This is an extremely puzzling book; I’m still trying to figure out what to make of it. (I’ll note in passing that the author sent me this copy for review.) It’s intended to be a light-hearted fantasy; I didn’t find it particularly amusing. One of the central characters is the absurdly named “Quant”, the Quantum Cat. You know, the cat that’s dead and alive at the same time, due to Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle? Which is invoked in the following way: “Looking at something alters it. Looking moves particles around.” Except that it doesn’t, of course–not at the macro level. But as this is a lighthearted fantasy I don’t want to make too much of that.

It takes place at a very odd English monastery–or, to be more precise, a friary; the residents are friars. Their precise order is never named, though apparently they are Roman Catholic friars. But there’s very little of the religious life in the book. There’s an occasional reference to Mass, but there’s nothing of the monastic Hours, although the services of the Hours are what give the rhythm to the religious life. Indeed, the friars seem to live lives that are largely unscheduled and have lots of free time, whereas I’ve never met a man of the cloth who couldn’t have used umpteen more hours in the day. More than that, few of them seem to have any sense of Roman Catholic doctrine or theology. Perhaps that’s the common state of religious communities in the early 21st century, but I’d certainly hope for better than this.

In most cases I wouldn’t worry so much about this sort of thing, of course. If a mystery novel pays a quick visit to a monastery, I’m not put off by little inaccuracies in theology. It all depends on the book’s world view, and this is in part what’s so puzzling about Jerome and the Seraph. Most books published today are written from the secular humanist world view. If God exists at all, he’s in his heaven; meanwhile we have to get along in the world as it is. Even fantasy fiction is mostly written from this world view: the supernatural trappings are window-dressing, there for atmosphere and to drive the plot; the only extent to which most fantasy novels are meant to be realistic is in the interactions between the characters. In “secular” novels I don’t usually sweat the religious or theological details, provided that the book isn’t out-and-out hostile to my faith.

There are exceptions to the rule of the secular world view in fantasy, of which J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis are no doubt the most prominent. The puzzling thing about Jerome and the Seraph is that it doesn’t appear to be written from the secular world view…but I’m not entirely sure just what its world view is. It certainly isn’t the orthodox Christian world view of Tolkien and Lewis, but there’s a definite emphasis on “spirituality”.

On the one hand, we have our poorly catechized and sadly ignorant friars; on the other hand, some of them are clearly shown to have a real love and devotion to Jesus Christ. As the book opens Brother Jerome has just died (he stumbled in the friary’s graveyard and broke his head on a tombstone). He’s quite disgusted about the whole thing, and surprised about the after life, which seems to be quite amazingly empty; just him and nothing else. But despite not going to heaven in any Christian sense–which he describes to himself in terms of cherubs, harps, and fluffy clouds, as though that notion had any real validity–he’s not distressed, downcast, or even much exercised about it. I would have thought it would call for some radical readjustments. Later on, Quant (who appears to be not only a cat, but also the “seraph” of the title) assures Jerome that Jerome’s Lord is indeed Lord of All…but this appears to be meant in the Universalist sense, i.e., that all religions are more or less successful attempts to draw near to God, and that all of them have more or less the same content. To be fair, I’m reading between the lines here, but the vagueness with which the idea is expressed is of a piece with the fuzzy theology of the whole book. To add to the puzzling theological tone I’ll note that Brother Jerome is (per the author’s afterword) intended to be the re-incarnation of St. Jerome, the man who first translated the Greek Old Testament into Latin, as though meek, simple Brother Jerome the late friary cook is anything like that irascible, cantankerous desert father.

As I say, I wouldn’t ordinary stress myself over the theology and worldview of a book like this, except that it seems to be important to the author, and clear theology is important to me.

On top of this, the book doesn’t seem to have much of a plot–or if it does, it eluded me. The late Brother Jerome spends a fair amount of time learning the ropes of the after-life, being bailed out of trivial scrapes by Quant, and wandering about the friary and visiting with his old pals who aren’t dead yet; but not to any particular result that I can see. There are only two important conflicts in the book. The first is when Jerome discovers that there’s more to God than he realized (this is where the Universalist tendency comes in), and although he’s shocked his eventual resignation to the actual state of things has no real consequence in the book. (This is part of why I say I think the theology, such as it is, is important to the author. I think there’s a message here) Then there’s Father Fidelis, the friary’s “guardian”, which I take to be an office like “abbot” or “mother superior”. Father Fidelis spends the book going through some kind of spiritual crisis, apparently involving a sexy woman who’s just moved into the parish. He resolves it by the end of the book and takes a new lease on life…but although his fidelity or possible lack thereof is a major topic of conversation at the friary (and even Brother Jerome goes and takes a peek at the woman’s house) there’s no interaction between Fidelis and any of the others (including Jerome) on the subject. Nothing Jerome or Quant does seems to have any bearing on it at all.

So there you have it. It’s theologically muddled, relatively plotless, not particularly amusing (to me, at any rate), yet seems to be pushing the Oneness of All Religions. I can only conclude that the author is similarly muddled but deeply “spiritual”, rather like many of the current leaders of my late denomination, the Episcopal Church. Frankly, I probably wouldn’t have finished it or reviewed it except that the author paid for the book and the postage to get it here from England and I’d feel like a heel if I didn’t give it a fair shot; and I feel a bit like a heel anyway since I hate writing bad reviews when I know the author is going to read them.

Possibly I’m reading too much into this; possibly Williams meant no more than to write a lighthearted fantasy and thought it would be fun to set it in a religious community, rather as Dan Brown meant to write a pot-boiler and thought it would be fun to make the Catholic Church the villain. I dunno. But if so, then I am most definitely not among the intended audience.

There’s a sequel, entitled Angelos; and as Ms. Williams first inquired as to whether I’d like to read and review that book and then threw Jerome and the Seraph as well, so that I’d have the full story, I rather feel compelled to read it too….if only for additional clues as to where Ms. Williams is coming from. But that will be another review.