Category Archives: Fiction

Fiction, Reviews

Saga reading report: ‘The Tale of Thorvard Crow’s-Beak’

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13th Century illustration of the Battle of Stamford Bridge from Matthew Paris. It looked nothing like this.

I’m still slogging through a Very Long Book (a good book, but comprehensive), so tonight I’ll report on another tale from The Complete Sagas of Icelanders. This is the last story in Volume I, which means I’ll be coming to longer sagas again in the next one. I’m not sure what I’ll do to vamp while I’m reading future long books.

To my delight, this tale turned out have considerable personal interest. It involves Erling Skjalgsson’s grandson, Eystein Orre (son of Erling’s daughter Ragnhild and Thorberg Arnesson – you may remember the story of Thorberg’s courtship from King of Rogaland). Eystein had a sister named Thora who would, in time, become concubine (or wife, sources differ) to King Harald Hardrada, and would die with him following a legendary charge at the Battle of Stamford Bridge in England.

Our tale is the Tale of Thorvard Crow’s-Beak. Thorvard is a wealthy Icelandic merchant. He sails to Norway where he speaks to King Harald, inviting him to come down to his ship and accept the gift of a sail. (According to this article from the Viking Herald, the manufacture of one sail for a Viking ship could take as long as fifty years [!] Perhaps they mean 50 years in man-hours).

I’ve mentioned previously that King Harald appears uncharacteristically genial in most of these saga tales. But in this one we see him in his usual temper. He tells Thorvard, curtly, that he got an Icelandic sail once before, and it tore apart under wind pressure. So he’s not interested in another such gift.

However, Thorvard then offers the sail to Eystein Orre, the king’s best friend, and Eystein, on examining it, recognizes it as an excellent specimen. He accepts it with thanks and invites Thorvard to stop and see him at his own home when he sails back to Iceland. When Thorvard does so, Eystein gives him generous gifts.

And to cap it we are told that, on a later occasion, Eystein’s ship outsails the king’s. And when the king asks where he got this fine sail, Eystein tells him it’s one he had turned down. A nice final note for the storyteller – it could even be true.

I was surprised to see “Eystein Orre” translated as “Eystein Grouse” here. Orre does mean grouse, even in modern Norwegian, but I’m sure I read somewhere that Eystein got his nickname from Orre farm in Jaeder. Perhaps that’s the meaning of the farm’s name. If Eystein lived there, it would likely have been due to inheritance from Erling.

The Tale of Thorvard Crow’s-beak is one of the more plausible stories in the collection, just trivial enough to believe.

Fiction, Reviews

‘The Killing Bay,’ by Chris Ould

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Heljarayga was a small, natural cove no more than a hundred yards wide at its midpoint. Beyond that I couldn’t see much. The mist hung like a damp dust-sheet over the headlands and above the almost mirror-smooth water it appeared to ebb and flow slightly, gossamer fine. The stillness made you want to hold your breath. Nothing and nobody moved.

I knew a few things about the Faeroes before I started reading Chris Ould’s mystery novels. One of my Norwegian cousins (gone now) was married to a Faeroese woman (still around). The hymn, Tiðin rennur, which Sissel sings so beautifully, comes from there…

And they still hold an annual whale hunt in the old Norse tradition. The old Norse tradition was to herd whales into a bay or inlet and beach them in the shallows, then kill them there. It was an important element of survival in a subsistence economy. (My own ancestral home in Norway is a farm called Kvalavåg, which means “whale bay” or “whale inlet.”) But the custom has been abandoned in most places. In the Faeroes it still continues, stubbornly maintained as a central element of local culture. This has not entirely escaped the notice of anti-whaling organizations, and that fact generates the central conflict of The Killing Bay, second of Ould’s Faeroes mysteries.

Our hero, Jan Reyna, is still in the Faeroes. He’s an English police detective (born in the Faeroes but raised in England) currently on suspension, not sure if he even wants to go home. He rather likes the Faeroes, and most of the relations he’s met there, but he doesn’t really feel at home.

The female cousin who’s hosting him brings him along to witness the grindadráp, the whale hunt. He’s not enthusiastic about the thing, but doesn’t feel qualified to judge. While there he meets Erla Sivertsen, a female Faeroese native who’s working as a photographer for an environmental protest group, documenting the kill. While there Erla clashes with Finn Sólsker, a local fisherman, but violence is averted.

Not long after, Erla is discovered murdered, and the local investigators, led by Jan’s new friend Hjalti Hentze, have it as their first job to check whether Finn has an alibi. (This is awkward because Finn happens to be his son-in-law.) When Erla’s coat and hat are discovered hidden in Finn’s fishing hut, Hjalti is forced to arrest him, but he’s not convinced of his guilt. In addition, why is he getting pressure from his superiors to close the case before he’s examined all possible leads?

The mystery in The Killing Bay was well-constructed and solid, but it was the setting that really riveted me, as it did with the previous book, The Blood Strand. Author Ould does a masterful job of evoking the setting and atmosphere of the islands. I felt like I’d been there.

Highly recommended. Cautions for language and mature themes. Environmental politics are treated with an even hand.

Fiction, Reviews

‘You’ll Get Yours,’ by Gerald Hansen

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Good characters do a lot to make a book work. But now that I’ve finished You’ll Get Yours, by Gerald Hansen, I think it’s possible to overdo it.

In the city of Derry, Ireland, a middle-aged woman’s body is found, dressed only in sexy underwear, on top of a cannon on the old city wall, her thumb superglued inside her mouth. As Detective Inspector Liam McLaughlin begins investigating, they find the woman hard to identify. No one seems to have known her. And when she finally is identified, as a woman who worked as a stocker at a nearby supermarket, it turns out she’s still a bit of a mystery. She seems to have no family, and there’s no record of her existence prior to four years ago.

In time it’s revealed that she’s been living under a false identity. She was once – briefly – famous, as a member of a Spice Girls-type girl band that had a few hits in the ‘90s. None of the other old group members are living in hiding, though, so what was she afraid of?

And the cops’ work won’t be made any easier by the almost universal hatred for the police that lingers in Derry, a residue from “the Troubles” of the old IRA years. In the end the solution will take them back to an old crime that time can’t bury and no one could possibly guess.

The emphasis in You’ll Get Yours is vivid characterization, and frankly I thought it was a little overdone. DI McLaughlin is a slob who’s always getting interrupted in the middle of eating a sandwich. His subordinates include a feminist detective with OCD, a fashion-plate womanizer, an over-eager rookie detective, and a female computer nerd. I think I was supposed to be amused by their interactions and frictions, but I found it all a little overdone and unconvincing.

The book wasn’t really that bad, plot-wise, and the solution was horrific and moving. But I couldn’t help being annoying by the comic book characterizations.

I should note, however, that references to religion were mostly respectful, and the author took trouble to avoid cursing.

You might enjoy it.

Fiction, Reviews

‘The Blood Strand,’ by Chris Ould

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I spent the day balancing the pains in my ribs, shoulder and head with painkillers and doing a passable impression of Elizabeth Barrett Browning on the sofa.

I knew nothing of Chris Ould or his Faeroes mystery series before I bought The Blood Strand. But I got a deal on it, and it was set in the Faeroes, a Nordic community I’d never visited fictionally (or in real life) before. I’m used to being depressed by Scandinavian Noir stories, but this one turned out to be a pleasant surprise.

Jan Reyna is an English police detective. He was born in the Faeroes, but his mother divorced his father and took him away when he was very young. Then she died, leaving him to be raised by relatives in England. He only met his father once, and then they got into a fistfight. But now the old man is hospitalized in the Faeroes following an accident and a stroke, and Jan succumbs to his aunt’s pressure to go and see his father while he’s still alive.

Arriving in the Faeroes, whose language he’s entirely forgotten, he finds his father (who turns out to be rich) unable to communicate. He meets his two half-brothers, one openly hostile, the other friendly. He also meets a local detective, Hjalte Hentze, who’s trying to figure out why Jan’s father was found in his car with a shotgun in the footwell, blood on the door, and a briefcase full of money in the trunk. That curiosity only increases when a young man’s body is found washed up on the shore with shotgun wounds. When he asks Jan to help out, Jan has nothing better to do… except for trying to find out why his mother left his father all those years ago.

I liked Jan Reyna and the other characters in The Blood Strand. The descriptions of Faeroese culture and scenery were interesting, and the unfolding mystery kept me fascinated. Though set in a historically Scandinavian setting, this book was not actually written by a Scandinavian, which may explain why it didn’t try to depress me to death. I had a good time reading it, and I look forward to the sequels.

Recommended. Not much offensive content either. References to Christianity (the Faeroese seem to be pretty religious) were mostly respectful.

Fiction, Reading, Reviews

Saga reading report: Tales of Three Thorsteins

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King Olaf Trygvesson, as painted by my friend (okay, my acquaintance) Anders Kvaale Rue. I’ve never asked him why he pictures Olaf with a haircut documented as being popular with Danes.

Tonight, three more tales from The Complete Sagas of Icelanders. Oddly, they’re all about guys named Thorstein. Perhaps the name was a statistical favorite among Icelanders. Or perhaps the name was becoming a go-to for storytellers, like “Jack” in so many British folk tales.

First, there’s “The Tale of Thorstein of the East Fjords.” We’re told that he was “young and fleet of foot,” though those qualities don’t really figure in the story. He is on a pilgrimage to Rome, and while traveling through Norway he comes upon a richly dressed young man defending himself against four attackers. Thorstein decides to intervene and kills three of the attackers. The young man he rescued tells him that once he gets back from Rome, he should go to King Magnus’s (Magnus the Good, I assume) court and see him. Just ask for Styrbjorn. (Styrbjorn was the name of a famous Swedish hero. I don’t know of more than one man who bore that name, and he was long dead by this time.)

One assumes that Thorstein goes to Rome and returns to Norway, though the saga writer fails to mention that. The next scene shows Thorstein showing up at the king’s hall, where he sends a message in, asking for Styrbjorn. All the kings’ men have a good laugh at somebody asking for Styrbjorn (like somebody today asking for Eliot Ness or Frank Sinatra, I suppose), but eventually the king himself silences them, explaining that he himself is this “Styrbjorn.” Thorstein ends up going home to Iceland with a lot of money.

The second tale is “The Tale of Thorstein the Curious.” This Thorstein went to Norway and joined the court of King Harald (Hardrada, I suppose). One day the king assigns him to watch his clothing while he’s taking a bath, and Thorstein can’t resist looking into his bag. There he sees a couple knife handles made from a strange, golden wood. When the king comes out of the bath, he intuits that Thorstein has peeked. Displeased, he demands that Thorstein fulfill a quest or lose his favor. He must fetch the king two more knife handles of the same wood – but he won’t give him a clue as to where such trees grow (considering Harald Hardrada’s history, it might have been anywhere in the Middle East, the Mediterranean, Eastern Europe, or Scandinavia). Thorstein eventually fulfills the quest, but only by way of escaping a giant serpent. In an oddly prosaic epilogue, we’re informed that this Thorstein died with Harald in England.

Finally we encounter “The Tale of Thorstein Shiver.” This Thorstein has joined the household of King Olaf (at first I assumed this would be Saint Olaf, but by the end it’s clear that it’s Olaf Trygvesson). One night the king gives a command (for no apparent reason) that no man is to go out to the privy without a buddy. Thorstein wakes in the middle of the night and is reluctant to wake anyone else, so he sneaks out alone. In the privy he encounters a demon. Then follows a sequence in which he asks the demon three times about which damned souls scream the loudest in Hell. The demon tells him about three famous Nordic heroes, describing their sufferings in the fires of perdition, and (at Thorstein’s request) each time screaming in imitation of that hero. Meanwhile, with each question the demon inches closer to Thorstein. But just before the demon can grab him, the church bells start ringing, and the demon flees back where he came from.

In the morning, the king asks how everyone slept. Thorstein confesses his disobedience, but King Olaf isn’t much bothered over that. He explains that he heard the diabolical screaming, and therefore ordered the bells rung, saving Thorstein from Hell.

There’s an interesting addendum. The king asks Thorstein if he felt frightened at any point, and Thorstein says he doesn’t know what fear feels like, though he shivered a little during the demon’s final scream.

This seems to anticipate a motif we find in several Scandinavian folk tales catalogued in the 19th Century – “The Boy Who Did Not Know Fear.” It seems to me that what we’re observing in these stories is a stage in the evolution of the folk tale – the point where stories are still connected to actual historical figures (likely the storytellers’ ancestors), but are growing increasingly extravagant and fabulous in the process of retelling.

Blogs, Socials, Fiction, Non-fiction

Pascal on How People Are Persuaded

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In this news recently, we heard from students and presumably responsible adults tout the fictional premises such as supporting Hamas is a human rights cause and Israel has never had a claim to land in the Middle East. News outlets dedicated to printing “the truth” have printed and aired reports from Hamas-approved spokesmen who could pose as objective reporters by the simple fact that they were in American media. Today, a commentator said that people hold to this fiction is not really different from those who hold to some of the other political conspiracy theories we’ve heard from the last presidential election. The facts don’t support their belief, and yet they refuse to change their minds.

I’ve often said this was a matter of trust. Different people trust different sources and voices without much comparison to reality. Maybe a better answer is that they trust their own unexamined conclusions most of all.

From the first section of Pascal’s Pensées, his ninth and tenth thoughts are these:

When we wish to correct with advantage, and to show another that he errs, we must notice from what side he views the matter, for on that side it is usually true, and admit that truth to him, but reveal to him the side on which it is false. He is satisfied with that, for he sees that he was not mistaken, and that he only failed to see all sides. Now, no one is offended at not seeing everything; but one does not like to be mistaken, and that perhaps arises from the fact that man naturally cannot see everything, and that naturally he cannot err in the side he looks at, since the perceptions of our senses are always true.

People are generally better persuaded by the reasons which they have themselves discovered than by those which have come into the mind of others.

Even if what they’ve discovered is ridiculous, they will likely hold to it better than they will an answer we give them, because it’s their idea. They drew their own conclusion or believe they did. I’ve heard a couple pastors tells stories about one of their children coming to them with a remarkable truth they had discovered in the Word and repeat some of their own words back to them. That’s how it works. Most of us aren’t original thinkers, but we should all learn to think for ourselves.

Now, to our Features Desk for today’s links.

Lost in the Cosmos: “Percy’s philosophy and storytelling both aim at restoring our ability to see ourselves rightly and to make the ineffable curiousness of our consciousness visible once more. He ends this peculiar book with a pair of interconnected science fiction stories—both brief choose-your-own adventures with tragicomic twists. In these tales, he confronts readers with the possibility that the help we really need has already arrived.”

Moral Imagination: In 1997, Justice Scalia said that while remembering the Holocaust is important, “you will have missed the most frightening aspect of it all, if you do not appreciate that it happened in one of the most educated, most progressive, most cultured countries in the world.”

C.S. Lewis: In 1952, C.S. Lewis discovered there was a woman at the Court Stairs Hotel who claimed to be his wife.

Welcome to the faith: Ayaan Hirsi Ali finds Christianity more compelling than secular humanism. “That is why I no longer consider myself a Muslim apostate, but a lapsed atheist.”

Fiction, Reviews

‘Borrowed Time,’ by John Nolte

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“A good man who cannot die, who lives forever, is cursed,” said Mason. “And an evil man who cannot die is a curse on everyone else.”

The legend of the longaevi is an old one in Christian tradition, and I suspect it probably exists in other cultures as well. Our ancestors believed in Longinus, the centurion who crucified Christ and was cursed not to die till Judgment Day (I employed this legend in my book The Elder King). They also believed in the Wandering Jew, who insulted Christ on His way to crucifixion and was doomed to wander the earth in a similar way. Both legends embody the understanding that, much as we’d like to lengthen our lives, death is in principle a mercy for fallen creatures.

The popular Highlander film and TV franchises took a different approach, but still couldn’t avoid the insight that earthly immortality would entail great sorrow and tragedy, if not evil.

John Nolte offers a new wrinkle on the concept in his recent novel, Borrowed Time. The man who calls himself Joshua Mason has wandered the earth longer than he can remember. If something kills him, he soon reappears under a certain Joshua tree in the Arizona desert. He’d always kept to himself and avoided transient humanity, until he met Doreen, with whom he fell in love and whom he married in secret, making a little family with her and her brain-damaged son in the run-down motel she ran.

To provide for them, Joshua began a secret business, based in the Dark Web. For a high fee, he allows very sick-minded human beings to murder him. He does not realize that the power of the people he’s dealing with, along with the increasing surveillance capacities of the government, will put him on a course that will lead to unleashing unthinkable horror on the world – through the most unlikely conduit you could imagine.

I first encountered author John Nolte on the old Dirty Harry’s Place blog, a fun movie blog. Lots of creativity and interaction. (Can anyone explain why the world abandoned blogs for social media? How long has it been since you’ve had a really good discussion on Facebook or X?) Since then, John has moved on to Breitbart, where he’s a big deal (we’re not friends, but I follow his career with interest). He’s written an effective urban fantasy in Borrowed Time, intended for a wider audience than Christian readers (watch out for language and graphic violence). The story is solid and well-paced. The characters are distinctive and lively. The prose is not polished, and there are a few typos and errors (such as putting Florida on the Pacific Ocean). But all in all this was a well-written, very readable, and gripping book. It moved me at the end.

Recommended for grownups.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Judgment Prey,’ by John Sandford

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It occurred to me (and not for the first time) as I read John Sandford’s latest Lucas Davenport novel, Judgment Prey, that these latest books in the series are about an entirely different character than the early Preys were. Back at the start, the emphasis was on street justice, and Lucas seemed to be a borderline psycho. Now he’s a settled family man anchoring stories that push gun control, and Lucas tends to operate as a buffer against violence.

As Judgment Prey opens, Lucas is still recovering from the wounds he received in the big gunfight at the end of the last book. He isn’t 100% yet, but he’s pushing to get back in shape. When one of his superiors asks him to look in on a crime scene, he puts up only formal resistance.

A federal judge has been gunned down in his home, along with his two young sons (the baby in the crib was spared). The widow, Margaret Cooper, discovers the bodies and is traumatized. A half-hearted attempt to make the crime look like a robbery gone wrong doesn’t convince. This was a hit, and it was personal.

Lucas, who is now a federal marshal, is allowed to join in the investigation as a sort of consultant, teaming up with his old buddy, Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension agent Virgil Flowers.

The investigation will entail examining the judge’s will, and the organizations he’s involved in. Lucas begins to smell a rat.  One of the charities mentioned in his will, Heart/Twin Cities, starts looking pretty sketchy (this could be inspired by recent Twin Cities news in the real world). Which raises questions about its director, a local society figure who seems on closer inspection to be all façade. But he’s got an iron-clad alibi…

 There’s a fair amount of dramatic tension in all this, but we’re also following Margaret the widow, who responds to her bereavement with action – she and her best friend are laying plans to trap the killer and shoot him dead.

A well-crafted story. Interesting characters. Cop humor. I got everything I came for in Judgment Prey. Recommended for adults. Cautions for violence and language. The ending is kind of ambiguous and troubling.

Authors, Fiction

‘Your Life is a Work of Art’ with Andrew Klavan

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I’ve made great strides with the InDesign software I’m struggling with, but the last few intractable problems still defy… tracting. And I don’t have a book to review tonight.

So I offer the video above, from a podcast called “Order of Man” (about which I know naught, but I found nothing objectionable when I watched). It’s about an hour, and it features an interview with Andrew Klavan about his latest novel, The House of Love and Death (which you really ought to read). He also discusses his journey to faith.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Thrones, Dominations,’ by Dorothy L. Sayers & Jill Patton Walsh

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“It is perfectly possible, I suppose,” said Lord Peter to his wife, over breakfast, “for someone to be murdered while doing something she does not usually do, or behaving in a way unaccustomed to her. But it is an affront to the natural feelings of a criminologist, all the same.”

I was aware that Dorothy L. Sayers had begun a Lord Peter Wimsey/Harriet Vane novel back in the 1930s and abandoned it, leaving behind some isolated scenes and a tentative outline. And that the late author Jill Patton Walsh had completed the novel, Thrones, Dominations, which was published in 1999. But I hadn’t taken the trouble to read it. I feared that history would have contaminated it, especially in terms of feminism. Miss Sayers was certainly a feminist in her time, but the world has changed, and modern readers (we are told) demand certain thematic adjustments. I apply the same avoidance to the contemporary Battle of the Sexes as I do to the challenges of modern dating.

But a deal on Thrones, Dominations showed up, and I bought it. And by and large I was very pleased.

The story begins not long after the end of Busman’s Honeymoon. Lord Peter and Harriet are in Paris, still on their honeymoon. There in a restaurant they encounter a couple of other newlyweds, the London theatrical investor (“angel”) Laurence Harwell and his wife Rosamund. Rosamund is the daughter of a convicted embezzler who spent time in prison, but has overcome that social handicap through the sheer power of her ethereal beauty.

Then the story shifts to London, and I must admit it drags a bit in terms of plot. We spend a lot of time satisfying fans’ curiosity about how Lord Peter and Harriet will organize their new household. Interesting for that group (of which I am one), but I think it makes for a slow dramatic start. However, eventually a murder does happen, and the logical suspect has a solid alibi, while another fellow looks pretty guilty but Lord Peter has his doubts. It all leads to one of those alibi-breaking puzzles that’s so characteristic of Miss Sayers’ work, which was very gratifying. The conclusion was tragic and touching.

I saw occasional traces of a modern sensibility in the story, but all in all, Jill Patton Walsh did a very good job writing the kind of story Miss Sayers would have produced if she hadn’t lost interest. There were moments when the characters reminded me why I love them, and that made for delightful reading.

I don’t generally like the Wimsey/Vane novels as well as the earlier stories, because I find Harriet a little dull. She’s essentially the author without her Christian faith, and Sayers without God would be a kind of a bore, in my opinion.

But that’s just me.

The only serious error I noticed was that one major character changed hair color over the course of the story (unless I got them confused with someone else).

Thrones, Dominations is, overall, a highly successful literary experiment, and is recommended, especially for Wimsey fans.