I have mixed feelings about this book. On the one hand it’s a good
telling of the story of the Trojan War from the perspective of two young
sisters who live within the walls of Troy. And it remains fairly faithful
to Homer’s story line and to the mythical aspects of the story. One
of the girls works in the Blood Room where all the injured warriors are
brought for treatment and also cares for the young son of Hector when his
mother needs to do her royal duties. The other young girl is a maid and
assistant weaver in Helen’s household. She has the gift of being able to
see the gods for who they are thru their disguises which makes for some
interesting conversations. Both are caught in the crossfire of the war
and its aftermath. And war is not pretty in Geras’ story, nor is it a
glorious exercise of national pride. Unlike Homer, Geras brings into the
story real human emotions and conflicts. She’s not writing a heroic epic.
She’s giving us a personal narrative that is behind the epic story. And
it’s really well told.

And that’s where my problem comes in. The story is so good and yet Geras
throws in some very inappropriate sexual content that just
bugged me. And it bugged me more when I saw the litter of awards and honors
for young adult fiction this book has gotten from all sorts of “reputable”
organizations. The conflict/problem in the book isn’t caused when one of the
sisters has a roll in the hay with a young warrior. The problem is that the
other sister also has her eyes on him. It just made me uncomfortable reading
this as a young adult book. She could have done it as well, if not better
without the sexual content. As an adult, I enjoyed it. As a mother, I will
not be giving this to my 14-year-old daughter.

I first read Eric Van Lustbader back in the 1980’s, when he’d just
written his Sunset Warrior trilogy. It had some good bits, but
overall I wasn’t impressed, and I stopped reading him. It’s possible
that the books went over my head, as my brother liked them then and still
likes them now. Anyway, I heard Van Lustbader’s name every so often
through the years, until a couple of years ago I picked up a fat
paperback called The Ring of Five Dragons. I was a bit
skeptical, but I needed something to read, so I bought it–and was
pleasantly surprised. Indeed, I liked it well enough to buy the sequel
when it came out, but for one reason or another the sequel languished
unread until just recently, when I discovered that the third volume in
the series was imminent. It had been long enough that I’d forgotten much
of the details, so I dug The Ring of Five Dragons out again,
and dove in.

And once again I was alternately amused, bemused, and enthralled.

Let me say a few words about the plot, and then I’ll try to explain my
reaction to this truly weird book.

I suppose I can best describe the plot as the irresistable force meeting the
immovable object. The irresistable force is the V’orrn, a spacefaring
race that has been travelling through the galaxy for eons since their
home world was burned to a crisp by a supernova. The heart of the V’orrn
race is in the V’orrn fleet, apparently, but from time to time as new
planets are discovered a contingent is spun off to exploit them.

Enter the immovable object, the planet Kundala. Before the V’orrn
arrived, Kundala was a joyous planet under the special protection of the
Goddess Miina. But some of Miina’s worshippers rebelled, Miina withdrew
her protection, and the V’orrn arrived to kick butt.

It’s now about a hundred years later. The V’orrn are still in charge.
All but one of the Ramahan abbeys that led the worship of Miina are in
ruins, destroyed by the V’orrn; the only reason the remaining abbey is
still standing is because the abbey leaders have been feeding information
to the V’orrn about the Kundalan resistance.

But if Kundala has changed, the V’orrn have changed, too. The V’orrn are
raised to be contemptuous of the races they conquer–but some of them are
strangely attracted to the Kundalans and their ways, including the V’orrn
regent, one Eleusis Ashera. More, it begins to appear that the Ramahan
religion is true, and that the old prophecies of a messiah, the
Dar-al-Salat, are coming true. And if that’s true, then Kundala appears
to be the center of the universe.

So much for the plot.

There’s a lot to like in this book, amid the numerous subplots. The tale of
the corruption of the remaining Ramahan abbey is particularly good, and
chilling. The story of the Dar-al-Salat is equally compelling. The
backstory unfolds like a mystery novel, and quite satisfactorily.

But then there are the weird things, which make it difficult for me to
take the book seriously. V’orrn names, for example, often include weird
spellings with tripled letters–name like “Stogggul” and “Rekkk” and
“Khagggun” and “Salamuuun”. I can’t complain that they are
unpronounceable–there’s a pronunciation key in the back of the book–but
they aren’t pronounced like you’d think they should be. He could just as
easily have chosen a more phonetic spelling.

Then there’s the vocabulary, with which he does strange things–for
atmosphere, I assume. The V’orrn and the Kundalans, though similar of
appearance are two different races, and apparently neither of them are
human; at least, the words “man”, and “woman” are never used. He uses
“male” and “female” instead, which is jarring. Similarly, instead of
days he often has the V’orrn speak of “sidereal units” (because, of
course, only V’orrn days are really days, and V’orrn days have no
relation to the rotation of the planet Kundala). A little of this kind
of thing is OK, but he takes it too extremes–as, for example, he
invariably uses the word “quotidian” instead of “daily”. Let me tell
you, when you run across the word “quotidian” three times in thirty
pages, you notice.

Then there’s the “science”. As I say, the V’orrn and the Kundalans are
two separate races, though they look like. Although they are never
called “men” or “women”, Kundalans appear to look much like we do.
V’orrn look mostly like Kundalans, but they are completely hairless, have
two hearts, two stomachs, and one lung, and are slightly larger.

So tell me, how is it that the V’orrn soldiers can father bastards on the
local Kundalan girls? They can, and they do, and nobody seems to think
that this is at all unusual.

So honestly, what with the names, and the language, and the
improbabilities, I found myself shaking my head or rolling my eyes
regularly while re-reading the book–but the headshake or eye-roll was
generally accompanied by a chuckle at Van Lustbader’s audacity. I have
to wonder whether it’s supposed to be a little absurd!

This is going to be a multi-volume series, of unknown length (unless the
third book ends it, which I doubt), and I want to make a prediction.
Given Kundala’s remarkably place in the cosmic scheme of things, and the
length of time that the V’orrn have been travelling, and the vaguely
Hindu/Buddhist feel about a lot of the fantasy details, I’m going to bet
that Kundala is, in some sense, the V’orrn homeworld remade–that at long
last, and after eons of genetic tinkering that have changed them almost
out of recognition, they have returned home. We’ll see.

I read recently in a book about textbook publishing and censorship in the
use of teaching materials that there are two types of books published for
children and young adults. The author of the book, Diane Ravitch, makes the
distinction between “mirror” books that reflect back to the reader images of
themselves and “window” books that give to the young reader access to other
worlds and times and cultures. Many books written about teen problems and
teen issues are mirror books. She also argues that “good” literature tends
to be of the window variety. I personally think both have their places in
the reading lives of children but I did find that to be a very interesting
distinction since the YA books that I as an adult enjoy tend to be of the
window variety while the mirror variety bores me to tears.

With that in mind, I would class this as a window book. It is the story of 9
year old Jethro Creighton who, in 1861, watches his family disintegrate
because of the coming of the Civil War. The Creighton’s live in southern
Illinois where the feelings pro and con for the secession of the south are
mixed in the community. And one brother goes to fight for the South and the
other goes to fight for the North. For the next 4 years Jethro watches as
his family struggle to maintain their place in the community—a brother off
to fight the North is not a good thing for them—and to maintain their farm
in the face of other family crisis. His father has a heart attack and Jethro
becomes the backbone of the farm. A vigilante group sets their barn on fire
and neighbors that had previously been antagonistic pitch in to help rebuild
and restock their farm.

It’s an interesting meditation on community and standing up for what you
believe and loyalty in the face of hostile opinions. It’s also a great way
to get a little history into a kid since the events of the Civil War from
Fort Sumter to Appomattox are a part of Jethro life and the economic issues,
aside from slavery, that led up to the war are talked about in the family.
It’s a real life story about a believable kid in an awful time and I could
find all sorts of complicated ethical dilemmas to discuss within the context
of the book. I enjoyed the writing as well. She has a knack for making
images and situations believable without overwriting them that I
appreciated. Good book!

I’ve just posted another story to our Once-Told Tales. It’s something I wrote a few years ago, and something I read recently reminded me of it, so I decided to post it. It’s very short (just a couple of pages) so you should go read it now.

Hey, Ian, your e-mail address is bouncing; apparently hotpop.com is down.
Thought you should know.

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.

Check out the comments on this post over at
Mark Shea’s blog. The game is to put odd pairs of authors together (as in Wodehouse and Lovecraft). The best one so far is a excerpt from Jane Austen’s version of Kafka’s Metamorphosis.

I have just ordered a copy (“Like new!”) of the out of print book, Scream for Jeeves!: H.P. Lovecraft Meets P.G. Wodehouse. How I missed it when it was in print, I have no idea, but apparently it’s a collection of three Lovecraft tales as told by Bertie Wooster. The mind boggles.

Update: Perhaps my mind doesn’t boggle after all…here’s what came to mind after I thought about it for a bit:

I was in bed, eyeing the morning egg-and-bacon while getting outside of a stiffish brandy-and-soda, when Jeeves shimmered into the room. I don’t know how he does it, and I would never dream of asking. There are things about one’s man one simply isn’t meant to know, what? Jeeves coughed softly, so I sluiced down the remaining B&S.

You may wonder why I didn’t simply have Jeeves escort the creature out, and well you may ask! I’m afraid there had been a chill about the flat ever since Jeeves criticized a stylish yellow veil I’d taken to wearing over my face, and I’d had to take a firm line with him. A man can’t let his man play the tyrant, what?

This book was one of those little nuggets of gold that you sometimes come
across while digging around in the dusty corners of the used bookstore. The
cover isn’t flashy, the font is very small and it was published in 1926. The
writing, however, is good and the points he makes about the conquest of
Britain first by the Celts, then the Romans, the Saxons, the Vikings, etc., is
so interesting that I squinted my way thru it waiting for the next bit to
unfold. His point about feudalism as a necessary step between tribalism and
the nation-state which allowed the accumulation of wealth and the beginnings
of the division of labor into specialties and trades is particularly
interesting. It’s also written from a pre-World War perspective when England
still had an Empire of some sort and the British thought of themselves as a
“race” so added to the history that he is writing is another layer of
historical interest to the modern reader. Unfortunately, the book is out of
print. And the bookstore only had this one volume published in 1953 by
Anchor Doubleday. I managed to find the following 2 volumes on Amazon so I
can continue the story, if my eyes don’t give out.

This is one of the more fascinating books I’ve read recently. It’s the
tale of a viking lord named Erling in the days of Olaf Tryggveson, when
Scandinavia was beginning to become a Christian land. Erling is not only
one of the first Christian lords in Norway, but also the first Christian
in his own domain, and much of the drama comes from the clash of faiths,
and the struggles between the followers of Odin and the followers of the
White Christ.

To a large extent, it’s an historical novel. Erling is an historical
figure, as are many of the viking notables he meets. It’s also a fantasy
novel, for the followers of the White Christ must overcome not only
the worshippers of the old gods, but supernatural forces as well. And,
most atypically (as I pointed out a few days
ago), it’s a work of Christian fantasy, and a remarkably good one.

The viewpoint character is an Irishman named Ailill. Having just
been kicked out of the abbey in which he had been a novice on account of
his manifold sins, Ailill arrives at his parents home just in time to be
taken captive by viking raiders. On the way back to Scandinavia the vikings
cut his hair in a priest’s tonsure, in hopes that with his monk’s robes
they’ll be able to get a good price for him at the slave market; there
are a few Christians there, and sometimes they will pay good money to
redeem a priest from slavery.

And, in fact, that’s more or less what happens. Ailill is purchased by
Erling, whose previous priest had been murdered by Erling’s father.
Ailill is given the choice of coming back to Erling’s home and being his
priest, with all the risks that that entails, or being sold again. The
difficulty is, Ailill’s nothing but a failed monk, and one with a serious
grudge against God; he’s taken no vows and is certainly no priest. But
freedom is better than slavery, and he lies to Erling and accompanies him
home.

The result is a fascinating, inspiring (and frequently humbling) story.
On the one hand we have Erling’s political and religious struggles, and
as Erling is (after his father’s death) one of the great men of Norway
during a tempestuous time, that’s an exciting tale indeed. And then,
on the other hand, we have the personal story of Ailill, failed monk,
who must perforce grow into his faith and his role as priest, and
learn to care for the flock that God has sent him. And perhaps best
of all, Walker doesn’t attempt to whitewash history. Erling is (and
historically was) gentle in his attempts to convert his people, but
King Olaf brings Christ with the edge of his sword. The Church is made
up of sinners, then and always, and the result is what you’d expect.

Walker handles the problem of how to mingle fantasy elements and
Christianity with ease. He simply feigns that old gods have a certain
reality, and that they and other less powerful beings (faerie,
essentially) are being displaced by the new religion. The work thus
feels all of a piece.

As I say, I found the story humbling–the fortitude and determination of
these early Christians in the face of hardship is almost impossible to
believe, and yet I know that Walker has portrayed them accurately. It
makes me a little less satisfied with myself, in all truth.

I should add, Lars contacted me after visiting this blog, and asked if
I would like to read any of his books. I said sure; they are published
by Baen Books, who publish a number of authors I quite like, so I figured
they couldn’t be too bad. I was quite pleasantly surprised by how much I
enjoyed this one.