Here’s another book by Lars Walker. It’s an ambitious concept, though
I’m afraid he doesn’t quite manage to pull it off.

Here’s the set-up. Will Sverdrup is a high school English teacher. He’s
currently teaching Shakespeare’s Hamlet; he’s also a member of a
local theater group that’s just starting a new production of
Hamlet (Will’s going to start in it.) And then, during rehearsal
one evening, something exceedingly odd happens.

First, Will finds himself in pre-Christian Denmark, in
the body of a buff young dude named Amlodd, whose uncle has just killed
Amlodd’s father and married his mother. Will–

But I must digress for a moment. It seems that the original source for
the tale of Hamlet is a 13th century manuscript by a fellow named Saxo
Grammaticus. (Given his name, one can only imagine that our Saxo was
writing things down when writing things down was a great eccentricity.)
In Saxo’s version of the tale, the star’s name is Amlodd. But back to our
story.

Will is familiar with Saxo Grammaticus, recognizes where he is, and
somehow has to deal with it. Meanwhile, all of his relations not
surprisingly think he’s mad.

Meanwhile, and for no obvious reason, the rest of the theater company
find themselves in a very odd place–a castle of vague outline that seems
to want to become Hamlet’s castle of Kronborg in Elsinore. Something in
the air seems to want them to act out Shakespeare’s play for real, quite
possibly including all of the deaths at the end. But there are some
wrinkles. To begin, Will Sverdrup isn’t there, being in Amlodd’s body in
the real Denmark–but Amlodd is there in Will’s body, and let me tell you
he doesn’t know how to behave in polite company. And then on top of that
there’s one other person there, the son of one of the cast members, a
sullen teenager who has acquired an interesting set of new powers.

As the book progresses we get to follow first Will in Amlodd’s body,
then the company in the faux-Elsinore, and so on, as little by little we
learn just what the hell is going on.

There’s a lot about this book to like. The scenes with Will in Denmark
are generally quite good, and the contrast between Will’s views of
what is right and proper and those of Amlodd’s friends and relations is
intriguing. And by far the best passage in the book concerns Amlodd’s
sojourn in England, a section which is told in third person so that it’s
unclear whether we’re watching Amlodd as he would really have been, or
Will in Amlodd’s body.

The sections in the faux-Elsinore are less satisfactory, though Amlodd’s
difficulties with 21st-century manners and morals are a nice counterpoint
to Will’s problems. Walker has tried to draw the members of the theater
company from all of the philosophical schools of modern America, so as to
comment on each, and I’m afraid it doesn’t work. It would take a longer
novel to really flesh out each character; instead, several of them evolve
into rather absurd caricatures (I’m thinking especially of the sullen
teenager’s father). The points Walker raises are valid ones, but it’s
hard to get past the characterizations.

Also, I’m not entirely happy with the portrayal of Christianity
in the book; in some places it seems tacked on in a way that it
simply doesn’t in The Year of the Warrior. Will Sverdrup,
in particular, is supposed to be making a moral and spiritual journey
in the course of the book, a journey that ends in his conversion, and
I’m afraid it seemed a little contrived. I hasten to add, though, that
my concerns are literary, not theological.

Finally, the ending didn’t satisfy me. The denouement denoue’d on
schedule, but it wasn’t quite clear to me why or how things worked out
the way they did.

But no matter. The book held my attention right handily, even in the
weak parts, and I rather enjoyed the good parts.

I’ve got one more of Lars’ books left to read; I’m looking forward to it,
and I gather that a couple more are in the works. I’m looking forward to
those, to, the moreso as one of them is evidently a sequel to
The Year of the Warrior.