Some books I have recently read: Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle, Prydain, Goldstone Wood, Paksenarrion

I have recently re-read three or more books by each of four different authors.

Let's go with the Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle books first.  The Late Betty MacDonald was the author. These are children's books (or maybe parent's books) about children with various common childish flaws, such as not telling the truth, quarreling, not putting toys away, bullying, losing things and not wanting to go to bed. The list goes on. In each case, Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle persuades the child to behave more positively, sometimes just by portraying a character herself (a queen who demands absolute neatness), by animals (a parrot that answers back faster than the child can say something nasty, such as "whose the boss around here."), or by minor magic. MacDonald is a genius at inventing funny names for children and their parents. Pergola Wingsproggle, and Enterprise Beecham, for example. The books show their age in spots -- all the mothers are housewives without outside employment, and no one has a TV, for example -- but they are still funny, even laugh out loud funny, and make us wish that we had a child-loving fairy godmother type to help us with our children's, grandchildren's, or other child's behavior. Human nature doesn't change. Most libraries should have these books.

There's a dark side of fantastic literature. Anne Elisabeth Stengl is the author of the Goldstone Wood books. (There is a Wikipedia page for her, but it's not very informative. If you are want more information, try the GoodReads Tales of Goldstone Wood page.) These are fantasies. Evil fairies (there are some very good ones, too) appear in these books. There seems no doubt that Stengl is a believing Christian (she has won two Christy awards) but the books aren't preachy. They are well written, with many characters, some through the series, and more in just part of it. To summarize in a phrase, the books are about conflict between good and evil. The evil is a dragon, or more than one dragon, as evil, intelligent and malevolent as can be. There is a Christ-figure, a high lord or prince, the Prince of Farthestshore, but he appears seldom. A recurring character is a speaking cat, sometimes. At other times, he is a fairy, and a knight of Farthestshore. The religion of the books is complex. There are elements of paganism, with priests and temples, practiced by some of the people in these books. There is also more than one good deity, or, if not multiple deities, powerful good beings. The moon, the sun, and the North Star are personified in one or more of the books. There is also a thrush, who calls characters back to goodness, repeatedly. One of Stengl's inventions, or, if she didn't invent them, she uses them a lot, is paths. Paths are hidden, except for those using them, and allow characters to travel rapidly from place to place without harm, so long as they stay on such paths, even though they may go through some dark places. Why did I start this paragraph with "the dark side?" Because the personalities of the dragons are so utterly evil. But there is good, too. This is a well-written series, and I recommend it to readers interested in fantastic literature. I have previously posted about some of Stengl's work: Veiled Rose here, Starflower here and Heartless here.

Another series is the Chronicles of Prydain, a series for middle- and high schoolers (and adults) by the late Lloyd Alexander. There are five books, namely The Book of Three, The Black Cauldron, The Castle of Llyr, Taran Wanderer and The High King. As the Wikipedia article on the series says, the series is a Bildungsroman -- the story of how a young person, in this case, Taran, grows up, emotionally. The Black Cauldron was a Newbery Honor book, and The High King was a Newbery winner. The books have swords and sorcery, and good and bad wizards, elves, and humans. There are some really well-drawn characters, some of them more than a little strange, and not all of them human. Alexander was especially good at dialog. Several of his characters have clearly distinct ways of speaking. One of them scarcely every stops talking. There is no explicit religion of any kind in these books, but there is certainly a struggle between good and evil, and it is clear which side Alexander was on. I posted, in more detail, about these books, a few years ago.

The last series is the Paksenarrion books, by Elizabeth Moon. They are sword and sorcery stories, well told, with some characters readers can identify with, and some evil ones, too. Moon pays a lot of attention to ordinary soldiers, and their lives, and what it takes to have an army move to a battle site. Here's an excerpt from the Wikipedia page on these books. (There are 10 novels in these settings, and they are tied together in various ways.):

The Deed of Paksenarrion has an engrossing religious theme. The world is presented as henotheistic; there is a "High Lord" followed by supposedly lesser deities and saints, such as Gird, Falk, etc., who serve it. There are also several references to the World tree and other animistic aspects of the natural world. This work encompasses themes such as "Hero as Redeemer" and "Hero as Saint" as described in Campbell's The Hero with a Thousand Faces. The trilogy also deals with the concepts of absolute good versus absolute evil, the death of friends and loved ones, and an enlightened look into the origin of courage and fear.
One of the most significant themes of The Deed of Paksenarrion is the balance of gender and the role of women. Women are portrayed as powerful leaders and strong fighters. They are accepted and praised as much as men. The book's protagonist is female, as is the Marshall-General of the fellowship of Gird, the book's primary religious sect.

The above paragraphs apply to all of the books. (For more on the books, see this page, which Moon, herself, is responsible for.)

I have previously written on the question of whether or not Moon's fantasy works are Christian novels. My conclusion is that, in some ways, they are, in others, they are not. A student once told me that his high school English teacher had said that every story has a Christ-figure. I'm not sure that I agree with that, but Paksenarrion is, in many respects, such a figure. She is celibate (except for being raped under torture), she sacrifices herself for others in a terrible and prolonged way, and she is vindicated by the High Lord. And she becomes a paladin, fighting evil.

Moon has also written some science fiction, set in the present, or the future. Her Remnant Population was a Hugo Award nominee, and her Speed of Dark won the Nebula award.

Thanks for reading. Read Stengl, Alexander, MacDonald or Moon, or any other good books. And re-read something.