I’d been wanting to read this book for a while, as it has gotten good reviews at Happy Catholic, among other places. The subject matter (it’s a fantasy novel) is right up my street, and in addition, the author is a member in good standing of the Catholic blogosphere, which I’m inclined to support. I finally found a copy in a book store in Kansas City while I was on a business trip last week, and read it mostly on the plane on the way home.

Auralia’s Colors is the first book in a series; the second book, Cyndere’s Midnight, is already out. It takes place in a region known to its inhabitants as The Expanse. The people who live in The Expanse came there from the North at some point in the indefinite past, as refugees from…something. They gathered in four groups, and built four cities, which they call Houses. The Houses are greatly separated from one another, with vast tracts of uninhabited territory in between. There’s a certain amount of contact between them, but The Expanse is mostly unpeopled.

The present story takes place in and around House Abascar, a walled city in which all of the common folk have been forced to give up all colors other than grey and white and black and brown for the glory of the greedy Queen Jaralaine. Beastmen prowl the nearby forests, and so all law-abiding “Housefolk” live within the walls of House Abascar. Law-breakers are forced to live outside the walls as “Gatherers”, who must hunt animals and gather wild fruits and vegetables to feed the people of the house.

Into this world comes a baby girl, left on the bank of the river, a girl who cannot help seeing colors everywhere, and making fine things out of them. She is raised by the Gatherers, as all orphans are, but she grows wild and free, and soon enough comes into conflict with the soldiers of the King, and with his son, Prince Cal-Raven.

There’s a lot here to like; this isn’t your typical pseudo-medieval-European politics-and-intrigue-driven epic fantasy. The author is trying to say some interesting things about the nature of beauty, about settling for too little in the name of security, about being open to the glory of God. (Though, as a proper Christian fantasy in the tradition of Tolkien’s On Fairy Stories, the book isn’t overtly Christian at all.)

Still, my reaction was mixed. Before I say why, I need to make a disclaimer. My business trip last week was extremely productive and useful, but very draining: I was basically in over-drive for two days. Flying home, I was tired (more tired than I realized) and grumpy, and just trying to get through the flight. I found myself having to push myself through the book, rather than letting it carry me. This might have been the fault of the book; or it might simply have been the half-alert state I found myself in. I’m inclined to give Mr. Overstreet the benefit of the doubt, but I don’t really know. Anyway, on to more serious criticisms.

There are two ways to write fantasy, which I’ll call the realistic way, and the fabulous way. The Lord of the Rings is an example of the first, as is George R.R. Martin’s A Game of Thrones and its sequels. The world presented by the book is intended to be taken as real. Its laws may be different than those of our world, but it is meant to be internally consistent and as real to its inhabitants as ours is to us. Most of the fantasy novels I’ve read have been in this vein. The fabulous way is less often attempted, and seems to be much harder to do. Examples would include Tolkien’s own Smith of Wooton Major, and Lord Dunsany’s The King of Elfland’s Daughter. Books in this vein are not allegories, but everything in them is freighted with meaning, and with mystery. Everything in them seems to glow, as though the people and places and other creatures are merely stand-ins for something much bigger and grander that is always in danger of breaking through.

I suppose one could further break the fabulous into two subcategories, those in which that deeper, grander world is really there, and those in which it’s simply an illusion. Michael Moorcock, for example, is a master at linking his books together with references and allusions that create the impression of a much larger world, when it’s really all just sleight of hand. But I digress.

My main criticism of Auralia’s Colors is that it doesn’t quite succeed in either mode. It doesn’t succeed as a realistic fantasy: I simply can’t buy House Abascar as a going concern. Most of the people live within the walls, but all of the food, apparently, is produced by a small village of Gatherers. The level of technology seems way out of proportion to the size of the population consistent with this food supply. Queen Jaralaine travels with a small retinue to a distant House, and returns unnoticed by the Captain of the Guard; how? How did she get there? How did she get back? And how (given the walls) could it have gone unnoticed?

If the author was trying to write in the realistic mode, then he’ll have answers to all of these objections, I feel sure. Perhaps there are large gardens and fields within the walls, for example (though at least once Prince Cal-Raven indicates that their food comes from the Gatherers). But the cues that would have encouraged such a view are missing.

My conjecture, however, is that the author was pursuing the fabulous; his themes and plot and background almost require it. But his storytelling is too realistic to support this. To make the fabulous work (I am trying to express ideas I only dimly understand, here) you need a certain distance, a certain veil of formality, between the reader and the characters. In this regard, Auralia and the other characters are almost too vivid, too down-to-earth. They are too much themselves to be archetypes.

Or so it seems to me; your mileage may vary.

I was sufficiently intrigued (and, in spots, moved) that I plan to take a look at Cyndere’s Midnight; but I think Mr. Overstreet can do better.