Hailstone Mountain by Lars Walker

This is an absolute ripping yarn, as ripping a yarn as you are likely to find, and unlike some TV series, it’s steeped in solid historical detail. Do want a fun sense of how Vikings lived in 1000 A.D.? Read Lars’ Erling novels.

This one is the fourth, but the first two are combined into one book, The Year of the Warrior. Next comes West Oversea, which you can learn about by searching this blog. And here, Hailstone Mountain (The Erling Skjalgsson Saga) brings us the courageous, noble Erling Skjalgsson stepping into the battle of his life.

First, he appears to be wasting away without reason. Father Ailill discerns he has been poisoned by magic and must find the magician to break the spell. Erling isn’t willing to risk everyone’s life on a quest to save his own, so his family and friends fear he will die, but when Lemming’s daughter disappears, they suspect she has been kidnapped by the minions of old magical people who kill select people in order to live forever. Whereas he would not fight for his life, Erling will fight against this abomination. That is what kicks everything off, and Lars doesn’t spend a chapter here and there describing the life cycle of trees. Each adventure builds to the next.

(Quick aside: View this photographic creation called “Cave Dwellers” by Folk Photography) 

Lars’ heroes are epic sized, but they are also realistically drawn. They deal with honor, slavery, and bigotry just as their historic counterparts did. One of the moving threads in this book has German priests refusing to work with a pagan magician who has joined their team. They could not condone the work of the devil in this man (a fair idea), and yet their motives were also of the devil. Sometimes, Ailill is no better. I wonder if he had a greater concept of God’s magnificent grace and less of his own worthlessness, would he have spoken an apt word to these men, like he does to the pagan in the beginning, and temper their distain? But bigotry runs deep, especially when its partially dug by religious convictions. It’s slow to correct course.

Continue reading Hailstone Mountain by Lars Walker

A memorable day in literary history

Big day in my world today. Today (thanks to Ori Pomerantz for his technical expertise) my new novel Hailstone Mountain made its appearance at Amazon. In order to take advantage of Amazon’s promotional programs, we’ll be exclusively with them for a while.

Hailstone Mountain is an H. Rider Haggard-esque story, in which Erling is struck by a curse that could kill him slowly. In order to break the curse, he must sail north (along with Father Ailill, Lemming, and others) to confront the source of the magic face to face. Meanwhile, Lemming’s niece Freydis is kidnapped by her relatives from up in Halogaland, and it’s not a nice kind of family, so she must be rescued. And that sets off repercussions that could destroy the whole country. Erling must join forces with a bitter enemy to stave off a monstrous horror.

In other news, my American Spectator review of the Vikings TV series is now a citation on the show’s Wikipedia page. That’s my second citation there. So where’s my honorary doctorate, already?

It’s possibly not unrelated that (I’m told; I haven’t looked) somebody posted the Spectator piece at Free Republic, where it became the target of ridicule and obloquy. I don’t mind. I’ve heard from a couple people today looking for various kinds of information, so my profile is higher than it was yesterday, and that’s what you want when you’re trying to sell books.

Also it’s pretty much decided that I’m going to be going for my Master’s in Library and Information Science. Where will I find the time? I don’t know. If it cuts into my reading, I can always blog about library science, which ought to be within the parameters of this blog.

Oh, one more thing – if you’re a book blogger with an established blog and have Kindle reader capability, contact me at lars (at) larswalker (dot) com, for a free review copy of Hailstone Mountain. We did that for Troll Valley, and it worked out pretty well.

Of course I don't mean YOUR baby…

G. K. Chesterton wrote, in Orthodoxy, “Certain new theologians dispute original sin, which is the only part of Christian theology which can really be proved.”

As evidence of that contention, I offer this article from CTV News:

Hamlin said the findings suggest that babies feel something like schaudenfreude, a German term describing the pleasure experienced when someone you dislike or consider threatening experiences harm.

Personally I’ve never trusted babies. Shifty eyes.

When I post, people read. For a second or so.

I promised you (subject to editorial approval) an American Spectator Online article by me, on the social and political aspects of the Vikings TV series on the History Channel. Here it is.
Phil and I have both noticed a spike in visits to this blog lately. An examination of our Sitemeter stats shows that every day we get clicks from people searching online for “countries with a cross on the flag,” or words to that effect. This brings them to my post, Flagging Enthusiasm. Those readers generally stay about two seconds before going off to search elsewhere. Apparently there is interest — in widely spread locations around the world — for information on flags with crosses on them. I’m at a loss to explain it. Any ideas?
In further news, my e-book Hailstone Mountain should be coming out very soon now. Just Kindle at first, I’m afraid.

The Devil's Star, by Jo Nesbø

I’m not sure what to think about Harry Hole (pronounced “WHO-leh.” You’re welcome), Norwegian author Jo Nesbø’s series detective who’s catching on very well in the current vogue for Scandinavian mysteries.

In The Devil’s Star, Harry displays one characteristic that I’ve grown very weary of in fictional detectives. He’s a mess in his personal life. He’s an alcoholic, it’s ruining his job and his relationships, and he doesn’t care enough about himself to fight for his life. He’s a superior police detective, but lately he hasn’t come to work for days at a time. He loves a woman who loves him – and her son adores him – but he’s stepping back from them, afraid of commitment and failure, haunted by profound fatalism.

But it’s high summer, “holiday season” in Oslo, and the police are operating with a skeleton force. When his supervisor (who’s name is Bjarne Møller – an homage to the 1970s American cop comedy?) needs to send two detectives to a murder scene, he can find no alternative to calling Harry, and teaming him up with his worst enemy – Detective Tom Waaler, who Harry is convinced is not only corrupt, but a murderer.

The murder victim shows marks of ritual – one finger has been cut off, and a star-shaped diamond left on the body. Soon there’s another similar murder, and another, and it becomes a full-fledged serial case.

I was fairly impatient with the first half of the book, where Harry stumbles (sometimes literally) around, either drunk or hung over most of the time, pushing away all attempts to help him. But in the second half things start moving, and Harry comes to life at last, and I was pleased pretty well by that part. The final showdown was exciting and effective.

Attitudes toward religion are interesting in The Devil’s Star. Christians (Pentecostals and Orthodox) show up – I’m not entirely sure why, actually – and are not depicted as entire idiots. Harry does take one swipe at Christianity (unfair, in my view), but we are also told that he believes in the soul, and a formula he often repeats, “Paradoxes don’t happen,” is flatly contradicted by another character, who seems to know what she’s talking about.

All in all I liked The Devil’s Star better than I thought I would. Cautions for language, gore, and mature themes (some of them pretty kinky).

Faith, Morality in Crime Fiction

David Masciotra says you can find faith in modern literature by reading crime novels. “The case for faith in fiction is to be made by those who deal with cracking cases for a living—the fictional detectives, private investigators, and troubled protagonists who inhabit the scandalous, seductive, and serpentine setting of noir.” Take Hit Me by Lawrence Block, for example. Mascoitra notes the main character’s desire to kill for money and conviction when confronted by iconography. When the man must pass a crucifix in order to kill someone, he can’t do it.

Mascoitra praises James Lee Burke for weaving these spiritual questions and motives better than most crime authors. Burke wrote to him: “Most of my plots come from the Bible or Greek mythology. I believe in the unseen world and believe the cosmos is probably something like the Oversoul that Emerson wrote of. I believe the essential human drama is between the forces of good and evil.”

Doctor Syn: A Smuggler Tale of the Romney Marsh, by Russell Thorndike

The theme song above will be familiar to many Americans of my generation. I was in junior high in 1963 when it first appeared on Walt Disney’s TV show, and it left a vivid impression. The Scarecrow of that series was a hero and a benefactor, a quiet vicar in a village church in coastal Kent who helped his parishioners earn a decent living through smuggling, while striking a blow against high tariffs (hurrah for free trade!).

The hero of Doctor Syn: A Smuggler Tale of the Romney Marsh (the last book chronologically in the series, though first written – author Russell Thorndike had not intended to create a series character) is no particular hero. He seems to be a complete hypocrite in his Anglican ministry, as he is perfectly capable of casually ordering an innocent man murdered for “knowing too much.” He has certain positive traits too, but all in all he’s a particularly devilish example of what used to be known as a “picaroon” in fiction – an unapologetic rogue.

His Scarecrow costume serves a purpose – he rides with his cohorts in frightening disguises in order to scare people off the marsh on the nights when his pack trains are carrying contraband to and from the beaches. He is little concerned by the arrival of a naval ship to investigate smuggling in the parish, but a particular member of the crew – a mute mulatto with his ears cut off – sets fear in his heart. For Doctor Syn has a dark secret, and the mulatto knows it.

A particular weakness of this book is that author Thorndike seems to want to be Dickens. He loads his story with comical “characters” who slow the story down considerably with their long stories and speeches. Another problem (which I noticed years ago when I read the next book, Doctor Syn on the High Seas), is fairly vicious racial attitudes (though this was softened when I realized that the vicar was not intended to be a role model). This racism seems to be mostly directed at black people, as Imogene, the female ingenue of the story, is said to be half Incan Indian, and gets no less respect for that.

I can’t say I wasn’t disappointed in Doctor Syn, but I still plan to buy and read the rest of the series. Maybe Thorndike will develop his character into something a little more like the one Patrick McGoohan played back in the ʼ60s.

On diversity

Something from my devotions today: 1 Corinthinas 12: 4-6: “There are different kinds of gifts, but the same Spirit. There are different kinds of service, but the same Lord. There are different kinds of working, but the same God works all of them in all men.”

The devotional I was reading from used the old King James terminology – “diversities of gifts, diversities of working,” etc.

And I got to thinking about word “diversity.”

If there’s any word that’s been abused in our time (and there are plenty) it’s “diversity.” Whenever a contemporary American hears the word diversity, he tenses up, figuring some bureaucrat is about to impose another form of uniformity on him. We’ve made diversity about race, and that’s just stupid.

Snatch up a dozen people from random spots around the world, and set them down together in a room. It’s my certain conviction that the least important thing about any person in that group will be his or her race (their views on race may have significance, though). Gender will matter. Politics and religion will matter, as will cultural tradition. I don’t know for a fact whether general racial traits actually exist in people (apart from physical appearance), but if there are such traits they will have little or no significance, except in terms of how people respond to them.

And yet we talk as if diversity were just about race. A university proudly points to its multi-racial faculty, calling it diverse, even though every single member of that faculty holds ideas and beliefs almost indistinguishable from any of the others.

All this is not what St. Paul is talking about here. The big racial divide in the early church was between Jews and Gentiles, and I’m quite sure the presence of both wasn’t what he meant by diversity.

What he meant was a wonderful truth, a truth Christianity has given as a gift to the world, which the world now takes for granted and thinks it came up with itself.

Paul declared that every human being – however weak, poor, and thickheaded – had a special, precious gift to give the Church, the Body of Christ. However little some individual seemed to have to offer, he did have a gift to share, according to Paul. All members of the Church were like organs in a body. The kidneys might be a little ashamed of their humble function, and the other organs might make jokes about them, but take the kidneys away – put their owner on a transplant waiting list – and it suddenly becomes clear how much those kidneys matter. Everybody matters in the Church.

This truth – in spite of centuries of officious attempts to make the Church an aristocracy where only the elite organs counted – could not be forgotten, and kept (and keeps) pushing through. Everybody matters. The one lost sheep counts. The widow’s mite counts more than the rich man’s endowment.

That’s what diversity actually means.

Nursing a grudge



If only the TV series could have been authentic, like this.



I’m going to grouse about the History Channel Vikings series one more time. Because it’s still on my mind. I’m still working on my piece about it for the American Spectator, too, which helps explain my obsession.

The responses I’ve gotten on Facebook have been interesting. Some people have been as negative as I am, or more – which may have had the effect of egging me on. Others have said, “Hey, it’s an interesting story, well acted, and it may interest people in the Vikings, so count your blessings.”

I think my reaction is partly self-centered. What I’m really thinking, deep in my lizard brain, is “I’ve been toiling most of my life accumulating sufficient information on the Viking Age to enable me to write believable novels – and I still get stuff wrong sometimes. So how come these Hollywood punks get to scribble a couple of facts on sticky notes and insert them into an otherwise fantasy script, call it a story about Vikings, and get paid enough money for me to retire on?”

I suspect that what these people really want to do is “A Game of Thrones.” And they can’t tell the difference.