Fiction, Reviews

Thrilling, Beautiful Adventure in “The Ale Boy’s Feast”

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I finally got to read Overstreet’s The Ale Boy’s Feast, and I loved it. The story that appears to be about a magical rebellion to small, oppressive rulers in the first book becomes an adventure about radical reconciliation by the fourth book. It asks big questions: Can the great curse be revoked? Can a traitor return to his kingdom or be accepted in a new one? Can criminals build a new place of law and order? And more than these questions are the ones driving the narrative behind the scenes: Does the glorious beauty we see in this world point to a glorious otherworldly source? Is that beauty sewn together with love, peace, joy, and hope? Is life (in the land of these books) about rejoicing in the hope of beauty, both natural and crafted?

Of course, this weaves cleanly and smoothly into the biblical theology of this world, because our goodness is defined by the Lord and peace on earth will be to those on whom God’s favor rests, but that doesn’t appear to be the central thrust. Wonder and beauty as they pull us back to God appears to be what this adventure is all about. (Blue flowers are signs that magically refreshing water is nearby.)

In the third book, we learn explosive details about Overstreet’s world. The real enemies are revealed. Plots and deceptions are discovered. A new threat, a pervasive weed that lives on blood, is tunneling from its Cent Regus heart throughout the country. Cal-raven is running for his life as well as trying to discover a new home for his people, the House Abascar which is ruined in the first book. At one point, he is compelled to rescue prisoners in House Cent Regus and is broken by what he learns there and in its aftermath.

In this book, Cal-raven begins to wander, despairing of ever answering his life-long questions. In the meantime, his loyal men attempt to follow his plans for establishing a new house without him. As they go, something seems to be poisoning everything around them. This book is the fourth of a rich, complicated series, so begin with book one. There’s no other way.

In fact, the story may be too complicated.

The conclusion of Raven’s Ladder changes everything, and the end The Ale Boy’s Feast changes it all again. Many minor characters have their hours in the spotlight, and while the story always moves forward—yes, there’s always a reward for the detour—I wonder if these books would be stronger with a bit more simplicity. A few critical details in this installment come up short for me.

Among the complexities I love is the development of The Keeper, and I don’t want to spoil it. The idea introduced in the first book which led me to speculate that this mysterious dragon was a god-figure expands to a dramatic crash at the end of book three. The explanation revealed in this book is wonderfully fantastic. This is not the least of all the things to love in these multi-layered stories.

About that which I did not like, I’ll say two things.

  1. In one late chapter, two main characters argue about the larger story being revealed. They talk of lies, liars, and which historic records are true. Perhaps I should have understood by this point that one of these men had a problematic perspective, but I didn’t. I thought these two were on the same page at this point. In their argument, they seem to circle each other, not even holding to one firm perspective. It’s as if they are floating theories to fit all the facts. This argument proves to be a major revelation, both of character and story, and I believe I understand it now, but I didn’t while in the thick of it. My confusion led to frustration when one of these men takes action later on.
  2. Part of this adventure’s conclusion feels a bit forced. It’s like a murder mystery being resolved by cuffing a character introduced in the last chapter. I see a poetic quality in it, a balance of images, but it doesn’t feel organic like so many other threads enjoyed in this series.

I’ll close with a beautiful thought from that chapter I criticized a few lines up. One man says, “It saddens me that you cannot imagine a life without someone to serve.” The other replies, “It saddens me that you think joy comes any other way” (pg 340).

In the end, Auralia’s radiant colors cannot be exploited for commercial or selfish gain. They are a service to others as well as a thing to be served. They “lure people out of the dark, away from all they thought they owned, and show them something grander” (pg 249).

Photo by Swapnil Sharma/ Pexels

Religion

“Obfuscatory pseudo-intellection”

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Theodore Dalrymple, in my opinion one of the most interesting writers today, writes over at City Journal about two separate books written about famous English serial murderers. Though the authors were born only a decade apart, they write as if from different worlds. Dalrymple contrasts the two accounts in order to highlight how western culture has changed within living memory.

But the woman of lesser education and humbler occupation displays in her book a much higher level of intellectual sophistication and moral intelligence than her more educated junior. Where one is modest, self-effacing, and straightforward, the other is grandiose and egotistical, her capacity to see clearly clouded by a combination of self-importance and obfuscatory pseudo-intellection. I believe that this contrast results not only from individual differences between the two women but from the different cultural environments in which they grew up and subsequently wrote. A week, said Harold Wilson, is a long time in politics; and it seems that ten years is a long time in the history of a culture.

I’m not sure I entirely agree with Dalrymple’s analysis of the Christian virtue of forgiveness. But I do agree with him that the concept has been entirely corrupted in modern times. I sometimes think that although western culture proudly regards itself as having cast off the shackles of Christianity, it has in fact only sunk into Christian heresy, with the labels switched to confuse the rubes. The theological act of forgiveness has been transformed into a vague principle that we are all morally obligated to forgive everything – even the most horrific crimes – because in fact they’re not crimes at all and there’s nothing to forgive. Our enemy, our tormenter, our murderer, is not a heinous malefactor but merely a fellow victim, the object of forces over which he had no control.

That’s not what Christian forgiveness means. Christianity grants to the sinner the dignity of responsibility. It has been argued that the doctrine of hell is the greatest compliment Christian theology ever paid to the human race. To say that someone is responsible, and to hold them responsible, is to attribute to them the dignity of free agency, declaring them a person capable of choice, rather than just an object subject to blind manipulation.

As in so many cases, it all comes down to what you think human beings are.

Writing

Writing Tips

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Aaron Armstrong passes on some writing tips from Doug Wilson, author of many books including Evangellyfish, which we linked to earlier. It’s good stuff, but I need some help on the fourth one. What does this mean: “4. Stretch before your routines. If you want to write Italian sonnets, try to write some short stories. If you want to write a few essays, write a novel, or maybe a novella if you are pressed for time. If you want to write haiku, then limber up with opinion pieces for The Washington Post.”

Authors, Writing

The Professor. And me. In that order.

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Today is the birthday of Prof. J. R. R. Tolkien, who needs no introduction here. As usual, Tolkien fans around the world are participating in a birthday toast, at 9:00 p.m. local time, wherever they happen to be. The formula is to raise your beverage of choice and say, “THE PROFESSOR!”

Tolkien did a bit of translation in his time, being one of the world’s great language scholars. I suppose it’s a stretch to try to use that as a bridge to the subject of my own ongoing translation work. I’m around ¾ of the way through the first draft now, which is a little ahead of my estimates, I think.

The New Year’s holiday gave me the unspeakable gift of two full, unscheduled days to devote to the project. I did 5,000 words each day, and was a little alarmed to realize something I’d never known before. Translating can be addictive. A Facebook friend who’s also a translator told me I wasn’t out of line to compare it to obsessive computer gaming, since he’s done both.

Translating involves its own special challenges and headaches, but it has the advantage of entirely lacking one great roadblock of ordinary writing – you never have to figure out what’s coming next. Figuring out what comes next has always been the hardest part of writing for me.

Of course it helps to be working on a project you find fascinating in its own right.

Bookselling

Good Bookshops Will Survive

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Allan Massie talks about what he has learned about bookselling in the Internet Age:

Intelligently run independent bookshops have a future. I’ve no doubt about that.. We have at least two in the Scottish Borders , one in Selkirk and the other in St Boswell’s, which are a pleasure to visit, precisely because they are run by people who combine an interest in books and literature with an interest in their customers and an awareness of their tastes. Without such interest and awareness, few bookshops will be long for this world.

Fiction, Reviews

Hell Around the Horn, by Rick Spilman

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Among the many pleasures of the reading life, one of the rarest is the unassuming but excellent novel. That was what I found, to my delight, in Hell Around the Horn, by Rick Spilman.

Hell Around the Horn has no grand pretensions. It does not try to be a romance, or a mystery, or a political tract. It is what its manifest states – a straightforward account, fictionalized, of a memorable voyage by a windjammer and her crew in the year 1905.

The windjammer, if you’re not familiar with the term, was the last stage in the age of commercial sail. Like the clipper ships before them the windjammers drove under a cloud of sails, but they were generally steel- or iron-built, and bulkier in the hull to accommodate more cargo. Although a seeming anachronism, windjammer commerce endured as late as 1957.

The story is told through the eyes of four main characters on board the vessel Lady Rachel – Capt. James Barker, a young captain keen to make a profit on his first voyage as a partner, Apprentice William Jones, a teenager just learning the ropes (literally), Able Seaman Fred Smythe, an American sailor with a little education, and Mary Barker, the captain’s wife, who has come along bringing their two children. Continue reading Hell Around the Horn, by Rick Spilman →

Authors, Fiction

CT Book of the Year: Evangellyfish

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Christianity Today has announced their book awards for 2013, and their fiction pick is Douglas Wilson’s satiric novel, Evangellyfish.

Wilson says he wants to “intelligent readers” to find his book “funny, dark, and redemptive.”

Joel Miller has a short interview with Wilson on his Patheos blog, in which he asks: “I wonder about the characters’ moral literacy. The cast is primarily Christian but many behave entirely other. How do we land in a world wherein self-gratification seems the highest virtue? And is that our real state of affairs?”

Wilson replies, “Let me start with the last question. No, it is not our real state of affairs across the board, but it is our real state of affairs in certain quadrants of the church. A few years ago, I got a rejection letter for this manuscript because the set-up for the plot was so ‘out there.’ After having received that rejection letter, the Ted Haggard scandal broke, which put my puny efforts into the shade. That made me happy.”

Poetry

The Earth’s Vigil, by G. K. Chesterton

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(It has been my custom to post a poem by Chesterton every Christmas. But I didn’t do that this year. I thought of posting a New Year’s poem tonight, but it looks as if Chesterton didn’t write any. This, however, is close. Happy New Year.)

The old earth keepeth her watch the same,

Alone in a voiceless void doth stand,

Her orange flowers in her bosom flame,

Her gold ring in her hand,

The surfs of the long gold-crested morns

Break evermore at her great robe’s hem,

And evermore come the bleak moon-horns,

But she keepeth not watch for them.

She keepeth her watch through the aeons,

But the heart of her groweth not old,

For the peal of the bridegroom’s paeons,

And the tale she once was told.

The nations shock and the cities reel,

The empires travail and rive and rend,

And she looks on havoc and smoke and steel,

And knoweth it is not the end.

The faiths may choke and the powers despair,

The powers re-arise and the faiths renew,

She is only a maiden, waiting there,

For the love whose word is true.

She keepeth her watch through the aeons,

But the heart of her groweth not old,

For the peal of the bridegroom’s paeons,

And the tale she once was told.

Through the cornfield’s gleam and the cottage shade,

They wait unwearied, the young and old,

Mother for child and man for maid,

For a love that once was told.

The hair grows grey under thatch or slates,

The eyes grow dim behind lattice panes,

The earth-race wait as the old earth waits,

And the hope in the heart remains.

She keepeth her watch through the aeons,

But the heart of her groweth not old,

For the peal of the bridegroom’s paeons,

And the tale she once was told.

God’s gold ring on her hand is bound,

She fires with blossom the grey hill-sides,

Her fields are quickened, her forests crowned,

While the love of her heart abides,

And we from the fears that fret and mar,

Look up in hours and behold a while

Her face, colossal, mid star on star,

Still looking forth with a smile.

She keepeth her watch through the aeons,

But the heart of her groweth not old,

For the peal of the bridegroom’s paeons,

And the tale she once was told.

Fiction, Reviews

Portrait of a Spy, by Daniel Silva

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Talk show host Hugh Hewitt has been promoting Daniel Silva’s Gabriel Allon spy novels for some time, so I finally tried one. I’m happy to report that Portrait of a Spy is an excellent novel, well-written, well-plotted, with engaging, believable characters. I highly recommend it, while at the same time confessing that I probably won’t be reading any more in this series. My reasons are not aesthetic or moral or political. More below.

Gabriel Allon is a skilled, even legendary Mossad agent whose working cover is his vocation as an art restorer, one of the best in the world. At the start of this novel, late in the series, he has at last broken his ties with Israeli intelligence, and is living with his beautiful wife in a secluded cottage on the Cornish coast. He’s excited about his latest commission, a recently identified lost Titian masterpiece.

And then one day, while visiting London, he witnesses a suicide bombing, one in a series of such bombings across Europe. He is drawn into the hunt for the masterminds, first back with Mossad, and then with the CIA as well. Their plan to locate and destroy the enemy involves a wealthy young Arabian heiress who has come (they’re pretty sure) to hate the jihadis.

No plan, as the generals say, ever survives contact with the enemy, and there are betrayals and deaths (and frustrating CIA political meddling) before the job gets done. It was all very suspenseful, and even moving.

Portrait of a Spy is a very good novel and (according to my lights) pretty much entirely on the right side of the issues. I recommend it highly, with the usual cautions for language, violence, and adult situations (not explicit).

The reason I can’t go on with the series is that I discovered something in reading it that I should have realized long ago. I’m just uncomfortable with spy stories. That world of deception and betrayal is tremendously stressful for me to think about. I could never live that way. I’m a very bad liar (not, I hasten to add, because of my high moral character, but because I just don’t do it well. My face gives it away). Spending time with espionage stories makes me uneasy.

You’re probably not like that, so you’ll very likely enjoy it.

Fiction, Reviews

Bid the Gods Arise (Vol. 1), by Robert Mullin

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My friend Robert Mullin sent me a manuscript of his novel Bid the Gods Arise a while back, and I read it and provided the following blurb:

Bid the Gods Arise possesses the music of epic and the color of myth. It’s a big story, spanning planets, but with a specific human heart. Once read, it lingers in the mind like a dream.

It’s not uncommon for me to receive manuscripts from people who’d like me to read and comment on them. It’s very rare that I can say much good. Bid the Gods Arise is an exception. A genuinely original work, it combines fantasy with interstellar travel far more successfully than you imagine it could.

The story involves two young men, Aric and Maurin, who are kidnapped from their home planet by interstellar slave merchants. Separated and sent to very different fates, they meet again at last and join with a company of others on a quest which involves both Aric’s true destiny and his greatest temptation.

This is a really good book, a Christian fantasy novel with no preaching. I recommend it.