Gaius Aurelius Constantine Helogabalus Thrax is a dragon exterminator. He would rather be called Robert, and he would definitely rather not be an exterminator. His father was an exterminator before him and taught him everything he knew before he died. Now, much as Robert hates the job, he can’t quit, for his poor family needs the money.

Robert’s long name is a reflection of his mother’s ambition for him, as well as her fascination with royalty and nobility. She pushes Robert, and she irritates him, but she is a good and loving mother. As a testament to this fact, she embraces the little dragonets Robert rescues and brings home. There are five or six living secretly in their home, and the whole family loves them and protects them.

When one of Robert’s sister complains that he always names the dragons and she never gets to, and Robert answers that he doesn’t name them. No human can name them. Instead, they tell him their name. He talks to them all the time, and listens to their silent answers. He understands their intelligence, and he loves them.

And yet, in his day job, he must to go into people’s homes and businesses to kill them, or to capture them and take them to the dragon market, where they are most often killed for their meat and skins, sometimes in cruel ways.

This is the conundrum Robert lives with, while dreaming of a different life, one that often seems out of reach

Meanwhile, up at the castle, Princess Cerise entertains and rejects a constant stream of suitors. Then one day, Prince Reginald, from the most powerful of the nearby kingdoms, arrives on the scene, and he is perfect in every princely way. The smitten princess is suddenly aware of how run down the castle has become and demands everything be fixed. Or at least, if most of the repairs would take too long, the infestation of dragons must be taken care of—at once.

So Robert is called, and his life becomes entangled with the lives of Princess Cerise and Pince Reginald whether he likes it or not.

Princess Cerise finds Reginald perfect, but he has not actually come to win her hand. In fact, his meeting her at all is a complete accident. He is just traveling about the countryside, adventuring, as he calls it, trying in some way to live up to his powerful and sometimes brutal father’s idea of what a prince and future king should be. He is even indifferent to the princess, though he treats her with respect and courtesy. If Reginald had it his way, he would just be left alone.

But his valet (whom Reginald’s father has sent along to keep an eye on him) convinces him that marrying a princess and killing a large dragon would be exactly the thing to win his father’s approval. Robert is roped into taking Reginald into the mountains to find the dragon he will kill. When Princess Cerise learns of this, she insists on going along to help and observe, and organizes a huge retinue to accompany the party.

But all is not as expected in the mountains. An evil is lurking there that the royal party is not prepared for. Now Robert, Cerise, and Reginald are faced with life-altering circumstances, and the rest of the story shows us how they come to terms with who they are and what they really want in life.

Despite this dark turn in the mountains, I’m Afraid You’ve Got Dragons is a fairly light-hearted, whimsical story. The characters (save for Reginald’s father and an evil wizard who wreaks havoc), are all heart-warming folk, whether they be royalty or commoners. And it is at heart a romance, one with a big question mark throughout the book. I thought I knew who would get the girl, but I truly wasn’t sure, and could see more than one good outcome.

But it’s more than just a romance, which is why this this non-romance reader was reading it. I cheered, not just for the love story, but for the growth of the characters as they suffer and learn throughout the story.

Peter S. Beagle is best known for his masterful fantasy, The Last Unicorn. I read that book years ago, and recently reread it, but somehow never thought to see what else he had written until I stumbled across this story. It’s fairly recent (2024), and Beagle’s story-telling powers are just as strong as when he wrote The Last Unicorn. That suggests to me there are treasures waiting to be discovered in among the works he published between the Unicorn and the Dragons. But for now, I’m delighted to have discovered I’m Afraid You’ve got Dragons. If you want a fun, light, adventure fantasy, with some romance thrown in, you can’t go wrong with this book. I couldn’t put it down, and I suspect you won’t be able to either.

The Caringorms in the eastern highlands of Scotland are not a high mountain range by worldwide standards, rising only a little over 4,000 feet, but they are rugged and beautiful, with an arctic-alpine environment, home to a variety of wildlife and dotted with deep valleys, lochs (lakes) and coiries (glacial bowls). While many people outside the area have never heard of this mountain range, it engenders deep love and loyalty among those who take the time to get to know it.

This was certainly the case for Nan Shepherd, a local of the area, who spent many, many hours hill walking in the area and getting to know the landscape intimately. The result was a wonderful little book about her experiences, The Living Mountain, which she wrote in the 1940’s, stuck in a drawer, and finally published 30 years later. It gives a fascinating glimpse into the mountains, and into the lives of those who love them.

Merryn Glover also grew up with mountains, but her experience was very different. An Australian by birth and the child of missionary parents, she grew up in India and Nepal, in the shadow of the Himalayas, among which are some of the world’s highest peaks. When she moved to Scotland after her marriage, she didn’t think much of the Cairngorms.

But she married a man who lovingly introduced her to them and helped her get to know them. And she discovered Nan Shepherd’s The Living Mountain, and a new way of viewing these mountains that were part of her new home.

Following in Nan Shepherd’s footsteps, Glover undertook the challenge of truly getting to know the Cairngorms, and she shares her journey with us in The Hidden Fires. Following Shepherd’s organization and chapter titles, Glover records her own impressions of the mountains, overlayed with Shepherd’s understanding of the area. But, though she closely aligns her work with Shepherd’s, it is imbued with her own perceptions and her own experiences, both on the mountain and in her life beyond the mountains—in her memories of growing up in the Himalayas, in her understanding of the history of the larger world as it relates to the Cairngorms, and even, or maybe especially, in her viewpoint as an outsider, new to these mountains.

I read The Living Mountain before reading Glover’s account, and found it to be a wonderful account of one woman’s deep involvement with the landscape she loved most. But I read it as from a distance. It was interesting as a work of Nature writing, but I didn’t identify closely with Shepherd.

How different my experience of reading The Hidden Fires. Perhaps this is because Glover came to the mountains first as an outsider, just as I am an outsider. Perhaps it is because Glover’s worldview more closer aligns with my own Christian worldview (though the book is not a Christian book per se, and is not intended to be). Perhaps it is because Glover shares so much more of herself in her work than Shepherd does.

I found Glover’s candor and transparency the most engaging aspect of the book. In one of the later chapters, in which she talks about walking solo and sleeping alone in the mountains (as Nan Shepherd often did), she shares with the reader her fears. These are not just the natural fears for physical safety when walking alone along rugged paths and spending the night as a woman alone and unprotected. Beyond that, she shares the fears of a lifetime, and how she overcame them, how the experiences of her life led her from fear to a place where she could spend an uncomfortable night in a tent by herself and say that although it was a terrible night in many ways (physical discomfort for one), she was not afraid.

She shares, as she faces the dark that was such a source of fear in her childhood:

Night unfurls herself, taking ever more time and space, spreading brighter stars and bigger moons across her black beauty. There will be owls and firesides. There will be dark.

And at last, I realise—almost by surprise—that I am not afraid. I can walk alone for I am not alone. I can love the dark, ‘for even the darkness is not dark to you . . . And when I wake, I am still with you.’ (Page 200).

The end of this quote is taken from Psalm 139, one of the instances, scattered throughout the book, of similar scriptural quotes, not referenced, likely not recognized by many readers, but breathed out by Glover as a natural response from her understanding of the natural world with God in it.

It is here where Glover’s thoughts meet mine and resonate with me. And it is also in her loving exploration of a place that is new to her, in her opening of herself to experience something in nature that she had not been open to when she first moved to Scotland. The book inspires me, not to get to know the Cairngorms (though I would love to visit them someday), but to find a landscape nearer home, a manifestation of nature that speaks to me the way the Scottish mountains speak to Glover and spoke to Shepherd, and get to know it in a more intimate way.

Though Shepherd’s The Living Mountain is a worthwhile read, you do not need to read it to understand and enjoy The Hidden Fires. And even if nature writing is not your usual reading choice, this glimpse, not only into nature, but also into one woman’s journey of discovery through nature, will pull you in, inspire you as it has done me, and perhaps even soothe your soul.

In the Forests of Serre by Patricia A. McKillip is aptly named, for the thick, dark forests that cover the land of Serre, imbued with a magic that goes deep into the land, overshadow the entire story. They drive the plot and mold the characters. Without the forests there would be no story.

In the opening pages we find Prince Ronan of Serre riding through the forests and, in the most desolate spot, crossing paths with Brume—the Mother of All Witches. He inadvertently tramples and kills her favorite white hen. In response she curses him, telling him he will have a very bad day and that, when he leaves his father’s palace at the end of it, he will not find his way back home until he finds her again.

And he does, indeed, find his day getting worse when he reaches the palace, for his father informs him that Princess Sidonie of Dacia is will arrive in three days and at that time she and Ronan will be married.

Ronan protests that he cannot marry. He has been away with his father’s armies, trying to get himself killed because the grief he feels over the loss of his first wife and child, both dead in childbirth, is unbearable. He cannot imagine taking another woman into his life, but his father, a hard, determined, and powerful man, insists it will happen, whether he wants it or not, for he must produce heirs.

Before the princess can arrive, the firebird, one of the most beautiful permutations of Serre’s magic, flies into Ronan’s line of vision, singing her bewitching song, and he runs into the forest, chasing her, mad with enchantment and unable to find his way home, just as Brume predicted.

Meanwhile, Sidonie, also unhappy about an arranged marriage, especially one that takes her so far from home, is on her way. Only her love for her father and for the land of Dacia has persuaded her to come, for she knows the King of Serre will attack and conquer Dacia if she refuses.

The wizard Gyre accompanies her as her guard. The great wizard, Unciel has sent Gyre because he himself is too sick and weak to make the journey, having expended all his energy fighting some mysterious evil. He will not speak of what he fought, and Euan, the lowly scribe who tends Unciel, tries to understand the wizard through the stories he copies. As things deteriorate in Serre, Euan supports Unciel in the ongoing battle against the elusive evil.

That evil, once thought dead, shows its face in the forests of Serre just as Sidonie and Gyre arrive. Ronan, the King, Gyre, Sidonie, and even the witch Brume, all encounter it and try in their various ways to fight it or to come to terms with it. It gets all mixed in with the magic of Serre and with the beauty of the land and its magic. Each of the characters must go into the forest in one way or another (for Euan, the scribe, this is metaphorical, as he enters Serre through story and through Unciel’s thoughts) to engage with the magic, to face the evil, and to discover themselves.

Can this evil finally be defeated and how? And what does the struggle and its resolution mean for the characters and for the reader?

That’s a question I’ve been grappling with since I first read this book some 20 to 25 years ago. It’s taken me multiple readings to understand this story. Perhaps I’m just dimwitted, but I don’t think so. In the Forests of Serre is a book that gives up its rewards slowly over extended time. Or rather, it begins to deliver its rewards at once but gives up its secrets more slowly.

I think, after my recent reread, I finally understand, and it’s very satisfying. Now, am I going to share my understanding with you?

Of course not. That would be to deny you the pleasure of discovering the story’s meaning for yourself. But if you don’t understand everything on your first read through, don’t worry. The book is completely satisfying, even without total understanding, because it is so incredibly beautiful. McKillip’s prose is so lush and lovely, you might lose yourself in it and forget to even worry about understanding the story. But you’ll have a sense as you read that it all fits together to create meaning even if what that meaning is remains elusive for a time.

To delve into its rewards, and begin to uncover its secrets, there’s no better time to start than now. If you’re looking for a perfect book to relax with over the holiday, I highly recommend this fantasy story.

From the opening pages of Neal Stephenson’s Science Fiction novel Anathem, we are immersed in the world of a Mathic Consent, something akin to our own world’s medieval monasteries, but with a purpose that is the Christian Monastery’s mirror opposite. Where the monastery was formed for the worship of God and only fostered learning, including philosophy and science, as a secondary purpose, the Mathic Consents of Arbe have made the study of mathematics and science their primary goal. The residents are free to believe in a god, but most do not.

And yet, the feel is the same, as we follow Fraa Erasmus and his friends and mentors through their daily rituals, including a clock winding ceremony, complete with musical chants and bell changes, that mirrors the feel of the Medieval divine offices of the liturgy. And there is a rightness about this. The monastic feel of the Mathic world creates a fitting atmosphere for the deep dive into philosophy that Stephenson takes us on in this novel.

As the story opens, Erasmus’s Consent is approaching Apert, the time when the gates will be open for ten days, allowing those inside the consent and those outside its walls to mingle freely. This is the first time since age eight (ten years previous) that Erasmus has had contact with a family member, and he revels in spending time with Cord, his Sib (sibling—in this case, sister). But more things are set in motion during these ten days of intermingling than family reunions.

Shortly after the gates close again, things are shaken up, first with the call from the secular power for a member of the consent to come out to consult with them. Then Fraa Orolo, Erasmus’s mentor, is kicked out of the order for unknown infractions. Erasmus and his friends begin a diligent and secret inquiry to discover what prompted this expulsion.

What they discover astonishes them. Orolo has used illicit instrumentation to detect a ship of some kind from out of their own solar system, now in orbit around Arbe. Amidst intense speculation about the type and purpose of this ship, more members are called out of the Consent—first some of Erasmus’s friends, and finally, Erasmus himself.

This launches him into an adventure of discovery, not only concerning the alien ship, but also about himself, the world outside his Consent’s walls, and ultimately, the nature of the cosmos. What he finds surprises him and pulls him into further adventures, and in turn, his discoveries pull the reader along in an immersive experience.

The conclusions Stephenson draws about the nature of the cosmos do not reflect my own worldview. But while I do not agree with them, I was mesmerized by the process by which he revealed them, by the story of Erasmus’s journey of seeking. This book that is part adventure Science Fiction, is also part careful examination of a philosophical journey.

How Stephenson pulls off the combination of such disparate purposes is a study in consummate storytelling, skillful writing, and detailed, immersive world-building. There were times when it was difficult for me to follow the technical dive into mathematics, science, logic, and philosophy, but at no time was I ever bored, no matter how difficult a passage I was slogging through.

This is because, no matter what philosophical treatise I was passing through, the journey of Erasmus and his friends remained in the forefront and pulled me through. This journey was so riveting, I pulled myself away from the book only with difficulty to attend to other things, and came back to the story as soon as I could.

I’m almost sorry I’ve read this book, as I will never again have the pleasure of discovering it for the first time, and yet I’m so glad to have read it. If you’re looking for a book that challenges you, and then stays with you for a long time, this one is for you.

Maxine Justice is plunging toward rock bottom. After being fired from her position at a big law firm, she started her own firm as a personal injury attorney, but things haven’t gone too well. She’s behind on rent for both her office and her apartment, she hasn’t paid her assistant, Kenji, and she has no groceries. She can’t even feed her cat.

Looking for a quick infusion of cash, she takes a gig at the night court, where she’ll get enough money for a small payment to Kenji and some groceries. But this backfires when she runs head on into a cover up. The judge in her courtroom is involved and trumps up accusations of a breach of law against Maxine.

Instead of cash in hand, she ends up with a huge fine and probation, requiring her to meet with the robotic counselor Singh on a regular basis. It seems things couldn’t get worse.

Daniel Schwabauer, in Maxine Justice: Galactic Attorney, sets up his protagonist to be any easy mark for the strange looking men she sees talking to one of the other lawyers in the night court.

When she returns to her office in the morning, one of these men, a Dr. Arounais, visits her. She is put off by his appearance. His “eyes were set too close together, his nose was slightly too long, and his cheeks were a bit too high, so that, seeing him straight on, you got the feeling he’d been streamlined by some alternate evolutionary processes to move through water rather than air”.

In keeping with his strange appearance, he claims to be from a group of extra-terrestrials called the Iperians and to represent the Galactic Body General. He has a proposition for humanity.

Dr. Arounais proposes to cure the human race of every natural flaw in exchange for one third of the earth’s gold reserves. He wants Maxine to represent his space community in order to work out a contract with the United Nations.

Thinking these men are just kooks in need of psychiatric help, Maxine turns down Dr. Arounais’s offer, but when she meets him again after discovering she has been evicted from her home and her cat is missing, she reconsiders. Especially after he plunks down a wad of cash.

The Iperians set Maxine up in a luxurious office in the most expensive high rise in the city, give her a huge salary, and she goes to work. They provide a serum for her to test, and the results are amazing. Though she can’t bring herself to believe Dr Arounais is for real, a part of her is beginning to want to believe.

But how does one with no connections get in to see anyone in the United Nations with the power to authorize a contract between all of humanity and aliens from outer space? The job forces Maxine to get creative, while at the same time she dodges assignation attempts from the large pharmaceutical companies, who have good reason to keep her from success.

And what can she do if, when she does all that she is hired to do, she discovers that her clients, the Iperians and the Galactic Body General, have more sinister schemes than she could have imagined. Is there a legal way to wiggle out of the disaster she sees looming ahead? And is she lawyer enough to find it. Is she a strong enough person of integrity to find it?

Maxine Justice: Galactic Lawyer is a fun romp with a serious side. Reading it is like a roller coaster ride, as Maxine speeds from one triumph to the next disaster without time to catch her breath. Kenji and Singh are alongside her for the ride, and it is through Singh, the robot counselor, that we see how integrity and faith can truly be a bulwark against disaster.

The book is a Christian Sci-Fi almost-thriller, without any hint of preachiness and with a strong dose of humor. I didn’t laugh out loud while reading, but I enjoyed an internal chuckle many times. And I was rooting for Maxine the entire time. And Kenji. And Singh. And the entire human race. To say nothing of the cat.

If you’re looking for something light to read, something that leans toward sci-fi but with a strong dose of recognizable earth culture (often portrayed tongue-in-cheek), written with humor and warmth, this book is for you. I highly recommend it.

Raise your hand if you think Science Fiction is a little weird (Eileen raises hand).

Now raise your hand if you like the weirdness (E. raises hand again).

If you raised your hand to both questions, Adrian Tchaikovsky’s Last Architect Series is for you. This is space opera at its finest, and Tchaikovsky doesn’t hold back on any of the things Science Fiction fans, and especially space opera fans are looking for.

First he gives us the almost derelict ship that somehow keeps performing when the action is the hottest and the need the greatest. Then he crews that ship with a motley group of spacers who don’t quite fit in with polite society and like it that way. Their pilot is Idris, an Intermediary, a human who has been engineered to be able to navigate through unspace, allowing this ship, this crew to go places not every ship can go.

The ship in this story, The Vulture God, is a salvage vessel, and when they go after a lost vessel in unspace, they find a ship that has been architected, that is, reworked into a bizarre, coiling shapes by huge crystalline beings that have been dubbed the Architects. In the process of a world’s (or a ship’s, or any structure’s) reshaping, all surface life is wiped out.

The architects emerged from unspace more than one hundred years before the time of our story and reshaped Earth, devasting humanity, though enough humans had already begun colonizing other worlds that the race was not completely wiped out. The human survivors, along with other species in the galaxy, joined together in war against the Architects, but any action they took only gave a few more residents of a targeted world time to escape into space.

The war finally ended when the Intermediaries (Ints) were developed. Ints had the ability to reach into the minds of the Architects, and they convinced them to go away and leave the peoples of the galaxy alone. Thus the war ended

Or so everyone thought–so everyone believed for fifty years. Until the Vulture God found that architected ship and hauled it back to real space.

The discovery plunges the crew of the Vulture God into a whirl of unexpected activity, in which, for one reason or another, everyone seems to have it in for them. Human civilization doesn’t have any use for them, and the Hegemony, an advanced society of giant clams (yes, the weirdness, but it works) picks a fight with them. Or at least one of their rebel citizens, a crime lord does.

The Parthenon, a space bound society of parthenogenically grown women, sees something else in them and sends one of their representatives (Solace) as a liaison, though Solace’s main interest is in the Intermediary, Idris, with whom she was friends during the war. Solace joins the crew of the Vulture God, as they try to uncover the secrets of the universe in order to combat the new architect threat.

The strange creatures of Tchaikovsky’s world begin to feel familiar, and the crew of the Vulture God becomes a group of people to cheer whole-heartedly for. The convolutions of the plot are too intricate to recount in a short review, but suffice it to say, they constitute a fun romp, while also presenting enough peril to keep the reader on the edge of the seat and turning pages.

In the end, the crew and the companions they acquire along the way, must go into unspace and try to confront the masters who are sending the architects to do their heinous work. All of their talents, strength, and loyalty will be needed to help Idris, whose mind is beginning to understand the shape of the universe, the minds of the Architects, and the character of their masters. This little, fearful man, who seems nothing like a hero, must find a way to save all the life the Architects’ masters are trying to destroy.

The three books, Shards of Earth, Eyes of the Void, and Lords of Uncreation, take us on a face-paced adventure with characters whose quirky foibles become endearing as the story progresses. The books are mostly clean, with only the occasional mention of sex and not a single sex scene, and with normal Science Fiction violence, which did not feel gratuitous and overdone to me (though it can get a little gory from time to time). One character has a foul mouth, so if that sort of thing bothers you, this series might not be for you. But she is a character with good reasons for the chip on her shoulder, who has been forced to fight with the world with attitude to survive. None of the other characters speaks in this way, save for a stray swear word here or there.

If you can get past the language of this one character, and if you can embrace the weirdness, you will find these books to be a lot of fun, with a bit of a serious side as well. The Guardian calls Tchaikovsky the “break-out star of contemporary British SF.” If you give these books a try, I think you’ll understand why.

The Chronicles of Narnia by C. S. Lewis are such a classic, it’s hard to even know what to say about them. Reams have already been written. How can I add anything new? And many of your already know them, or know about them, from the various film versions if not from the books themselves.

But I’ve known, since I started this Book Feature segment, that I would need to write about them sometime, and I’m realizing that now is the time. So here goes.

A girl named Lucy opens a wardrobe door in an old house in the country and steps in. But where the back of the wardrobe should be, a wondrous winter landscape opens up. In this winter woodland, she find a lamppost, and wonders what it is doing here in the middle of the wood. As she stands there wondering what to do next, she hears feet coming toward her, and a faun steps out from among the trees with an armload of parcels that he drops at her feet. And as they introduce themselves, Lucy Pevensie and Tumnus the Faun, Lucy learns that she has stepped into a land called Narnia.

Though this is not the beginning of the land of Narnia, it is the beginning of the story Lewis had to share with us. Some recent collections of the Chronicles place The Magician’s Nephew in the starting spot. After all, this is where we are shown Aslan singing Narnia into life. But I hold to the order of my old book set, the order in which Lewis wrote and published the stories, with The Lion the Witch, and the Wardrobe first.

Though chronological storytelling sometimes makes sense, in this case, it is the step into wonder that is most important. We start the series with that first discovery made by one little girl in war torn England. We feel the crisp winter air and it invigorates us. We see the lamppost and wonder at it along with Lucy.

The presence of the lamppost is explained in The Magician’s Nephew and for this reason alone, I would not put that book first. We need to share that moment of magic and wonder along with Lucy, and discover Narnia in all its full-blown majesty. We need to learn that Narnia is waiting for two kings and two queens, who will be kings and queens forever, and then see Lucy, her sister Susan, and her two brothers, Peter and Edmund, come into the land and test the prophecy.

We need to see the land where it is always winter but never Christmas, a land hushed by the expectancy that Aslan, the son of the Emperor from Over the Sea, will come again, and the rush of exhilaration as we learn, with the children that Aslan is a lion, not a tame lion, and not safe, but good.

The Chronicles are packed full of theology, wisdom, and adventure, but it is the wonder of the opening chapters of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe that set the tone for the entire series. It is this wonder that has captivated readers of various beliefs for decades, both those who share Lewis’s beliefs and those two do not. The wonder and the adventure. And the deep understanding that all of it, though purely fantasy, is completely true nonetheless.

This is all you really need to know about Narnia before venturing into its world through the pages of Lewis’s seven books—The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Prince Caspian, The Voyage of the “Dawn Treader,” The Silver Chair, The Horse and His Boy, The Magician’s Nephew, and The Last Battle. If you have never read the books before, telling you more could only spoil your first taste of the wonder.

And I would encourage you to read the books before watching any film adaptations. I’ve enjoyed the films that were made in the first decade of this century, covering the first three books, but I’m glad I had read the stories many times first. Now there is a new set of films afoot, being directed for Netflix by Greta Gerwig. There is some controversy around these plans, especially as pertains to the voicing of Aslan. This is something to pay attention to, for those of us who adhere to Lewis’s original vision for the story, and the underlying theology.

But even if the controversy dies down and Gerwig makes great adaptations, I’m disappointed, for the reasons I have already discussed, by the fact that The Magician’s Nephew will be the first film in the Netflix series, and they will take them in chronological order. I do not believe this order is true to Lewis’s vision.

Of course, every reading or filming of any story is always an interpretation. Even when we sit alone in an armchair and read the original words on the page, we are writing the story along with the author, seeing it in a unique way as only we can. But if you watch a film, you are not seeing your own vision first, but a vision as filtered through a mediator, with their own unique point of view.

I’m not sure this matters for every book converted into film. But with a classic as seminal as The Chronicles of Narnia, something is lost by not entering them alone, just you and the words Lewis put on the page, just the two of you sharing a vision of wonder and adventure and truth. So enjoy the films if you like, but I encourage you, if you haven’t already done so, to read the books first, opening your mind and heart of a world of wonder that’s not quite like any other.

Establishing a human colony on Mars is a growing aspiration within a certain technological and scientific sector of our country. They say it will be hard, very hard, but possible. And they are determined to make it happen.

Kelly and Zach Weinersmith suggest it might be even harder than anyone thinks. In A City on Mars, they take a long, careful look (splashed with a dose of humor) at not only the technological challenges, but at the societal and ethical challenges. The subtitle of the book—Can We Settle Space, Should We Settle Space, and Have We Really Thought This Through?—gives an idea of the breadth and depth of their treatise.

Though much of the book is a run-down of all the difficulties that come with a space colony project, the Weinersmiths open the book with a look at commonly stated justifications for taking on such an expensive and difficult proposition—space myths, as they call them.

The list of eight arguments they address are 1) Space Will Save Humanity from Near-Term Calamity by Providing a New Home; 2) Space Settlement Will Save Earth’s Environment by Relocating Industry and Population Off-World; 3) Space Resources Will Make Us All Rich; 4) Space Settlement will End, or at Least Mitigate, War; 5) Space Exploration Is a Natural Human Urge; 6) Space Will Unify Us; 7) Space Travel Will Make Us Wise; and 8) Creating Nations in Space Will Reinvigorate Our Homogenized Bureaucratic, and Generally Wussified, Earth Culture.

If you made it all the way through that list and found yourself nodding at one or more of those, thinking, yes, that makes sense, that’s a good justification for gearing up for Mars, think again.

In a short page or two each, the Weinersmiths debunk these arguments in no uncertain terms. By the time I’d gotten through all their counterarguments, I was beginning to agree that there aren’t a lot of good reasons to pursue a colony on Mars (to be fair, I was ambivalent before, so I wasn’t hard to convince).

They do follow these arguments by what they consider two good reasons for chasing the goal. One is that, while a space colony won’t help solve our short-term problems, it could be a way to preserve humanity in the long term. And then, they add that going into space might be worthwhile just because it’s awesome–still a perfectly serviceable argument in their view.

Once they’ve dealt this opening heavy blow to the idea of space settlement, they turn to all the hard stuff, the problems that we’ve yet to solve and may never be able to solve. This includes things like how to live and remain healthy in a low-gravity environment, to say nothing of being able to return to earth once your bones have stretched and weakened under those conditions. Add to that the dangers, both those we can guess and those that will be unexpected pitfalls, of having children in low-gravity. Can it even be done? And without procreation, can we really have a viable, long-term settlement, in space?

And where can such a settlement be built. The space domes of Science Fiction are not feasible due to the high levels of radiation, something only Earth’s atmosphere is designed to shield us from. Towns would have to be built below ground and would look very different from our Science Fiction ideal. In addition, the viable locations will be few and far between.

Mining space resources comes with its own set of problems and would be very expensive. Everything, every piece of equipment, every method of refinement and development would have to take into account the extreme toxicity of the environment.

The Weinersmiths take on all these issues, and finish with a lengthy discussion of space law and how the political states that share our Earth would divide and allocate space and its resources, or fight over it, and how the weaponization of space could spell disaster for humankind rather than salvation.

These are all issues that should be addressed before we ever attempt to go to Mars or to establish a colony in space, but the push is on, with the blind hope that all this will work itself out in an enlightened society in space.

The space barons of the current day, guys like Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and others, who are throwing billions of dollars at the project in their determination to make it work, are very smart people, but I’m inclined to agree with the Weinersmiths that they haven’t thought this all out as thoroughly as they should.

A City On Mars is not only a very thoughtful discussion of our space aspirations, but it is humorous as well, and highly entertaining. I could hardly put it down once I started, and I came away much better educated on space exploration than I was before. I still love books and films about space travel, and I’ll always be a Star Trek fan, but I now have a more realistic view of what this might mean for the real world, and I’ll watch further developments with a healthy skepticism.

If you’re a science geek, or a Science Fiction fan, or in some other way delighted by space and its possibilities, then I invite you to get a copy of A City of Mars and read it with an open mind. Or even if this isn’t something you follow and have a special interest in, I think you’ll find it an interesting and fun read, one I highly recommend.

Meg Murry, the protagonist in Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time, is having a hard school year. She doesn’t fit in with her schoolmates, she makes poor grades even though her mother insists her mind is fine—even better than fine—she feels ugly and awkward, and, worst of all, her brilliant physicist father is missing.

No one knows where Meg’s father is. He was working on a secret project, and the letters just stopped. Meg’s mother still writes to him everyday, believing without wavering that he is still alive. The townspeople think he just ran off and left his wife and family, and this, more than anything else, makes Meg’s life miserable.

The only person (besides, perhaps, her mother) who truly understands Meg is her baby brother, Charles Wallace. Charles Wallace is also a misfit, a child so brilliant and with such a special understanding of esoteric scientific and mystical concepts, that most people will never be able to comprehend how his mind works. In fact, because he doesn’t talk much outside the family, most people think he’s an idiot, not all there, deficient somehow.

When Charles Wallace meets three strange old ladies, Mrs. Whatsit, Mrs. Who, and Mrs. Which, Meg is nervous about them. But as she gets to know them, she realizes they are magical beings, here to help bring her father home. Meg is confused about this at first, as she has no idea where her father is, but she comes to understand that he disappeared when an experiment went wrong, an experiment in tessering—that is, in traveling great distances by folding space and time.

Thus begins a wondrous and terrifying adventure. One of Meg’s schoolmates, Calvin, joins them, and Meg discovers he is much like Charles Wallace, sharing the same brilliance and special understanding of the world. Together, they travel with the three strange ladies to worlds they never imagined existed, and confront a dark force that is holding Meg’s father and threatening many worlds, including their own world, earth.

Though Charles Wallace believes he can resist the evil they face and free their father, his overconfidence undoes him, leaving him at the mercy of the dark force. Neither Calvin nor Meg’s father can help Charles Wallace, and it becomes Meg’s task to combat the dark force and free them all to go home again.

Meg doesn’t want this task. She feels inadequate and wants her father, or one of the ladies, who all seem so much more capable than her, to fight the fight. But it is her fight, and finally she finds that she can face it for the sake of her brother.

A Wrinkle in Time is a Science Fiction classic (Number three on Amazon in children’s classic and number one in children’s time travel science fiction). It was written for children, because, as L’Engle commented, if adults can’t understand the story you have to tell, you have to write it for children. In truth, this is a book both children and adults can enjoy. I’ve read it a number of times, and recently reread it with as great enjoyment as when I first read it as a child. First published in 1962, it’s a timeless story that will be on our library and bookstore shelves for the foreseeable future.

L’Engle was a Christian, and though the book is not specifically Christian, the themes are in line with a Christian world view. The large themes of trust, love, and self-sacrifice are writ small in the life of one confused teen searching for a way to belong in the world and make a difference to those she loves most. I haven’t seen any of the film versions (I believe there are a couple) but I don’t think any film could improve on L’Engle’s prose, which is both elegant and completely approachable.

If you haven’t read this wonderful story, I suggest you not wait too much longer. You’ll discover a book that can be both an inspiration and a lifetime book friend.

Madeleine L’Engle, most famous for her children’s classic, A Wrinkle in Time, and the follow-up stories (4 more of them in that series), also shared a lot of wisdom through her non-fiction. The best known of these, a book dear to the hearts of many writers and other artists, is Walking on Water. It’s subtitle, Reflections on Faith and Art, is most appropriate, as L’Engle rambles through—reflects on—a lot of ideas about faith and art.

Despite the rambling nature of her musings, however, the book offers some clear thematic ideas. These are revisited many times throughout the book, giving it a coherence you might not notice if you read too fast or with too little focus. I found, on my second reading, that making notes, in my case with lots of sticky notes attached to relevant pages, helped highlight these themes. I’m not normally a note-taker, but I found this practice extremely helpful in getting the most out of this book.

The title of the book comes from the idea, introduced early on, that we, as artists and as people of faith, can do many things we believe to be impossible. For example, walking on water. This is a reference to a story in the New Testament, in which Jesus approaches his disciples in their boat, walking across the water. Peter, always brash, challenges Jesus to command him to walk across the water to him. Jesus takes up the challenge, issues the command–or invitation–and Peter gets out of the boat. And he walks on water. It isn’t until he looks down and realizes what he is doing that he begins to sink. He must turn his eyes of faith back where they belong to steady his steps.

L’Engle stresses two things that come out of this story. One is that we as artists can do impossible things. We can tell truth through our stories, paintings, music, and other art, truth that might not be communicated in any other way. And not only can we tell truth, but we often discover the truth we were hiding from when we keep our eyes of faith fastened on the master Creator and don’t look down to notice what we are doing.

This brings us to the second point L’Engle finds in Peter’s story. We have to get ourselves out of the way of our art. We can’t look down and think too much about what we are doing. We have to make room for the art, and learn to serve the art.

This second point leads into discussions on the necessity of humility, on the need to recapture the creativity of children, and on avoiding what she calls “the dirty devices of the world” (from a quote by Traherne). By this she means all the distractions, the so-called grown-up attitudes, the fears and desire for control that dull our imaginations.

L’Engle has much to say on faith as well. She sees faith and art as inextricably intertwined. The book was a response to the question of what it means to be a Christian artist, and she responded with discomfort at the term. We struggle to live by faith everyday. We struggle to be true to our art everyday. And the two intersect, often in unexpected ways. Didactic attempts to make “Christian” art seldom result in great art.

Many of the things she suggests are, or should be true for a Christian artist are equally true for the best of the secular artists. The only difference she sees between the two is in the purpose of the work. For a Christian “the purpose of the work, be it story or music or painting, is to further the coming of the kingdom, to make us aware of our status as children of God, and to turn our feet toward home.”

With this purpose as a guiding light, the artist who combines art and faith will be finding cosmos in chaos. The chaos is all around us, but in our art, we can point to the cosmos of the master Creator.

For a writer like myself, this book is very inspirational, a good reminder of how I want to go about my art. But I believe everyone can benefit from this book. The secular artist who does not share L’Engle’s faith (and mine), will still find many gems of wisdom that will enhance the creative process. And for those who do not consider themselves artist, and do not aspire to become artist, there is much here that can aid in living any kind of life more creatively, with clearer faith.

Sandra Foster, Connie Willis’s heroine in Bellwether, is a social scientist doing research into fads at HiTek, a research company in Boulder, CO. She studies such things as the Hula Hoop, Barbie dolls, and Miniature Golf. In her current project she is searching for the beginnings of the hair-bobbing trend of the 1920s. Her office is stacked with newspaper and magazine clippings about hair-bobbing as she searches diligently for the trend setter, not to understand hairstyles per se, but to understand how fads get started. And though hair-bobbing is her current gig, she notices fads everywhere, in everything she sees and everything she reads.

Her favorite restaurant on Boulder’s trendy Pearl Street follows the trends in the drinks they offer, much to her dismay (as her favoirte tea is replaced with faddish coffees). The books she can find or must wait for at the library are subject to reading fads. Her best friend is tied to fads as she plans her daughter’s birthday party.

And, worst of all, Hi-Tek, her fictional company, is rife with trendy management and team building techniques, which wreak havoc throughout the ranks, as requirements for funding requests and reporting continually change. The only employee not dismayed by the chaos is Flip, the mail room clerk, who wears duct tape jewelry and acts put-upon when anyone asks her to do her job or get mail deliveries right.

Flip attaches herself to Sandra, who can’t bring herself to be mean to the young woman. It’s a trial for Sandra, but then one of Flip’s mistakes leads to Sandra meeting Bennet O’Reilly, a biological scientist working in the far reaches of the facility.

When Bennet is in danger of losing his funding due to a glitch in the company’s revamped application system, Sandra proposes they work together to study sheep, since she has a friend who can supply a flock and they can observe both the biological and social behaviors of animals. This is when Sandra learns about a bellwether.

A bellwether is a leader of the flock, often identified by a bell around its neck. In broader terms, a bellwether is also an indicator or predictor of things. Exactly what Sandra has been looking for in her fad research. What or who are the bellwethers at the heart of fad formation and dissolution?

As Sandra and Bennet struggle to make their sheep project work, Sandra continues to observe the fads and trends that swirl around her—in Flip’s often odd behavior, in Hi-Tek’s chaotic operating procedures, in the restaurants and other business she frequents, and in the social lives and conversations of her friends and colleagues.

The machinations of the denizens of Hi-Tek are hilarious, and Sandra is often bewildered, searching desperately to make sense of it all. Mostly, she just hangs on to sanity and her job by a thread.

I can’t share what Sandra learns about bellwethers and fads without spoiling the fun for you, but let me assure you, the conclusion of the book is hilariously satisfying—even brilliant. Willis pokes gentle fun at our human foolishness, showing our ridiculous herd (or should I say, flock) mentality, and pushing us to think about how and why we follow trends and fads.

In the process, she also throws in a tremendous wealth of factual flotsam and jetsam. This includes odd facts about various fads, a hoard of scientific information, and a dose of history for good measure. If feels like Willis threw in everything, including the kitchen sink, from years of research—a true case of not wasting anything—but she doles it out with a such a light touch, we hardly realize how much information we are taking in.

Despite the insightful conclusions this book draws, it is primarily a fun romp with a dose of romance to round things out. If you want a break from more serious reading, need a good laugh to relieve the pressures of everyday life, or are looking for the perfect book to take on a relaxing vacation this summer (yes, this would be a great beach read), I highly recommend you read Bellwether by Connie Willis.

For sixty years John F. Kennedy has been connected to the landing of the first astronauts on the moon, even though he had been dead six years by the time of the landing. He accomplished other things in his short presidency, and serious students of his life may deem some of them more important, but in my consciousness, and for many others, I suspect, the moon landing is what we best remember him for.

It was, after all, his vision, combined with his political power, that made the moon reachable. His eloquence fired up the nation and convinced congress to fund the project (an incredibly expensive proposition). There was likely no one else in that era who could have had quite such an impact.

Would we have reached the moon without Kennedy? Very likely. Would we have reached it before 1970 and beat the Soviet Union there? Probably not.

In American Moonshot, Douglas Brinkley gives us the full story

He begins with Dr Robert Goddard, the first prominent rocket scientist in the United States, the first to begin developing the technology that would make an eons long dream a true possibility.

After laying this groundwork, he gives us the backgrounds of both Wernher von Braun and Jack Kennedy. Von Braun grew up in pre-Hitler Germany, and became the leading genius that developed the V-2 rocket for Hitler’s war effort. The V-2 rocket was the basis for all rocket science that followed. After the war, von Braun was brought to the United States, where his knowledge of rocketry was put to work, first for the army, and then for NASA. He and Kennedy became good friends and worked together to advance the cause of space.

In developing Kennedy’s background, Brinkley goes back to the beginning, to his birth in 1917 and his family life. He covers Kennedy’s education, his familial influences (including his older brother Joe, who died as an aviator in the war), and his service in World War II as commander of a U-boat. All these things helped form his political outlook, and pressure from his family funneled him inevitably into politics, even though he may have preferred a more scholarly career.

American Moonshot is really a dual biography, a coin with two equally important sides. On one side, it follows Kennedy through his entire life and career. On the other side, it follows the life and career of the race to the moon, which was an outgrowth of the cold war Kennedy inherited when he came to the presidency. Brinkley can follow both story streams because they follow the same channel to such a large degree.

In his years in congress and then in the presidency, Kennedy interfaced with everyone involved in the space program, and became personal friends with many of them. He made it his business to know everything that was happening on the space front, not only because he was determined to beat the Soviets to the moon, but also because he saw how the scientific advancements necessary to the task benefitted the country in so many ways.

There are many aspects of Kennedy’s life and career that get only brief notice in this book, and the story is crafted to put Kennedy in the best light. For instance, though Brinkley mentions Kennedy’s womanizing during his bachelor days, he makes no mention of it at all after Kennedy’s marriage to Jackie. Of course, this is not germane to the main point of the book, but I noticed its absence, along with the absence of most other issues that might put Kennedy in a negative light. Dwight Eisenhower, Kennedy’s predecessor in the White House, gets a lot more bad press in the book, though he was one of the most beloved presidents of the modern era.

I point out this bias, just to be aware of it. It’s not unexpected that Brinkley would want to put Kennedy in the best possible light, as he is the hero of this story. Whether we should have spent the money to go to the moon so fast when there where so many other needs, whether we should have reacted in such a competitive way to the Soviet’s early successes in space, while given mention here, is left as an argument for another time and place.

Instead, Brinkley highlights the social power of the space race to foster both technological advancements and social cohesion in a time otherwise punctuated by great unrest. Though I suspect my politics might have been in opposition to Kennedy had I been an adult then (I was a small child during this era, and unaware of all the nuances of the space race and the cold war), I found myself cheering whole-heartedly for Kennedy and his moonshot, and feeling sad, knowing he would not be alive to share in the triumph of success.

I found this book, besides being intellectually stimulating, to be a panacea for the less patriotic and very anxious time we are living in now. That may be a false panacea, for the Kennedy era certainly had its downsides as civil rights struggles heated up and the cold war plodded on.

But within this turmoil, Kennedy knew people needed a common goal to work toward and a cause to cheer for, and he gave his people and the people of the world both. Reading it felt like taking in a breath of fresh air. If you need a similar breath of fresh air, or if you are interested in space or in presidential history, I highly recommend you dive into this interesting and informative book.

In Kevin Crossley-Holland’s Arthur trilogy, Arthur de Caldicot is a boy on the brink of manhood in the year 1199. He lives in a medieval manor, in England on the border with Wales. He is learning to read and write, skills that few in his circle have, and he fears his father will send him to a monastery to be a scribe. His dearest wish is to become a knight.

On his thirteenth birthday, an old man named Merlin, who lives on the estate, secretly gives him a special stone, warning him to show it to no-one. As he holds the stone and it warms to his touch, he discovers another world within it–Britian of an earlier era. In this world, another Arthur is fostered out in secret, and only later discovers he is destined to be a king.

Arthur de Caldicot finds the stone oddly comforting, as his own adventures seem to parallel those of his namesake of an earlier time. Even the people in his life, including his family members, show up in similar roles in the seeing stone. He finds a sense of belonging in this other world.

Meanwhile, in the real world, Arthur grapples with how he fits in with his family and friends and what his role in the world should be. His best friend, Gatty, is a serf, and her life is hard. Arthur sees it as only right that he should help her when he can, but his family sees it as beneath his place. Each person has their God-given place in the world and must live accordingly. It is a testament to Arthur’s character, that he does not see the rightness of this, and continues to be a friend to Gatty.

His own life, privileged though it is, is not easy by modern day standards. Crossley-Holland shows life in medieval England with all its deprivations and ignorance, even among the nobility, with clear-eyed dispassion. We see Arthur reacting to his world as it really must have been, not as to a romanticized story of knights and ladies.

Arthur’s story continues to parallel that of the seeing stone Arthur, even to the startling revelation about his family that he receives at the end of book one. He is astonished and disheartened by the turn of events, and the only thing that mitigates his distress is the news that he is going to the estate of his father’s liege lord, Lord Stephen, to be a squire, at last to learn to be a knight.

Book two finds Arthur making his home with his new lord and learning the ways of a knight. Romance blossoms for him as well, and further complications arise related to his family situation. It is also a time of excitement as a new crusade has been called and Lord Stephen is planning to take the cross. Arthur will take the cross too and go with him. Through all this, he continues to follow the adventures in his seeing stone, learning from the deeds of the other Arthur—King Arthur now—and his knights of the Round Table.

And finally, book three takes him across the sea to meet up with other crusaders and to embark on what was to become the disastrous Fourth Crusade that pitted Christian against Christian at the gates of Constantinople. In his adventures, Arthur knows pride, sorrow, shame, and compassion, and becomes a man to be respected and admired.

The three books of Crossley-Holland’s Arthur trilogy are The Seeing Stone, At the Crossing Places, and King of the Middle March. Crossley-Holland does a magnificent job, not only of showing us life in medieval Europe, but of weaving the Arthurian legend into the story in a meaningful and delightful way.

The stories are categorized both as Children’s literature and as Young Adult novels, and I believe this is accurate, as they can be enjoyed by a wide range of ages. I can see how a child would like these books. Certainly, the prose level is appropriate, and the chapters are mostly very short, sometimes only one page, though there are some that are 8-10 pages. But this book doesn’t pull any punches about the conditions in 1199—either the physical conditions or the attitudes. There are a few things in here that a child, even at middle grade level, might have trouble with (a man loses his hand for stealing, for instance). As an adult, I found this book refreshing in its manner of showing the dark side of life in this time period without pushing intentionally into unnecessary darkness for the sake of being dark and edgy.

This trilogy is a fresh example of how children’s literature, when done right, can appeal to adults as well as to children. A refreshing blend of historical fiction and Arthurian fantasy, I highly recommend these books to anyone from Middle Grade to 100+ years of age. You really can’t go wrong if you add it to your reading pile.

Kit’s life in London is full of dead-ends. He doesn’t have a close family, his job is unsatisfactory, and his girlfriend, Wilhelmina (Mina), is less than exciting. He thinks he really needs to get a better girlfriend. For now, however, he finds himself repeatedly drawn back to her. But even when he does try to spend some time with her on a day off, he can’t seem to get there, what with a used up subway pass, temporarily closed stations, and pouring rain.

And when he dashes down an alley as a short-cut, he is accosted by an old man who seems to know him—even knows his real name is Cosimo. The man claims to be his long-lost great-grandfather, also named Cosimo, and swirls him away to a seaside village in another time, perhaps another dimension.

Cosimo (the great-grandfather) explains to Kit that they traveled to the village via a ley line, a field of force, a trail of telluric energy. It is one of many that crisscross Britain and have been around since the Stone Age. They allow those who understand them to travel to various places and times, and Cosimo wants to initiate Kit into their use.

Kit can’t quite see his way to joining the old man, or even believing him, but when he gets back to London and finally makes it to Mina’s apartment after what seems only a short side-excursion, he finds he’s lost most of the day. Trying to explain to Mina what happened to him, he takes her to the alley, but when he tries to take her to the seaside village, they are separated and Mina ends up alone in 17^th century Prague. Kit and his grandfather start a frantic search for her. To find her they need a map, the mysterious skin map, and Kit discovers that other, more sinister individuals are also looking for the map, determined to dispose of anyone who gets in their way.

So begins a wild ride across five books, several continents, and as many centuries in Stephen R. Lawhead’s Bright Empires series. More characters join the hunt for the skin map and its ultimate secret. The questers travel to China, Egypt of the pharaohs, Italy before it was Italy (when the Latins were a barbaric threat), Damascus of the early 20^th century, modern America’s desert southwest, Prague, Constantinople, and England of the 17^th century, and even to the home of a tribe of prehistoric people.

The history of the skin map pervades the five books and shows us some pivotal moments that affect the quest of Kit and Wilhelmina and their circle of friends. Kit’s story and the skin map history intersect at one point, when Kit ley travels to the wondrous Spirit Well and witnesses a seminal event, though he does not understand what he is seeing.

Later, when the universe begins to show signs of imminent destruction and Kit and the others realize that only by returning to the Spirit Well might they save everything, they cannot find their way back. It looks like everything—not just everything they know, but literally the whole universe—will be gone if they don’t find an open pathway.

The books of the Bright Empires series are The Skin Map, The Bone House, The Spirit Well, The Shadow Lamp, and The Fatal Tree. Lawhead brings a large body of knowledge to bear in his World Building, making this a fun journey through history and geography, with some science and theology thrown in (never in a preachy way, but as part of the reality of this world that is almost ours but not quite—we don’t have ley lines as far as I know). I don’t agree with all of the theological ideas that inform the books, but my theological disagreements did not in any way hamper my enjoyment of the story.

I was disappointed in Lawhead’s handling of the time travel aspect of the story in the final book, the final resolution. He didn’t follow through on the logic of time-travel, and especially of how changes in the past would affect the present (if time-travel was actually possible). When a change to the past was made, things that should have reset did not, and I deem this a flaw in the series.

However, my disappointment was tempered by my overall enjoyment of this series. It had some serious moments, but it was mainly a fun romp and well worth reading.

Every evening as the sun slips down below the horizon, the bell rings at Sealey Head. It is an ephemeral sound that vanishes as soon as one hears it. If one hears it at all. Many of the residents of Sealey Head no longer do. Or rather, they don’t notice it when they hear it. Judd Cauley, who, with his father, owns the inn at Sealey Head, still notices it and wonders. Gwyneth Blair, daughter of a wealthy merchant, hears it and writes stories that speculate about how it came to be and what it might mean.

Everyone has a theory about its meaning. For some, it’s just the echo of something that happened a long time ago. Others know it must mean something more. And its echo reaches beyond Sealey Head, in the form of a book that brings the scholar Ridley Dow to Judd Cauley’s inn. He has come, loaded with books, to investigate the mystery of the bell.

But there is more than one mystery at Sealey Head. At Aislinn House, where the Lady Eglantyne lays in a dream-like state, approaching the end of her life, the maid Emma knows about the second mystery. Sometimes when Emma opens a door, she finds the kitchen or the linen closet or a guest bedroom. But other times, she finds another house, and a princess named Ysabo who lives a strange ritualistic life, trapped by a magic she cannot understand. Emma and Ysabo have become friends, but they cannot unravel the mystery of Ysabo’s life. It will be up to others to do that.

One of those is Ridley Dow, who is more than the scholar he seems. Judd and Gwyneth find themselves pulled into the mystery as well. And when Lady Eglantyne’s niece and heir, Miranda Beryl comes to visit her aunt on her deathbed, she presents herself as an elegant socialite, but hides a deeper purpose and a greater understanding of what is going on at Aislinn house than most resident of Sealey Head suspect.

As most of Sealey Head goes about its business unaware, these four delve deeper and uncover an evil that nearly costs Ridley his life. It is only when Ysabo finds the courage to question her mysterious life and her counterparts on the opposite side of Aislinn House find the resources to confront the evil, that they have hope of unraveling the secrets of both the house and the bell.

Patricia A. McKillip’s works have the feel of tradition for me. This is due in equal parts to her deeply traditional fantasy elements and to my own habit of reading and rereading one or two of her works every year—either starting the year with one of her novels or ending the year with one (or sometimes both).

I recently reread The Bell at Sealey Head, and found myself pulled in, as always, to the intricate plot, vivid characters, and, most of all, to the lush, dreamlike quality of her writing.  These characteristic qualities keep me coming back to this and other of McKillip’s work. While reading The Bell at Sealy Head, I felt it might be one of my favorites.

Later, after I’d finished the reread, I thought about McKillip’s other stories, many of which I’d also like to call my favorites, and realized it is her body of work as a whole that tops my list of favorite fantasy, and favorite fiction overall. The Bell at Sealey Head is simply a fine representative story in a magical collection of stories.

It is, however, more accessible to a first-time reader of McKillip than some of the other stories, and I recommend it for those who are trying one of her novels for the first time. You’ll be pulled in to a wonderful, immersive world you won’t want to leave, and you’ll soon be looking for more of McKillip’s stories.

Would you like some spaceships in you fantasy? Or how about dragons in your science fiction? Better yet, what if those dragons are your spaceships, or at least their power source? And what if these dragons are intimately connected to their planet or moon in ways that are integral to the health of these planetary bodies and the humans that live on them?

Scott Reintgen develops these ideas in The Last Dragon on Mars, the first book in his new series, The Dragonships Series. This science fantasy story for middle grade is innovative in several ways that make this story a fun romp for kids and adults alike.

Reintgen starts by introducing us to Lunar Jones, a young teen living at a relocation clinic in one of the major cities on Mars. His parents are dead, and the other kids in the clinic have become his family. Despite his young age, he is almost a father figure to them. He feels a responsibility to make sure they have food and a chance to make something of themselves. This is no small task on Mars, a world under a curse since the murder of its dragon, Ares. Earth is Mars’ only hope, but Earth cannot be counted on, and things look grim for Lunar and his friends.

Lunar works as a scavenger to make ends meet, going outside the city walls to retrieve tech resources buried after the long wars that left Mars dragonless and cursed. This is dangerous work, and one day, with a substitute scout riding along, things don’t go so well. Lunar is forced to run from other scavengers, in mortal danger from both the scavengers and from an impending storm. Trying to save himself and his scout, he crosses into a military zone and stumbles on a secret he could never have imagined.

A new dragon has been born on Mars, and a crew is forming. And just for knowing this, Lunar’s life is forfeit. Until he encounters the dragon, face to face, mind to mind, and something miraculous happens that changes everything for Lunar, and for the young people training to be the new dragonship crew.

Lunar still has to scrap to survive and to win acceptance, and he discovers that he has exchanged one set of perils for an even larger set–perils that are not just shattering to his own small life, but world shattering. Does he have what it takes to meet the challenge. Will he live up to the trust that has been placed in him?

I chose to read this book because, as a writer of Science Fantasy myself, I’m always on the look-out for new books that fit into this genre. This one is a fantastic example, both of Science Fantasy and of children’s literature that crosses the age gap. C. S. Lewis is often quoted as saying “No book is really worth reading at the age of ten which is not equally – and often far more – worth reading at the age of fifty and beyond.”

I think The Last Dragon on Mars would have met C. S. Lewis’s standards. This over fifty adult certainly enjoyed it, and I highly recommend it. Especially since, in addition to good writing and a fun adventure it has, well, Dragons! What’s not to like about that?

Lynesse Fourth Daughter of the Royal Line of Lannesite can’t do anything right. Her mother, the queen, and her three older sisters behave as royals should and take responsibility for the safety, political stability, and economy of the land. But Lynesse is always in trouble, and her troubles are fueled, in part, by her ideas of heroism, as gleaned from the old stories.

When strange things begin to happen in nearby lands and people flee from their homes with stories of a demon, the queen refuses to take these tales seriously. Lynesse decides it will be up to her to save her world. She climbs up the mountain with one companion to request help from the last of the Elder race, in her mind, a sorcerer. Her people have a compact with Nyrgoth Elder, that he will help them if they have need of him. So she goes, shaking in her boots, and boldly knocks on the door of his tower.

When Nyr Illim Tevitch, anthropologist second class of Earth’s Explorer Corps, is awakened from a sleep of many years by the technology in his tower, he immediately becomes aware of the fact that he is alone. Has been alone, with no word from Earth, for two hundred and ninety-one years. His aloneness is oppressive, and the resulting depression is held at bay only by the technology that allows him to temporarily block his emotions.

When Nyr discovers that Lynesse’s request for help is the catalyst of his awakening, he has a moment of hope. He thinks, at first, that she is someone he helped and loved for a short time, Astresse Once Regent. He is deflated when he learns Lynesse is not Astresse, but rather her great-great granddaughter.

Because of Lynesse’s resemblance to Astresse and in honor of his compact with that lady of an earlier generation, and also because of the despair of being alone, Nyr agrees to help Lynesse. He does this against his better judgment and the strictures of his science. He should not get involved. He should not have helped Astresse either. But he did, and he promised to help her family if they needed him, so he goes down the mountain with Lynesse to fight a demon.

One of the protagonists of Adrian Tchaikovsky’s short novel, Elder Race, Nyr knows many things that Lynesse does not know. He knows that her people are descended from colonists from Earth, who changed their physiology to adapt to a new environment. He knows that something has happened on Earth that has cut him and the people of this colony world off from any help from Earth. He knows that the magic Lynesse believes in is just the advanced technology that surrounds him and is even within him, allowing him to do many marvelous things. He knows there is no magic, only the way things work. And he knows there is no demon, only some natural phenomenon or a technological aberration left over from earlier times.

But he cannot communicate this to her. She sees through different eyes, and the words of her language, though accessible to Nyr on a surface level, carry slightly different meanings to Lynesse than he intends to convey. No matter what he says, she believes the things he does are magical and the way to deal with something evil is to confront it and fight it, with a sword if that is the only weapon to hand.

Elder Race, by Adrian Tchaikovsky, is the story of two people sharing a perilous adventure, but even more, it is the story of two people trying to understand one another. They fail at this more often than not, due to the extreme differences in their experiences and world views, but they have some successes, too. Often, Nye feels these successes are only partial, a way to navigate their quest even as they continue to see the world in different ways.

But in the end, when the demon becomes something more real than Nyr could have imagined, he begins to understand the nobility in Lynesse, and he find a desperate way to respond, to meet the demon on her terms rather than on his.

Elder Race is a short book, but it tells the story of Nyr and Lynesse beautifully, without wasted words, superfluous characters, or unnecessary complications along the way of their quest. We see each of their struggles clearly, as well as how they help each other in ways neither of them could have expected.

This book is a good introduction to Science Fantasy, and, because the story is about two people connecting across cultural boundaries rather than about the strangeness of their world, it is accessible to anyone, even those who aren’t sure if they like speculative fiction. At the same time, it has all the elements Speculative Fiction fans expect. The prose is superb and the characters a joy to get to know. Though it’s mostly true that no book is for everyone, I think almost anyone can enjoy this story.

“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”—Arthur C. Clark, science fiction author.

The above quote has a ring of truth to it, both for everyday life in the 21^st century, and for the genres of science fiction and fantasy. I’m guessing Rosemary Kirstein is familiar with the above quote. She certainly understands the idea, as it comprises one of the foundational premises of her Steerswoman series.

This premise plays out in a society in which the Steerswomen and the Wizards are at odds, not exactly foes, but certainly not friends. And their view of the world is antithetical.

The Steerswomen roam the known world, seeking knowledge. They seek it, not for power, but for the sheer joy of indulging their unquenchable curiosity and to share what they’ve learned. By their code, if you ask a steerswoman a question, she must answer. But their code also stipulates that if she asks you a question you too must answer. If you refuse, you are placed under the steerswoman’s ban and no steerswoman will ever again answer even your most casual question.

In contrast, the wizards already hold the knowledge they desire, the knowledge of magic, and they are not interested in sharing. In fact, they go out of their way to hide their knowledge. Most of them are under the steerswoman’s ban, and this doesn’t bother them at all, most of the time, as they barely notice the steerswoman.

That is, until one steerswoman, Rowan, catches their attention by asking the wrong questions. When she finds a strange jewel, and then another, and then meets an outlander woman wearing a whole belt of the same jewels, she begins to investigate. The outlander, Bel, joins her quest, and before long, a soldier working for one of the wizards attacks and tries to kill Rowan.

Again, when Rowan and Bel reach a town with a resident wizard and take rooms in an inn, the wizard’s dragons attack and destroy the inn trying to do away with Rowan. Now she not only has their attention, but the wizards have hers. Which one is trying to kill her, and why? She knows it has something to do with the strange jewels, and so, with the blessings of her superiors, she and Bel set out to discover what these jewels are and why the wizards don’t want them to get involved.

Throughout the four books, Rowan and Bel learn more, not just about the jewels, but about how the wizards operate, and what their magic is like. Rowan uses her ability to examine and remember details and her logical mind to advance the quest, and she begins to understand more and more about how magic really works.

She doesn’t quite make the leap to seeing wizard’s work as advanced technology by the end of book four, but she’s moving, slowly, in that direction. The modern reader, familiar with the highly technological world we live in, will catch on much sooner—I figured it out early in book one, and I think most other readers will too.

Far from spoiling the enjoyment of the book, this inside knowledge makes the stories even more fun. We follow Rowan’s discoveries, wondering when she’ll make the connections, when she’ll realize that what looks like magic to her is really the technology of a more advanced civilization.

The stories are more than a journey of discovery about magic and technology. Not all the wizards wish well to the people of Rowan’s world, and one, Slado, the head wizard, appears to have truly evil intentions. Rowan and Bel realize a disaster of unimaginable proportions is looming if they don’t find a way to stop Slado.

The intrigue grows, and so does the suspense. But the plot never overshadows the characters. Kirstein does a stellar job of creating a diverse and charming array of people to inhabit her world. Much of the delight of the books is meeting all the wonderful, very ordinary, and completely unique people in their pages. I’d love to meet some of these people in our primary world and live life with them.

Kirstein also has an eye for detail. She uses it skillfully in several ways. In some scenes, the slow build of detail, which may at first seem overdone, has the effect of gradually ratcheting up the tension without ever becoming boring. She also uses the detail Rowan notices to show the workings of Rowan’s logic as she tries to figure out the mystery behind the jewels and then the mystery of the wizards and what they can and will do.

To four books that are available so far are The Steerswoman, The Outskirter’s Secret, The Lost Steersman, and The Language of Power. The only drawback to these books that I can find is the fact that the series is not complete. Kirstein projected a total of six books, and it has been quite a while (years) since she published one. A little research led me to believe (hope) she is still trying to finish the series and plans to get books 5 and 6 out at some point. I could not find anything to indicate how likely this is to happen, and if it does, what kind of time frame for their releases we could expect.

Even so, with the story left hanging, the books are well worth reading. Each story has its own smaller arc withing the larger story, so there is a sense of closure at the end of each book. They have a unique Science Fantasy feel, and are beautifully written and delightful. Even if Kirstein never publishes another word in this series, I will cherish the story as it is so far and count myself lucky to have found these books. I highly recommend you do the same.

Nineteen year old Christy Huddleston of Asheville, NC, well-off and sheltered, volunteers to teach school in Cutter Gap, deep in the mountains of Appalachia. The year is 1912. The children she has volunteered to teach are so poor they often have to walk to school barefoot in winter, but walk they do, so eager are they for learning.

Christy has no idea what she is getting herself into, but, despite her parents’ misgivings, she doesn’t back down. After traveling as far as she can by railway, she tags along with the postman on a seven-mile trek through deep snow, across a log bridge over a raging creek, and into the gap. Before the trek is done, they stop to share a meal with one of the mountain families, and Christy starts to understand why she might be considered a foreigner by the people here. She realizes her habits and behavior must be as strange to them as theirs are to her. She feels as if she has stepped, not just into another place, but also into another time.

The meal is interrupted when an injured man, near death is brought to the cabin. He had been on the way to meet Christy and bring her to Cutter Gap. She is stunned with the realization that this man might die because of her. The mountain doctor comes and a makeshift surgery room is set up so he can treat the man, though conditions are far from sanitary. But the doctor is skilled and thorough and gives the man a fighting chance at life. Christy trudges on with the postman toward the mission where she is to teach, relieved and yet feeling the harshness of life in this mountain community into which she has been so unceremoniously plunged.

Exhausted but undaunted, she begins to teach and, without realizing it, begins also to be taught. She learns firsthand about poverty, ignorance, superstition, and the hatred of feuding families. She yearns to help these people, but her enthusiasm leads her to take a few missteps before she learns to help them in a way that will protect their dignity.

She also learns, that beneath the rough, sometimes smelly exteriors are children with bright minds, eager to learn, desperate for love. She finds ways to nurture both their minds and their hearts. And through them, she learns what it means to love someone she might not have a natural affinity for.

She also learns to see the beauty in her new surroundings. This includes the natural beauty around her. Her friend Fairlight helps her explore nature, and demonstrates how to live in the moment, for the joy of each day. But the beauty she discovers in Cutter Gap is more than the beauty of nature. It also extends to the culture—to the music, the stories, the jokes, and the celebrations.

The mission has a new minister, young and unmarried, and it doesn’t take him long to begin courting Christy. Young and naive, she thinks she had discovered love, though his attitudes toward life and faith bother her at times, especially as she is mentored by Miss Alice, the founder of the school and a Quaker. She will need wisdom to discover if her love is true and lasting, or just a passing fancy.

In Miss Alice she finds grounding, wisdom, and a challenge to her rather prosaic faith, but it is not until crisis comes to the gap, by way of family feuding and typhoid fever, that Christy must learn to live Miss Alice’s teachings. Now she finds that only love and a strong, true faith will sustain her, a love and a faith greater than any she has experienced before.

Christy, by Catherine Marshall, is stuffed full of wisdom, but we hardly notice, as we get caught up in sharing Christy’s life and experiences and learn along with her to love the people of Cutter Gap. The first-person point of view brings us very close to Christy, allowing us to experience Cutter Gap with her, allowing us to learn her lessons alongside her.

The book was a bestseller in its time and has remained a perennial favorite. One of the Christian publishing industry’s highest awards, the Christy Award, is named for the book. Both the writing and the storytelling are unmatched. And though it is set more than 100 years ago, and was written over 50 years ago, it is timeless. It’s been a while since I read it, but skimming through sections in order to write this feature reminds me it might be time to read it again soon. I hope you’ll make time for it too, especially if you have yet to discover its sorrows and its joys.

In the land between the mountains, two rival families sit in an uneasy quietude, two families which each claim the crown of a kingdom long without a king. Now Toren Renné, the head of one of the families, has decided to give the Isle of Battle to the other family, the Wills family. He hopes to foster a real peace.

But his cousins don’t trust the Wills family. They believe the only way to keep from being swept away by Wills aggression is to never give an inch, let alone a whole island. And the only way they can devise to stop Toren, who has refused to listen to argument, is to kill their noble cousin.

Their scheme of treachery is put into play, though its working out will come many months hence. What none of them understand it that the feud between the Renné and the Wills is like child’s play in comparison to the ancient feud that is about to be unleashed in their lands.

Elsewhere, Elise Wills is about to be married off to the son of the Prince of Innes, a political marriage that will give the Wills family a strong military ally. The prospective bridegroom, Prince Michael, is an agreeable young man, but he warns Elise not to marry him. His father is being controlled by Hafydd, a cruel pitiless man, perhaps a sorcerer as well, or something even more sinister from an almost forgotten past, and Elise will never be free again if she comes into the marriage.

Elise agrees that she can’t marry Michael. She is not willing to be a pawn in the power games that have gone on for far too long between the Renné and the Wills. But she and her father may be powerless to prevent the marriage. Only running away may keep her safe, and even that is uncertain.

And only one man can help her escape, a man who calls himself Alaan, a man who can find hidden paths through which to escape. Alaan’s true identify is as mysterious and ancient as Hafydd’s, but he has set himself against Hafydd, and an alliance with him, however unreliable, seems preferable to falling under Hayfydd’s power.

Meanwhile, Tam, Baore, and Fynnol, three young men from the Vale—an isolated settlement on the far northern reaches of the Wyndd River—embark on a journey down the river with Cynddl, a story-finder of the traveling people. Cynddl wants to listen to the river and find its hidden stories, and the three young rivermen want adventure and the horses Cynddl has promised for their help. But Cynddl has another, unspoken purpose. His people have sent him to determine if an old sorcery has reawakened, if the children of that sorcery are now moving in the world, twisting events to service an ancient feud. It is the river that holds the answers, and the river, as well, that holds the pieces of the past that are stirring in the present of the story.

Journeying with him, Tam, Baore, and Fynnol find themselves caught up in this ancient story, fighting for their lives and for the lives of those they come to care for along the way. They see the movement of a vast, dark evil and the valiant struggles of those who are good to resist it, and they are changed by it.

Across the pages of the Swan’s War trilogy, the reader is also pulled deeper into this struggle, as the evil pushes inexorably against both characters and readers, seeming unstoppable. And the same change, the same melancholy, that stays with the characters, stays with the reader as well.

Like much epic fantasy, the Swan’s War explores the past and how individuals and society integrate the past into their present, how they are changed by it, and how they wrestle their lives away from the past to create a future of their own choosing. And how, even as they make these bold choices, they are still bound to the past, with past, present, and future sounding as one great chime, one single note. These are powerful themes, and Russell handles them adroitly.

All three books of the Swan’s War Trilogy, The One Kingdom, The Isle of Battle, and The Shadow Roads, carry equal weight, with no saggy middle or skim-worthy sections. They pull the reader in with a unique premise and fabulous world-building. Their atmosphere stays with the reader long after the third book is closed, the last page read. Sean Russell has done a magnificent job of pushing and tugging the emotions through this well-written work. I struggle to find any downside and recommend this wonderful fantasy story unreservedly.

The Pulizer Prize winning novel Lonesome Dove is about two old friends, Captain Woodrow Call (Call) and Augustus McCrae (Gus), who spent many years fighting Indians together as Texas Rangers. They had storied careers, with a reputation for being tough and getting the job done.

Now they are retired, and run the Hat Creek Cattle Company, near the spot-in-the-road town of Lonesome Dove, just a stone’s throw from the Rio Grande and Mexico. Their cattle company doesn’t amount to much, though Call has ambitions and works hard trying to fix the place up. Gus mainly drinks and amuses himself with his pet pigs and with Lorena, Lonesome Dove’s one and only prostitute.

Their cattle company employs a small and motley crew of men who rode with Call and Gus as Rangers in days past. The two men are also raising Newt, the offspring of another prostitute who had lived and died in Lonesome Dove. The identity of Newt’s father is up for speculation—Gus believes Call is Newt’s father, but Call won’t admit it or claim the young man.iron Farrill is about to graduate from university on earth, an earth of the far distant future, an earth that glows a radioactive blue as a result of ancient wars. Biron is not from earth, but from the nebular kingdoms, and is soon to return home, when someone tries to kill him.

The long, hot, boring days on the spread progress pretty much the same from one to the next until another former Ranger arrives. Jake Spoon has been to Montana and speaks in glowing terms of the lush green grass there, insisting the other men should see it. No one has ever driven cattle that far and established a herd there, and Call decides he and Gus should be the ones to do it. Gus is less enthusiastic, but he goes along with the plan. They gather their herd by raiding ranches in Mexico, they scout around until they find enough cowboys to drive the herd, and off they go, heading north to Montana. They understand the harsh environment they are adventuring in, but even these hardened men cannot be fully prepared for all they will encounter.

Jake has taken up with Lorena, and they decide to hit the trail as well, traveling near but not with Call and Gus and the herd. Jake has promised to take Lorena (Lorie) to San Francisco, and she sees this as her chance to get out of hot, dusty Texas and her dead-end life. But Jake is good-for-nothing and leaves Lorie alone in camp while he goes to town to gamble. This land is not a safe place for a woman alone, and Lorie is abducted by a brutal Indian named Blue Duck. Blue Duck was troublesome to Call and Gus during their ranger days and hasn’t mellowed since that time. Gus goes after Lorie and Blue Duck, while Call keeps the herd moving north.

Meanwhile, in Fort Smith, Arkansas, Sheriff July Johnson sets off to hunt down Jake Spoon, who is wanted for murder in that town. July’s faithless wife, Elmira, sends him off gladly, foisting her son from an earlier relationship on him, though the boy really has no business wondering around the wild lands in Texas. Elmira takes advantage of July’s absence to run off in search of her former lover, even though she is pregnant with July’s child.

These diverse characters all eventually make it to Nebraska, where Indians are a constant threat, and towns are hardscrabble and wild. Here Gus’s old flame, Clara, lives with her dying husband and their children, breeding horses and holding men like Gus and July at arm’s length with a strength only prairie women could boast. Clara is the center around which these storylines revolve and come together.

The trek from south Texas to Montana is long, hard, even brutal, and McMurtry doesn’t hold back in describing that time and place, with all its dangers, as it must have been. Nothing is romanticized here, but the people that grace these pages have heart and determination, and persevere even in the face of death and disappointment.

The story holds a few surprises, some heartwarming, some heart wrenching. The ensemble cast contains many strong characters, and it wasn’t until the story came to its conclusion that I realized who the protagonist really is. It all came together then, and I understood, with a deep sense of satisfaction.

This is a long book (my paperback copy runs 858 pages), and some of the content is raw and may be difficult for some people to handle, so this book is not for everyone. But if you enjoy westerns and can stomach the violence of the wild west in all its brutal reality, this book is not to be missed. The writing is fabulous, leaving the pulp western in the shadow, and the characters and their stories grab hold and don’t let go–once I started reading, I couldn’t stop.

Many people are more familiar with the 1989 television mini-series, starring Robert Duvall as Gus and Tommy Lee Jones as Call. After enjoying the book, I watched the miniseries and found it to be a fabulous adaptation. It stayed much closer to the book than many novel adaptations do, and the performances were stellar. For the best experience, I recommend reading the book first and then watching the film. Both are well worth your time.

Biron Farrill is about to graduate from university on earth, an earth of the far distant future, an earth that glows a radioactive blue as a result of ancient wars. Biron is not from earth, but from the nebular kingdoms, and is soon to return home, when someone tries to kill him.

He survives with the help of Sander Jonti, a man he barely knows and likes not at all. But Jonti is the only one who seems able to make sense of what is happening. Biron has no enemies that he knows of, but he quickly learns that his father does and has been taken into custody and charged with treason by the Tyranni, the overlords of the nebular kingdoms. This comes as a complete surprise to Biron, and leaves him bewildered, unsure what to do.

Fortunately, Jonti is there to tell him what to do. Jonti assures him he must go to the planet Rhodia. The director of Rhodia, though a seeming imbecile, has some influence with the Tyranni, mostly because he lets himself be used by them. Enough influence, perhaps, to save Biron’s life. Jonti promises to make all the arrangements, and Biron, not knowing what else to do, agrees.

But he is barely settled on the interstellar ship, as per Jonti’s arrangements, when he becomes aware of little things that make him realize he is being manipulated. Jonti may not be trustworthy. The captain of the ship may not be trustworthy. And Biron knows he’s in trouble when he is taken to Aratap, commissioner of the Tyranni, rather than to Rhodia.

Aratap is looking for the conspirators of a rebellion. He is watching closely to detect patterns that will tell him where to find the rebels. And he sees an opportunity in Biron. He lets him go on to Rhodia, where Biron meets the Director, the Director’s lovely daughter, Artemisia, and the Director’s devious cousin, Gillbret.

Biron learns that his father is dead, though he doesn’t know by whose hand or exactly why. And now he is pulled further into intrigue.

The Director of Rhodia seems willing to kill Biron to please his Tyranni masters. Gillbret is desperate to escape from Rhodia and go hunting for a rebel world he is sure exists, and he wants to recruit Biron. And Artemisia, trying to escape an unwanted marriage to an older Tyranni, is willing to play along with her Uncle Gil and help Biron escape. After all, Biron is the only one of the three who knows how to pilot a spaceship.

And if they escape, what then? Where will they go? The rebel world is allusive, mysterious. It may not even exist. The Tyranni are watching, waiting to swoop in and destroy the conspirators if they can find them. Jonti comes back onto the scene, but Biron knows he can’t trust him. And above all, Biron wants to know who killed his father. That is more important to him than his own life.

This intriguing tale is one of Asimov’s early works, one which he reportedly did not care much for. But it is a fast-paced story with well-conceived intrigue. It ends with a twist that is both surprising and believable. The world building of this Hard Science Fiction tale is stellar, a precursor to Asimov’s later work. And, though the characters may not be as deeply drawn as would be possible in a longer, more literary work, they are still engaging, more than mere stick figures to people the plot.

Despite Asimov’s opinion of The Stars, Like Dust, it still deserves a place on today’s shelves along with his more popular Foundation series. Though it is slightly dated, this doesn’t detract from the pleasure of the story. In fact, this has long been one of my favorite Isaac Asimov’s works, and I recommend it to anyone who wants a quick, fun read.

The recorder is facing her first solo assignment, and though she denies it at first, she has some apprehension about her performance. But she has her training, and she has her drone, which gives her companionship and comfort when she needs it (and punishment in the form of an electric shock when she transgresses some rule of expected behavior).

So begins Cathy McCrumb’s Science Fiction trilogy, Children of the Consortium. The setting is a space faring society, far, in both distance and time, from earth where humans originated. The Consortium has evolved as a sort of watchdog entity over society, and recorders and elders are placed in all areas of life to create a permanent record and to ensure that citizens follow the laws and procedures that keep life humming smoothly along without conflict.

But this society is a repressive one, and not everyone is willing to live under its strictures. Not every accepts the rules and the enforcers of the rules. As a result of this dissatisfaction, something has gone wrong on Pallas, a remote moon with a secretive research facility. Some researchers may be dead. The research facility’s recorder has gone silent. Someone needs to investigate.

A team arrives via the spaceship Thalassa and our recorder protagonist (who like all recorders, has a number/letter designation but no name), is assigned to accompany them to the surface, both to record the proceedings and to find the facility recorder—to dispose of her body if necessary and retrieve her drone.

But the recorder was right to be apprehensive. All is not as it should be on Pallas. Not only does the team discover bodies that indicate an extensive, murderous plot, but before they can begin to unravel the intrigue, they are assaulted by gigantic roaches, the result of a research project gone horribly wrong. They are forced to fight for their lives, and the recorder sends her drone into the fray to protect the humans.

But she is unprepared for the malevolent strength of the roaches. The creatures crush her drone, rendering it inoperable, and the recorder has a violent physical reaction to this loss. A chip in her brain is programmed to explode and end her life if her drone is destroyed. As the team fights the roaches to get back to their shuttle, the recorder’s life hangs in the balance.

Thalassa’s doctor is one of the few people with the skills to remove the chip from the recorder’s brain. He saves her life, but to what purpose? Can she be called a recorder now? Or is she an aberration, fit only for the Consortium’s reclamation tanks?

As she begins to discover what it means to be human, with the help of the team who kept her alive on Pallas and other members of the Thalassa’s crew, she calls into question everything she thought she knew. Her exploration of life and love is complicated when the crew discovers how insidious the intrigue on Pallas really was. A plot to destroy the Consortium has gone off track, and the recorder must learn about being human at the same time as she and the team fight to save both the Consortium and all of humanity.

The three books of the trilogy, Recorder, Aberration, and Guardian, explore these important themes while plunging the reader into a lively adventure (what could be more lively than giant bugs that will eat you if they have a chance?). A strong dose of romance, and a deep exploration of friendship and loyalty round out the thematic positives of this series.

McCrumb has created a clear, interesting voice for this mostly first-person narration. The world building is stellar, pulling the reader into this complex society and tugging loyalties back and forth—first fomenting a fierce dislike for the Consortium and all it stands for, and then, unexpectedly, tugging on our sympathy for the people within the Consortium, who are as much prisoners of a system as the citizens they record.

This is a fun, thought-provoking read, entirely clean, and with some Christian themes that deepen the narrative without ever hinting at preachiness. I would have liked just a shade less of the romance, but that’s only a personal preference, and not a true criticism of the story. Overall, it’s a series I highly recommend.

Update: The third book in this trilogy, Guardian, won the 2025 Realm Award for Science Fiction and the 2025 Realm Makers Book of the Year.

Amor Towles is a master of detail. Not just any detail, but the right details and only the right details to give us the entire essence of a life.

So it is in his novel, A Gentleman in Moscow. This is the story of Count Alexander Rostov, an aristocrat who meets a Bolshevik tribunal head-on in 1922 Russia. For the crime of being an unrepentant aristocrat, some members of the tribunal want to take him to the wall—that is, have him executed. But because of a pre-revolutionary poem attributed to him, the desire is not unanimous. Instead, he is sentenced to house-arrest at the Metropol Hotel in Moscow, where he has been residing for the past four years. It is a life sentence, and he is warned that on the day he steps outside the hotel, he will be shot.

The count is a pragmatic man, and he makes the best of his situation. The workers at the hotel become his friends, and he makes a life there, eventually even becoming one of the powers behind the success of the hotel’s premier restaurant.  It is in the descriptions of the hotel, and of the count’s living situation there, that Towles’s command of detail really comes to the fore, painting evocative pictures that show us the story better than any straightforward telling could do.

Soon after he is placed under house arrest, the count meets a nine-year old girl, Nina, who lives for a time at the hotel with her diplomat father, and the count’s relationship with her changes his life. From Nina, he learns the ins and outs of the back side of the hotel. And with her, he forges a friendship that will result in sorrows, but also in his greatest joy.

Even when confined to existence in a single six-story building, life can bring surprises. One surprise is the famous actress who stays often at the hotel and becomes the count’s friend, and something more. Her companionship weaves into his story for much of the book, and she is of great help to him as his daughter grows into a beautiful young woman and a gifted musician.

A daughter? This unmarried man, who spends more than half his life in the confines of a hotel, has a daughter? Yes, but not a biological daughter.

A daughter for this unmarried man is one of those surprises that come even in the constrained life the count leads. For his young friend, Nina, grows up in restive, Russia, where the wrong cause or the wrong associations can lead to trouble. Trouble finds Nina, and the count finds himself raising her daughter, Sophia.

And now the count, raised in luxury and privilege, who seems at the beginning of the story to be only concerned for his own routine and comfort, must put his own comfort, even his own safety, on the line to secure Sophia’s future. What can he do for her, when he cannot even step foot outside the hotel without risking both their futures?

Towles uses his masterful command of language, of history, and of details, the right details, to build a portrait of a man who is so much more than we at first believe him to be. As he faces his last test, we hope for him, and we revel in his cleverness, his love for Sophia, and finally, for the goodness of his heart and his love for his home. The ending of this story, even as it leaves us with questions about the future of these people we’ve come to care about, is deeply satisfying. I highly recommend this book.

If you read the book and enjoy it as much as I have, you may also want to check out the upcoming TV series, provided you have access to the Showtime plan of Paramount Plus. It will premier on that streaming service on March 29 in the US, and will star Ewan McGregor as the count. Hopefully it will be available in other formats at some point in the future. In the meanwhile, enjoy the book. It’s well worth your time.

Frederic S. Durbin’s A Green and Ancient Light is a gentle fantasy set in a world like ours, but not quite ours, which parallels the time of World War II. Like many children in England who were sent from London to the countryside for safety, in this story a nine-year old boy is spending the summer in a quiet fishing village with his grandmother, whom he barely knows. His mother at home is coping with a new baby, and his father has been sent to war. He cherishes a photo of his family and writes often to his Mama and Papa, but his life, for this one summer, is centered on this small village, on his grandmother, and on the startling, life-changing events that are about to shake his world.

As the story opens, the village gapes at an enemy plane, shot down over the coast and diving into the ocean with a fiery explosion. The boy narrator, whose name we never learn, is fascinated, as all boys of that age would be, by the crash, but does not suspect until that night how much this event will come to dominate his summer.

Late that night, his grandmother receives a secret visitor at her back door, a Mr. Girandole, the only named character in the story. This giving of his name, when all other characters are identified merely by an initial and a blank line (Mrs. F____ for the neighbor, for example, and R____ for the downed pilot), suggests Mr. Girandole’s pivotal place in the story, and centers us in that magical place that is of this world, and yet is apart, a place bathed in a different light and moving to the rhythm of a different music.

Mr. Girandole needs Grandmother’s help, and Grandmother, in turn, enlists the boy’s help. They leave in the dark to climb up to the forest, where they discover the downed plane’s pilot, hanging from his parachute straps in a tree, severely injured. Enemy or not, this man needs help, and Grandmother and Mr. Girandole set out to help him.

But Mr. Girandole is not what he at first seems. And there is more to the forest than the boy can imagine—a hidden sculpture garden that holds a mystery as potent as the mystery of Mr. Girandole’s origins. And the pilot, at first seeming only a soldier with the same fears and aggressions normal to any man shot down in enemy territory, becomes something more as well, as he is exposed to the enchantments of the garden.

The boy and his grandmother spend the rest of the summer trying to solve the mystery of the garden in order to help Mr. Girandole return to his own land in a world apart from our own. They learn to be secretive as they dodge the contingent of soldiers that swarm about the village and the surrounding countryside searching for the downed pilot. And they learn that the pilot, who as first seems only their enemy, has had experiences with that other world of Mr. Girandole and can be their ally if they will let him.

The story moves with slow and exorable grace toward an ending that is both triumphant and tragic, leaving us with a bittersweet yearning to find and know that same green and ancient light the boy found in the garden, no matter the consequences.

A Green and Ancient Light is a story that, though firmly in the fantasy genre, defies the confines of its category. It is a story for anyone who is looking for that magical path into deeper connection with the meaning of joy and love, anyone who senses there is more to life than what we can see and touch.

When King Arthur is mortally wounded and is carried away from the world, his people are given the promise that he will return when he is most needed—The Once and Future King, as he is known in T. H. White’s version of the legend.

This promise is what makes the tragic ending of the story bearable. It seems the glory of Camelot has crashed into chaos, the world no better off than before Arthur came on the scene. Worse off, in fact, for it was not until Arthur’s magnificent reign that mankind knew what was possible. Afterwards, the darkness is even darker in contrast to the light that shone with brilliance for a brief time.

Stephen R. Lawhead shows us this brilliance and its tragic end in his Pendragon Cycle, but he doesn’t leave it at that. In Avalon, he brings us forward into the modern era and shows us the fulfillment of the promise.

Both the British government and the British monarchy are painted with less than complementary stokes as this story opens. The decadent last king of Britian (not a real member of the royal family as we know them, but an imagined descendent), commits suicide, leaving the way open for the corrupt Prime Minister to do away with the monarchy and take over as the first president of Britain. Lawhead shows us a Britian that has lost her way–lost her soul and her commitment to the ways of truth and justice.

But he shows us, along with the decadence, a British people still true at heart, who are open to the leadership of a true hero and willing to follow him back to Avalon, back to the Summerland of Taliesin (as articulated in the Pendragon Cycle).

This hero is Captain James Arthur Stuart, a Scotsman and the true heir, not only to the British throne, but to King Arthur. In a way that Embries (Merlin) cannot quite explain, James is King Arthur, come again at Britian’s time of greatest need. Though he is, indeed, himself, he is also Arthur, and has Arthur’s memories, which come to him in flashes at pivotal moments.

Reluctant at first to believe he is the heir, James comes to accept his position as rightful king, partly through legal evidence and partly through his insight into Arthur’s memories. Convinced at last, he jumps whole-heartedly, with wisdom and undaunted courage, into the fight to restore the monarchy and lead his people back to Avalon in the spirit of Taliesin’s Summerland.

This was a fascinating read. Lawhead pulled off a difficult task admirably and created a truly likable good character. I’ve heard and read critics who lament the scarcity in modern literature of truly good characters who are also sympathetic and likeable. So many characters, while falling on the side of good, are not the upright, commendable, good-to-the core characters we can cheer for without reservation. We have instead, a mixed bag of somewhat good or mostly good anti-heroes or reluctant heroes, or deeply flawed heroes who must overcome their flaws to pull off a victory over evil.

And these characters are worth cheering for too, worth reading, and their journeys make for many wonderful stories. But it’s refreshing to meet one of the absolutely good characters and find in him a person we can like without reservation.

I read this book, scene after scene, with unadulterated delight. Even the scenes in which nothing pivotal happened were delightful, because I cared so much about James and his circle of close companions.

Only one scene less me less than satisfied. Lawhead included a fight scene against a gang of skinheads (dating the book a little in retrospect). I didn’t object to the scene per se. It was a necessary scene to show James’s courage and physical prowess. But it was a bit mechanical and so completely anchored in the present day of the story. It would have been greatly enhanced if it had been accompanied by flashbacks to King Arthur’s memories and point of view. It could have connected James even more firmly with Arthur, that magnificent warrior, and Lawhead, unfortunately, lost an important opportunity.

Otherwise, the story was well-executed and a fitting sequel to the Pendragon Cycle. I enjoyed it a great deal and highly recommend it, even to readers who have not read the Cycle, though it gains depth if read in conjunction with the other five books.

One could call the story of King Arthur of Britian the once and future story. It has been told and retold since the Middle Ages, and continues to provide fodder for new renditions. Every telling is a little different, each imbued with the particular vision and world view of its creator.

Stephen R. Lawhead’s retelling is one more unique version. Although Christian elements are inherent to the legend and show up in some fashion in many, if not most renditions, Lawhead’s Pendragon Cycle is the first modern version I’ve read that is written from a specifically Christian worldview (the first I’ve read, though others like this may exist that I have not yet encountered). The five books of the cycle are Taliesin, Merlin, Arthur, Pendragon, and Grail.

The Christian world view comes through in the overarching vision for Britian, the vision of the Summerland, as articulated first by the bard Taliesin.

I have seen a land shining with goodness where each man protects his brother’s dignity as readily as his own, where war and want have ceased and all races live under the same law of love and honor.

I have seen a land bright with truth, where a man’s word is his pledge and falsehood is banished, where children sleep safe in their mothers’ arms and never know fear or pain. I have seen a land where kings extend their hands in justice rather than reach for the sword, where mercy, kindness, and compassion flow like deep water over the land, and men revere virtue, revere truth, revere beauty, above comfort, pleasure, or selfish gain. A land where peace reigns in the hearts of men, where faith blazes like a beacon from every hill and love like a fire from every hearth, where the True God is worshiped and his ways acclaimed by all. (Taliesin, Stephen R. Lawhead, Copyright 1987, Harper Collins/Eros, paperback printing, 1999, page 443).

Taliesin does not live to become the Lord of Summerland. In the second book of the cycle, it appears that Taliesin’s son Merlin might be the Lord of Summerland. But Merlin’s life takes turns that lead him away from that fate, and he realizes he is waiting for someone else.

That someone arrives with the birth of Arthur, and it becomes Merlin’s life work to bring Arthur to his lordship. The third book brings this to fruition, and we see the flowering of Britian as the Summerland. Lawhead’s Arthur is one of the most likable versions of the king I have come across so far, as is his queen, an Irish battle queen. Yet, as we all know, it doesn’t last.

In Lawhead’s version, tragedy does not come to Arthur through the betrayal of his queen—she remains steadfast throughout—but through the jealousy and anger of another woman, Morgian, and her son Mordred. And through Arthur’s own proud overreaching, as he goes to Rome to proclaim himself Emperor and leaves his land and his queen unprotected.

The cycle could have ended here, as a trilogy, but it is richer for the last two books, that go back in time to fill in parts of Arthur’s reign that Lawhead hurried over in the third book. These stories complete the picture of Merlin and Arthur, and of their vision of the Summerland, a land we are still waiting for, as we await Arthur’s promised return.

I was moved and delighted by Lawhead’s Pendragon Cycle, not only by the telling of the stories, but even more, by the mythical vision that flows through every book and flowers in passages that rise above the ordinary and elevate the entire cycle. These stirring passages are the crowning jewels within books well-worth reading.

When Ray Bradbury was writing his Martian Chronicles in the 1940’s, 1999 seemed so very far in the future. Surely by then mankind would make it to that most tantalizing of destinations: Mars.

It’s been about eighty years since Bradbury gave this book to the world, and we’re still waiting, eyeing that distant world with interest and longing and trying to figure out what it will take to get a man or woman there. We’re getting closer, and our modern technology has given us a pretty good idea of what we’ll find when we arrive.

It’s truly nothing like the world that Bradbury’s first astronauts find when they land on Mars in an imaginary 1999. Along the canals we have seen with our powerful telescopes, are cities filled with homes and a thriving Martian culture. And the Martians do not all welcome these intruders from another world. The first human explorers disappear without a trace.

But these failures do not deter the humans. They continue sending astronauts in ever greater numbers. They find a world where nothing is quite as it seems, but again, they are not deterred. They simply make the world over in their own image. Settlers follow the astronauts, and soon a thriving earth culture replaces the old Martian culture.

Until there are few indigenous Martians left. And finally, none.

And then disaster strikes on earth. Rather than watching from a distance, thankful to be safe, the humans of Mars begin to remember their home and the loved ones they have left behind. And a great reverse-exodus begins. As if they could fix what was happening on earth by joining the disaster. As if they did not carry with them the same seeds of disaster they had left behind on the home planet.

The Martian Chronicles still has resonance, despite the eighty years and numerous scientific advances since its first release. This might change when humans finally set foot on Mars, but I doubt it. The story is not so much about the journey to a distant planet as it is about humanity. Bradbury sees his own species with a very clear vision and thinly disguises his commentary on human fallibility with a story of space exploration and colonization.

But the book is not just social commentary. It’s also a highly entertaining story. Bradbury was a master of the craft of storytelling, finding both the humor and the pathos in every situation and showing them to us through a collection of just-right details.

It’s a short book, one that will entertain you while it makes you think. A book I highly recommend.

In The Tower at Stony Wood by Patricia A. McKillip, Cyan Dag is the greatest knight in the realm of Regis Aurum, King of Yves. Seven years ago, he saved the king’s life during a battle to put down a rebellion on the northern island of Ysse. He has been one of the king’s favorites since that day, though he has no land or money. He is too poor even to marry the woman he loves, a noblewoman whose father seeks an advantageous marriage for her. Cyan hopes the king can intervene on behalf of himself and his lady.

But now it’s the king’s turn to marry. His bride is Gwynne from Skye, a land known for its magic. Before Cyan can get a clear glimpse of Gwynne, the Bard of Skye finds him and tells him the bride is not what she seems but is something strange and perilous out of the sea. The true Gwynne of Skye is shut in a tower, forced to view the world only through a mirror and to stitch pictures of what she sees out of colored threads. If she leaves the tower, or even looks out the window, she will die. The Bard of Skye has sought out Cyan Dag because she believes he is the only one who can rescue Gwynne and save the king, and the realm, from the peril posed by the imposter.

Cyan, bewildered by what he has learned, and fearing for his king and friend, sets out for Skye, with no idea how he will rescue the real Gwynne or even where her tower is, but determined to do what he can.

Meanwhile, Thayne of the Ysse (the conquered north island) also sets out for Skye. His objective is not a lady, but a dragon. With the magic of Ysse, he hopes to claim both the dragon and the dragon’s gold to help Ysse rise up and throw off the yoke of Regis Aurum’s rule. The dragon he seeks lives in a desolate valley, its body wound around a tower with no door.

In a third tower in Skye, in the little town of Stony Wood beside the sea, a young woman named Melanthos views the stories told by yet another mirror, stories of a knight riding to rescue a lady and of a lady trapped in a tower. She, too, makes thread pictures of them. She doesn’t understand why she does this, or what happens to her pictures when the wind takes them, but the enchantment of the tower calls her. Her mother, a woman full of buried magic, enters her tower and also becomes mesmerized by the pictures in the mirror.

Before long, these story threads become tangled together. Cyan Dag, unable to find the tower where Gwynne of Skye is a prisoner, finds, instead, the dragon’s tower and the tower by the sea, and finds the threads of his tale intertwining with those of Thayne of Ysse and Melanthos and her mother. The Bard of Skye walks in and out of the tale, along with her sister, who understands the magic of Skye in ways Cyan cannot comprehend.

Desperate to find Gwynne, Cyan begins to discover that his mission might be something other than what he believed. And as he struggles to learn the truth, he worries over his lady love, whom he left without a word of goodbye or an explanation. Though his heart fears she has been married out of his life, he will not give up his mission or desert Gwynne in order to return to her. He is committed and will not turn aside.

The Tower at Stony Wood refers loosely to Tennyson’s poem, The Lady of Shalott, and its Arthurian foundation stories. Like all Patricia A. McKillip’s wonderful stories, this tale is a complex tapestry of magic and valor, where things are not what they seem. And Cyan Dag is, like all her heroes and heroines, a character with hidden virtues, strengths, and vision. McKillip’s tells the story in lush, lyrical prose, and gives us mere hints of the truth beneath the mystery as she leads us through her intricate plot to a conclusion that only seems inevitable once we arrive.

This is pure fantasy at its finest, but one must be willing to accept the magic—not just the magic in a place like Skye, but the magic of the word pictures McKillip weaves, the magic of unfettered imagination—if one hopes to experience all this story, or any of her stories, have to offer.

McKillip has long been my favorite fantasy author. Though I suspect her beliefs are far different from my own, I find her characters to reflect much of my own understanding of the ideal hero. And her work is so achingly beautiful, I can’t resist it. I found this to be true all over again as I reread The Tower at Stony Wood, and I highly recommend you embrace the magic of this tale as well.

Ned Henry is traveling back and forth through time at a mad pace, trying to find the Bishop’s Bird Stump in time for the dedication of Lady Schrapnell’s reconstructed Coventry Cathedral. In fact, he’s made so many drops into an earlier time that he is suffering from the worst case of time-lag ever.

This means he has a tendency to maudlin sentimentality. Difficulty in distinguishing sounds. Fatigue. A tendency to become distracted by irrelevancies. Slowness in answering. Blurred vision.

He’s a classic case, but when he’s jerked out of the 1940s and back to 2057 Oxford, England, he isn’t given the chance to rest, as prescribed. Instead, he’s sent at once to the Victorian era, to help correct a possible time-travel incongruity. The possible incongruity occurs when a woman named Verity (the most beautiful woman Ned has ever seen—but then, he’s time lagged and sentimental), accidently brings a specimen of the now-extinct housecat forward in time. 

Thus begins a romp through time in To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis. Ned and Verity hang out in the Victorian era, where Ned embarks, accidentally, on his own version of Three Men in a Boat, (by Jerome K. Jerome) a book Ned has read fondly. His boat even includes a dog, as in the original story, and at one point, his boat passes Jerome’s boat on the River Thames.

Ned and Verity scramble throughout the story to correct the blunders they keep making in their time-lagged state, while back in 2057 their time-travel supervisors are trying to understand the repercussions of the incongruity.

The book is a Comedy of Errors, with a warm heart at its core. Willis displays a massive base of knowledge about history, literature, art—about English culture in general—and an understanding of British humor that makes this book a delight from page one all the way to the end.

The Bishop’s Bird Stump is found at last, just in time for the dedication (and if you want to know what a Bird Stump is, read the book). It’s not where anyone expected, and the discovery of its location and how it got there opens whole new vistas for the time-travel community.

The time travel aspect of this book puts it squarely in the Science Fiction category, but anyone who enjoys British history will also enjoy this book. And if you love a good romance, this one’s for you as well. Light-hearted, witty, clean, and no end of fun, I can’t recommend this book highly enough.

In England of the mid-20^th century, the Drew children, Simon, Jane, and Barney, embark on a seaside holiday with their parents and their Great Uncle Merry—not a real uncle at all, but a mysterious family friend. They soon discover an ancient map, which Great Uncle Merry helps them decipher, and the adventure begins—a new quest for the Holy Grail, hidden and lost for centuries.

Thus begins Susan Cooper’s The Dark is Rising Sequence, a work that wraps the battle between light and dark in the mantle of King Arthur and places it in the care of a group of 20^th century children.

The books, in order, are 1) Over Sea, Under Stone, 2) The Dark is Rising, 3) Greenwitch, 4) The Grey King, and 5) Silver on the Tree. Written for children, the protagonists are all children, but the books’ appeal transcends age ranges.

The Drew children’s adventure in the first book ends with the rediscovered Grail safe in a museum, while the children go back to their ordinary lives, though they are changed by their experiences. They now have a deeper understanding of the ancient mysteries that surround them and a realization that their Great Uncle Merry might be more than he seems. When they learn his full name, Merriman Lyon, Barney makes the connection—Merriman Lyon . . . Merry Lyon . . .Merlion . . .Merlin!

Book Two introduces Will Stanton, the seventh son of a seventh son (important in some mythologies), the youngest member of a rousing and beautiful family. On his eleventh birthday, he discovers he is the last of the Old Ones, a group of people from across the centuries who have special power and are tasked with fighting the forces of darkness. Merriman Lyon (Great Uncle Merry) steps openly into his role of Merlin, the first Old One, onetime advisor to King Arthur. Other hints of connection to the Arthurian legend are revealed, connections Will learns of bit by bit as he comes into his power and joins the battle against the Dark. For the Dark is rising again, after a long period of quiescence.

In Book Three, the Drew children and Will Stanton meet for the first time, back at the seaside. Will, with his special knowledge as an Old One, understands that they must work together, but the Drew children, being (mostly) ordinary children, do not welcome him with open arms. The story is not only about the next stage in the fight against the dark, but is also a story of coming together, as the four children become more of a team.

Book Four takes us to Wales for the first time, a place of deep mystery and old legend. The Drew children do not appear in this story, but it is in this tale that Will meets Bran, an albino boy with a mysterious past. Merriman Lyon (Merlin) has recruited Bran to help Will, but Bran does not know the true extent of his involvement in the old legends until the conclusion of the story (and no spoilers here, except to say that those who love the old Arthurian legend, will love the twist Bran’s story gives to the old tales).

Book Five brings all the children—Simon, Jane, and Barney Drew, Will Stanton, and Bran—together, once again in Wales, for the ultimate confrontation with the Dark. More than any of the other books, this one brings fantastical elements and the old Arthurian legend together in modern times, for an adventure children (and adults, too) cannot help but love.

These books are rousing good adventure stories. They also pull in a lot of symbolism out of the old legends, to add an aura of ancient mystery and wonder dear to the hearts of young readers (and readers young at heart). Much of the symbolism is more Druidic than Christian, but not in a way that would alienate Christian readers, especially since the battle between light and dark is an age-old theme in Christian fantasy, as well as in much secular fantasy.

In a genre where so many young protagonists are orphans—a plotting device to get the parents out of the way so the children can have true agency in their own adventures—these children, except Bran, all have a mother, father, and siblings, and a normal family life. In fact, the pictures Cooper draws of the Stanton family (Will’s family) are among my favorite parts of these books. They are a charming and wholesome and ever-fascinating family, and I savored every scene they are in.

The books overall are wholesome in the best way possible. They are, moreover, well written, with a variety of vividly drawn characters and exciting, fast-moving plots. Encourage the children in your lives to read them, or better yet, read them together. You won’t regret sharing the adventure with them.

Cazaril has had a harder life than most. By the age of 35, he has fought in wars, made bitter enemies, commanded a fortress under siege, been betrayed by his own people, and survived, though only barely, as a prisoner rowing in the galleys. But these trials are nothing to what Lois McMaster Bujold is about to throw at him in The Curse of Chalion.

Though scarred by his experiences, he is now free. Penniless, he makes his way on foot back to the provincial court where he was once a page. It is the only place that feels like home, and he hopes to find work there, enough to sustain himself. But the welcome he finds there is warmer than he could have dared hope, and he finds himself secretary to the young Royesse, second in line to the throne of Chalion.

Royesse Iselle is a lady of both beauty and intelligence, as is her attendant, the Lady Betriz. Cazaril teaches both ladies, and develops a close and respectful relationship with them—with, perhaps, a few stronger feelings mixed in for one of the ladies. 

He is pleased with his new position until the Roya (king), Iselle’s half-brother, demands her presence at his stronghold. Now Cazaril will have to face his old enemies, those who betrayed him to the galleys, and hope his position is unobtrusive enough that he can escape their attention.

But he cannot remain on the sidelines when the Roya arranges a terrifying marriage for Iselle. As she prays for a miracle, Cazaril decides to give her one if he can. But what he tries has results he never imagined. Now he is drawn further in the court intrigue, while gaining a new sight that allows him to see the curse that hangs over the royal family of Chalion. To save the family, and especially Iselle, he must find a way to remove the curse.

Beautifully written, with a pacing that never relents, this story combines all the best characteristics of fantasy. It has, first of all, a magnificent cast of characters, each one unique and well-drawn. I loved every one of them, even the bad guys (who I loved to hate). Even the clerics were refreshingly human, rather than the caricatures, either good or bad, that often show up when a work of fantasy is trying to make a philosophical or religious point. I especially loved Cazaril, who is both truly heroic and beautifully human and carries the day even though, at age 35, he is past the age of most fantasy heroes.

The world-building is equally well done. This world is complete and full of life. No cardboard sketches. Reading the book, I felt as if I was living in and breathing the air of this world. The unique, five-god religion of the world is different enough from my own faith that I could have felt alienated, but it had elements that resonated with me, and I became more and more fascinated as the bits and pieces were revealed.

This book is also very clean, which is refreshing. At the same time, it is never moralistic or prudish. There is some violence–some fighting and some blood—and Bujold never shies away from brutal realism in these scenes, but it is never excessive, never so graphic as to be gratuitous. And there is love and desire. Not every character is a saint in sexual matters, and we learn of things that would horrify us if faced with them in real life. But Bujold pulls the door shut on these things, as she should. This book has had great reviews and has been popular, as it deserves, proving that gratuitous violence and sex are not necessary to tell a good, even a great, story.

This book was difficult to put down. I loved every page, and I’m looking forward to reading the next one, in what appears to be a sort-of-series of stand-alone stories. I highly recommend this book, both to fantasy lovers, and to readers who are new to the genre.

 A beautiful woman meets a dangerous and intriguing man, one whom she will not easily forget. Shortly thereafter, she meets a second, equally dangerous man, one whom she comes to regard with great respect and affection. This second man is married to a beautiful woman who will allow no rivals.

And so begins a complex tangle of emotions, easily complex enough to build a compelling story.

But this isn’t enough for Guy Gavriel Kay in The Lions of Al-Rassan.

The beautiful woman is Jehane, a physician and a Kindarth. Her people are landless, at the mercy of the rulers and the would-be rulers of the realm. They themselves have no ambition to rule. They only seek to find a place where they can practice their religion and carry on their culture in peace. But peace is not in store for Jehane. When she rescues one of her patients from a political massacre, she must leave her home and her family and flee for her life.

The first man she meets, as she is taking this first step into political intrigue, is Ammar ibn Khairan, Asharite assassin, skilled poet, subtle, deadly, and a favorite of the court at Cartada, Al-Rassan’s premier city. A favorite of the court, that is, until he accomplishes one assassination too many and is forced into exile.

In the course of her flight from home, Jehane meets the second man, Rodrigo Belmonte, in whom she discovers goodness, mercy, and an indomitable sense of honor. Rodrigo, a legendary warrior of Esperaña, the northmost area of the peninsula, exacts justice on a rogue warrior with high connections. His reward is exile from his kingdom, from his home, and from his wife and sons.

Jehane, Ammar, and Rodrigo all make their separate ways to the Asharite city of Ragosa, where an enlightened ruler accepts their service. Ragosa is a city that exhibits the fading beauty of the Asharite culture, a beauty that includes tolerance, even acceptance of non-Asharites. And so, the three exiles come together, take measure of each other, and develop a depth of friendship and love they never expected to find among those who are not their own kind.

Between the two men, respect and a shared mission forge a bond that grows until it is deeper than mere friendship. Between Jehane and the two men, a different kind of bond is growing, though even she does not acknowledge it at first, and only slowly begins to make a choice between them.

And all is well in Ragosa, where music, poetry, and gracious living thrive amongst soaring architecture and the fantastic masks of a lively street carnival. For a brief moment, in this one anachronistic place, beauty reigns.

But it cannot last. The Asharites, conquerors and long-time rulers, are desperate to retain their grip on the peninsula. The Esperañans, descendants of the conquered, are determined to drive the Asharites out. The two forces are about to tear the peninsula apart in a monumental struggle for control. A savage war is coming, a war that will destroy all beauty in its path. A war in which each ruler will need his best warriors, his greatest patriots. And so, the Asharite ruler in Cartada and the Esperañan ruler in Valledo will call Ammar and Rodrigo home.

Now, though their friendship never wavers, they become something else as well. They become mortal enemies. And in time the are called upon to destroy each other for the sake of another love, the love of home and king and country. Jehane is caught in the middle, powerless as her people have so often been powerless, watching with Rodrigo’s wife as the world they have known ends.

In a way, this is the story of medieval Spain, but by unmooring it from the historical Spain and bringing it into the realm of Historical Fantasy, Kay makes it something more—a story in which the essence of a struggle between three great peoples is distilled with remarkable clarity, a story whose essence speaks to us in the struggles of our own times.

Kay weaves this story with a subtle touch, gathering up the threads of our hearts one by one until he holds them with an inexorable grip. When his hold is secure, he tugs hard, and our hearts shatter.

The Lions of Al-Rassan is an elegant, lyrical, provocative, merciless, heartbreaking book. Kay’s writing is poetry in prose form, and his story-telling powers are unmatched. He uses the great beauty of his writing to sing a tribute and a lament for the beauty that was lost in Al-Rassan, and for all the beauty that is lost in all the world, in all the times.

The book contains a few scenes with sexual content and a great many instances of cruel, brutal violence. If these things bother you, I suggest you pass on this one, but if you can tolerate these things, I cannot recommend this book highly enough.

Karen Hancock’s Legends of the Guardian King opens when Prince Abramm Kalladorne returns to Springerlan after years of religious training to discover that his father, who was king of Kirath, and his three oldest brothers are all dead. His two remaining brothers are suspicious of Abramm, believing the religious sect he is a part of wants to use him to gain political power.

In fact, Abramms younger brother is so hostile, he delivers him into slavery. This betrayal elicits a crisis of faith that nearly esclipeses the physical crisis Abramm endures as he is sold to an Esurhrite gamer and trained as a gladiator. Thus begins an adventure in painful training, discipline, and spiritual renewal Abramm could never have predicted and didn’t want. In the end, it molds him into a more worthy man than the soft life of a reigious accolate ever could have done.

When he returns to Kiriath years later, he faces early challenges, but earns a space of peace and prosperity and the love of a strong, beautiful woman. Considering the length of the series, its not a surprise that this peaceful period could not last. More betrayal from within the kingdom and threats from without as the dark Esurhite kingdom seeks to take over the northern kingdoms result in more pressure than the kingdom can withstand.

The new challenges Abramm faces, both to his political position and to his faith, outdo anything he faced as a slave in the gladiator games. Though the external challenges are extreme, it is the internal challenges, the things Abramm struggles to learn about himself, his faith, and his God, that are the hardest to overcome.

Karen Hancock’s Guardian-King series is celebrating its 20th anniversary this year, and it has stood the test of time quite well. A four book epic fantasy series, it is grandly conceived and skillfully executed. The books are The Light of Eidon, The Shadow Within, Shadow over Kiriath, and The Return of the Guardian King. In these books, Hancock builds a world that is both broad and deep, giving the reader a feeling that this is a real world, one we could step into at any time and find it familiar.

The characters are also well-drawn and diverse. The lines between the good and bad characters, while always clear, are not always what one expects. The people who profess to have faith in God, fail and turn to evil sometimes, while the Esurhite gamer, who earns his wealth in a cruel blood sport, becomes Abramm’s friend and supporter.

Hancock does not shy away from adult themes. She treats her fantasy world as a reflection of the real world, where humans are fallible and dark things happen to good people–and are sometimes perpetuated by supposedly good people.

Though the books are unabashedly Christian, Hancock suffered some criticism in earlier years because her story was not always as clean and nice as some Christian readers thought it should be. Christian fantasy has come a long way in the portrayal of the grittier side of life, and I doubt many will offer the same criticism in today’s market (by today’s standards, these books would not be considered gritty at all). This is as it should be, for Hancock’s series mirrors real life much more clearly than a more sanitized story could do.

Besides her unwillingness to shy away from an accurate portrayal of life, Hancock’s books are much more skillfully written than most of the Christian fantasy that has been offered in the interim. It’s hard to find much to criticize in her storytelling. Perhaps Abramm’s spiritual struggles stretch out a bit too long, sometimes feeling repetitious, but that’s a small thing that detracts very little from the value of the books. Though I can’t possibly read all of the new Christian fantasy in this burgeoning genre, among those I have read I have yet to find much that equals Hancock’s books for quality. I enjoyed them immensely when rereading them recently and highly recommend them, both for fantasy fans and for newcomers to the genre.

I first read The Robe by Lloyd C. Douglas over forty years ago, and for a number of years I reread it every year around Easter. After I dropped that yearly habit, I picked it up for a reread every few years. I haven’t read it for quite some time now, but I don’t need to (though I would like to). The story is imprinted in my memory in great detail, including many of the best lines of dialogue, and I can take myself into the story, in my mind, whenever I’m in the mood for it.

A skillfully executed work of fiction set in the Roman Empire, mostly in Palestine, but also in Rome itself, along with a smattering of other locations in the empire, it follows the history of the Roman Tribune in charge of the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. When soldiers cast lots for Christ’s robe, this man, Tribune Marcellus, becomes the robe’s new owner and quickly discovers this is no ordinary garment.

A drunken subordinate calls for the robe to be displayed and mocked at a banquet on the evening after the crucifixion. When Marcellus is forced to touch the it under these circumstances, his mind breaks. After a great deal of mental suffering and embarrassment, he must confront the robe again, and it changes him irrevocably, and changes, in turn, the course of his life.

His Greek slave, Demetrius, is also affected by the robe. Douglas weaves the arcs of Marcellus and Demetrius together in a satisfying way, so that we cheer as much for one as for the other. Their friendship becomes one of the highlights of the book.

Some Christians may object to Douglas’s handling of some of the Jesus’s miracles. His interpretation of events may at time appear to water down the divinity of Jesus. But a complete reading reaffirms that divinity, as Douglas pulls no punches when it comes to the resurrection. It could be that the version of some events (the feeding of the five thousand in particular) reflect Douglas’s belief of how these events must have occurred. I suspect, however, that this tinkering was a narrative strategy, one which allowed Marcellus’s gradual change of heart and mind to proceed in the most believable way.

The novel also tinkers with historical facts, especially as pertains to the emperor Caligula. While Douglas does not make up facts or falsify things wholesale, he does compress historical events. There was probably a longer time span between the crucifixion and Caligula’s accession to the throne. More importantly, Caligula was a relatively good emperor at the beginning of his reign, until an illness unbalanced his mind. Douglas chooses to make him behave in insane and cruel ways right from the start.

For those of you who are sticklers for historical accuracy, I would encourage you to recognize these discrepancies and decide in advance to give Douglas a pass, as I have done. Making this decision from the start will allow you to enjoy this wonderful story as it should be enjoyed, rather than getting pulled out of the story by worrying about its accuracy.

And I can affirm that it is a wonderful story, in part because of the historical tinkering. The compression of historical events allows for Marcellus to come into conflict with the empire in a much more dramatic way than would otherwise have been possible. If Douglas had tried to draw out the timeline of the story in order for Marcellus’s showdown with Caligula to fit historical timing, he would have diffused the energy of the story and lessened the force of its ending.

And it is such a glorious ending, both heart-rending and triumphant. Love, faith, and truth win out over selfish greed, cruel acrimony, and the inertia of a ruling class that allows the empire to degenerate because of an inclination toward self-preservation. Be forewarned, however. When I say love, faith, and truth win, that doesn’t mean the victory will take the shape you expect, but I can’t imagine the story resolving any other way. Douglas has written one of the most memorable endings on my bookshelves.

To avoid spoilers, I won’t say more. If you want a mesmerizing, immersive reading experience, find a copy of The Robe and take the plunge. It’s a fabulous story, one that will stay with you for a long time. Indeed, you may discover that one reading is not enough and decide to join me in my next reread.

My first Donna Leon book was #25 in her Guido Brunetti series—The Waters of Eternal Youth. It was one of only a couple of choices on the bookstore shelves when I was shopping. I’ve found that it doesn’t matter which book you start with in this series—they are all equally accessible.

I was so charmed by my first dip into the series that I immediately found and read #1 in the series, Death at La Fenice, and began looking for more. I usually make the L portion of the mystery section one of my first stops when I enter a used book store (which doesn’t mean they’re not worth buying new, and I do that as well).

The books are set in Venice, Italy, reason enough to read them. Leon’s bio says she lived in Venice for over 30 years, which explains the realistic, detailed, and loving portrait of that city in her stories. But along with a charming city, she also portrays a charming protagonist. Guido Brunetti is a gentle man without the angst that so many stories seem to think readers demand. He’s doing his job under sometimes difficult circumstances, working under a boss who is close to incompetent and more interested in how he and his department appear to his superiors than in the finding the truth.

But Brunetti has learned to work around these difficulties, with the help of a couple of kindred spirits in his department. When he goes home, he has the support of an intelligent and loving wife. Paola is almost as much a reason to read the books as Guido Brunetti himself. The daughter of wealthy aristocrats—one of Venice’s old families—she has chosen to marry a working man and become a working woman herself (a literature teacher). Besides that, she is a fantastic cook, and Leon provides mouth-watering descriptions of her cooking without letting them become a distraction from the plot at hand. Brunetti’s teenaged children complete the not-quite-but-close-enough-to-perfect home portrait.

The plots of each story are well-wrought. Leon knows just how to weave information into a mystery story so that we don’t quite get the solution, but have that satisfied Ah-ha moment when all is revealed (and makes perfect sense). The individual plots of each story—the crime that must be solved—are interesting, but not really the main point of reading the series. The main point is to soak in the atmosphere while enjoying the companionable struggle along with Brunetti as we try to figure it all out.

Leon has released a book a year since 1992, making the current count 32. I’ve read five so far, with a couple more on the shelf waiting for the right moment. I’m reading them slowly, at one or two per year, not because they’re not good enough to devour more quickly. Not at all. I could easily get hooked on them and read through the whole series. But then I wouldn’t have the pleasure of anticipation, or the added pleasure of having a new one available when I need a break from my other reading.

For that is when I read them. Much as I love most of my other reading, and especially all the speculative books I read, sometimes I need something light to give me a break from the other things. Something completely different. I can count on the quality of Leon’s books and know that they will always have the right atmosphere, the right touch, when I need those breaks. So, the two unread volumes on my shelf and the others waiting for acquisition, will be there at just the right time.

If you enjoy mysteries, or you’re not sure and would like to give them a try, I would recommend you find a Commissario Brunetti book, any one, anywhere in the series, and give them a try. I don’t think you’ll be disappointed.

Dr Ransom, an English academic of the early to mid-20th century, takes a walking tour and ends up on a deserted road, where he approaches a locked-up country estate. looking for a place to spend the night. As he forces his way through the hedge, we are sure no good can come of this, and when he interrupts an old colleague threatening a local youth, our suspicions deepen. And sure enough, before the night is over, Ransom has been drugged and loaded onto a spaceship headed for Malacandra, the planet we know as Mars. The two men flying the vessel have been there before and believe the locals on Malacandra want a human sacrifice. Ransom will be their victim.

But things are not what they seem to these two unenlightened space pilots. The Malecandrian ruler, a being from another dimension, is more interested in news out of the dark, silent planet (Earth) than in sacrifices. Ranson finds himself in the midst of a cosmic battle between good and evil that spans a series of three books by C. S. Lewis: Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra, and That Hideous Strength (collectively know as his Space Trilogy or Cosmic Trilogy).

Ransom does make it back to Earth with his skin intact (barely). The knowledge he has gained of unearthly beings and the battle they are engaged in makes him a prime candidate for a mission to Perelandra (Venus). Perelandra is newly populated, and the forces of evil on Earth are taking their war there, hoping to corrupt and recruit this new species. Ransom is there to provide the counter arguments, hoping to prevent disaster for this new world. This second book ends with a wonderful passage–one of my favorite in C. S. Lewis’s fiction–a paean for that Good in the cosmos that is beyond our mortal comprehension, except in glimpses and limited by our attachment to this dark, silent planet, Earth.

In the third book, That Hideous Strength, the battle comes to Earth (or, at least we see it working itself out on Earth for the first time in the series). Lewis delights my heart in this last volume by pulling in a bit of the Arthurian legend. A small college town has become the vortex of the battle, as agents from the National Institute of Co-ordinated Experiments–N.I.C.E. (if the name raises red flags, it should) have discovered the burial place of the ancient sage, Merlin. They know Merlin is about to emerge from his grave, and they want to appropriate his power for their evil cause. Ransom and a small, motley company of local folks must find Merlin before N.I.C.E. does and use his power to stop the evil.

This last of the three stories focuses less on Ransom and more on a young couple, Mark and Jane, as they unwittingly get pulled into the battle–Jane as a part of Ransom’s company, and Mark as a recruit to N.I.C.E. Their relationship, already strained, becomes more so, as each struggles to put together a vision of what is happening in their small community. These two characters are interesting and sympathetic in their own right and bring the cosmic battle into real life in a way the reader can identify with.

As usual, C. S. Lewis writes with brilliance and insight, but is immensely entertaining at the same time. I have read the first two books many times, but only recently read the third book–and wondered why I had put it off for so long. Fans of realistic or hard Science Fiction may have to work a little harder to suspend disbelief. Lewis is not so concerned with realism as he is with symbolism. Of course, our planets, Mars and Venus, are not capable of supporting the kind of life Ransom finds on them, and I suspect Lewis knew this, but didn’t care, being more interested in other things. But when we accept the stories for what they are–really more fantasy than science fiction–we leave ourselves open for a fabulous reading experience, one I recommend you don’t miss.

In a land that is not quite Alaska, but could be with just a slight shift, Maki has lost both her mother and her father. She has only her older brother, Tsanu left, and a memory of the last story her mother told her, the story of the beautiful, seventh city, where the good people live.

In Seventh City, an historical fantasy by Emily Hayse, Maki and Tsanu make a life for themselves until the invaders come again (the same invaders responsible for her father’s death many years ago). When some of the men of the village stage a raid against the invaders, Tsanu is taken captive. He tells the invaders’ leader, Captain Innes, about the jeweled seventh city, even though he, and all the native peoples of the area know that it is just a story and the city does not exist. The captain covets the riches of the mythical city and decides to stage an expedition to find it, with Tsanu as guide.

Realizing her brother has done this to buy time and save his life, Maki disguises herself as a boy and takes a job caring for the invaders’ horses, even though she knows nothing about these strange animals. She is determined to go with the expedition and rescue her brother.

So begins a wild and treacherous winter adventure. Maki’s understanding of her land, along with her wilderness skills, save the company more than once as they trek into the frozen backlands. To the hardship of the difficult mountain terrain is added the perils of ice, snow, and freezing cold, along with illness and near starvation.

Arrogant and cruel, Captain Innes drives them relentlessly, as he himself is driven by a thirst for riches and glory. When, at last, they reach the mountain where Tsanu has promised they will find the seventh city, they discover what Maki could never have expected.

The native men of Maki’s village follow close behind the expedition, and a final confrontation is brewing, until they uncover one last peril, more terrifying than all the others, that threatens everyone. Maki, Tsanu, the native men, and the men of the expedition must all make difficult decisions, and each one must reach deep within to find the resources and the courage to face the final test.

In the end, Maki discovers that the enmity that seemed so simple in the beginning has become confused with friendship and respect in the fight for survival. She values those who return down the mountain with her, and mourns those left behind in wilderness graves.

Hayse has a thorough knowledge of the landscape and customs of her thinly veiled Alaska, and her love for it is clear. Her land and people are vibrant with life. Maki’s courage and resourcefulness, and even more, her love and loyalty, are a source of joy and inspiration. Although Young Adult stories are not my first choice in literature, this well-written tale of adventure delighted me.

 For more by Emily Hayse, see the June 2022 featured series.

Graysha Brady-Phillips is slowly dying of an incurable disease. And a messy divorce has left her in dire need of money. Raised in an enclosed space-city habitat, she has never been on a planet before—never been in the open under an exposed sky. But now her desperate circumstances require her to step out of her comfortable world and onto a new and dangerous planet.

Shivering World by Kathy Tyers is a Science Fiction novel that gives us Goddard, humanity’s newest habitable world, if a world in the early stages of terraforming can be called habitable. A group of hardy colonists have been given the contract to terraform this new world, and the rumor is that they are using their isolated location to secretly do illegal genetic research. Research that might provide a cure for Graysha’s condition.

Despite the risks of spaceflight, especially precarious to someone with her medical condition, Graysha heads to Goddard to replace a soil scientist killed in a sandstorm. She is surprised she got the job, as she is more a teacher than a scientist, but she’s glad for the opportunity. At the very least, the hazard pay will help her out of her financial difficulties. And perhaps, if she can win the colonists’ confidence, she can find out if they can keep her from dying.

Unfortunately, winning their confidence will not be easy, since Graysha’s mother is the head of the Eugenics Board responsible for banning genetic engineering. She’ll have to prove, somehow, that she is not her mother’s pawn and a spy for the Eugenics Board.

Things on the developing world are physically tough and some of the colonists are suspicious and unwelcoming, which makes Graysha’s adjustment to her new life difficult. And then she finds evidence that someone is trying to sabotage the terraforming process. Life on a hazardous planet becomes even more dangerous.

Tyers’ characters are well-drawn and interesting. From the moment Graysha sets foot on Goddard, weak from the fasting required for space travel, and faces an unsympathetic colonist, I was cheering for her. There are other characters to cheer for in this story as well, and some well-realized antagonists. Tyers handles all her characters skillfully, and even when someone is unlikable, or works against Graysha, their motives are clear and understandable. In a story in which the physical conditions are harsh and the stakes are high for everyone, differing needs and loyalties make for unavoidable clashes among the characters without the need for a cardboard villain.

Tyers weaves journeys of both faith and love into Graysha’s story, giving the book added depth. This is Christian Science Fiction, but it is not preachy. Rather, it’s simply an intriguing story of a young woman doing what she can to survive and find a place for herself in a situation where she faces almost impossible odds. Though it is Science Fiction, set in a distant world, the setting is not too strange or hard to relate to. While Science Fiction fans will find it easy to get into this world, I believe readers who have not read Science Fiction, or have read only a little, will enjoy this as well. It is, at its foundation, just a very human story.

The American Civil War was a great tragedy, and a blot on our nation’s history, but for one Kansas boy, it was the experience that brought him into manhood, taught him courage and loyaty, and gave him an understanding of people who were different from him, with different points of view.

Rifles for Watie, by Harold Keith, is an older book (1957) that has become a timeless classic. Written for teens and young adults, it’s a book with appeal for adults as well. It’s been at least fifty years since I first discovered it, and it still makes my top ten list of favorite books every time.

The story follows the adventures of Jefferson Davis Bussey, a Kansas farm boy, who joins the Union army after a group of Missouri Bushwackers attacks his family’s farm. As an infantryman, he experiences the war up close, in all its bloody detail.  He suffers all the hardships of a foot soldier, including the weariness of walking farther than you think you possibly can, with too little food and too little water, and reaching the end of the march just in time to join in the cacophony of battle and watch your friends die around you.

Though Jeff never loses sight of why his is fighting and retains his staunch loyalty to the Union throughout the story, he has a unique opportunity to see the war from the other side. First, he meets (and falls in love with) Lucy Washbourne, a member of the Cherokee Nation in Oklahoma. Later, when Jeff gets stuck as a spy behind the lines and has to pretend to be a Confederate recruit, he gets an even closer look at the Cherokee rebels and comes to understand their reasons for fighting and to care for them as a people.

While behind the lines, he discovers a plot to smuggle a load of repeating rifles (the latest in war technology at that time), from the north to the headquarters of Stand Watie, the leader of the Cherokee rebels. Despite his love for Lucy and his friendships among the Cherokee fighters, his duty is clear. He dashes away, heading north with his information, with half the rebel army behind him. A life or death chase across rugged terrain lends true excitement to the end of this story.

If you have a young person in your life, from late elementary age and up, I would highly recommend this book as a gift. It has all the excitement of any modern story, a hero we can all root for wholeheartedly and identify with through all his triumphs and sorrows, and insight into a time in our history we should never forget. 

But don’t just get a copy for your favorite young person. Get a copy for yourself, and treat yourself to a great, timeless read.

What could feel more like fantasy than an island covered with castles, a brotherhood of warriors living in a stronghold protected by magic wards, and a hero who creates his magic on an Irish harp.

The Song of Seare by Carla Laureano, is a traditional fantasy trilogy with an Irish inspired setting. The books are Oath of the Brotherhood, Beneath the Forsaken City, and The Sword and the Song. First published in 2014 and 2015 and recently reissued by Enclave, the series is evidence that traditional epic fantasy is not dead, despite the many new subgenres of fantasy that have gained popularity in recent years.

As the story opens, Conor has just finished his fosterage, where he has become an adherent of a forbidden faith. He returns home to a father who has no love for him and packs him off to another castle as a political hostage.

It is here that Conor meets Aine, the woman of his heart. Here he also comes under the tutelage of a master harpist, who helps him discover his magic, released when he composes on the harp. And it is here that Conor begins to discover the perilous plot of an evil blood druid, a plot that threatens everything he loves and especially targets those who share his faith.

To forestall this evil, he must leave Aine and his mentor behind and find a place among the Fíréin, a secretive warrior brotherhood who share his faith. The Fíréin try to protect the old ways of their God while preparing for the promised high king. Among them, Conor learns the warrior skills that will allow him to face the challenges ahead.

As Seare is plunged into darkness, death, and destruction, Conor and Aine must develop their magical gifts, not only to survive, but to uphold truth and save the people of the land from the terror of the druid. They also explore their maturing love against the backdrop of a war that brings them together only to tear them apart again.

Conor and Aine have noticeable flaws, which make them feel human. But they also have a nobility of character and purpose that defines what a hero should be. Their loyalty and endurance in the face of overwhelming odds are inspiring, and the solution Conor discovers in the end, in order to meet the peril and, yes, to overcome, is heartrending and beautiful.

Laureano writes from a Christian worldview and gives us a fully realized world and well-drawn characters vivid with a life of their own. As soon as I began reading, I knew I was in for a grand adventure of the kind we don’t see so often anymore. Written for adults, the sexual content is appropriate to show realistic relations between men and women without ever becoming explicit. The books contain typical fantasy violence, graphic enough to bring home the level of peril faced by the characters, but never gratuitous.

I highly recommend this series for readers who love traditional fantasy. It is also a great entry series for anyone interested in trying epic fantasy for the first time.

We usually try to avoid tough times in the school of hard knocks, even though such times can teach us the things we really need to learn to thrive. Callie, the protagonist of Karen Hancock’s Arena is no different. Despite the many issues in a life that’s going nowhere, she is looking for quick, easy help. She just wants to score an easy infusion of cash when she lets her friend talk her into signing up for a Psychology Department experiment at the local university.

Instead of the short, easy obstacle course she expected, she finds herself in the Arena. This isn’t just a room in a campus building. It’s a completely different world. Her only instructions (at least the only instructions she waited around long enough to hear) are to stay on the white path, where she will find help when she needs it, and an exit portal at the end.

But staying on the white path isn’t as easy as it sounds, and this world is full of strange and unexpected perils. Along the way, she meets up with people who have been trying to get out for as long as five years, and she discovers that not everything or everyone is what they claim to be.

She does find help and makes friends (and some enemies, as well), and survives terrors she could never have imagined. She is forced to face her deepest fears, knowing that she must overcome them to survive, but discovering that she doesn’t have to face them alone. This holds true, even when she’s in danger of losing what she holds most dear.

Arena is a lively adventure story with a core of truth underpinning everything that happens. I was never bored, and I quickly became invested in the varied and interesting characters, cheering hard for some and hoping for others to get what they deserved (and what they deserved was not good, let me assure you). This Christy Award winner is categorized as Fantasy, but it has a Science Fiction lean that makes it feel contemporary even though it’s twenty years old. Enclave has issued a 20^th Anniversary Edition in hardback that is a pleasure to hold and read, and the story itself holds up to the test of time. An excellent read.

Even Assistant Pig-Keepers have big dreams. Yes, that’s right. Not a pig-keeper. A pig-keeper’s assistant. To be fair, the pig Taran helps care for is special pig, an oracular pig. And Taran takes his duties very seriously and cares deeply about Hen Wen’s (the pig’s) welfare. But he also dreams of winning glory as a great warrior. 

Lloyd Alexander’s The Chronicles of Prydain comprise Taran’s story as he grows from a young man, almost, but not quite, still a child, to a wiser (and sometimes sadder) man. The things he learns along the way, both from his guardian, the wizard Dallben, and from his adventures, are things every young person needs to learn. Correction. They are things we all need to learn, whether young or old.

Don’t think this means the books are preachy morality tales. They are, rather, good stories about a young man with whom we grow as he faces the forces of evil, learns how to love, and comes to know himself. And has a chance to win a little glory as well, along the way.

Lloyd Alexander insisted the stories are not set in Wales, but that lovely, legend-rich land is the inspiration for the five-book series (The Book of Three, The Black Cauldron, The Castle of Llyr, Taran Wanderer, and The High King). These well-written fantasy stories from the 1960s have a lively tone that will endear them to children and adults alike. The characters jump off the page as unique individuals, and their adventures are varied and interesting.

I didn’t discover the series until I was mostly grown, and I wish I had known of them sooner, as my child-self would have been enthralled. But, as the best of children’s literature always does, they have great appeal for adults as well. I recently read them again, and found them just as entertaining as the first time around.

If you have children, please consider sharing these books with them. They’ll thank you for a long time, and you’ll be the richer for it as well. If you have no children in your life, don’t think that disqualifies these books from a place on your reading list. They are timeless and ageless. And they are quick reads you can fit into the cracks in your schedule when you need to escape into a less complicated world where good is good and you understand the evil you need to fight. As with many fantasy stores, you might even have clearer vision when you return to the “real” world.

If robots were sentient, would they believe in God? That’s the question Steven James started with when he conceived of his Science Fiction Thriller, Synapse. And his answer was, yes, he believed they would, or at least some of them would, just as organic (natural) people do.

The protagonist of Synapse, Kestrel, loses a baby daughter before she has a chance to get to know her. As she struggles with her grief, her brother, a high official in the company that manufactures Artificials (robots), sends her a consolation gift–an Artificial named Jordon. James’s choice of the term artificial rather than robot is an apt one, as Jordon is so much more than the mechanized robot of earlier science fiction stories and movies. He is lifelike and aware, a real person and an intriguing character despite his origins. 

As Kestrel and Jordon get to know one another, they both struggle with questions of life and death, of faith and eternity. Kestrel is a pastor who isn’t sure how the old answers, the things she believed in and taught, fit into her new reality. When Jordon wants to know if the tenets of Kestrel’s faith apply to him, she doesn’t have an answer. Jordon has to discover the truth for himself.

James allows us to witness, not only Jordon’s conclusions, but also the consequences of that conclusion as Jordon acts on his belief. But even as we see Jordon carry his belief to its logical conclusion, the question is still one James cannot give a definitive answer to. As we get to know and care about Jordon and Kestrel, we can only hope that redemption is for him as well.

These questions are complicated by the seething unrest over the advances in artificial life in Kestrel’s and Jordon’s society. Early in the book, before Kestrel even meets Jordon, she witnesses a terrorist attack at an Artificial plant. And though she has a bias against Artificials due to a tragic accident that took her parents’ lives, she is horrified at the destruction of this attack.

Kestrel, and with her, Jordon, are sucked into the intrigue surrounding the attack and the debate about the continued development and use of Artificials. The suspense is well-paced and exciting, and as things ramp up, both Kestrel and Jordon have their faith tested and find answers. Not answers that sew everything up too neatly. But answers they can live with. Or die with.

The story is a lively mix of Science Fiction and Suspense, with a love interest thrown in. Something for almost everyone.

These War-Torn Hands, the first book in Emily Hayse’s Knights of Tin and Lead trilogy, was at the top of my reading list for May 2022. I purchased the book from Emily at the Realm Makers Conference in 2021 and thought if I liked it, I’d pick up the next one at her table in July of 2022. I started it hoping for an enjoyable read but not expecting much more. It had an interesting concept—a western fantasy—and I wasn’t sure how I would like that.

I’d forgotten how much I like a good western. I used to read one occasionally, back when the western genre still enjoyed a moderate level of popularity. I also enjoyed western films and TV shows as much or more than fantasy and sci-fi shows.

If I’d remembered that about myself, I might have been more prepared when These Ward Torn Hands pulled me in. Hayse combines the flavor of the old western, including its cowboys, dusty pioneer towns, and wide-open spaces, with the knightly character of the traditional fantasy hero. I understand, after reading these books, why she titled the trilogy Knights of Tin and Lead. The tin and lead refer to the marshal’s badges and the bullets that characterize a western.

But the reference to knights comes from the fantasy tradition and constitutes a salute to the physical prowess and high sense of honor of the chivalric knight (never mind the truth that knights in the real world were less than honorable at times—it’s the ideal that traditional fantasy deals with).

The setting is an unidentified “western territory”—an American west after the civil war that has been disconnected from the geographical, historical American west, an alternate land that has all the features of our own western territories with room for a few fantastical one. These include strange, dangerous creatures, among them, dragons, a curse on the land, and a prophecy about ending the curse.

The result of combining these elements is a story that feels very down to earth and, at the same time, mysterious and mythical. I was so fascinated, by the time I was half finished with the first book I’d set aside the rest of my reading pile and ordered the other two books (The Beautiful Ones and In the Glorious Fields). I read through without a pause, which is very rare for me.

The need to break the curse becomes paramount in the third book, In the Glorious Fields, along with the idea that only the best and purest of the settlers could accomplish this task. This motif not only brings to mind the search for the Holy Grail, which only the purest of the knights of the round table could hope to find, but also has Biblical overtones. The themes of sacrifice, redemption, and salvation are clear without being explicit or didactic.

The skillful wrap-up of these themes, packaged in their down-to-earth setting, made for a satisfying conclusion. I also reveled in the relationship of the characters to their surroundings. Their love for the land and their frequent expressions of wonder over its beauty stirred me and left me examining my own physical surroundings with eyes to see the wonder in the world around me. This, I believe, is what a good fantasy (and perhaps a good western as well) should do.

For more by Emily Hayse, see the January 2023 featured book.

Frank Herbert’s Dune has often been touted as one of the best Science Fiction novels of all time, comparable to Fantasy’s great work, The Lord of the Rings. First published in 1965, it won both the Hugo and Nebula awards and holds a place of honor on bookstore shelves yet today.

Herbert’s original series was a trilogy. Bowing to fan pressure, he wrote three additional books, and his son and another writer carried on with the series after his death. I’m featuring just the first book here. I read the first three many years ago but have not reread books 2 (Dune Messiah) and 3 (Children of Dune) recently and don’t remember them well enough to talk about them or recommend them. I reread Dune last year to prepare myself for the movie release last fall.

I remember enjoying the book the first time around, and enjoyed it just as much this last time, perhaps even more.

The novel follows Paul Atreides as he travels across space with his family to take control of the desert world, Arrakis (informally known as Dune). The family has grown too powerful, and the emperor has ordered them to Dune in a scheme to bring about their downfall.

Dune is a forbidding world, but contains the spice needed for interstellar travel. It has the potential to make the family fabulously wealthy or to destroy them. Fate and the machinations of other powerful families make a good start in bringing about the second option (destruction), and Paul seems doomed.

Despite the alien world they live in, the characters Herbert created come to life as people we can relate to. The power struggles that sweep across Dune, swirling into a destructive force much like the sandstorms of that harsh world, are not so different from the struggles that have swept through our human history on earth (and still tears cities and homes apart today). The individual tragedies are also not that different from the tragedies of living humans, and Paul’s resilience can be traced in a thousand human stories.

Herbert’s in-depth world building, so realistically drawn, brings Dune to life. The story arc never lags. The writing itself is beautiful and compelling. And these pieces interlock to create a stellar reading experience. If you take the leap (it’s a long read), you’ll remember it for a long time. The movie (covering the first half of the novel) is pretty good, too. I recommend you read the book first (if you haven’t already) and then enjoy the movie. If you’ve already seen the movie, don’t waste any time getting to the book. It’s a great read.

Patrick W. Carr’s The Staff and The Sword trilogy is pure fantasy of the traditional variety, and a lot of fun. The three books are A Cast of Stones, The Hero’s Lot, and A Draw of Kings. They follow the adventures of Errol, a boy who starts out in the gutter and ends up in the inner circle of kings and prelates as they fight to save their country from invasion. It’s standard stuff for the genre. Some readers might be disgruntled by its lack of unique cultures based on diverse mythologies, but these books contain enough unique elements to keep them fresh, while delivering a rousing adventure.

One unique element is Errol’s use of the staff as his main weapon, rather than the sword that is usual in so many fantasies. He does become a swordsman later in the books, but he is a master with the staff, and this allows for some unique fighting scenes. Another interesting aspect is the method of carving lots as a way of making major decisions. Errol discovers a gift for this, which entangles him in the intrigue of the halls of power in his world.

Carr included a twist at the end, which he foreshadowed throughout the trilogy, but I saw it coming from book one. As a surprise twist, I felt it was too obvious, but that detracted very little from my enjoyment of the books. The characters and story are engaging, and I look forward to a reread someday (or a dip into one of Carr’s other series).

Carr writes from a Christian world view, but his trilogy is not preachy and is very well written. It’s a trilogy any fantasy lover can enjoy, and is very accessible to readers who are new to the genre as well.

Byzantium by Stephen R. Lawhead is an old favorite from my book collection. It follows the adventures of Aiden, a monk in a quiet Irish monastery. The monks struggle to keep literacy and scholarship alive in Western Europe, while the Vikings raid and plunder, threatening to destroy everything the monks

Chosen to join a group of monks on a quest to deliver the hand-illuminated Book of Kells to the emperor in Byzantium, Aiden encounters Vikings, travels as their slave to the fabled city, and from there into Saracen territory, before returning home again to Ireland. He faces death and desire, comes face to face with the evil in the world, and finds his faith shaken to the core.

Lawhead gives us a fully realized picture of twelfth century Europe and the Middle East, painting Aiden’s personal journey against the backdrop of Viking sea battles, magnificent Christian cathedrals, and imposing Abbasid palaces.

In the end, it is the most unlikely person who shows him the way to truth. I am moved and inspired by the resolution each time I read this story.

At over 800 pages, it can seem a daunting prospect to make it to the end, but it is well-written tale, fully worth the time commitment—a book I highly recommend.

I first read Mary Steward’s Arthurian trilogy as an undergraduate (many years ago) The books are The Crystal Cave, The Hollow Hills, and The Last Enchantment. The is a fourth book, The Wicked Day, which Stewart completed later and which I only recently discovered.

I’ve been thinking about some of the story elements in the Arthurian legend in conjunction with planning a future Seven Worlds Dominion novel and decided to revisit Stewart’s series. I reread the trilogy during the second half of 2021, and then continued on to read The Wicked Day for the first time.

The trilogy is written in first person, through Merlin’s point of view and tells the story of his life. I enjoyed this perspective immensely, and Stewart’s prose is flawless. She lingers lovingly over those descriptive details that make a story world come to life. Yet, despite her sometimes lush descriptions, the stories never drag.

My favorite was the first book, which details Merlin’s early life and lets us see how he became the great seer of legend. Stewart takes a historical approach to the legend, setting it in early Britain, just after Rome has been pushed out. All three books in the trilogy were fascinating, though I enjoyed the last less, as Merlin falls victim to schemes and plots and begins to lose his powers.

Book four, The Wicked Day, is the story of King Arthur’s illegitimate son, Mordred, told mostly from his point of view. I missed the voice of Merlin, and though this book is as well written as you would expect from a talent like Stewart, I didn’t enjoy it as much.

I wasn’t on board with her handling of Mordred’s character and his motivations, for one thing. It’s also the book that shows us the fall of Arthur and the end of his kingdom. Knowing what was coming, I found it hard to keep going to the bitter end. That, however, is a fault of the legend and not of Stewart’s rendering.