Wayfarer, by R. J. Anderson

I recently posted on Knife (also known as Faery Rebels: Spell Hunter) by R. J. Anderson. Anderson, herself, was kind enough to comment on that post. To summarize, Knife is a short fantasy novel, designed for, and marketed to, "Young Adult" readers, about a small group of faeries, and their interactions with a human living in a house close to the oak tree that the faeries inhabit. The location seems to be rural England, and the time seems to be approximately the present. The book is well written, and the properties of the faeries, and their characters, are well done. The book has a Christian world view, although it is not obtrusive at all. It was published by a secular publisher, HarperCollins, in 2010, under its HarperTeen label.

Wayfarer follows Knife, with the same characters and location. It can be read by itself, but a reader would be better informed by reading Knife first. I won't give away any more of the plot than I need to, but I do wish to muse about a few aspects of the book. The title describes the mission of Linden, a young faery, who is ordered to travel out in the world, to try to find other groups of faeries.

Let me mention a few aspects of the book, all related to its Christian world view.

First, The Christian world-view is more obvious than in the first one. A human teenager is one of the main characters. He is the child of missionary parents (as is Anderson). But Timothy is not sure that he wants to believe as his parents do. Timothy, and Linden are befriended by a couple who have prayed for, and supported, Timothy's parents. They demonstrate intelligent, genuine, quiet Christian love in a way that cannot be dismissed.

There is more explicit prayer to the Gardener, the faery's name for God.

Timothy uses Bible verses to communicate with Linden.

Second, there is an explicit statement of how the relationship between humans and faeries is supposed to be: ". . . the Great Gardener created us to help humans." (p. 293)

Third, it is clear that not all Christians in the book act as they should. Timothy begins the book staying in a boarding school, which is supposed to be Christian. But the other boys seem to have their minds on worldly things. That is one of the reasons Timothy doubts his faith. But there are others. He has seen unspecified conflicts between Christianity and science. One thing I appreciated about Anderson's book is that a minor character, the husband of the couple who helped Timothy and Linden, says that some Christians act out of ignorance, especially in the realm of science and the Bible. He was a college science professor himself, before retirement. The exact nature of the conflict is not spelled out. Anderson, whatever her own beliefs, does not say that one has to believe in a young earth in order to be a faithful Christian. That's good, because there are many faithful Christians who don't so believe.

The book is not exactly a Christian book -- it's more a good novel with a Christian world view, and worth reading. Anderson's third book, Arrow, is to be published next month.

Thanks for reading this.

Faery Rebels: Spell Hunter, by R. J. Anderson

I recently read Faery Rebels: Spell Hunter (UK title: Knife) by R. J. Anderson. (Anderson, if it matters, is a woman, mother of young sons.) I shall refer to the book as Knife, since that's the title that the author seems to prefer, and the word is also the name of the protagonist. There is no Wikipedia article on Anderson, or the book. Here is a review. Anderson has answered some questions about the book, and the series of three that it begins, in her blog.

I discovered the book through a post by Anderson in the Speculative Faith blog. Anderson tells more about herself, and her writing, in that post.

Now to my post: the book is well written, and seems to have been written from a Christian world-view, but that world-view is not at all intrusive. The library where I got the book has it classified as for older children.

I'll start with the setting. Bryony is a faery, apparently in the UK. She is looking out a window in the tree she lives in, and sees a young human boy, climbing the tree. He sees her, too.

The small group of faeries, all female, live in a centuries-old hollow oak. She is the youngest of the group. They have lost most of their magic, and they are afraid to go outside the oak's bark. They don't seem to do anything for each other out of generosity, or love, just as a re-payment for some work done for them, or for other favors. Hunters and gatherers have to go out, to collect food and other raw materials. Bryony becomes a Hunter, by edict of the Queen. Her weapons are primitive, and not always effective, mostly because the faeries have no supply of steel. There is a human house, not too far, or too close, to the oak. Bryony goes there, and is able to enter the house, and to take a small knife-blade from a woodcarving set. She asks the Queen to name her Knife.

I will not give away the plot any further, except to say that Knife eventually learns much of what has made her group of faeries so small, unable to reproduce except by leaving an egg behind when they die, and so fearful.

Christian world-view? The faeries have a deity, The Gardener, and breathe prayers to him (?) when in great need. In spite of what I said about their seeming selfishness, above, there is a lot of unselfish sacrifice in the book, and by more than one faery. And the book ends with acknowledgments, and finally, this quotation:

Alike pervaded by His eye,

All parts of His dominion lie;

This world of ours, and worlds unseen,

And thin the boundary between.

She attributes that stanza to Josiah Conder. It is  from Conder's hymn, "The Lord Is King," which is public domain. Indeed, He is.