CSFF Blog Tour: The Charlatan's Boy Day Three

In my previous posts, I steadfastly avoided giving away the ending of The Charlatan's Boy. However, in order to highlight the novel's irony and remark on some of its themes, you have to know the ending, which is really the end of the beginning of Grady's life rather than the conclusion of anything. So, if you haven't read the book yet, and you should read it, stop reading if you don't want the ending spoiled.

Floyd and Grady succeed brilliantly creating a new Feechie scare. Grady does much of the legwork, tromping around through the forests at night to set off the noise maker, shoot arrows into barns and even moving wagons, and shout Feechie war cries. Grady witnesses first hand the terror that the noise maker can create. While out in the woods leaving Feechie signs one night, some hunters and their dogs tree Grady, thinking he is a raccoon. When the hunters start to chop down the tree, Grady sounds the noise maker. The hounds run away yelping and the hunters follow closely behind. Grady also demonstrates his ingenuity. He hangs the noise maker in a stand of pines with ropes and pulleys such that when the wind blows, the noise maker will sound its horrible bellowing. One night in the woods, Grady hears a strange cry that he knows must be a bog owl. According to Feechie folklore, the Feechies use that call to signal to one another. Grady is thrilled to finally hear something about which he has heard so much talk. At the Middenmarsh stock market, Grady's Feechie antics convince cattle drovers from all over Corenwald that the Feechies are on the move. Everyone is talking about Feechies and Floyd and Grady are able to revive the Feechie act. However, people are no longer just curious about Feechies. The scare has worked a little too well, and people are now frightened of Feechies to the point that they are prepared to do violence to them. Floyd and Grady make some alterations. Floyd ties a rope around Grady when he's in Feechie costume so that the villagers won't be afraid that he'll get away and kill them. Grady again feels that he is doing honest acting work.

As Floyd predicted, giving people a little push in the right direction is all it takes to manipulate public opinion. People want a show, and many will give up a few coppers to be entertained. As I was reading The Charlatan's Boy, I was struck by the similarities between writers and hucksters like Floyd. Both try to entertain. Both make things up and attempt to render a bunch of lies believable. Perhaps a writer is simply an honest huckster, one that admits that what he is selling is fiction.

Short-eared Owl, also known by

the common name Bog Owl.

Floyd decides to take the new Feechie act to the Tambluff stock market. In the town square, they find a slew of hucksters attempting to cash in on the Feechie craze. Floyd is angry. He doesn't like to share the benefits of his work. Floyd and Grady quickly prove to have the superior act and the crowd, which is very hostile to Grady the Feechie, drifts from the other acts to Floyd's wagon, but then some farmers show up with someone in a cage on a hay wagon. The farmers claim they caught their Feechie in a net near the Bayberry swamp. Floyd and Gardy are impressed as the Feechie looks very much like a Feechie, very much like Grady. Even stranger, the farmers are not trying to take any money from people. They tell their story and display their Feechie for free. As the crowd drifts toward the farmers, Floyd orchestrates a diversion. He falls from the wagon, claiming that Grady has gotten loose. In the ruckus that ensues, the crowd comes close to seriously harming Grady, but Floyd does nothing to save him. Floyd disowns Grady--apparently having a live Feechie is no longer necessary for his act--and the crowd tosses Grady in the cage with the farmers' Feechie. They stare at each other and Grady experiences a strange sense of recognition and familiarity. Then, the unthinkable occurs. An army of Feechies, whom all resemble Grady, come over the rooftops, making the bog owl bark and terrifying the people. The Feechies break open the cage. The Feechie in the cage beckons for Grady to join them. The Feechies are real, and Grady is one of them. As Grady learns when he arrives in the heart of the swamp, he has Feechie parents and they did lose him when they hid him under a palmetto bush.

The revelations in the novel's final chapters cast an ironic light on the story. Rogers has masterfully plotted his story, laying a field of mines that all go off when Grady's true identity is revealed. The story we thought we were reading becomes a different story. Floyd's most unbelievable tale about Grady's past is true and Floyd is shown to be a cruel liar. Grady feels such an affinity for playing a Feechie because he is a Feechie. Much of the folklore that Floyd and Grady use to add authenticity to their act has a basis in fact. As Grady's story suggests, the roots of myth and legend are often sunk in reality, a forgotten reality that seems too fantastic to believe.

Photo Credit: Short-eared Owl -- Amherst Island, Ontario, Canada -- 2006 February. Attributed to Mdf. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

In conjunction with the CSFF Blog Tour, I received a free copy of The Charlatan's Boy from the publisher.

To learn more about the Jonathan Rogers, visit his website at http://jonathan-rogers.com/.

To learn what the other CSFF bloggers are saying, follow the links below:

Sally Apokedak Amy Bissell Red Bissell Jennifer Bogart Thomas Clayton Booher Keanan Brand Beckie Burnham Christian Fiction Book Reviews Valerie Comer CSFF Blog Tour D. G. D. Davidson April Erwin Andrea Graham Tori Greene Katie Hart Bruce Hennigan Christopher Hopper Becky Jesse Cris Jesse Jason Joyner Julie

Carol Keen Shannon McDermott Allen McGraw Matt Mikalatos Rebecca LuElla Miller Nissa Donita K. Paul SarahFlan Sarah Sawyer Chawna Schroeder Tammy Shelnut Kathleen Smith James Somers Donna Swanson Robert Treskillard Fred Warren Phyllis Wheeler Nicole White Elizabeth Williams Dave Wilson

CSFF Blog Tour: The Charlatan's Boy Day Two

As I noted in yesterday's post, the driving force behind Grady's story is his search for belonging and identity. Ignorant of or indifferent to Grady's needs, Floyd allows Grady to drift and assume whatever identity is advantageous to Floyd's schemes. During the Feechie-act, Grady identifies himself as a Feechie; later he takes on the persona of a phrenologist's assistant; at the worst of times, Grady is merely a useful sidekick, someone to share the work. More than once, Grady wonders if Floyd might be his father, but Floyd never acknowledges him as a son. Remarking on why he keeps Grady around, Floyd says, "'I reckon I'm too tenter-hearted for my own good. But I hope you'll make yourself useful'" (p. 43).

So why does Grady not leave Floyd and strike off on his own? Following the demise of the ugly boy routine, Floyd tells Grady that he's not a Feechie, just a very ugly boy that his mother did not want, and that his loss in the ugly contest proves it. No civilizer boy could beat a Feechie for ugliness, at least according to common wisdom. Grady considers leaving, but decides against it.

Truth is, I forgave Floyd because I didn't know what else to do. I didn't have another person in the world but Floyd, and it hurt to have him disappointed in me.... It's a dangerous business, seeking the good opinion of a feller as unscrupulous as Floyd, but I kept after it (p. 42).

Later that day, the pair enter the town of Little Reedy and go to Short Fronie's public house, where Floyd hopes to win some money at cards. (Rogers populates the story with evocative and humorous names for people and places.) Floyd picks Ten-Finger Walter--a struggling phrenologist who is not very good at phrenology or cards--as his mark. While Floyd plays, Grady sits at the bar, telling Short Fronie about his troubles. Short Fronie is rough with the customers but has a tender heart for Grady and offers to let him stay with her. She's offering to become his mother. Grady has the opportunity of a lifetime thrust before him. He could become a villager and belong some place. Grady is overwhelmed and watches Floyd's card game as he tries to get his head around Fronie's offer. Floyd's game is going poorly, but Grady notices something about the way Ten-Finger eats his peanuts. During a break in the game, Grady tells Floyd what he has observed: when Ten-Finger has a good hand, he throws the shells on the floor, otherwise he puts them on the table. Armed with Grady's scouting report, Floyd makes short work of Ten-Finger, fleecing him for all his money and his phrenology equipment. Floyd tells Grady that he "saved the day." Grady tells Fronie he's sorry and then follows Floyd out the door.

Rogers presents a fascinating scene here that works on several levels. We move forward in the story from the ugly boy routine to phrenology. We see just how unscrupulous Floyd is. He has no qualms about pushing his advantage and taking everything from Ten-Finger. What's to stop him from doing the same to Grady? We're also left wondering why someone would not take the golden egg when it's presented to them. Are a few complimentary words from Floyd more valuable than a life of love and security with Fronie? Does Grady love Floyd as a parent? As Grady is well-aware, he has known no one else or any other life. Having proven himself useful, Grady is back in Floyd's good graces and opts to continue with the familiar, however unwise his choice appears.

In conjunction with the CSFF Blog Tour, I received a free copy of The Charlatan's Boy from the publisher.

To learn more about the Jonathan Rogers, visit his website at  http://jonathan-rogers.com/.

To learn what the other CSFF bloggers are saying, follow the links below:

Sally Apokedak Amy Bissell Red Bissell Jennifer Bogart Thomas Clayton Booher Keanan Brand Beckie Burnham Christian Fiction Book Reviews Valerie Comer CSFF Blog Tour D. G. D. Davidson April Erwin Andrea Graham Tori Greene Katie Hart Bruce Hennigan Christopher Hopper Becky Jesse Cris Jesse Jason Joyner Julie

Carol Keen Shannon McDermott Allen McGraw Matt Mikalatos Rebecca LuElla Miller Nissa Donita K. Paul SarahFlan Sarah Sawyer Chawna Schroeder Tammy Shelnut Kathleen Smith James Somers Donna Swanson Robert Treskillard Fred Warren Phyllis Wheeler Nicole White Elizabeth Williams Dave Wilson

CSFF Blog Tour: The Charlatan's Boy Day One

For this month's CSFF blog tour, we're reviewing Jonathan Rogers' The Charlatan's Boy, a charming picaresque story about hucksters and Feechies (more about them later), in which the narrator/protagonist makes a startling discovery concerning his identity. The action takes place in Corenwald, an island colony of farms, cattle ranches, mines and inhospitable swamps. Much of Corenwald's produce is shipped back to the continent from which the "civilizers" came. The setting has a nineteenth-century feel to it, probably because I associate it with nineteenth-century America as opposed to anything the author is doing. Firearms of any kind are distinctly absent. When hunters chase Grady across a swamp with their dogs and tree him, thinking he is a raccoon, they shoot at him with bows and arrows. The indigenous people of Corenwald are known as Feechies, a reclusive people who live in the swamps and generally avoid contact with the civilizers. The Feechies are so reclusive that many civilizers doubt their existence. Despite their pseudo-mythical status, Feechies have well-known traits. They are ugly, small, wiry, wear muskrat pelts, cover themselves with mud, wrestle alligators, and live in swamps. Corenwalders also consider them wild and dangerous.

Grady, the boy from the title, tells his story in a dialect reminiscent of the rural American South. To Rogers' credit, he maintains the dialect throughout the narrative, and coming from Grady and the other characters, the language sounds natural and unaffected. (Warning to parents: if you're hoping your children will learn sound grammar and diction from reading this book, they won't, but they might pick up a truth or two about human nature.) Grady's voice is infectious and works with his innocent honesty to endear him to the reader. Consider the following paragraph from the opening chapter:

I don't care who you are--when it comes to knowing where you come from, you got to take somebody else's word for it. That's where things has always got ticklish for me. I only know one man who might be able to tell me where I come from, and that man is a liar and a fraud (p. 2).

That's the crux of the story: who is Grady; where did he come from; who are his parents? Grady desperately wants answers to those questions and he dreams of having a proper home with loving parents. Instead, Grady has Floyd, the charlatan from the title. Grady's earliest memories are riding in Floyd's wagon. Floyd has told Grady many stories about his early life. In one version, Floyd says that he found Grady crying under a palmetto bush and took pity on him. Grady finds it hard to believe that Floyd would take pity on anyone. In a crueler story, Floyd claims to have bought Grady from a circus man, mistaking him for a monkey. Floyd tells another story in which Grady's mother gives the boy to Floyd because he's too ugly to keep. By most standards, Grady is ugly. He is short and wiry with close set eyes, one blue and one green. He has a single eyebrow stretching across his forehead and his small ears stick straight out. His weak chin is difficult to distinguish from his neck. Grady looks much like everyone's idea of a Feechie and according to Grady, "If you want to know the truth, I'm pretty sure that's why Floyd kept me" (p. 3).

At the start of the novel, Floyd and Grady are making their living from the Feechie-trade. They travel from village to village, putting on a show in which Grady stars as a genuine he-feechie and Floyd charges people a few coppers hear a lecture about the times he spent in the swamps with the Feechies. Floyd proves masterful at working a crowd and Grady plays the part of a Feechie to perfection. However, people eventually stop believing in Feechies, and Floyd has to come up with a different scam. Grady came to think of himself as a Feechie while they performed the Feechie shows and later looked back fondly on the feechie-trade as "honest" work. Floyd's next idea is to parade Grady around as the ugliest boy in the world and bet villagers that they do not have an uglier boy living in their village. This works until they meet a boy in a mining town that beats Grady for ugliness. They next try phrenology and do quite well. As Grady understands, the key to being a charlatan is reading people and Floyd is a master at it. He makes very educated guesses about people's traits and what they want to hear. The phrenology business comes to an end when an angry customer destroys their equipment. Grady tells a father the truth about a prospective son-in-law who is only interested in the daughter's dowry and tries to bribe Grady for a favorable reading. After trying some less than successful schemes, Floyd hits on a new idea, a grand scheme to bring back the good old days of the Feechie-trade. Floyd concocts a plan to create his own Feechie scare. They create arrows and spears from flint and a noise-maker that bellows like a swamp monster. The idea is to make strange noises in the forests and swamps near villages and shoot "Feechie" arrows in the sides of houses and barns. Floyd believes that if enough people  talk about Feechies, people will start believing in Feechies, and he and Grady can return to the Feechie-trade. The plan works. The Feechie scare takes hold but with consequences that neither Floyd nor Grady could ever imagine.

In conjunction with the CSFF Blog Tour, I received a free copy of The Charlatan's Boy from the publisher.

To learn more about the Jonathan Rogers, visit his website at  http://jonathan-rogers.com/.

To learn what the other CSFF bloggers are saying, follow the links below:

Sally Apokedak Amy Bissell Red Bissell Jennifer Bogart Thomas Clayton Booher Keanan Brand Beckie Burnham Christian Fiction Book Reviews Valerie Comer CSFF Blog Tour D. G. D. Davidson April Erwin Andrea Graham Tori Greene Katie Hart Bruce Hennigan Christopher Hopper Becky Jesse Cris Jesse Jason Joyner Julie

Carol Keen Shannon McDermott Allen McGraw Matt Mikalatos Rebecca LuElla Miller Nissa Donita K. Paul SarahFlan Sarah Sawyer Chawna Schroeder Tammy Shelnut Kathleen Smith James Somers Donna Swanson Robert Treskillard Fred Warren Phyllis Wheeler Nicole White Elizabeth Williams Dave Wilson

Word of the Week: Goblin

From Francisco Goya's

Los Caprichos (1799).

Goblins abound in fantasy literature, from Christina Rossetti's Goblin Market to George MacDonald's The Princess and the Goblin to J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit to Tyger Tyger, the book I reviewed last week, but where does the word come from? And what is a goblin?

Goblins come in many shapes and sizes and temperaments, ranging from grotesquely evil to mischievous and annoying. Tolkien's goblins, later rechristened orcs, lean in the evil direction while MacDonald's goblins lean the other way. Goblins are typically small, ranging from a few inches to the stature of a dwarf. In some stories, they possess magical abilities.

I assumed the word had a Germanic or Norse origin but it's antecedents are not so easily traced, which seems strangely appropriate for such a creature. One line dates the word's first recorded usage to the fourteenth century and traces it to the old French word gobelin derived from Gobelinus, a spirit said to haunt Évreux, a region in Normandy in northern France. Another theory relates goblin to the German word kobold--meaning household goblin--derived from the Medieval Latin term cabalus from the Greek words kobalos--a rogue or knave--and kobaloi--the wicked spirits that rogues invoked. Kobold was also used by silver miners in the Harz Mountains in northern Germany to refer to rock containing arsenic and sulfur. The contaminants degraded the ore and made the miners sick.

Goblin, Goblin: A Review of Tyger Tyger

Tyger Tyger: A Goblin Wars Book by Kersten Hamilton is a story steeped in tales of Irish mythology. The narrative centers on Teagan Wylltson--a teenager in contemporary Chicago with definite plans for vet school. Hamilton tells an exciting story about the Wylltson family's struggle with a group of goblins determined to kill them and the protagonist's struggle to discover how she and her family fit in to ancient Irish history. The ultimate answer is sobering--Teagan, her younger brother Aiden, and their mother Aileen fall into a gray area--but not without hope and speaks to the power of love and friendship to overcome old wounds and hatred.

Teagan's life turns upside down one day when her best friend Abby, who believes she is psychic, claims that in a dream, she saw goblins from the paintings Teagan's mother creates for her children's books attacking Teagan. Abby is so convinced of the danger that she drags Teagan to St. Drogo's church to ask for the saint's protection. Abby is not a regular churchgoer. Teagan dismisses Abby's fears but then receives another shock when her parents tell her that there will be a new addition to their family. Finn, Teagan's cousin who has been missing for several years after the death of his parents, has been discovered by social services. Finn gives the authorities Teagan's mother's name and her parents agree to take guardianship of the boy who has been living on the streets.

By most standards, Teagan's family is eccentric. Aileen is an orphan with a mysterious past who was taken in and raised by Mamieo--Finn's grandmother and a member of the Irish Travelers. She writes and illustrates children's books set in fantastical lands populated with fantastical creatures. The Wylltson's basement is filled with paintings. Aiden has a remarkable ability to remember and regurgitate songs. He also finds the tooth fairy and Elvis impersonators scary. John--Teagan's father--is a librarian by trade with a great love for poetry, especially old poetry like that of  William Blake whose poem "The Tyger" informs the novel's title. Mr. Wylltson reads to the family after dinner most every evening.

Finn Mccool Comes to Aid the Fianna,

by Stephen Reid (1932).

Strange events follow Finn's arrival. Teagan has no interest in a boyfriend as that would interfere with her plans for vet school, but she feels a strange electricity whenever Finn is near. He appears to feel an attraction as well. Mr. Wylltson reads an account of the Irish hero Fionn Mac Cumhaill who battles goblins. Aileen points out that Finn is a variation of the name Fionn. (We later learn that Finn is not only Fionn's namesake but the Mac Cumhaill, the person who carries on the battle with the goblins.) A baby hedgehog that Teagan is caring for at the Lincoln Park Zoo is found dead and it appears that the death is Teagan's fault. On the way home, she catches a fleeting glimpse of a cat-sidhe, a type of cat goblin. Aiden claims he saw a body-less shadow touch his mother. Finn leaves in the middle of the night, fearful of the trouble he may have brought on the Wylltsons. But the worst is yet to come and Teagan's life will become much stranger--including two trips to Mag Mell, the world the goblins now call home--before it makes any sense.

Hamilton populates her story with a vast array of fantastic creatures. Some are hopelessly evil; others are charming. A quote from Hamlet, which comes up several times in the novel, does well to sum up Hamilton's story.

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy. (Hamlet Act 1, scene 5)

The narrative--told entirely from Teagan's point-of-view--is fast-paced but not hurried and Hamilton further flavors the story with her sense of humor. Some scenes are as amusing as they are terrifying. In one case, a pair of hell hounds chase a vintage truck through suburban Chicago. However, unlike the proverbial dog chasing the car who doesn't know what to do with the car if he catches it, these nasty creatures know exactly what to do with the occupants of the truck. Hamilton also makes some subtle plays with names if you read carefully. Finn's guardian angel for example is named Raynor Schein, which could be read as "rain or shine." The novel ends with a satisfying conclusion that answers the questions posed at the outset but leaves room for more adventures to come. This reader is looking forward to another trip to Mag Mell.

I received an advance copy of Tyger Tyger from the publisher through NetGalley.

CSFF Blog Tour: The Skin Map Day Three

The Skin Map is speculative fiction. To paraphrase Orson Scott Card's broad definition, much of the story takes place in worlds that have never existed or are as yet unknown. I suspect few would argue with the speculative tag, but what kind of speculative fiction is this? Is it fantasy, science fiction, or some sort of alternate history? It combines a bit of each. The worlds to which the characters jump have much in common with our own, but their histories are slightly different. In the seventeenth-century England that Kit visits, the English Civil War has not taken place. Oliver Cromwell is an itinerant preacher. In another world, Howard Carter and the Earl of Carnarvon discover the untouched tomb of a high priest rather than King Tut. (Lawhead does marvelous work in that chapter building up our anticipation of the discovery we know is coming so that we can share in Carnarvon's disappointment. Rather than filling his tomb with gold, the priest has spent his money on art, covering the walls and ceilings with paintings.) While these historical differences are significant, Lawhead does not focus on them or spend much time speculating on their consequences for subsequent historical developments. As for fantasy, the cave lion and the chapters set in seventeenth-century Europe give the story a touch of fantasy, but the genre's touchstone, magic, is completely absent. Aren't those ley lines magical? No, Cosimo and Sir Henry argue a naturalistic explanation. The alternate worlds are simply part of the grand universe in which the characters reside, a characteristic as "magical" as gravity, light, or the moon. Time travel has been a staple of science fiction, and the alternate worlds follow the same rules as our world, except for the ley lines. All of which leads me to conclude that The Skin Map has more in common with science fiction than anything else.

Despite the various attempts by Cosimo and Sir Henry to explain how ley lines work, it is still not clear what is required to use them. Are only certain people with some sort of gift able to initiate a jump? Or, is ley jumping a skill that anyone can acquire with practice and knowhow? Some of Cosimo's comments suggest the former, but Wilhelmina is able to make jumps by herself at the novel's conclusion. Hopefully Lawhead will elucidate this mystery in subsequent volumes.

The Great Fire of London,

with Ludgate and Old St. Paul's,

ca. 1670, artist unknown.

As with most stories involving time travel, there are some moral questions. If you know that a great calamity is about to occur and you can stop it, what do you do? Let history play out or intervene? On their way to dinner in seventeenth-century London, Cosimo makes a late night stop at a particular baker to buy a stale loaf of bread. He pounds on the door to wake the baker who is most displeased with the interruption to his sleep. Cosimo tosses the loaf to some women on the street after leaving the bakery. Kit learns that Cosimo has woken the baker whose untended fire caused the great fire of London. Kit questions altering history since Cosimo had stated earlier that ley travelers should strive to impact alternate worlds as little as possible. Cosimo argues that preventing the great fire spared many poor people a great deal of suffering and that the building boom in the wake of the fire would occur with or without the mass destruction.

Wilhelmina alters history in a different way. Plunked in seventeenth-century Prague with no idea how to return to modern-day London, Wilhelmina makes the best of her situation and attempts to integrate with the local society. However, when the bakery she and her partner operate is faring poorly, she uses her knowledge of modern-day coffee houses to reshape history to her own commercial success. Rather than waiting for coffee houses to evolve in Prague as the taste for coffee slowly spreads across the continent, Wilhelmina determines to start a new type of business from scratch and sends her partner out to find coffee beans. Knowing what a success coffee will ultimately be, Wilhelmina is hardly taking a gamble. The only serious problem is finding enough coffee beans. Lawhead does not treat the morality of Wilhelmina's actions. Other than Burleigh, who appears to have no moral scruples, Wilhelmina has no one with whom to discuss the situation.

Considering how to sum up The Skin Map's philosophy, two quotes come to mind.

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,

Than are dreamt of in your philosophy. (Hamlet Act 1, scene 5)

And Cosimo's rebuttal to Kit:

Who's to say the reality in which we find ourselves is the best one possible? (p. 61)

In conjunction with the CSFF Blog Tour, I received a free copy of The Skin Map from the publisher.

To learn more about the author, visit his website at http://www.stephenlawhead.com/.

To learn what the other CSFF bloggers are saying, follow the links below:

Red Bissell Thomas Clayton Booher Keanan Brand Grace Bridges Beckie Burnham Morgan L. Busse Jeff Chapman Christian Fiction Book Reviews Valerie Comer Karri Compton Amy Cruson CSFF Blog Tour Stacey Dale D. G. D. Davidson George Duncan April Erwin Tori Greene Ryan Heart Bruce Hennigan Timothy Hicks Christopher Hopper Becky Jesse Cris Jesse Becca Johnson

Jason Joyner Julie Carol Keen Krystine Kercher Shannon McDermott Allen McGraw Matt Mikalatos Rebecca LuElla Miller Nissa John W. Otte Gavin Patchett Sarah Sawyer Chawna Schroeder Kathleen Smith Rachel Starr Thomson Donna Swanson Robert Treskillard Steve Trower Fred Warren Dona Watson Phyllis Wheeler Nicole White Elizabeth Williams Dave Wilson

CSFF Blog Tour: The Skin Map Day Two

In yesterday's post I mentioned two protagonists in addition to Kit and Wilhelmina: Arthur Flinders-Petrie and Lord Archelaeus Burleigh, Earl of Sutherland. In the grand scheme of ley lines and world jumping, Kit and Wilhelmina are minor figures, amateurs, interlopers. The real movers and shakers are Flinders-Petrie and Burleigh.

Flinders-Petrie is a pioneer in the use of ley lines. Through trial and error, he has learned to navigate the lines to go where he wants when he wants. He has documented his findings as a map tattooed on his torso. After his death, the map is removed and preserved as a thin piece of parchment, the skin map of the novel's title. We enter Flinders-Petrie's story as he arrives in Maccau, China to have a new tattoo added to the map. This addition records directions to the Well of Souls, which Flinders-Petrie describes as "the ultimate prize, . . . the greatest treasure ever known" (p. 132). To Wu Chen Hu--the tattooist who has recorded all the maps in his unique, vivid blue ink--the designs are "a tightly controlled swash of abstract ciphers. . . , elegant in their own way as the Pinyin script was elegant, but utterly devoid of any comprehensible meaning" (p. 132). Burleigh makes his first appearance, interrupting the tattoo session to invite Flinders-Petrie to dinner to discuss mutual business interests. Chen Hu is suspicious of Burleigh but remains reticent. Dinner turns out to be a trap. Burleigh knows about Flinders-Petrie's discoveries and requests that he and Flinders-Petrie form a partnership. When Flinders-Petrie refuses, Burleigh decides to acquire the map by force. Only the intervention of Chen Hu and his daughter Xian-Li save Flinders-Petrie from being killed and skinned.

The Foundation Stone above the

Well of Souls.

Burleigh is the novel's charming but ruthless villain. He's also an atheist, flatly stating, when Cosimo invokes God in a plea for mercy, that God does not exist, "only chaos, chance, and the immutable laws of nature" (p. 337). Burleigh claims to give people choices, usually cooperate or die in some dastardly manner. As with Flinders-Petrie, we know nothing of Burleigh's past. He possesses considerable wealth, some of it obtained from selling antiquities on the black market, and employs a small army of henchmen whom Cosimo calls Burley men. All the other protagonists cross paths with him at some point in the novel and none of the meetings conclude pleasantly. What motivates Burleigh? Avarice? He has more than enough money. Burleigh's aim is the Well of Souls.

So, what is the Well of Souls? According to Wikipedia, the "Well of Souls is a natural cave located immediately beneath the Foundation Stone, under the Dome of the Rock on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem." When Burleigh presses Cosimo for an answer, Cosimo calls it a myth with Jewish, Arab, and Egyptian versions, but none agree on its nature or location. Cosimo continues:

Some tales have it that the well is an earthly place, an underground region where the souls of the dead congregate to await the coming Judgement. Others hold it to be a heavenly place where the souls of those not yet born await their call to life in this world (p. 336).

But in Lawhead's universe, it appears to be something more. Flinders-Petrie tells an Egyptian priest that the Well of Souls is beyond Sirius--the Dog Star--and that he will take his wife Xian-Li--who has just died of an acute fever--to the Well of Souls in a last attempt to heal her or, more accurately, bring her back from the dead. Lawhead does not give us a difinitive answer.

In conjunction with the CSFF Blog Tour, I received a free copy of The Skin Map from the publisher.

To learn more about the author, visit his website at http://www.stephenlawhead.com/.

To learn what the other CSFF bloggers are saying, follow the links below:

Red Bissell Thomas Clayton Booher Keanan Brand Grace Bridges Beckie Burnham Morgan L. Busse Jeff Chapman Christian Fiction Book Reviews Valerie Comer Karri Compton Amy Cruson CSFF Blog Tour Stacey Dale D. G. D. Davidson George Duncan April Erwin Tori Greene Ryan Heart Bruce Hennigan Timothy Hicks Christopher Hopper Becky Jesse Cris Jesse Becca Johnson

Jason Joyner Julie Carol Keen Krystine Kercher Shannon McDermott Allen McGraw Matt Mikalatos Rebecca LuElla Miller Nissa John W. Otte Gavin Patchett Sarah Sawyer Chawna Schroeder Kathleen Smith Rachel Starr Thomson Donna Swanson Robert Treskillard Steve Trower Fred Warren Dona Watson Phyllis Wheeler Nicole White Elizabeth Williams Dave Wilson

CSFF Blog Tour: The Skin Map Day One

This month's tour features The Skin Map by Stephen R. Lawhead, a well-known writer with several novel cycles to his credit. The Skin Map is the first book in the Bright Empires series. The second novel in the series--The Bone House--is scheduled for September 2011. If you have read my previous post, you will know that we received our review copies late. (Mine arrived last Saturday). I prefer a couple days to think about a novel before I write about it and I usually have the first post written well before Monday but no such luxury this time. I finished the book Sunday night, so I feel like I'm doing this tour by the seat of my pants, which may be appropriate. Two of the protagonists--Kit and Wilhelmina--are living by the seat of their pants as they jump from one time and place to another. Before I go any further, I must point out to potential readers that there is a major problem with this book. The pages end before the story does. Yes, a few (very few) issues are resolved and a mystery or two is cleared up but there is a lot more story left. Reading The Skin Map is like stopping The Lord of the Rings after The Fellowship of the Ring.

Down Tor stone row on

Dartmoor in South Devon, UK.

In an essay at the back of the book, Lawhead remarks on his inspiration for the story. In the early twentieth century, Alfred Watkins noticed that many ancient landmarks in the English countryside were aligned in straight lines. He documented the phenomenon, termed them "ley lines," and published at least three books on the subject. Theories abound regarding ley lines. There are many landmarks in Europe, so some argue that lines formed by various points are inevitable based merely on random chance. Others dispute the purpose and significance of ley lines. Were the ancients marking something, such as "the telluric energy that is associated with various geodynamic forces of the earth: underground streams, fault lines, movement of the earth's crust, and even, perhaps, lightening strikes?" (p. 402) No one knows, but Lawhead has crafted one scenario, that these lines are points at which alternative universes touch, into an exciting and engaging story.

The story begins with Kit trying to make it across modern-day London to his girlfriend's flat where she is waiting for him to take her shopping for curtains. Everything Kit does goes awry. He eventually wanders down a dark alley known as Stane Way (Anglo-Saxon for Stone Way, referring to standing stones) and meets a man named Cosimo who claims to be his great-grandfather and seems to know everything about Kit's dull existence. (Most people would say Kit does not have a life.) Cosimo convinces Kit to have a drink with him and when the pair emerge from the alley, they are in an early nineteenth-century fishing village. Over a tankard of ale at a local pub, Cosimo explains ley lines and jumping between worlds and asks Kit to aid him in a project. Kit believes that he is suffering from some extended hallucination and refuses any part in Cosimo's plans.

Kit reenters London through the Stane Way ley and eventually arrives at his girlfriend Wilhelmina's house eight hours late. She is not pleased. Neither Kit nor Wilhelmina appear to be all that fond of each other but remain as a couple out of mutual desperation. Wilhelmina is plain and severe looking. She is a baker and lives a life of early mornings and early nights, different from Kit's time schedule. Kit reluctantly tells her the story of his meeting with Cosimo because he can think of no other "plausible" explanation. He decides the only way to convince her is to show her, so she accompanies Kit to Stane Way. They both make the leap to another world. Kit winds up where he left Cosimo. Wilhelmina winds up somewhere else. Ley jumping takes practice and Kit is a novice. Kit and Cosimo set out to find Wilhelmina and their storyline takes them to seventeenth-century England and later a tomb in twentieth-century Egypt. Wilhelmina finds herself in early seventeenth-century Bohemia. Fortunately, Wilhelmina learned German from her grandmother. She hitches a ride from a baker--another fortunate coincidence--on his way to Prague to set up a new shop. Two other characters have their own plot lines--Arthur Flinders-Petrie and Lord Archelaeus Burleigh, Earl of Sutherland--but more about them tomorrow.

As expected from a writer as experienced as Lawhead, the narrative flows and we move from story to story without too much jarring. The various worlds are rendered in detail. (I know more about seventeenth-century London eating habits than I ever wanted to know.) Lawhead has clearly done some research.

Photo Credit: Attributed to Herby. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported, 2.5 Generic, 2.0 Generic and 1.0 Generic license.

In conjunction with the CSFF Blog Tour, I received a free copy of The Skin Map from the publisher.

To learn more about the author, visit his website at http://www.stephenlawhead.com/.

To learn what the other CSFF bloggers are saying, follow the links below:

Red Bissell Thomas Clayton Booher Keanan Brand Grace Bridges Beckie Burnham Morgan L. Busse Jeff Chapman Christian Fiction Book Reviews Valerie Comer Karri Compton Amy Cruson CSFF Blog Tour Stacey Dale D. G. D. Davidson George Duncan April Erwin Tori Greene Ryan Heart Bruce Hennigan Timothy Hicks Christopher Hopper Becky Jesse Cris Jesse Becca Johnson

Jason Joyner Julie Carol Keen Krystine Kercher Shannon McDermott Allen McGraw Matt Mikalatos Rebecca LuElla Miller Nissa John W. Otte Gavin Patchett Sarah Sawyer Chawna Schroeder Kathleen Smith Rachel Starr Thomson Donna Swanson Robert Treskillard Steve Trower Fred Warren Dona Watson Phyllis Wheeler Nicole White Elizabeth Williams Dave Wilson

Excerpt from "Esme's Amulet"

Some of you may be wondering why there are no CSFF blog tour posts this month. There's a simple explanation. Review copies for the October selection arrived on Saturday. (I almost backed my car into the mail truck as it careened into my driveway.) The October tour will start next week, the first week of November.

I don't have much to post right now because I'm busy reading, finishing the novel I had already begun and starting the one that arrived on Saturday. What's freaky is that both novels reference the same quote from Shakespeare's Hamlet. So, in lieu of posting about the work of someone else, here's a teaser from "Esme's Amulet," which appears in the October-November-December print issue of Golden Visions Magazine, available in paper or pdf. I love the cover art for this edition.

This excerpt picks up with Esme at a village market, desperately trying to sell a goat that has been eating her mother's prized vegetables.

Esme asked every passerby if they wanted a goat. Her cheeks ached from smiling. A few acknowledged her as they hurried to some urgent appointment, but most brushed past, and to the one man who showed an interest, Gertrude stomped her front hooves and lowered her head to butt him.

"Mother will cook you as sure as the sun sets if I take you home. And I'll get a whipping. Do you want to be eaten?"

Gertrude stared at her with placid eyes then bleated.

"I'll take your goat, miss."

Esme spun around urgently, searching for the owner of that female voice, fearful lest the buyer vanish and suspicious, after so much failure, of her own senses.

"Over here, lassie." Directly behind her, an old woman, whom Esme assumed to be a harmless though likely shrewd widow, sat in the shade of her stall selling trinkets. On her head she wore a red cloth wrapped multiple times like a turban. A smile softened the severity of her thin, wrinkled face, and her raised eyebrows questioned, inviting conversation. Esme jerked Gertrude in the stall's direction, and to her great surprise, the goat followed willingly.

"Did you say you want to buy my goat?"

"Well now. Buy is a strong word, but I'll trade you something for her."

Something worth five ducats ought to be just as good. She scanned the bronze chains, buckles, brooches, and bracelets displayed on the stall's wooden counter, grayed and softened from years of rain and sun. An oval-shaped brooch with a single garnet embedded in the middle with interlocking vines etched around the border caught her eye. How grown up she felt to be bartering. "That brooch is nice."

"Yes, it is, my sweet, but is that all you want for your goat?"

"My mother told me to bring home," she paused, then announced firmly, "six ducats."

"Six? I should say that goat's worth no more than three. She's got a sour temperament."

"She's skittish from the crowd."

"I have something that would be perfect for you." The old woman retrieved from her apron pocket a gleaming, gold-colored pendant strung on a leather cord. "What do you say to this?"

Esme admired the pendant as it swung hypnotically beneath the woman's hand. At the charm's center, a green stone, its surface a myriad of interlocking planes, each reflecting light at a different angle, captured her attention. She noted the five garnets embedded in a ring around the stone with runes in between and beyond those fought snakes and vines with each snake swallowing the tail of another while the vines coiled tightly around the scaly bodies. But to the stone her eyes returned, always retreating to the stone after forays among the red gems and writhing snakes.

The woman snatched the pendant away, replacing it in her pocket where it jangled, settling among coins. Faltering as dizziness overcame her, Esme placed her hand on the stall to catch herself.

"So what do you say? My charm for your goat. And it's more than just a pretty trinket. It's an amulet. Those runes ward off evil in all its slippery forms. Seems an even trade though I suspect you're getting the better bargain."

Short Stuff Take 6

"Hero for Hire," by Milo James Fowler in A Fly in Amber

"Hero for Hire" does not belong in the fantasy or science fiction genres. It's set firmly in the present world as we know it. But it addresses fantasy in a comical way and suggests what might happen if someone tries to turn their fantasy into reality. Darrell, the protagonist, is what most people would call a loser. He's twenty-seven, lives in a cottage in his parent's backyard, works the graveyard shift at Target, and still relies on his mother to do his laundry, which he also neglects to retrieve in a timely manner. His most prized possession is a samurai sword that he bought on eBay. He routinely dresses in a gi purchased at Party City and acts out mock battles with imaginary Ninjas in his living room. He always prevails. Not a bad way to get some physical exercise, but he decides that mock battles or attacking watermelons and pumpkins are becoming boring. He needs some real enemies. He needs to use his skills for good. So far, his only nemeses are a cat that leaves dead birds on his doorstep and his angry mother, who nags him about his laundry. He puts an add in the paper: "Hero for Hire" along with his phone number. For two weeks, nothing much happens. He gets some prank calls, but then, someone requests a hero. An old lady claims that someone has stolen her laptop. Darrell accepts the job. I won't spoil it by recording what happens. It's funny and sad with some interesting twists. No one gets hurt, except for Darrell's ego, which takes a beating, and his feet, which are scorched on the hot sidewalk. Fowler handles his subject matter with wit and compassion. We feel sympathy for Darrell even as we laugh at him. "Hero for Hire" reminds me of "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty," only in Fowler's story, the protagonist attempts to turn his fantasies into reality.

"The Lych Owl's Cry," by Terrie Schultz in Golden Visions Magazine print edition (October-November-December 2010)

The word lych is a Saxon word for corpse used in modern English as an adjective in phrases or names associated with death or burial, such as the lychgate at the entrance to traditional English churchyards. Lych owl is another name for the barn owl, whose cry, according to folklore, portends death. Schultz's story begins and ends with the lych owl's shriek. The protagonist is Jessa, a healer in a village, who hears a lych owl one night and with resignation, waits to be summoned to some neighbor's deathbed. The dead are a young wife and her newborn baby. Jessa tells the husband that there is nothing she can do but he begs her to cross the Veil and bring them back, something remembered in tales but never done by Jessa, her mother, or her grandmother. The tales told of healers coming back haunted or never at all. Jessa relents and agrees to try. She finds the recipe for a salve in an ancient tome that she hides under a stone in her cottage. The salve works and she rises from her body in a ghostly form and follows a path through the churchyard to a hedge of hawthorn and rowan at the edge of the village where she crosses the Veil into a misty, barren place, a sort of purgatory. She had feared that she would meet demons. Instead, the meets her recently deceased neighbors and family and learns why so many characters from the old tales never came back. Schultz builds her haunting story with sharp details and flowing prose. While many such stories might focus on the terror of death, the operative emotion in Shultz's tale is love and the grief that comes with loss and saying no.

Comments on How to Write Science Fiction and Fantasy

If you want to write science fiction or fantasy, I recommend giving Orson Scott Card's How to Write Science Fiction & Fantasy a read, maybe multiple reads. This is a short guide, less than 140 pages of text, but it's packed with  cogent advice. While most books on writing dwell on general skills, such as the mechanics of building sentences and creating effective dialogue, Card focuses on problems and skills at the story level targeted at issues particular to the science fiction and fantasy genres. For example, he devotes one of the book's five chapters to world building.

In the first chapter, he attempts to describe speculative fiction by defining its boundaries. He explains that science fiction and fantasy are labels defined by the publishing industry, sometimes useful in helping readers find your work and sometimes a way to pigeon-hole you. The terms also label a "fluid, evolving community of readers and writers" (p. 17) as well as a "ghetto in which you can do almost anything you like" (p. 17). His clearest definition states: "science fiction and fantasy stories are those that take place in worlds that have never existed or are not yet known" (p. 18). This covers a lot of works that would not ordinarily be considered speculative. However, if a story does not fit this definition in some way, it's not in the speculative genre. What about the boundary between science fiction and fantasy? Card provides a somewhat accurate rule:

If the story is set in a universe that follows the same rules as ours, it's science fiction. If it's set in a universe that doesn't follow our rules, it's fantasy (p. 22).

In either case, the writer must define the limits of technology or magic early in a story and stick to them.

The longest chapter covers world creation. Card discusses where ideas come from, using some of his own works--Ender's Game and Hart's Hope--as examples.  Hart's Hope began with the map of a walled city that Card drew to pass some time. He then asked himself questions about the city, named the various gates and determined their particular functions. Asking questions and then more questions, Card contends, is the key to world and story creation. Once you have the germ of an idea, Card emphasizes the importance of creating rules of time, technology, and magic for an invented world. Characters will have to contend with those rules just as we have to wrestle with the physical laws limiting our abilities. Card warns that readers will notice if a writer is sloppy with rules or breaks them. Those readers will feel betrayed. Card also comments on creating geographies and cultures.

In the chapter on story construction, Card identifies differences between the protagonist and a viewpoint character and suggests how to determine which characters should fill those roles in your stories. Another difficult task when developing a story is deciding when it should begin and end. To answer this question, Card offers the MICE quotient. (Yes, those lowly rodents can be your friends.) MICE is an acronym for four types of stories: milieu, idea, character, and event. In a milieu story, such as Gulliver's Travels, the purpose is to explore a strange land. An idea story depicts the discovery of new information. It begins with a question and ends with the answer. In 2001: A Space Odyssey, the story begins with a mysterious monolith and ends when someone discovers its purpose. A character story traces the "transformation of a character's role in the communities that matter most to him" (p. 79). In an event story, the narrative begins when something in the world is out of order and ends when a new order is established. Examples include Hamlet and The Lord of the Rings. Stories may contain sub-plots which draw on any of the types but the dominate plot will follow one of these formulas. Card is not saying that speculative fiction is formulaic. Anything can happen between the beginning and the end, but it's important to know what kind of story you're writing so that you can honor your reader's expectations.

The fourth chapter covers writing, namely exposition and diction. Card discusses how to guide readers into the strangeness of an invented world, using Octavia Butler's Wild Seed as an example. Later in the chapter, he discusses  how to use appropriate diction for an invented world.

In the final chapter "The Life and Business of Writing," Card discusses markets, agents, and query letters. He comments on the usefulness of classes, workshops, conventions, and professional organizations. Keep in mind that How to Write Science Fiction and Fantasy was published in 1990. Much of the information in this chapter is dated as the internet has opened many new markets for speculative fiction writers. But some of Card's advice is timeless. Consider his amusing but apt comments on the writer's self-image. Card argues that a writer must believe two things at all times.

1. The story I am now working on is the greatest work of genius ever written in English.
2. The story I am now working on is worthless drivel (p. 109).

Perhaps holding contradictory opinions simultaneously is a sign of madness, but the writer has to call on both of these ideas to do his work, calling on number one when submitting the story to an editor and number two when revising it. Two points come up over and over again in How to Write Science Fiction and Fantasy, and if you get nothing else out of the book, you should at least remember to honor the rules you create for your world and honor your reader's expectations.

Review of Masters and Slayers: Another Trip to Starlight

Reading Masters and Slayers by Bryan Davis was a strange experience for me for two reasons. First, I read a digital copy of the galleys. I had never read a "published" novel in digital form before. I think I prefer paper. I tend to do a lot of reading in small bits while I'm waiting in the car or watching something cook. That's hard to do when the book is on your laptop. So, I had to schedule long blocks of time to read Masters and Slayers, usually at night.

Second, Masters and Slayers is closely intertwined with Davis' Starlighter, which I reviewed for the CSFF Blog Tour a few months ago. (For my commentary on Starlighter, go here, here, and here.) The stories take place in the same worlds and share many of the same characters. The two books could be mashed together into one, albeit very long, novel. The novels differ in their point of view characters. Masters and Slayers centers on Adrian Masters while Starlighter tells the story of Jason Masters, Adrian's younger brother. Also, I believe Davis intends Masters and Slayers for an older audience. Starlighter is marketed as a YA novel. Masters and Slayers has a slower pace than Starlighter with more time for complex character development and it answers a lot of the questions I had after reading Starlighter. The content is also grittier. For instance, there's some discussion of the breeding program the dragons have established to propagate slaves. You don't have to read Starlighter first to follow Masters and Slayers. Many parts of the early chapters are a retelling of the material from Starlighter from a different character's point of view. This made for a strange reading experience since I already knew what was going to happen in those scenes, as if I had looked at the writer's notes beforehand. If you have not read either novel and want to read both, I recommend reading Masters and Slayers, which provides more background material, before Starlighter.

Masters and Slayers takes place on two planets in the same solar system. (I like the names the dragon's use for the planets so I'll use them.) The dragon's home planet is Starlight while the humans native home is Darksphere. There are multiple portals between the two worlds but the existence and location of these is not well known by the residents of either planet. Approximately one hundred years ago, Magnar, a powerful dragon, crossed from Starlight to Darksphere. He captured some humans and took them back to the dragon planet to become slaves in the pheterone mines. Pheterone is a gas trapped beneath the surface that the dragons need to live healthy lives. It's similar to our natural gas. One of the humans--Uriel Blackstone--escapes, returns to Darksphere, and locks the portal. He tries to rally a force to rescue the humans still on Starlight but most dismiss his story as pure lunacy and the government works to suppress it. Some, however, have faith in Blackstone. Over time, an underground organization known as the Underground Gateway develops with the goal of freeing The Lost Ones, as the slaves are now known. Adrian's brother Frederick has succeeded in finding a portal and crossing over to Starlight and a dragon from Starlight has contacted the underground about acquiring pheterone from Darksphere. Masters and Slayers follows the journeys of three members of the group--Adrian, Marcelle, and Drexel--as they enter Starlight and attempt to return to Darksphere with at least a few freed slaves.

The plot of Masters and Slayers is complicated. Drexel enters via a different portal than Adrian and Marcelle, and Drexel does not know for certain if the other two are on Starlight. As one expects in a good story, many of the characters have ulterior motives which add to the plot's thickness. I could spend several pages covering its intricacies. Drexel, for instance, hopes to use the rescue of the Lost Ones to propel himself to high political office in Mesolantrum, the home country of the characters from Darksphere. The motives of Arxad, the dragon who wants to trade for pheterone, are equally complex as he appears torn between loyalty to the dragon species and disgust with the practice of slavery.

Forgive me for not providing a detailed plot summary. I would much rather discuss character and theme. The most interesting characters are not Adrian, Marcelle, and Drexel, but Cassabrie and Arxad. Adrian is an accomplished and admirable warrior. He has a solid sense of right and wrong and tends to act accordingly although he can exercise restraint and patience when needed and recognize the complexities of a situation. One could do well to emulate him. There's nothing wrong with Adrian. Therein lies the problem. Almost all his difficulties are external: trekking through the wilderness, finding the Lost Ones, fighting the dragons. He appears to have only one internal problem. Whom does he love more, Cassabrie or Marcelle? And if he must choose between them, will he choose based on his heart or will he sacrifice his own longings and act out of a sense of chivalry and loyalty. This choice is more complicated than it might first appear. Cassabrie is a disembodied spirit. She was executed by Magnar, who feared her powers to hypnotize dragons. Arxad values her talents; he salvaged and protected her spirit. Cassabrie can dwell within Adrian in a kind of "perfect union." Marcelle is Adrian's childhood friend and fellow warrior. On Darksphere, they appeared destined to someday be together. This inner conflict builds slowly through the story and doesn't reach its first fruition until the novel's climatic scenes.

Marcelle is a skilled fighter but acts impulsively. She is strident, sees the world in black and white terms and acts accordingly without considering circumstances or the ramifications of her actions. When she and Adrian go to a work camp for children, Marcelle, against Adrian's advice, rashly attacks a dragon who whips a child. Adrian comes to her aid to kill the dragon. The consequences of this event soon spiral out of control in ways Adrian and Marcelle never imagined. In another scene, Magnar commands some slaves to subdue Marcelle, threatening to burn their children alive if they don't comply. Marcelle rebukes them: "'If all it takes is a verbal threat to your little ones to turn your backbones into butter, then you can just die and rot here! A real man would fight!'" (p. 400) Marcelle fails to consider the context. She is one warrior against many dragons and the slaves know that Magnar will not hesitate to carry out his threat. Prudence suggests the slaves should save their children and live to fight another day when the odds are better.

Drexel is one of the leaders of the Underground Gateway. He lacks great skill as a warrior but does have a talent for planning and manipulating situations to achieve his goals. Unfortunately, his ambitions for political power have crushed his moral compass and he behaves in such a reprehensible manner that the reader feels no sympathy for him.

Cassabrie and Arxad are mysterious. We never see the story from their viewpoint; their motives are never clear. As stated above, Cassabrie owes a great debt to Arxad for her current state of existence. Arxad appears to feel great sympathy for the plight of the slaves but must act carefully to avoid raising the other dragon's suspicions of his loyalty. Arxad takes care to transport the spirits of "promoted" slaves to the Northlands. Arxad defends the slaves in legal proceedings and insists that laws be followed. And when Adrian's execution is imminent Arxad offers to let Adrian kill him so that Adrian can escape. Arxad is bound by law to stop a condemned prisoner from escaping. Adrian considers accepting Arxad's offer but Cassabrie counsels him against it. The slaves are far better off with Arxad in place to check Magnar's power than with him dead. Cassabrie recognizes Arxad's importance to the slaves and the precarious nature of his position. Both Cassabrie and Arxad are pulled in opposite directions, their loyalties divided. When Cassabrie first dwells within Adrian, experiencing the sensations of again having a body, she tells him that "I am to be your guide, not your mistress" (p. 181). Can we believe her? The phrase is repeated multiple times. As Cassabrie's love for Adrian grows, we recognize that the balance between guide and mistress subtly shifts. Arxad warns Adrian to beware of Cassabrie mesmerizing abilities and Adrian wisely heeds the advice.

Before closing out this review, I want to touch on a few themes. Davis depicts a stark contrast between Adrian and Drexel regarding means versus ends. Drexel reveals that he will exercise any means, including sending children to certain death, to achieve his ends which are inherently selfish. For Drexel, saving the Lost Ones is merely a precondition for seizing power though he convinces himself that all he does, all the sacrifices of other lives, is for the greater good. Adrian could not be more different. Saving the Lost Ones is his goal, but he refuses to permit others to die without his intervention to save them, even if such actions ultimately put his goal in jeopardy. For instance, he could have remained hidden at the cattle camp and allowed the dragon to kill several of the children in payment for the death of the dragon that he and Marcelle killed. Such a strategy would have allowed he and Marcelle to continue their efforts. Instead, Adrian offers himself in the place of the children.

In many ways, the dragon society on Starlight mirrors the human society on Darksphere. A corrupt governor rules Mesolantrum and the society is divided between nobles and peasants. The leaders work to suppress anyone or anything that might foment discontent. Talk of rescuing the Lost Ones is forbidden and the Code, an ancient book of wisdom, has been banned. A few citizens, such as Adrian and his father, oppose the government and strive to live according to the Code. On Starlight, Magnar is the counterpart to Mesolantrum's governor while the dragons and slaves mirror the nobles and peasants divide. Like Adrian, Arxad works to restore law and justice to his society.

Whether intentional or not, Davis presents strong, capable warriors in a positive light while those who do not possess fighting skills tend to be victims or scheming villains, usually tainted with a touch of cowardice. The contrast between Adrian and Drexel demonstrates the dichotomy. I find this troubling because not everyone has the physical talents to be a great warrior. Some people are better suited to develop strategy and use cunning to defeat an enemy. Is that sort of talent inherently bad? Drexel uses his skills for ill but might someone use those same skills to achieve positive ends? As we've seen in the case of Marcelle, a little more thinking might go a long way.

I received an advance copy of Masters and Slayers from the publisher through NetGalley.

Short Stuff: Take 5

"The Captain and His Squire," by Matthew Wuertz in Mindflights.

"The Captain and His Squire" is the second story in Wuertz's Cole of Arkessler trilogy. (See my review of the first story here.) A scholar for Salincia's royal academy, Cole again finds himself on the road traveling to a distant city to record a knight's life story. His subject for this trip is Sir Borodin, the captain of the knights in Kartev. Unlike Sir Chahan, who behaved like an oaf much of the time, Cole finds Sir Borodin to be intelligent and affable. They also share an interest in darivs--a mysterious race of humanoids living in the forests--and Borodin has collected books that mention them. Like Cole, Borodin's interest dates from the action against the darivs near Donevsk recorded in "Regarding Sir Chahan." An alarm bell interrupts their conversation. Cole follows Borodin to Aukland Bridge, where two guards and a dariv lie dead. Lord Thamair, the lord of Kartev, orders a retaliatory attack on the darivs. The next morning, a force of knights and squires led by Thamair and Borodin leave the city. At Borodin's invitation, Cole accompanies them. The battle with the darivs in Arsdale Forest goes badly. Borodin falls and Harris, his squire, flees the battlefield. Cole and the survivors from Kartev are magically rendered blind then captured and forced into a tunnel. A magician recognizes the difference in Cole's clothing from the others and upon finding that Cole is a scholar, restores his sight. The magician wants Cole to record the recent events. Cole learns from the magician that the darivs serve the magician's brother and that the recent attacks are in retaliation for "stealing" Mydrianna from them. The darivs are known for devouring the corpses of fallen enemies but no one knows what becomes of live captives. When the darivs leave them unguarded, Harris returns to free them. He tells them that he left the field under Borodin's dying orders to prepare the city for defense. Harris leads the blind, wounded fighters back to Kartev where they must rally any able-bodied citizens to mount a defense against an impending attack. "The Captain and His Squire" is a transition story. We learn more about the darivs and their motives, but this story lacks some of the punch of the previous one as Cole does not undergo any great change to his character or beliefs. "The Captain and His Squire" and "Regarding Sir Chahan" share a similar structure. In both stories, Cole ventures far from home to interview a knight who then dies in battle with darivs. One has to wonder if knights will be leery of telling Cole their life stories in the future since the stories end shortly thereafter.


"In Hot Water: A Dragonson Vignette," by Walter G. Esselman in Residential Aliens.

"In Hot Water" is a quirky tale with a serious side. The Lords of Bon Su Pear have asked two water nymphs--Regent and Brianna--to retrieve a mysterious box from a sunken ship. The Lords insist the box contains a bottle of cognac. Brianna brings along her playful spell otter, named SOS, whose fur glows blue. They retrieve the box with little trouble, but as they're leaving the ship, an adolescent sea monster--part bull, mostly fish--swallows SOS. Brianna wants to chase down the massive animal but Regent convinces her they need reinforcements. Brianna creates a diversion in the water, allowing Regent and Brianna to avoid their otter's fate but barely. The monster, properly called a Camahueto, isn't done yet. (They never are.) It lunges out of the water to attack the water nymphs and Lords. Regent manages to wound the beast but Brianna takes her revenge with some watergolems who hack it to a bloody, gooey mess. An argument over the box's contents ensues and the Lords reluctantly admit it contains a cure for Wailing Flu. According to tradition, the Lords must anonymously do something to help the people of the city each year, thus the secrecy about the box. Esselman mixes the strange, mundane, and dangerous for comic effect. The nymphs nearly die retrieving what they think is a bottle of booze. High officials asking others to risk their necks to further the interests of the officials is nothing new, and the innocent otter suffers more than anyone but not as much as you think. You'll have to read the story to find out what really happened to that furry, blue critter.

CSFF Blog Tour: Venom and Song Day Three

Much of Venom and Song focuses on the development of cohesion among the seven lords. They begin the story as a loose-knit set of teens with little in common other than the bizarre events that have taken over their lives. Grimwarden wisely understands that a few individuals with some extraordinary gifts will fail before the power and discipline of the Spider King. From the instant their training at Whitehall begins, Grimwarden concentrates on teamwork, on transforming the seven into a military unit that is more powerful than the sum of its parts. The team-building exercises demonstrate that as a team, the seven lords can accomplish what the individuals cannot. All seven have unique gifts and important roles to play and no one, not even Jett with his strength or Johnny with his fire, can carry everyone. Along with cohesion comes trust and friendship and sacrifice. When they first arrived at Whitehall, they bickered and lashed out at each other when the tasks became difficult. All that had changed by the time they reached Terradym Fortress. They went to extraordinary lengths to save one another from death in the various traps and worked together to unlock the secrets of the cistern.

Initially, the lords understand the conflict with the Spider King as a battle between good and evil. They are the "good guys" while the Gwar and assorted company are the "bad guys." Their Elvish handlers are content to leave them in ignorance, but a chance meeting with a scarlet raptor leads Kat and Tommy to a shocking discovery. The Elves once enslaved the Gwar and treated them cruelly. The Gwar have good reason to feel some antipathy toward the Elves. The revelations, which Kat and Tommy share with the others before approaching Grimwarden and Goldarrow, threaten to wreck the Elves' plans. Jett threatens to leave Allyra and return to Earth. Grimwarden and Goldarrow eventually convince the seven that despite the wrongs of the past, the Elvish cause is just in the face of the Spider King's tyranny and vengeance. "[H]ow much Elven blood must be spilled to pay the debt in full?" asks Grimwarden (p. 179). The seven learn that history is more gray than black and white and that righting past wrongs with more violence and wrongs does not resolve the original issue.

Finally, Venom and Song makes an interesting comparison on the nature of power in the contrast between the Spider King and the seven lords. The Spider King is all about physical power. He does appear to be stronger than the combined powers of the seven. He has an answer to all their tactics, but he is puzzled by some of their decisions. After Jett sacrifices his life to save Kiri Lee, the Spider King says, "And the strong one made the choice to let the air walker live? How strange, given that he was the greater warrior" (p. 367). The Spider King values physical strength above all else and when their battle with him reaches a stalemate, the Spider King taunts them, asking them what they know about power.

"Look, look behind you. See my armies, my fortress, my lands? I KNOW power, real power! Power to create life, power to take it . . . even power to wake the dormant volcano to vomit up FIRE!" (p. 380)

The irony soon becomes evident. The Spider King knows very little about real power as water soon washes away his armies, his fortress, and him. The Rainsong calls on the real power of Ellos (God) to unleash the torrent that dooms the Spider King and his plans. To the response of Ellos, the Spider King has no answer. And the key to the Rainsong is Kiri Lee, the person that the physically strongest member of the seven gave up his life to save.

Venom and Song is an exciting narrative that addresses friendship, trust, sacrifice, and power in thought provoking ways. It's well worth reading.

In conjunction with the CSFF Blog Tour, I received a free copy of Venom and Song from the publisher.

To learn more about the authors, visit their blogs:

Wayne Thomas Batson  – http://enterthedoorwithin.blogspot.com/
Christopher Hopper – http://www.christopherhopper.com/blog/

To learn what the other CSFF bloggers are saying, follow the links below:

Angela Brandon Barr Keanan Brand Amy Browning Beckie Burnham Morgan L. Busse Melissa Carswell Valerie Comer Amy Cruson CSFF Blog Tour D. G. D. Davidson April Erwin Tori Greene Ryan Heart Bruce Hennigan Timothy Hicks Becky Jesse Cris Jesse Jason Joyner Julie

Carol Keen Krystine Kercher Dawn King Leighton Rebecca LuElla Miller John W. Otte Donita K. Paul Sarah Sawyer Chawna Schroeder Tammy Shelnut James Somers Kathleen Smith Rachel Starr Thomson Robert Treskillard Steve Trower Fred Warren Jason Waguespac Dona Watson Phyllis Wheeler Jill Williamson