You think your family has problems.

The three novels listed above comprise Russell’s latest fantasy trilogy,
The Swans’ War, and if nothing else Russell has raised the subject
of generational sin to new heights.

In The One Kingdom we’re introduced to our primary viewpoint
character, Tam, and to two opposed families, the Renne and the Wills.
Back in the old days, the Land Between the Mountains was united into a
single kingdom; then came civil war, with the Renne and the Wills both
claiming the throne. They’ve been feuding every since, and the kingdom is
but a distant memory. Tam and his cousins are from a valley in the far
north, inhabited by folk who fled the constant wars; the trio are
venturing out for the first time in their young lives, looking for horses
and adventure. They find it, naturally, and also discover that the Land
Between The Mountains is a much stranger place than any of them (or the
reader) would have guessed. It’s as though the Land had once, long ago,
been torn into shreds, and the edges rejoined incorrectly, so that much
of the Land is simply inaccessible–at least to mere mortals. Yet there
are those Tam meets who are clearly more than human.

In The Isle of Battle the feud between the Renne and the
Wills breaks out into open battle yet again; and we discover that the
current violence is really a manifestation of a much older feud, a battle
between the three children of Wyrr, great magicians all, who have lain
undead in the bosom of the great river that bears their father’s name for
a thousand years, but are now free. The consequences for the people who
dwell in the Land Between the Mountains don’t bear thinking of.

In The Shadow Roads Russell brings the whole thing to a
conclusion as we learn that the dispute between the children of Wyrr is
but a symptom of an even older quarrel–and if it isn’t resolved, and
promptly, the shredded lands will rejoin to catastrophic effect.

The trilogy as a whole is well-written and engaging, and full of
surprises. Each book picks up right where its predecessor leaves off,
and goes somewhere completely unexpected; and Russell has peopled his
world with as delightful and varied a cast as one could ask for:
Tam and his cousins; Cynddl, the story finder; Alaan, who travels by
paths that no one else can find; Lord Carral Wills, the blind minstrel,
and his daughter Elise, heir (by Wills reckoning) to the throne of the
One Kingdom; Toren Renne, heir (by Renne reckoning), a good and valiant
man who might be too good for his stiff-necked family; Prince Michael of
Innes, a good man in a tough position; the evil Sir Haffyd (yet another
occurrence of that archetypal character, the Enemy Who Will Not Die); and
not least (and probably best), Lynn Renne, who lives by herself in a
private garden near the center of Renne Castle–Lynn who speaks to many
but whom no one ever sees.

In short, if you like epic fantasy it’s worth your time.

This is a book I picked up at Powell’s whilst attending the Tcl
conference; I’d not heard of Sarah Ash before, and there was a note on
the shelf saying that it’s a good book. I agree, as it happens, and I’ve
already acquired the second book in the series.

Lord of Snow and Shadows is what I think of as a political
fantasy–that is, a fantasy novel in which politics and intrigue are at
the forefront, as with George R.R. Martin’s
A Game of Thrones. Ash’s world is clearly though loosely
based on Imperial Russia–but a Russia which is divided by an ocean from
the rest of “Europe”, and in which the empire splintered, generations
ago, into five independent princedoms.

The prime mover in the political drama is Eugene, Prince of Tielen.
Legend has it that the empire will be reunited by the man who reunites
Artamon’s Tears, five matched rubies which once adorned the imperial
crown. Eugene is determined to be the one, and the only man who stands
in his way is Volkh Nagarian, Drakhaon of Azhkendir–if man is the right
word, which it probably isn’t. Like all of his line, Volkh is the host of
the Dhrakaoul: a violent dragon spirit which subjects him to sudden
vicious rages, and whose shape Volkh can take at need. Not even an army
can withstand the flame of the Dhrakaoul, but this aid comes at great
personal cost to the Dhrakaon, and at times an even greater cost to his
people.

Still, Eugene is not one to be balked, and in the opening pages of the
novel he succeeds in having Volkh murdered…which sends the Dhrakaoul
fleeing south to Volkh’s son and heir, a young portrait painter
unaware of his ancestry. Gavril Nagarian must learn to lead the unruly,
barbaric people of northern Rossiya, and must somehow prevent the
Dhrakaoul from consuming him utterly.

Not a bad start, I think; and the best part is that not only does Ash keep
surprising me, but she plays fair in doing it. The climax of the book is
everything one could want, and much to my surprise includes a plot point
that some authors would have dragged out for three or four volumes. It
makes me extremely curious to know where she’s going, for I confess I
haven’t the slightest idea.

Some things are simply common sense, and should be obvious to anyone with
the wit God gave a goose. One plus one, for example, equals two. We
often use this as the canonical case of a statement that simply must be
true. One plus one equals two: it’s just common sense.

If you’re a pure mathematician, though, that simple statement hides a
world of peril and uncertainty. Vast are the swamps the student of math
must cross, stepping from axiom to axiom, proof to proof, theorem to
theorem, before he can demonstrate unequivocally that indeed, one plus
one really does equal two. And the mass of his acquaintance greet his
joyful shouts with, “Of course one plus one equals two. What else could
it equal? So what?” The student of math is unbowed. Now he not only
knows the basic fact; now he also knows why one plus one equals
two.

That’s kind of how I feel about this book. The first volume in a series
entitled Christian Origins and the Question of God, it strikes me
as nothing so much as a detailed defense of common sense in the field of
New Testament studies–a field in which, to judge from the author’s
sources, common sense has often been distinctly lacking.

The book lays the foundation for the other volumes in the series;
consequently it begins with a lengthy survey of the epistemologies used in
New Testament studies over the last century or so, combined with a
criticism of most of them. This is followed by Wright’s own epistemology,
which he terms “critical realism”; in his view, the New Testament cannot
be approached as simply historical, or simply theological, or simply
literary, but requires the union of all three. He then goes on to examine
the world view of the Jewish community in which Christianity arose, and
then uses this world view in a preliminary look at the gospels and the
earliest Christians.

And all the way along, he’s disposing of popular but absurd readings of
the New Testament. I do not have the time or the learning (this is an
exceedingly scholarly book, albeit a lucid one) to go into all of them,
but here’s an example. It has become popular in certain circles to claim
(largely on the basis of an early date for the apocryphal Gospel of
Thomas) that the earliest Christianity was a Hellenistic
movement–that Jesus, in fact, was a Cynic. Later on, goes the claim, a
Jewish veneer was added; it is this we see in the canonical gospels.
Wright examines the world view displayed in the gospels, and in particular
in the smaller stories told and retold within them; he also examines the
praxis of the earliest Christians so far as it is known. And he
concludes, persuasively, that the Cynic theory is all wet–it is much
more likely that Christianity should begin as a Jewish sect and retain
aspects of its origin at a later time than that it should have begun as a
Greek philosophical movement and unaccountably have Jewish language and
symbols grafted onto it.

Reading this book has been a long, involved journey; and though I end up
with familiar conclusions I feel rather like the student of math I
describe above: I can now feel comfortable that common sense really does
make sense.

Lilek’s latest, which is subtitled “Highlights from the Golden Age of Bad
Parenting Advice”, is a hoot, rather as you’d expect from the author of
The Gallery of Regrettable Food and
Interior Desecrations. He covers the whole range of
mid-20th-century parenting ephemera, from pamphlets on how to deliver a
baby at home to the role of the father in raising children to the dread
sin of Constipation. There are quite a few chuckles here, and a number of
outright belly-laughs.

But is it as good as its predecessors? Has Lileks met the high standard
of his previous work? Yes, but also no. So far as the book goes, it’s
classic Lileks; but the whole thing feels a tad lightweight, in two
senses. I don’t know whether James rushed it, or ran out of inspiration, or
simply had less grist for his mill, but there seems to be less here than
in his previous books–it was over too quickly. (In fairness, this is an
extremely subjective judgement; the page count hasn’t decreased.)
But second, the book is literally more lightweight. The prior volumes
were initially published in hardcover; they made hefty Christmas presents
and nice (if unusual) coffee-table books. With Mommy Knows Worst
the publisher went straight to softcover. It would look funny on the
coffee-table and it’s going to look funny sitting next to them on the shelf.

Ah, well. It’s still a lot of fun.

Well, I’m back. I wasn’t able to blog during the trip, as the hotel’s network was out for almost the entire week, but it pleases me to be able to announce that the first exposure of the project I’ve been working on for the last seven or eight months was wholly positive–in fact, I can’t say how it could have gone any better. This is a great and good thing, and means that I might actually be able to start devoting a little time to some personal projects that have been hanging fire…like reviewing books. We’ll see how it goes.

I’ll be off on yet another trip tomorrow–with luck, the last until next spring. As usual, I’ll probably be writing a blog post or two, but I probably won’t respond to e-mail until I get back.

This trip is a Big Deal; it’s the culmination of all of the hard work I’ve been doing over the last six months.

I was on a walk today with my first grader, James, when I discovered that he’d never heard of “cooties”. When I was his age, it was an article of faith among all of the first grade boys that girls had cooties–and if a girl touched you, you’d get cooties too. Naturally, they had a similar belief about us.

Mind you, I don’t think any of us had any idea just what cooties were. It was just an unpleasant condition endemic to the opposite sex, and it was to be avoided. And, of course, it was an excuse to chase the girls on those days when it was there turn to play on the jungle gym during recess. We’d chase them to give them cooties, and they’d run to the jungle gym, which was safe. And the next day, when it was our turn to play on the jungle gym, they’d chase us.

But these kids, these days, they don’t know about cooties. I suppose cooties were deemed sexist and were stamped out somehow. It’s rather sad, really.

The November issue of
Ex Libris Reviews is now on-line
with an exciting Notice of Publication from Craig Clarke!