Even if your enemy has any number of vicious cutthroats, and still more vicious ferrals, at his command, one could see reason in hunting him down, if the necessity were great enough. But when your enemy can see you coming from a thousand miles away, one would strain hard to see any reason in taking…
Tag: fantasy
CSFF Blog Tour: A Cast of Stones
Not to put too fine a point on it, Errol Stone is a drunk. Drinking is the only thing he’s good at. That, and running errands over the Cripples. In an effort to earn more ale money, he agreed to take a message to the hermit-priest. So he got involved in the Church, and the…
Prism Tour Review: King
Akabe’s highest aspiration is to rebuild a holy house for the Infinite. His highest priority is staying alive. As the followers of Atea seek to make him king no longer – in the most final and irreversible way possible – he struggles to stay ahead of the knife’s-edge of their schemes. Choosing an Atean queen…
Prism Tour: Dragonwitch
The North Star, if you follow it, will lead you north, which gets very cold during the winter. In the North Country, Leta lives a dull life expecting dull things, and Alistair leads a promising life expecting death. Neither yet has any notion of the Far World beyond their world – a world that even…
CSFF Blog Tour: Cleansing Legends
These past few days, as the blog tour has been reviewing and debating Merlin’s Blade, I have been reminded of Walt Disney’s Sword in the Stone. I don’t know what that tells you about my frame of reference, but there you have it. Merlin’s Blade and Sword in the Stone are vastly dissimilar; any exhaustive…
CSFF Blog Tour: Merlin’s Blade
The blind son of the village blacksmith cannot, perhaps, expect too much. Even a conversation with the young, sweet-voiced harpist seems at the outer limits of hope. But hope Merlin does. He even tries. So his troubles begin. But soon enough the wreckage of that long afternoon will shrink into unimportance. Ancient powers are rising…
Review: The Enchanted Castle
A biographer of C.S. Lewis once called a collection of preparatory schools a testimony to the fact that English parents do not enjoy the company of their children. However that is, the old system did separate parents from children; such separation is generally, in children’s fantasy books, a precursor to magic. In The Enchanted Castle,…
CSFF Blog Tour: Other Mills
Yesterday I mentioned G. K. Chesterton’s opinion that pagans practiced demonic rites because they knew they were terrible. Today I will provide excerpts from The Everlasting Man where he wrote this. This passage also touches on the issue of magic in Christian fiction, which Becky Miller raised in her post. I believe that Christians who…
CSFF Blog Tour: Fortress of Mist
Thomas has the city of Magnus, and other things his enemies want even more. He is not entirely sure who his enemies are, much less where they are, but they keep leaving him signs. The slaughtered bulls were a pretty clear hint. He has other hints – hints of help from the people who would…
CSFF Blog Tour: The Orphan King
We have all heard that knowledge is power. But few have ever known it, or demonstrated it, as well as Thomas. An orphan, and in effect little better than a slave, yet he has power. He has a rare ability, the ability to read. Rarer yet, he has books to read. Rarest of all is…