CSFF Blog Tour: Bolt

Some time ago – I forget, exactly, how much, or even vaguely how much – the CSFF blog tour reviewed the entire Staff and Sword trilogy, written by Patrick W. Carr. Now Patrick Carr is back, and so are we. His new book is called The Shock of Night, and it is the beginning of the Darkwater Saga.

Question: Does “saga” mean it will have more than three books? Answer: Probably, but you never know for sure. Even though a three-book series is by definition a “trilogy”, we cannot rule out it being labeled a “saga”. Sometimes authors just want to sound cool.

There is one element of this book that I would like to bring up here, because I will probably be too busy making real points in my review to bring it up there. One character – a very tough character, a character who can kill men almost faster than the eye can follow – is named Bolt. This name did not really work for me, because it is the name of the eponymous hero of the movie Bolt, who was – as you may recall, and I certainly do – a dog who lived in a Hollywood-created delusion that he had superpowers. When I read “Bolt” on the pages of Patrick Carr’s book, quite often the voice of Mittens (a companion of the other Bolt) echoed in my head: “Bolt!” And this in a New York accent.

Let me know if you experienced the same thing, or even thought of the movie Bolt. I want to know if I’m the only person making this association.

Now for the links:

The Shock of Night on Amazon;
The Shock of Night on Goodreads;
the website of author Patrick Carr, who evidently never saw Bolt;
and finally, our intrepid reviewers:

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

CSFF Blog Tour: The Staff and the Sword

The central question of The Staff and the Sword is who will be the next king – Illustra’s soteregia, who will die to save the kingdom. When the church casts the lots for the answer, half the lots say Liam and half say Errol. Errol is the staff, for this is his weapon, the weapon with which he slayed monsters and climbed to fame.

And Liam, I suppose, is the sword.

Though of primary importance to the story, Liam is at best a second-tier character; in terms of page count, he might be a third-tier character. Martin, Adora, Luis, Rokha, maybe even Rale and Merodach are invested with more time and certainly more emotion than Liam.

The story unveils little of what he thinks or feels about any of his life’s circumstances, from his lost parents to his unusual upbringing to his given fate. We see that he accepts – maybe even embraces? – fighting and then dying as Illustra’s royal sacrifice, but we don’t know why. Did he abandon himself to Deas’ choosing? Was he the sort of born hero who dies easily if he dies well? Had he so built his life around one purpose that he had nothing else in it? I read all three books, and I couldn’t say.

I don’t think that readers of The Staff and the Sword trilogy really know who Liam is. I don’t think the other characters knew, either. The Staff and the Sword is Errol’s story and no one else’s. Liam is left an unplumbed mystery. The reader’s emotions are mostly with him, as are the characters’. It’s sad but it’s true: The only character in A Draw of Kings who didn’t prefer Liam to die instead of Errol was Antil.

Not to invest in Liam was a curious choice on Patrick Carr’s part; the suspense of who was the soteregia would have been greater had readers been led to know and care about Liam as well as Errol. It may be that Errol was The Hero and that’s all there was to Carr’s decision. It would have been a very different series, and quite possibly a longer one, if Liam had been raised to a similar level.

Possibly the story held Liam at arm’s length in order to pursue the contrast between him and Errol. The books always paired them opposite each other. At the beginning, it was Errol the hopeless drunk and Liam the promising young blacksmith; later, the solis and the omne, the savior and the king, the staff and the sword, the everyman hero and the warrior from a legend.

Perfect, several characters thought of Liam. Untouchable, Rokha called him. You need distance to maintain that. When you get near something, it grows more flawed. But also more loveable.

CSFF Blog Tour: A Draw of Kings

The kingdom of Illustra is faced by a two-front war. Or a three-front war. It depends at how many different points the foreign hordes can force their way into the country. Illustra needs to find their soteregia, their savior-king. Then they will crown him. Then he will go and fight for them.

Then he will die, and save them.

Every time they cast the lots to find the savior-king, the lots say Errol and Liam, each name as many times as the other. So Illustra prepares for war, and goes out to battle, all the while waiting for something to reveal the truth, to untwist the Gordian knot. Who is soteregia, and why does the cast of lots fail?

A Draw of Kings is the final book in The Staff and the Sword trilogy, written by Patrick W. Carr. Here Errol’s journey – begun as the village drunk two books earlier – finally ends, and here they discover at last who the Soteregia is.

Carr handles a large cast of characters, and honors all the principals with a true part to play in the story. The narrative is complex, as the characters divide into three storylines, for a while widely divergent from each other. There was a little confusion to this at the beginning, when it took Carr several chapters to return to one storyline. (Two missions actually began on a ship, and at one point I forgot they were different ships. I remember when I figured this out. Huh! That’s why Martin wasn’t around during the storm!)

Even at the beginning, I appreciated the multiple storylines, where the characters pursued the same goal with different quests and in different theaters. It suited Illustra’s many troubles.

It also allowed Patrick Carr to display the vastness of the world he has created, from Ongol to the steppes to Illustra herself. Finally, the different storylines gave the assemblage of characters space to work and to shine.

The most important part of any story is the end. Ending a story that has sprawled across three books and a thousand pages is especially hard, and hardest of all is ending a story you yourself have tied into a Gordian knot. But Patrick Carr succeeded in crafting a satisfying ending, in cutting through his Gordian knot, and it is this success, of all his successes, that is most impressive.

A Draw of Kings had a strong religious element that still felt somewhat to the side of the action. I enjoyed picking out the real-world parallels (I caught a nod toward Calvinism!), and I was moved by Errol’s final conclusion regarding the mercy of Deas. I wish that part of the book had been stronger, though perhaps the story didn’t have room for it.

The flaw of this book was a favoritism towards Errol that infected the other characters. They were partisans for Errol, and occasionally it made them act less than what they were. Adora was wrong to invite Antil to dinner, only to prod and taunt him; if you make someone your guest you need to treat him as a guest. Far worse was the archbenefice, who punished one man’s insolence to Errol by having his teeth broken.

Worst of all was Martin. He expressed his willingness to “search church law and tradition” for a way to execute Antil. Justice is rarely served this way. I have already determined I want to kill you, so all that’s to do now is to scour law and tradition for some technicality on which to do it. And with Illustra on the brink of annihilation and the church having just regained holy Scripture that had been lost for centuries, Martin made a priority of “correcting perceived slights to Errol on behalf of his predecessor and Rodran”.

Yet this flaw was ultimately a minor one, and A Draw of Kings is not only the last book of its series, but the best. It seals The Staff and the Sword as a rich and compelling fantasy, the sort of story that suggests a thousand other stories to be told.


In conjunction with the CSFF Blog Tour, I received a free copy of this book from the publisher.

CSFF Blog Tour: A Draw of Kings, and an Irish Prayer

First came A Cast of Stones, and then The Hero’s Lot. What could be next but A Draw of Kings?

With A Draw of Kings, Patrick W. Carr concludes The Staff and the Sword trilogy. The first books of the trilogy have both been nominated for the 2014 Clive Staples Award, making it really easy for me to slip in a plug for the award here. (Cast a vote for the finalists!)

I think that most books published in Christian SF are part of a series, and only a few series consist of connected but free-standing stories. Unlike the Chronicles of Narnia or the Tales of Goldstone Wood – where you can read one book and, generally speaking, finish the story you started – most series are spent on one journey, one story, one cast of characters.

I always enjoy it when, as with The Staff and the Sword, the CSFF begins a series and then follows the story through every book to the end. We don’t always do so, and I don’t know if we always should, or can; there are too many authors and too many stories and, arguably, too many series.

No less for that – maybe more for it – there is a special interest in tours like this, where we reach the end of a long story and give our final measurement.

Finally – and this has nothing to do with either the CSFF or A Draw of Kings, but it’s my blog, you know – happy St. Patrick’s Day! “Christ with me, Christ before me, Christ behind me, Christ in me, Christ beneath me, Christ above me.” ~ St. Patrick


Although it’s not related to St. Patrick’s Day, nor even to Ireland, here are the links to Patrick Carr’s website and to A Draw of Kings on Amazon. And of course, the blog tour:

Gillian Adams
Jennifer Bogart
Keanan Brand
Beckie Burnham
Mike Coville

Pauline Creeden
Vicky DealSharingAunt
Carol Gehringer
Victor Gentile
Rebekah Gyger
Nikole Hahn
Jason Joyner
Carol Keen
Krystine Kercher

Jennette Mbewe
Amber McCallister
Shannon McNear
Meagan @ Blooming with Books
Rebecca LuElla Miller
Joan Nienhuis
Nissa
Writer Rani
Nathan Reimer
Audrey Sauble

James Somers
Jojo Sutis
Steve Trower
Shane Werlinger
Phyllis Wheeler
Nicole White
Jill Williamson