, and choose suicidal policies guaranteed to make enemies out of friends. The point is not realism, but the maximum possible treachery. I said that it’s Uhtred’s idiotic life choices that propel the plot in the early seasons. Later on, Uhtred becomes the voice of reason, restraining a succession of kings from one disastrous, counterintuitive caprice after another.
I was particularly disappointed, in the later seasons and the final movie, of the treatment of King Athelstan, one of my personal favorites. I’m fond of Athelstan because he raised Norway’s King Haakon the Good at his court, and made him a Christian.
[Spoiler alert] In the final movie, Seven Kings Must Die, Athelstan, who’s been a decent fellow up to now, suddenly murders his brother treacherously (something that absolutely did not happen in real life), and is also portrayed as a homosexual.
Yeah, I should have seen that coming. Athelstan never married or fathered a child, so obviously he must have been homosexual. As you can probably understand, I take that canard personally.
Interestingly, Paul Anderson, in his novel, Mother of Kings, makes Athelstan’s foster son, Haakon, a homosexual.
Fictioneers have treated this admirable pair very shabbily.
And it occurred to me then that somebody ought to write a good novel about Haakon’s life, emphasizing his education (there’s a good chance he might even have been literate) at Athelstan’s court.
Eric Schumacher has written a series of books on Haakon, but I read the first one and didn’t like his treatment.
And then I thought of a Bridge Character for a Haakon story. Which means I’ll have to write the book now.
I’ve mentioned more than once that I attribute the success of my Erling books (success as literary works, not financial success, obviously) to the insertion of Father Ailill as a bridge character. A bridge character is a character with a relatable enough personality that he can explain a very alien, antique culture to modern readers. (Hobbits are the classic bridge characters in Tolkien, which is why The Lord of the Rings is so much more accessible than the Silmarillion.)
This bridge character came to me almost in a moment. He won’t be anything like Father Ailill. In fact, he’ll be a Viking himself.
How can a Viking be a bridge character to the Viking Age?
This will not be your ordinary Viking.
Watch this space for the next couple years, for more information.
As the first installment in a series of mysteries starring Miami police detective Remy Ferguson, Mystery of L’inconnu introduces us to the detective and his team. For this reader, it wasn’t a very impressive debut.
“L’inconnu” (French for Unknown) is a very large, state of the art luxury yacht owned by a yacht manufacturing company. As a sales inducement, the company periodically offers free cruises to small groups of the super-rich, so they can enjoy the service, food, and amenities. But this voyage goes very, very bad.
The first part of the book concentrates on the story of the voyage, in which we gradually learn that one of the crew has made a deal with smugglers to take drugs on board at sea, to be delivered in Miami. Then the deal goes very, very wrong, and soon there are cartel gunmen rampaging through the vessel while the crew and passengers try to devise ways to either hide or defend themselves. They do surprisingly well, and the reader is rooting for them.
(Spoiler coming up.)
Then we switch to the investigation, led by our hero, Detective Remy Ferguson. And we are abruptly informed that pretty much all these people we’d been rooting for are dead. Remy’s investigation is subjected to pressure by his superiors, who are being pestered by the (very influential) yacht company to wrap the case up.
Then we get a final section, where we are presented with a Big Plot Twist (admittedly not a bad one), and a perilous situation from which our hero escapes only through a deus ex machina.
In my opinion, this is a very poor way to tell a story.
On top of that, the prose was weak. The author often misuses words, confusing “Cavalry” with “Calvary,” “flare gun” with “flair gun,” and other such errors. He appeared (I wasn’t quite sure because the prose was confusing) to confuse a rifle with a shotgun. He thinks Multiple Personality Disorder is the same as schizophrenia. And he delivers clumsy lines like, “’Whatever works,’ Brewer mumbled his simplistic estimation.”
Mystery of L’inconnu was a disappointing novel. I did finish it, though, so I suppose it wasn’t a total narrative failure.
With all the dragons in new fantasy stories today, I hope young readers haven’t been shielded from their traditional setting. The picture of a dragon hoarding treasure under a mountain is a classic depiction of greed.
The beast is at the top of the food chain. It can destroy whole kingdoms if it wanted to. If two dragons were to fight each other, the disaster to their field of battle would be apocalyptic. But a defining quality of a dragon is its hoard. Why does it sleep on a mountain of gold? Why did Smaug care that Bilbo took a cup, and how could he have noticed one cup missing from his trove of treasure? Because that’s what dragons are about. They want all the wealth for themselves, and they are powerful and conceited enough to refuse to allow anyone to slight them.
I was thinking this morning about how some of us tend to use what we have and some of us tend to keep it unused. I’m a keeper. I’ve had my favorite t-shirt for over 20 years because I don’t wear it often. When people ask, “What would you do if we gave you $1000 today,” my first thought is to put it in the bank for the future. Of course, there will be a time to use it, but not today, because if I use it now, I may not have it tomorrow.
I wonder if the idea of a dragon hoard would apply well to those of us who keep to ourselves and take comfort in what we could do tomorrow if the need arose. Maybe all we’re doing is holding on to our wealth, not out of greed but out of pride, fear, and personal comfort.
What else do we have today?
Moon Caves: In the Sea of Tranquility or Mare Tranquillitatis, there’s a 200-foot pit, one of many spotted by satellites orbiting the Moon. Scientists studying the photographs have reason to believe this pit has a cave. Why we aren’t sending people to the Moon by now is likely a political question. The current NASA plan appears to be sending a team around the Moon.
In related news, Space X has been sending astronauts to the International Space Station for a few years. They have a team, Crew-8, at the station now and will send Crew-9 in mid-August.
Photo by Jonathan Kemper on Unsplash
[This is an irregular, unscheduled Saturday blog post. I got the idea this morning during my prayers, and I liked it too well to keep to myself.]
I caught a short video clip where a guy was ridiculing the idea of Heaven.
“Isn’t perfection kind of boring?” he asked. “I mean, if everything’s perfect, what’s left for anybody to do?”
The answer to that, I think, starts with C. S. Lewis’ response to those who laugh at images of wings and harps in Heaven – “People who can’t understand books written for grownups shouldn’t read them.”
Is there a more common truism than the statement, “I began to grow wise when I began to understand how little I knew”?
As we grow and learn in this life, we never reach a point where we can say, “Now I’ve got it all. Now there’s nothing left for me to learn.”
On the contrary. The more we learn, the more we grow aware of all that’s left to learn. Sometimes the material is just not available at the moment – unrecorded history, scientific discoveries not yet made, mathematical formulae that haven’t been worked out yet.
It never ends.
And that’s just in this world.
Suppose you were suddenly transported into the Infinite. Do you think you’d run out of things to discover? Do you think you’d run out of truth and beauty, when you’re face to face at last with the very Source of truth and beauty, who is infinite?
It sounds more like an everlasting Quest to me.
This might be why Pride is the greatest sin. If we approach the Ultimate Truth with a prideful, know-it-all attitude, we won’t be capable of enjoying Heaven at all. We might think it dull.
Maybe that’s what Hell is.
For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. (2 Corinthians 4:6)
I’ve been thinking about the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. That turn of phrase has intrigued me for a long time.
The glory of God is a frequent topic in Scripture. In the Old Testament, God’s glory is a serious issue. The people of Israel could not bear to hear His voice on Sinai, and asked Moses to be their mediator instead (Exodus 20). When Moses was permitted to see God’s “backside” (Exodus 34) on the mountain, he got the merest glimpse of the least part of the divine glory, and yet his face shown for days.
The Holy of Holies in the temple was so sacred that common people couldn’t enter. When Uzzah touched the Ark of the Covenant – even to keep it from slipping off a cart – God struck him down (2 Samuel 6).
In short, the Hebrews took God’s holiness deadly seriously. God was just and merciful, but nobody to treat lightly. Holiness meant separation, and nothing was holier than God. His holiness could kill you. He was so Other that even images of Him were forbidden.
Then along comes Jesus Christ, claiming to be God incarnate.
Suddenly God – of whom no image might be made – had a face.
That’s amazing, when you think of it.
If He really was the incarnation of that same God who terrified the Hebrews, a tremendous condescension had happened. The voltage had been stepped down infinitely, just so God could walk among men without leaving corpses behind wherever He went. To the contrary, this Holiness healed the sick and raised the dead.
Too often Christians forget what we’re dealing with in Jesus Christ. We take the incarnation for granted. We handle holy things lightly. We ought to remember what incredible power we’re dealing with. The Lion has agreed to be our friend, but it would be wise not to poke the Lion.
More than that, how amazing is it to look in a kind Man’s face, and encounter God Himself? As theologians have observed, only the Highest can descend to the very lowest level. God has always been perfect goodness, but Jesus Christ made that perfection touchable.
The phrase “perfection made better” comes to mind. It’s probably wrong in some theological way, but it’s what strikes me.
What does an amateur Viking scholar do once he’s finished watching the interminable, insufferable “Vikings” series from the History Channel and Netflix?
He watches “The Last Kingdom,” as a man who’s had his joints dislocated on the rack might feel some relief at merely having an arm broken.
“The Last Kingdom” is, of course, based on a series of novels by Bernard Cornwell. That provides a sort of tether for the whole project, keeping it from flying off into the clouds as the “Vikings” series did.
The hero of the story is Uhtred of Bebbanburg, who (as far as I know) is a fictional character. Starting out as the unloved son of an English nobleman, he is kidnapped by Vikings (“Danes” as the English always called them) and adopted into their family. Later, when his adopted family is murdered by other, treacherous Danes, he finds himself joining the forces of King Aethelred of Wessex, and after his death, his brother Alfred (soon to be the Great).
What drives the plot is mainly the fact that Uhtred is an idiot. At every juncture, he ignores sensible advice and chooses the suicidal grand gesture. But because he’s a great fighter, he manages to survive, careening from one misadventure to another but always frustrated in his main goal – to reclaim his ancestral domains.
I watched one episode some years back, and was disappointed with the inaccuracies. Bad costumes (the leather and fur that look so good on screen but are impractical in real life). Bad weapons and armor – Uhtred’s sword has an anachronistic double-handed grip with a round pommel, and he carries it in a back scabbard (you never see him draw the sword, because back scabbards don’t work that way, and nobody used them in the 9th Century anyway).
In the third season, Uhtred suddenly shows up with a Ragnar Lothbrok haircut, which seems to indicate the malign influence of the “Vikings” series. Wikipedia suggests that the series begins deviating heavily from the books at that point. We’re seeing more female warriors (you can make a case for Aethelflaed of Mercia, I suppose, though I don’t think history says she actually swung a sword as a warrior herself). The plots – it seems to me – are a little less plausible now than during the previous seasons.
I respect Bernard Cornwell as a fine writer, though I’ve always found him cynical about Christianity – it must be admitted, though, that there are some admirable Christians in “The Last Kingdom” to balance the hypocrites and grifters.
But all in all, I can’t find an excuse to quit this series after having slogged through the No Man’s Land of “The Vikings.” “The Last Kingdom” isn’t bad. Comparatively.
Yes, it’s my birthday, thank you. I guess I was a little obscure about that yesterday.
Aside from his Travis McGee novels, John D. MacDonald was a prolific author of stand-alone thrillers. Today’s pick is April Evil, from 1956.
The setting is the town of Flamingo, Florida, whose most eccentric resident is old Dr. Paul Tomlin. It’s well known that Dr. Tomlin keeps all his money in cash, in a safe in his big stone house, as he doesn’t believe in banks.
This eccentricity attracts interest. Naturally his ne’er-do-well nephew Dil Parks is interested, as is Dil’s sexy, scheming wife, Lenora. And then there’s a more distant relation, young Joe Preston, who came to visit with his wife, Laurie. Dr. Tomlin despises Joe, but he likes Laurie, and so allows them to stay with him, while he teaches Laurie about books and music.
But even more darkly, a man named Harry Mullin has come to town. He’s on the FBI’s Most Wanted list, and he’s heard a rumor about a lot of money in an old man’s house. He’s assembled a team of specialists, and they’re planning a quick, easy job and a clean getaway.
Lawyer Ben Piersall is not involved in any of this. When Dil’s wife, Lenora, tried to get him to help them have the old man declared incompetent, he laughed her off. What he doesn’t know is that the criminal Harry Mullin has moved in next door, and his own son has developed a powerful curiosity about these secretive strangers.
It’s a powder keg situation, with several different fuses burning to it, and it’s all set to go off on one terrible afternoon.
April Evil is not the best of John D. MacDonald’s novels (I found it a little melodramatic), but it’s well-written and fairly representative. As always, the characters are the great strength. They’re varied and believable, and they sometimes surprise the reader.
Recommended. Cautions for violence and sexual situations.
