The Shock of Night, by Patrick W. Carr.

  This is the first book of The Darkwater Saga, whose medieval setting is in the twentieth year of King Laidir’s reign. The key figure is Willet Dura raised to minor nobility by Laidir, King of Collum whose citadel is Brunard. Dura served as the king’s reeve and the story begins as he is summoned to investigate the brutal murder of Robin, a guard whose keep was Elwin, a member of one of the religious orders known as the Servants. In an attempt to glean information from Elwin who survived the attack, the Servant pronounces “Domere” upon Dura and expires. From that moment on, Willet Dura is able to delve the minds of all those whom he touches.

  The story unfolds in a tale of Dura’s encounters with the rest of the higher nobles who despise him, a mysterious group known as the Vigil, the four religious orders (Servants, Vanguard, Clast, and Absold), and the menace of Laewan whose minions are those who were once lured into the Darkwater Forest to become his blind followers.

  Willet Dura himself is a survivor of the Darkwater - in a past war, he led a band of warriors into the dreaded forest as a matter of survival against an overwhelming enemy; only Dura escapes, the details of which he is not able to recall and marks him as mysterious and dangerous.

  The singular bright spot in his dismal existence is his betrothed, Lady Gael, with whom he shares an indomitable love. Yet, the prospect of their marriage is increasingly threatened.

  Dura continues his investigation and slowly discovers that there are as many who seek his death as those who are sworn to protect him. As his inquiry becomes more involved, he unearths a plot that threatens the survival of kingdoms and all that he holds dear.

  I grant that the story itself is intriguing and goes a long way in sustaining one’s interest. However, I am quite distraught. One might take issue with its anemic theological world-view (there is an obvious Trinitarian Godhead that corresponds to the Three Persons of the Christian faith) in which little of redemption in this present evil world is artistically dealt with. But that is not what disturbs me. It is the writing itself.

  When I first considered reviewing this novel, I read cursory samplings of some of Carr’s other works, which seemed to hold promise. But I found the writing in this novel to be extremely disappointing. I suspect there are few on this tour, if any, who would agree with me, or at least not to the same extent.

  There is a constant commentary whose purpose, I guess, is to bring the characters to life, but I found to be unrealistic and very distracting. The relentless narrative of body language and facial expressions was simply overbearing: shrugging shoulders, furrowed brows, lips thin, lips tighten, lips quiver, gazes go flat, blossoming anger, blossoming heat, arched eye brows, bile in the throat, chewing the inside of cheeks, faces knotting, standing on the balls of feet, etc. Combined with this were silly metaphors. I catalogued a list of examples, which could have easily been extended. Here are some of them:

p. 46, Invisible hands reached inside my gut and started kneading my stomach like dough.

p. 77, He scowled down at me, his brows meeting over his hooked nose.

p. 77, He spat and growled a curse that could have stripped paint from wood.

p. 78, I gnawed on the inside of my cheek.

p. 112, I felt a trickle of sweat begin to trace an icy path down my spine.

p. 114, My stomach, still queasy, started tumbling in my gut, like an acrobat but not nearly as graceful.

p. 160, His voice rose as the rage trapped behind his eyes broke free.

p. 167, A network of wrinkles radiated out from her mouth, a tight circle at the center of a spider’s web that communicated anger and fear.

p. 170, I could feel the tension in my throat, like lute strings tightened to the breaking point.

p. 172, Uncertainty drained from her like water through the sluice of a dam.

p. 172, She smiled, but her lips imitated the quiver in her fingers.

p. 174, A tremor began in the outer two fingers of his right hand, working its way up his arm until Gael nudged me.

p. 179, A distant rumble of thunder rolled across my hearing like a drummer’s knell before an execution.

p. 206, My stomach collapsed into a hole in my middle, pulling my breath and heartbeat with it.

p. 228, He could feel his eyes trying to start from his head.

p. 232, Cold like the point of a dagger in winter, traced its way through my middle.

p. 238, Anger welled up through my middle, spreading to my arms and legs until the chill from the air faded and my face burned with shame and anger.

p. 260, His eyebrow, as thick over his nose as it was over his eyes, lowered some more.

p. 262, Her brows made half circles over her dark brown eyes.

p. 284, I shook myself like a dog in the rain and stepped behind the barrel.

p. 297, Fear ripped through me like the disturbance of a pebble dropped in a reflecting pool…

p. 309, Her brow lowered, and a vertical line appeared between her eyes.

p. 384, I smiled, forcing my face to don an expression that belied the fear churning in my gut.

p. 399, He eyed Bolt, his dark eyes squinting until they almost disappeared.

p. 401, A giant hand had hollowed out my middle leaving naught but a shell of skin and bones. Spots swam in front of my eyes.

p. 402, Bile built at the back of my throat as more puzzle pieces slipped into place.

Nothing like this is found in the Christian writing that is worthy of emulation (C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, Andrew Peterson). Perhaps this is what is being taught at our Christian Writer’s conventions or approved by editors of Christian Fantasy. I hope not.

I received a review copy  from BethanyHouse for this blog tour.

Amazon The Shock Of Night
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Participant's list:

Thomas Clayton Booher
Keanan Brand
Beckie Burnham
Carol Bruce Collett
Carol Gehringer
Victor Gentile
Rani Grant
Rebekah Gyger
Bruce Hennigan
Janeen Ippolito
Carol Keen
Rebekah Loper
Jennette Mbewe
Shannon McDermott
Meagan @ Blooming with Books
Rebecca LuElla Miller
Joan Nienhuis
Nissa
Audrey Sauble
Chawna Schroeder
Jessica Thomas
Robert Treskillard
Shane Werlinger
Phyllis Wheeler
Nicole White

September 2015, Christian Fiction and Fantasy Blog Tour

The First Principle, by Marissa Shrock.

After  the Great Collapse and the Second Civil War, the geographical and polical makeup of Canada, Mexico, and the United States was reformed by the Council of World Peacekeepers into the United Regions of North America. Governor Wilkins of the The Great Lakes Regions is about to be nominated for the presidency of URNA, when Vivica, her daughter finds out that she’s pregnant. Term law requires that she abort the child, which Vivica has no problem doing. But she begins to have second thoughts when she is challenged by her boyfriend and father of  the child, Ben to keep the baby. Ben is a Chrisitian, who acknowledges his sin and seeks to make things right between him and Vivica and the baby she is carrying. Keeping the baby would not be an easy task as teen girls are constantly monitored. However, Vivica does have a knack for hacking into networks and modifying information, a skill that has been financially rewarded by those whose school grades were in need of adjustment. She’s able to keep her pregancy test results negative, but she is up against the clock as time is obviously going to reveal something that no hacking skill is going to be able to amend.

Ben’s Christianity is an offense to Vivica, but her continued interest in him, and an almost unwilling acknowledgement of a commitment to protect her baby, keeps her from rejecting it outright. To make matters more complicated, Ben is part of the rebel contingent that is gaining in strength; any commitment to him is to place Vivica in opposition to her mother and the whole naturalist philosophy that dominates the political and social structure of URNA.

Marissa Shrock has written a tale that takes current-day issues and injects them into a future that is teetering between dystopia and eutopia. Vivica has to make some hard choices, any of which is going to place her in opposition to family or friend.

The story is fairly well-written, though there is one thing that I find very annoying – free indirect speech. An occasional use is acceptable, but a steady diet can become very irritating. I do not doubt that I am in the minority on this, but I think it is a cheap, colorless way to peek into someone’s mind and see what is going on. Overlooking that, I am quite pleased with Ms Shrock’s writing.

I suspect that the strong, and at times tract-like (though artful), presentation of Christianity might be a source of consternation for some, but frankly, I think it has its place in Christian literature. If the purpose of a story is to present the Christian faith in a straightforward, head-on manner, The First Principle fills the bill. I suspect that is at least part of what the author had in mind. In concert with that was the subtle and sometimes not so subtle encapsulation of the social issues of today – teen pregnancy, abortion, rationale for abortion, the anti-intellectual charge against Chrisitianity, etc. Some of it may come across as stereotypical and might detract from the story, but regardless, the issues are laid out for the reader. For those who are familiar with them already, they might find the novel one-dimensional. But for the world of teens in which not much thought has been given to the issues, or in which the party-line has been uncritically swallowed, this story is precisely what is needed, and it is in that I find its greatest value.

Not only that, but it was very entertaining. An enjoyable read that I have no problem recommending.

I am very grateful to Kregal Publications which provided a copy for this review for the September, 2015 Christian Fantasy and Fiction Blog Tour.

See my Rating Chart
 

The First Principle on Amazon 
Author Website

Blog Tour Participant Links:

Julie Bihn
Thomas Clayton Booher
Beckie Burnham
April Erwin
Victor Gentile
Carol Keen
Shannon McDermott
Meagan @ Blooming with Books
Megan @ Hardcover Feedback 
Rebecca LuElla Miller
Joan Nienhuis
Nissa
Jalynn Patterson
Chawna Schroeder
Jessica Thomas

Francis Schaeffer’s Perspective #2: The Strength of Art Forms

This is the second article in a series on Francis A. Schaeffer's "Perspectives on Art" in The Christian Imagination, ed. Leland Ryken (Colorado Springs, Colorado: Waterbrook Press, 2002).

Perspective #2. Art forms add strength to the world which shows through, no matter what the world view is or whether the world view is true or false.

Rembrandt’s Carcass of Beef serves to illustrate how the form of art adds strength to the world which it manifests.

“Rembrandt’s art causes us to see the side of beef in a concentrated way, and, speaking for myself, after looking and looking at this picture, I have never been able to look at a side of beef in a butcher shop with the superficiality I did before.” (p 37).

Unfortunately, Schaeffer did not go into a little more detail about the differences in the way he looked at a beef carcass before and after the Rembrandt experience. I think the proverb ‘beauty is in the eye of the beholder’ has some bearing on this. Looking at art is subjective. No two persons will stand in front of the Carcass of Beef and see the same thing. An educated eye will look at art differently from the way it looks at the world which the art reflects. Even the uneducated eye – to see a reproduction of the real world from the hand of the artist alone says something, not only about the artist, but the real world. There is intrigue over why the artist chose the subject and how he transferred what he sees onto the canvas. The final art product carries the full weight of that intrigue.

The art form of fiction shares the nature of the art form of the Rembrandt.  The page is the canvas on which the story is painted and the words are the oils applied with the skillful strokes of grammar and syntax. The writer produces a story that has its ties with the real and ordinary, and places it before the reader ‘in a concentrated way.’  

Schaeffer kept looking and looking at the painting. It had a wondrous appeal. I think, however, the bare fact it was hanging in the Louvre with Rembrandt’s name on it might have raised the appeal several degrees. The works of the masters, or even lesser ones of still lofty reputation, evoke a prejudiced eye. Perhaps the mystique of the artist himself heightens one’s sensitivity to see greatness when it would otherwise be missed. There are artists who are missed even though their works are great because they do not have the celebrity. This holds true for many writers, especially Christian, and to put a finer point on it, Christian speculative fiction writers.[1]

Regardless of the celebrity element, I think we may assume that Rembrandt’s art is capable of having a profound impact in precisely the way Schaeffer hints because it is focused (concentrated). What Schaeffer saw was a result of Rembrandt’s ingenious eye scrutinizing the hanging beef in a way that others do not; perhaps, cannot. Not only his perception, but also his touch makes the difference – a photograph of the same side of beef would not bring out the same subtleties, unless that photo was the art work of a professional photographer whose use of light and dark and angle reveals things that a mere random shot would not.

Schaeffer observes that the side of beef phenomenon holds for literature, that ‘good prose as an art form has something that bad prose does not’ and ‘poetry has something good prose does not.’ The something is the side of beef factor, the thing that grabs one’s attention and increasingly occupies it. I agree in the general direction this line of thought takes. However, I balk at the idea that poetry has something that good prose does not, and I think that much of the reason has to do with me, a left-brained reader. I rarely come away with something moving or epiphanic from poetry. I struggle with Frost and Shakespeare. For me, the poetic form more often than not obscures and confuses. That is my experience and must own up to it. But good prose, ah. Good prose has quite a different effect. It sometimes reaches the intensity of hearing Mozart or Bach or Beethoven – it moves. It opens my imagination to nuances of the truth known and heretofore unknown, and its meaning becomes intellectually and emotionally aesthetic.

Obviously, good prose does far more than bad prose, but it is a point worth making. It is a strong reminder to authors of Christian fiction that their prose needs to be top notch. None of us is a Lewis or a Tolkien when it comes to speculative fiction, regardless of those dastardly over-zealous reviews that compare our work to theirs. I had one refer to The Oerken Leaves (now rewritten as The Oerken Tree) as C. S. Lewis meets Mark Twain. Another compared it to Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland. Another wrote, ‘If you like Lewis and Tolkien, you’re going to  love this.’ They all make me cringe because it just is not so. Yet, I hope that The Oerken Tree is good prose, and I am not so sure it (or your work) has to be worthy to sit side by side with the Greats in order to be considered top notch. But it surely needs to be several huge steps in that direction. In my opinion, Andrew Peterson’s Wingfeather Saga is there. Polivka’s Blaggard’s Moon should be sitting at least on the same shelf.

There are many Christian young adult fantasy works that have become quite popular in the last decade, and their authors are hailed as great writers. But I think their writings fall in the category of bad prose simply because it is bad art. The good word-artist paints with elegance and beauty. It does not have to be like the masters, but there should be some breath-taking moments in them. Many do not rise much above finger painting and paint by numbers. Few of us bring the reader into a Carcass of Beef experience.

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^[1] In my opinion, there is not many current day works of this type being produced that is worthy of celebrity fame simply because the writing is only average or slightly better or worse. On the other hand, there are a few who are quite worthy, but the ascription of ‘Christian’ and ‘speculative’ hinder their recognition. It is difficult to gain acknowledgement, as any writer knows, no matter how good the writing. Christian speculative fiction especially. The Christian Science Fiction and Fantasy (CSFF) blog tour has been promoting the genre since 2006. Rebecca Luella Miller administrates the tour. She also administers Speculative Faith, which features articles by authors and agents in the genre. The CSFF blog tour features a novel every month in which the members that participate post a review of the novel or a discussion of something closely related to it. Some provide an interview with the author. Typically, the participating member can receive a courtesy copy of the novel for the review. It is a great way to add to one’s library. The tour lasts three days. The critiques, for the most part, are very insightful and objective. If you think you might want to join the tour, visit here.

Reflections on Francis Schaeffer’s Perspectives on Art

Francis A. Schaeffer presents “eleven distinct perspectives[1] from which a Christian can evaluate works of art.” Schaeffer uses literature and painting as primary examples of how his eleven perspectives are used. I want to look at these perspectives in a series of articles and consider their value to the Christian artist, especially for the writer of Christian speculative fiction.

Perspective #1. A work of art has a value in itself. 

Schaeffer ranks this as the most important of all perspectives, and yet I find no clear explanation of what he means. His summarizing statement is tautologous, “Perspective number one is that a work of art is first of all a work of art.” (p 37). The concept of a 'work of art' could be translated, a 'work of beauty,' or a 'work that elicits enjoyment.' Schaeffer writes, "Art is not something we merely analyze or value for its intellectual content. It is something to be enjoyed. The Bible says that the art work in the tabernacle and the temple was for beauty."[2] Given this, Schaeffer places a premium on the aesthetic value of art, making the intellectual content of lesser worth. 

He reinforces this by offering three possible meanings concerning the nature of a work of art the first two of which, in his mind, are invalid. These are (1) the view that art does not say anything and cannot be analyzed, it is simply there; it is art for art’s sake (2) the view that art is the embodiment of a message about the world or man or artist – anything; the fallacy here, in Schaeffer’s thinking, is that this view reduces art to an intellectual statement; (3) the view that the artist’s own world view or view of reality is perceived through a body of work which the artist produces; a body of work is necessary to provide a sufficient sample avoiding a one-sided and limited evaluation.

Given that third point, one wonders if an artist who produces only one work can truly be called an artist, and his work, a work of art. Consider Margaret Mitchell (1900-1949) whose novel, Gone With the Wind, was the only one she wrote. She was a journalist and one might contend that her journalistic writings would offer a greater sample. But they would likely be disqualified seeing that that kind of writing is analytical, informative – in a word, intellectual. Perhaps Gone With the Wind in itself provides ample material (423,575 words[2]) on which to draw some conclusions.

Consider also that if the ascertainment of the artist’s view of reality is a necessary component to evaluating a work of art (as a work of art), where does speculative fiction stand? I cannot be absolutely certain, but I think J K Rowling’s view of reality would not include magic and all the incidentals, though the tale of Harry Potter itself does. The magic and all its attendant paraphernalia is pertinent to the meaning of the story. Assuming that speculative fiction tells a tale which reflects the author’s philosophical outlook (Good always defeats Evil; Love endures; Suffering is good and necessary for Victory), it is particularly problematic. All fiction is make-believe, but speculative fiction is make-believe within make-believe and, therefore, has an added layer of complexity in discerning the author’s (artist’s) view of what this world (cosmos) is all about. To qualify a bit, I am talking about a make-believe that has little to do with our world. An example would be George MacDonald’s (1824-1905) Phantastes, whose message is slippery,[3] I think, if there be an over-arching message at all. It does offer glimpses here and there into MacDonald’s perception of things. For example, Cosmo and the mirror allow MacDonald to give a little of his thought about the significance of art and the imagination.[4]

Rowling’s Harry Potter is not nearly so enigmatic, however. There is not much difference between the wizard world of Harry and the muggle world. The central intelligent beings in both are humans and all the frailties and pleasantries of the one world apply to the other. We ordinary humans can empathize with the extraordinary world of witchcraft and wizardry because at bottom, there’s really not that much difference. The fantastical element of speculative fiction is a perfect fit for mystique and intrigue, which are a part of its beauty and appeal; it elicits enjoyment. The mystique and intrigue of the non-muggle realm provide Rowling with a story-world that likely rivets the attention of the reader and gains his imagination and empathy in a more zealous way, thereby more keenly acclimating that reader to her world-view. That is an important principle for the Christian writer of speculative fiction. You are writing to entertain, but you are also writing to grab the reader and hold him down so that he cannot help but hear what you are saying. This assumes that all our story writing will have a message, which I think is true.

Another thought: Though art should not be reduced to an intellectual statement it cannot be divorced from it either. Is not an author’s world-view and the communication of that through his artwork, intellectual? Not as a formulaic expression, certainly, but it does say something that requires intelligent consideration. In order for it to be intelligible at all, it must be meaningful and capable of interpretation. It must say something intelligent. Given that, it seems the value of all art is necessarily bound to its ability to say something that is intelligible, and therefore has meaning, and meaning implies a message. Art is bound to an inherent message.

Schaeffer does not deny that art has meaning. In fact, he would say it does, but he apparently thinks it is secondary to the art. This is to say that the medium of the message has greater value than the message itself. One may ask, If there is no message, what justifies the medium? Without a message, there is no necessity for a means to convey that message.

The word (message) of God, for example, has a medium: inscripturated human language (in its final form for the present evil age - yes, I am a cessationist). There would be no justification for a Bible if there were no special revelation from God. One could even argue that human language is necessary because it is analogous to divine language (it is a part of our image bearing capacity), and in and of itself is revelatory (points us to God as Language, especially as Language incarnated in the Word - Jesus Christ). Language is a medium necessitated by the need for communicating a message, and most of all, for communicating the truths of God. 

In like fashion, message necessitates art (in whatever form) as a means to communicate that message. I don't think it is the reverse. The message is prior to the art. I think a better point to make is that because message and medium are congruently necessary, reflection should take us into the synergistic relationship between the message and its medium in terms of their power and beauty, and consider both to be of tantamount importance in determining the value of art.

How great is the divide between the art and the world view of the artist? How interdependent are they? Another way to ask this is, What is the coherency between beauty and content, entertainment and message? This has a special bearing on all Christian speculative fiction (or any fiction). The idea that one can write merely for entertainment is questionable with regard to its validity or even its possibility. This does not mean I think entertainment is overrated. Part of the quality of the medium is its ability to hold the reader's attention agreeably, or simply stated, to entertain. It is that 'mystique and intrigue' as entertainment that gives speculative fiction an advantage in its value. But if the medium of art is justified only if there is a message, then we cannot write merely for entertainment's sake. Rather, we must use the entertaining value of speculative fiction to bring home the message. 

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[1] Francis Schaeffer, “Perspectives on Art,” in The Christian Imagination, ed. Leland Ryken (Colorado Springs, Colorado: Waterbrook Press, 2002), 35-41.
[2]  ibid., p 35.
[3] Compare J K Rowlings’ Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, the largest in the series, at 257,045 words.
[4] In The Fantastic Imagination, MacDonald poses the question, Must a fairy-tale have meaning? MacDonald answers, “Everyone...who feels the story, will read its meaning after his own nature and development: one man will read one meaning in it, another will read another.” Does this reveal a relativist’s world-view?
[5] Cosmo’s reaction to the mirror: "What a strange thing a mirror is! and what a wondrous affinity exists between it and a man's imagination! For this room of mine, as I behold it in the glass, is the same, and yet not the same. It is not the mere representation of the room I live in, but it looks just as if I were reading about it in a story I like. All its commonness has disappeared. The mirror has lifted it out of the region of fact into the realm of art; and the very representing of it to me has clothed with interest that which was otherwise hard and bare; just as one sees with delight upon the stage the representation of a character from which one would escape in life as from something unendurably wearisome. But is it not rather that art rescues nature from the weary and sated regards of our senses, and the degrading injustice of our anxious everyday life, and, appealing to the imagination, which dwells apart, reveals Nature in some degree as she really is, and as she represents herself to the eye of the child, whose every-day life, fearless and unambitious, meets the true import of the wonder-teeming world around him, and rejoices therein without questioning?” Phantastes, p 78