Non-fiction, Reading, Reviews

‘The Saga of the Sworn Brothers’

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A scene from Ravnsborg in Missouri, which sadly no longer exists. The man addressing the feast is not a skald, but Sam Shoults, the owner of the place. But you get the idea.

I have apparently survived my first Viking weekend of the “summer season.” It’s not quite summer yet, of course, as was made abundantly clear by events. The skies were overcast, the breeze (though fortunately light) was a-chill. I don’t wear my fine woolen tunic a lot, as Viking reenactment in the country is mostly a warm-weather activity, but I was glad of it this weekend. The crowds at the Fantasy of the Lakes Renaissance Festival in Lindstrom, MN were not large, but that’s hardly the fault of the organizers, who did their best. Oddly enough, my book sales were better on Saturday (the colder day) than on Sunday.

Instead of reading from my Kindle in my abundant free moments, I chose to bring along my current volume of The Complete Sagas of Icelanders. I had a long saga to read, and one I’d read before – at least in the variant recorded in Flatey Book. The version printed in this edition is compiled from four source texts, including some variant passages, which are clearly marked.

This one is The Saga of the Sworn Brothers, quite a famous saga. It seems to be based on a skaldic poem by a man who you may recall if you’ve read my novel The Baldur Game – the poet Thormod Kolbrunarskald (Coal-Brow’s Skald). (I’ve blogged about the Flatey Book version before in this space). The poem, of which this saga preserves passages, celebrates the achievements of Thormod’s friend and sworn brother, Thorgeir Havarsson. Sworn brotherhood was a serious matter in Viking society – once the oath was sworn, each brother was honor-bound to avenge the other’s death. Judging by the poem, and the saga built on it, Thormod was likely from the git-go to be called on to do just that – because Thorgeir seems to have been a complete psychopath. Thormod says of him that he never knew fear – not even bothering to call for help while clinging for life to nothing but a clump of angelica at the brink of a cliff.

The saga is episodic, as sagas tend to be, but it follows the two friends as they carom from one adventure to another, casually killing men and getting outlawed here and there on the way. In time they part company. Thorgeir (the psychopath) enters the household of King (Saint) Olaf Haraldsson, but leaves him eventually to meet his fate. Thormod, when he learns of Thorgeir’s death (at the hands of several killers, of course), sets out to get revenge, a quest that will take him as far as Greenland. Later he enters Saint Olaf’s service in his own right. He is a prominent figure in the legends of Olaf’s death at Stiklestad. His death from an arrow wound after the battle takes place here (as well as in Flatey Book, which I’d forgotten) in a barley barn. I made it a cattle byre in The Baldur Game – Snorri’s Heimskringla does not specify what kind of building it was.

Another difference from Heimskringla is Thormod’s famous last words. In Heimskringla, he pulls an arrowhead out of his chest, looks at it, and says, “The king has fed us well – I am fat at the heart-roots.” Then he dies. He does not say that in this version, but dies in the midst of the last line of a poem he composes on the spot, which is finished by Olaf’s brother Harald (later King Harald Hardrada). This reinforces my guess, which I employ in The Baldur Game, that Harald must have been present at Thormod’s death, and would have been the source of the story.

(The veracity of the “heart-roots” line is also questionable due to the fact that the same line occurs in other sagas, notably when Leif Eriksson’s brother Thorvald is dying after a fight with Native Americans in Vinland.)

The Saga of the Sworn Brothers is an intriguing one, notable for being based on the recollections of a man who’s fairly honest about himself and his dead friend. The sworn brothers are not high heroes, but reckless, feckless youths who do as much harm as good in the world. Thormod’s death in Saint Olaf’s service is regarded as a grace. (The saga writer is not shy about inserting little moral homilies here and there.)

The Sworn Brothers is an intriguing – and valuable – saga.

Bookselling, Uncategorized

Fantasy of the Lakes

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The wonders of my set-up some years ago, when I had fewer books to sell, and before I had a Viking tent of my own.

In case you’re in the general area this weekend, I will be making a not-so-rare public appearance, Saturday and Sunday, at the Fantasy of the Lakes Renaissance Festival in Lindstrom Minnesota. This will be my first time at this event; they claim to be family friendly. (Though I sometimes pretend to be too good for Renaissance Festivals, I am in fact a lowly fantasy writer, after all.)

This will also be my first opportunity to offer my entire Erling Saga for sale in paperback form. For many years only The Year of the Warrior and West Oversea have been incarnate, and I’ve given away promotional bookmarks for the e-books of the rest of the series. When people asked if they were available in paper too, I’ve mumbled something about “maybe someday.” Well, someday is now. I assume after this I’ll have to answer questions about whether there are e-book versions.

There’ll be questions about audiobooks too, of course, so I’ll still get to practice my “someday” responses. (Troll Valley is coming, though. I’m about a third of the way through it. Didn’t get much done this morning; Friday mornings are rough because the garbage trucks rattle by.)

Pray for me. I’ll be dealing with human beings, and that’s always a trial.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Ripped Into,’ by Jack Chandler

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Stuart “Fin” Finlay, the hero of Ripped Into (the first book in a new series by Jack Chandler) is a sort of a private detective in England, specializing in locating missing children. This time he takes a job from a man named Stanton, who wants him to find his missing stepdaughter, Sarah. She disappeared the same night their house burned down and his wife disappeared.

Fin starts running down leads, but the author also follows the activities of Sarah herself, living a high-stress life under a false identity. The mystery becomes one of why she’s hiding, and why she doesn’t simply go to the police.

As the story works itself out, we learn that some extremely dangerous people are hunting for Sarah. Fin eventually is able to take her under his wing, but she is very fragile and paranoid, convinced that she can trust no one, ready to bolt any moment. Only perfect honesty and a measure of self-disclosure, very hard for Fin, will keep her on his side.

I can’t deny that Ripped Into is an intense, fast-moving book. Considerable space is spent on Fin and Sarah painfully disclosing their personal traumas to one another in an effort to build rapport; I’m not sure that element wasn’t a little mushy for a book as violent as this. Which brings up my main problem with the story – it involves an extended scene of the torture of a woman. We have an occasional commenter on this blog who never fails to take umbrage at my objections to female cops in novels. I willingly admit to my sexism, but that’s not the main reason why I dislike the topic. The primary reason is that I just hate witnessing violence against women. (The fact that author Chandler turns out to be a woman herself doesn’t mend the matter for this reader.)

So my final verdict is that Ripped Into is a pretty effective mystery thriller featuring generally good writing, but it did not suit my very subjective taste.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Where They Wait,’ by Scott Carson

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The signature sound of the loon is a solitary sound. It’s a haunting cry of undeniable beauty with an undercurrent of sorrow. An announcement of peaceful northern isolation, the Thoreau of birds.

The sound is a lie, though. Loons are not solitary, nor are they peaceful. The loon’s life is a violent one. The birds will stab each other with their beaks, beat each other with their wings, and pull each other under the water. The midnight cry that makes people think of Thoreau at Walden Pond is anything but serene.

I picked up another novel by Scott Carson, whose Lost Man’s Lane impressed me so. Where They Wait did not bowl me over to quite the same degree, but it’s very good.

Nick Bishop is a journalist, out of work, yet another victim of the digital revolution. Living in Florida, he calls an old college friend in Maine, where he used to live and went to school. The friend tells him he’s editing the college’s alumni magazine, and offers him a decent fee to write an article about a distinguished alumnus, a young computer tycoon who lives locally. But Nick needs to come up and interview him in person, he says.

Well, it’s been a long time since Nick has gone home to Maine. His mother is there, but she’s in nursing care, her memory lost to a stroke. Ironically, she’d been a highly respected expert on memory. There’s also the family’s lakeside “camp,” what people in other states would call a cabin, on a lake. Nick drives up and interviews the young tycoon, surprised to be met at the door by a young woman who’d been a childhood friend, and on whom he’d had a crush. The tycoon shows Nick a new cell phone app he’s working on – a relaxation program. Nick tries the beta version, and it works well. Rather too well. His life will never be the same, and soon he’ll learn facts about his past he’d never guessed. Facts that could be the death of him and others.

Where They Wait is an earlier novel than Lost Man’s Lane, and (in my opinion) not quite as successful. However, I considered Lost Man’s Lane almost perfect, so plenty of room remains for this to be quite a good novel. And such judgments are subjective anyway. Where They Wait offers intriguing characters and a compelling mystery, with one foot in science and the other in the supernatural. Very much in my own line, when I’m writing such books as Wolf Time.

I enjoyed Where They Wait, and read it in a day. There are a couple respectful, vague references to Christianity, and the whole thing could be viewed allegorically, if one were in the mood.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Rough Treatment,’ by John Harvey

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In an unnamed city in England’s Midlands, a pair of well-dressed burglars are having a successful run, breaking into rich people’s homes during the daytime when they’re supposed to be gone. But one day they burgle a TV director’s house, to find his wife, Maria Ray, at home. They rob the place anyway, and there are sexual sparks between one of the burglars – Jerry – and Maria. But the big prize of their day’s haul is a kilo of cocaine, hidden in a wall safe. Maria’s husband had been “holding it for a friend.”

So begins John Harvey’s police procedural Rough Treatment. As Jerry the burglar and Maria begin a torrid affair, Inspector Charlie Resnick, the hero of this series, heads up the police investigation. The clues will lead to organized crime and possible police corruption.

There’s  much to be said for Rough Treatment. It has a creative idea – particularly memorable for the character of the burglar with a heart of gold. Inspector Charlie Resnick himself is a pretty good hero, with a properly tragic back story – I wish we’d been given more information about it. One would need to read the first book in the series, I suppose – this is the second.

I found the writing style kind of ragged, though – the author is inclined to make sudden scene changes without alerting the reader (this may be a formatting problem, though). He also likes to begin scenes without telling us where they’re taking place, leaving that illumination for a few paragraphs on. Which annoys me.

The story is set in the 1990s, and so is gratifyingly free from the fashionable 50-50 male to female personnel ratio that’s become so popular today, at least in fiction. Cop humor is much in evidence, and in the (general) absence of women, tends to be pretty dirty, without any of the wit we find in John Sandford’s novels. There’s also a lot of offensive racist talk (disapproved of, of course). The sex scenes get pretty steamy too.

Rough Treatment was all right of its place and time, but I didn’t love it.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Lost Man’s Lane,’ by Scott Carson

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“Sure,” Noah said. “But to be any good, it takes time and it’s humbling. Anything worth doing in life meets that criteria. Detective work has one essential requirement: a willingness to admit that you might be wrong. Being observant and quick on your feet is nice, but self-doubt is mandatory.”

What an exceedingly fine book this was.

I didn’t actually realize what I was buying when I got Scott Carson’s Lost Man’s Lane on a discount offer. I assumed I was getting an ordinary, mundane missing person mystery. But this book is more like my Epsom novels – two parts urban fantasy and one part horror. Just enough horror to spice the mixture, but not enough to put off a wuss like this reader.

The story takes place in Bloomington, Indiana in the late 1990s. Marshal Miller is a teenager, the son of a single mother. The very day he gets his learner’s permit to drive, he’s pulled over by a policeman, a hostile man who speaks threateningly to him and writes him a ticket. Through his rear view mirror, Marshall sees a young woman in the back seat of the cruiser, wearing a tee-shirt from a local ice cream shop and crying.

No court summons arrives, so Marshall turns his attention to other things – until someone shows him a missing person’s flyer being posted around town. It shows a picture of the very young woman Marshall saw in the police car. He contacts the private investigator whose contact information is on the flyer, a genial local man who passes the information on to the police and takes him under his wing as an apprentice P.I.

Marshall is suddenly a local celebrity – but that turns sour when he makes another police report that appears to be false. Now Marshall is a laughingstock, accused of inventing hoaxes, bringing false hope to the missing girls’ family

It’s a hard time for Marshall, but he weathers the storm with the help of his mother, the girl he loves (who is unfortunately dating somebody else), the private investigator, and a couple good friends. He will be tempered in fire as he comes of age at the turn of the millennium.

Scott Carson (actually bestselling author Michael Koryta) is simply a top-notch fictioneer. If you asked me to find a flaw in Lost Man’s Lane, I couldn’t think of one. The characters are vivid and faceted. The dialogue is fast and crisp. The prose sings. And the plotting – the plot is an intricate web of threads, all of which tie up elegantly at the end. Reading this book was a delight from beginning to end.

The supernatural elements in Lost Man’s Lane bear no marks of Christian theology. The approach seems to be similar to that of Manly Wade Wellman (whose Silver John stories are referenced at one point). The book’s sexual morality doesn’t follow Christian ethics, so don’t look for that sort of story.

But overall I find no fault in Lost Man’s Lane. Wish I’d written it.

Music

Sunday Singing: Exhortations to Prayer

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Today’s hymn comes from the great English poet William Cowper (1731-1800; his name is pronounced “Cooper”) who struggled with depression for most of his life and found godly comfort in the pastoral care of John Newton (1725-1807). Read the text Cowper’s hymn, understanding the author felt darkened clouds were drawn to him and fought to take strength in the joy of the Lord.

This one won’t be in your hymnal. It was written in 1779 and paired with tunes I can’t readily find recordings for. The one above is a familiar one that works, which is the way hymns have been sung for many years.

“Therefore take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand firm. . . . praying at all times in the Spirit, with all prayer and supplication” (Eph 6:13, 18 ESV).

  1. What various hindrances we meet
    in coming to the mercy seat!
    Yet who that knows the worth of pray’r
    but wishes to be often there!
  2. Pray’r makes the darkened clouds withdraw;
    pray’r climbs the ladder Jacob saw;
    gives exercise to faith and love;
    brings ev’ry blessing from above.
  3. Restraining pray’r, we cease to fight;
    pray’r makes the Christian’s armor bright;
    and Satan trembles when he sees
    the weakest saint upon his knees.
  4. Have you no words? Ah, think again:
    words flow apace when you complain,
    and fill a fellow-creature’s ear
    with the sad tale of all your care.
  5. Were half the breath thus vainly spent
    to heav’n in supplication sent,
    our cheerful song would oft’ner be,
    “Hear what the Lord hath done for me!”
Fiction, Reviews

‘A Handful of Dust,’ by Evelyn Waugh

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Tony Last, who is sort of the hero of Evelyn Waugh’s A Handful of Dust, is a landed Englishman, barely managing to maintain his ancestral estate in the 1930s. His ancestral home, we are informed, has been defaced in hideous Victorian Gothic style, but he loves it. He also loves his wife Brenda and his little son John.

Over the course of this book he will lose all three of those, in various ways, and will be last seen on a feckless exploratory expedition, in search of a lost city, in the Amazon region of South America.

A Handful of Dust has a high reputation as a satirical novel. I found it a very wry book, but funny only in a mordant way. The humor is subtle (much went over my head, I’m certain) and exceedingly dark.

Perhaps later history was too much in my mind as I read. This book was written before World War II, before the British Empire dissolved, and before the Anglosphere fell into the hands of people committed to its erasure. Tony Last, the hero of A Handful of Dust, is an idealist and a romantic, which is his tragedy.

It is also the tragedy of everyone who ever loved England, if only from afar.

Non-fiction, Religion, Reviews

‘The Kingdom of Cain,’ by Andrew Klavan

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The legacy of Cain is murder. It is the attempt to kill the accusing image of God within us and re-create the world in the image of the desires we mistake for ourselves.

The novelist Andrew Klavan has morphed himself (in between writing marvelous mystery stories) into a philosopher of art in recent years. His book The Truth and Beauty examined the English Romantic poets, linking their artistic strivings to the search for God. I loved that book, but had trouble understanding its ultimate point. This led me to do some theorizing of my own (I’ve posted some of my thoughts on this blog). Klavan’s latest book, The Kingdom of Cain, suggests to me that I’ve been generally on the right track.

Andrew Klavan has often mentioned wryly that one of his great fears, when he became a Christian, was that he’d become a Christian writer – the kind of writer who tells stories about a little girl who prays that God will help her find her bunny rabbit, and God obliges. Instead, he has made his uneasy way working at his proper craft, writing the kind of stories he cares about and suffering the criticism of those readers who want bunny stories.

So this book begins as a sort of apologia for realistic (even earthy) Christian fiction – an issue that matters to me as well, in my humble way. Can depictions of the darkness of life – the ugly things that evil, twisted men do to each other and to the innocent – serve to glorify God?

Klavan thinks they can.

He starts out with the ancient, original murder – that of Cain upon Abel. He describes how the spirit of Cain has passed down through history to find full expression in post-Christian thinkers and psychologists – men like Nietzsche and Freud – and de Sade. How Dostoevsky pondered such ideas, found them wanting, and brought forth brilliant, moral works of art – Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov. He describes the crimes of a nondescript Wisconsin psychopath named Ed Gien, whose hideous career inspired “Psycho,” “The Silence of the Lambs,” and a score of inferior knock-offs.

Then he ponders the mysteries of creation, the fall of Man, and redemption. The book ends in a vision of what the author considers possibly the greatest work of human art – Michelangelo’s “Pieta,” an achievement that contemplates what Christians consider the greatest crime of all time – the greatest crime possible – and transforms it into sublime beauty.

Here, he suggests, is an answer to the mystery of Theodicy, the question how a good God could permit evil. The answer, Klavan suggests, cannot be parsed in logic or spoken in words. Only Beauty, a gleam of light from Heaven received by the soul, can provide answers for those who have eyes to see.

But read The Kingdom of Cain for yourself. I’m certainly going to read it again. I experienced genuine physical thrills as I followed its line of thought.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Sayulita Sucker,’ by Craig Terlson

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Ahead, I saw the tall concrete wall painted the color of Meyer
lemons. Terminal de Autobuses was emblazoned in thick black letters. Behind the station a hill rose, half covered in foliage, with orange-roofed buildings poking their heads up like school children. The sky was painted the perfect blue, a light breeze cooled my sweaty neck, and the events of the last couple of hours faded with the distant cries of gulls.

My friend Craig Terlson was kind enough to send me an advance copy his next novel Sayulita Sucker, now available for pre-order. It’s a shorter book (a short story is appended for good measure), but features Terlson’s usual excellent neo-hardboiled prose.

Luke Fischer, our continuing hero, is a Canadian expatriate, living as a beach bum near Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. He subsists on the hospitality of his patron, Benno, a genial crime boss. From time to time Benno takes advantage of Luke’s size, strength, and fighting skills to help him out with various small problems.

Benno is out of town as Sayulita Sucker begins, and Luke is approached by a man who claims to be a friend of his. He has a daughter, he says, who has always been a little wild. Now she’s disappeared, and he fears she might have fallen into the hands of traffickers. He has an idea she’s being held in a town a little way north up the coast. Luke agrees to go and look, and takes a bus up. Clues lead him to another town called Sayulita, and violence ensues.

Luke is a laconic character, and his ability to handle himself in a fight always surprises me a little. He strikes me as sort of a cross between Travis McGee and Jeff Lebowski. His investigative technique mostly involves sitting in bars and hotel lounges until somebody takes offense at one of his questions and tries to kill him. The whole story had, for this reader, a kind of dream-like quality.

Quite an enjoyable story, adorned by the author’s excellent prose and dialogue. Recommended. Cautions for language.