Starflower, by Anne Elisabeth Stengl

Her Wikipedia page is pretty sparse, but Anne Elisabeth Stengl does have a blog. That blog gives more information about Stengl and her work, and shows you covers from the nine published items in her Goldstone Wood series.

Discussing nine volumes without giving away too much of the plot isn't going to be easy, so let's take a few specifics from the fourth volume, Starflower, without really summarizing it. (The first two books won Christy awards, and Starflower was nominated for one.)

What to say?
First, these works are fantastic literature. They are clearly fantasy -- there are fairies, dragons, and there is magic. The dragons can appear to be human, and the fairies, most of them, anyway, are also animals, such as a goat, a cat, a badger. Fairies live for a very long time. The setting is not an actual geography, or a specified time. There are no steam engines, no gunpowder, no printing presses, so it's something like the earth of long ago. But there is not an emphasis on swordplay, or magic. The emphasis is on character.

As in most fantastic sub-creations, there are rules. In Starflower, knowing someone's actual name gives some power over them. There are fairy paths that, if you can find them, and stay on them, let one travel very far in a very short time. There are barriers around various fairy realms. There is a near world, and a far one, but they intertwine. As N. T. Wright put it in his Revelation for Everyone, and in others of his works: "God’s sphere of being and operation (‘heaven’) and our sphere (‘earth’) are not after all separated by a great gulf. They meet and merge and meld into one another in all kinds of ways."

Second, (and see above) these are Christian books. Why do I say that? They are not preachy. No one goes to church. One reason I say that is that there is clearly conflict between good and evil. Fairies, and humans, are often drawn to the evil of the dragons. Another reason is redemption. Characters are forgiven. Even the most vile can be. Starflower is largely about the transformation of a self-centered, proud, character into one capable of selfless love and sacrifice. 

The books are often about that sort of love. In Starflower, the heroine loves three most unlovely dogs, and, in the process, transforms their behavior, through her unselfish love of them, seeing what is good in seemingly evil beasts.

One of the characters in Starflower is a hound. Stengl states, in the epilogue, that she was thinking about the Hound of Heaven, and quotes the first stanza:
I FLED Him, down the nights and down the days;   
  I fled Him, down the arches of the years;   
I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways   
    Of my own mind; and in the mist of tears   
I hid from Him, and under running laughter.      
      Up vistaed hopes I sped;   
      And shot, precipitated,   
Adown Titanic glooms of chasmèd fears,   
  From those strong Feet that followed, followed after.   
      But with unhurrying chase,        
      And unperturbèd pace,   
Deliberate speed, majestic instancy,   
      They beat—and a Voice beat   
      More instant than the Feet—   
‘All things betray thee, who betrayest Me.’ (Public domain. Source.)

Third, the structure of the books is interesting. The reader may be introduced to a character in one volume, and to episodes involving that character, and then, in another book, see the same episodes from the view of another character, or see a different view of a character. Starflower is said to be set centuries before any of the first three books, which are all set in the same time period. But some of the characters in Starflower were introduced in one or more of the previous books. A seemingly new main character is introduced at the beginning of the book.

The Goldstone Wood books do intermesh, but a reader should be able to read any of them profitably without having read the others.

Fourth, and unlike, say, Tolkien, who gives us little or none of what's going on in the mind of Sauron, Stengl spends lots of words on the thinking of the dragons.

Fifth, the books are well written. I have yet to see a grammatical error. The chapters make you want to read on, although they often change point of view from one to the next. Stengl is good at naming: Eanrin, Imraldera, Gleamdren, Iubdan, Glomar, Bebo, Wolftongue, Amarok. Stengl's descriptions of settings are well done. Her characters are easy to get to know. The plots are gripping. The books are not like any other fantastic literature that I have read, in atmosphere, characterization, setting, and plot, but many people who love fantastic literature should be able to enjoy them, whether the reader is Christian or not.

Sixth, the characters are ethnically diverse. The heroine of Starflower is described as having dark skin, and there is a dark-skinned woman on the cover of the book. Two of the other volumes feature females with oriental facial features on their covers.

I'm glad I read these books. I'm now going through them, some for the second or third time, and hope to enjoy them for years to come. Perhaps you can, too. I have previously posted on Stengl's Heartless and on her Veiled Rose.

Thanks for reading! Read Stengl.

Among Others by Jo Walton

You can almost always find chains of coincidence to disprove magic. That's because it doesn't happen the way it does in books. It makes those chains of coincidence. That's what it is. It's like if you snapped your fingers and produced a rose but it was because someone on an aeroplane had dropped a rose at just the right time for it to land in your hand. There was a real person and a real aeroplane and a real rose, but that doesn't mean the reason you have the rose isn't because you did the magic. Jo Walton, Among Others. (New York: Tom Doherty Associates, 2010, p. 40.)

I recently read Among Others by Jo Walton. The book won several important awards, including the Hugo, Nebula, and British Fantasy awards, and was a nominee for the World Fantasy Award.

The book consists entirely of the diary of Morwenna Phelps, also known as Morwenna Markova, during the period from September 1979 through February 1980, plus an initial entry from 1975. She is a teenager, in a boarding school. She has been in a terrible accident that took the life of her twin sister, Morganna, and left her with one bad leg, so bad that she isn't required to participate in sports at the school. That's all right with her, because she is a voracious reader, mostly of fantastic literature. I didn't count, but there must have been a few hundred of such books mentioned, mostly read by Morwenna. She gives her opinions of them, and occasionally discusses them with a book club, or with her father. Many of these books are well known even today, and some of the others should be, although they aren't. I suspect that this parading of the history of science-fiction/fantasy, throughout the book, was one of the reasons for the awards that it won. It's a good book, though, lest there be any doubt.
It's a quiet book, and you won't find any armies marching, swordplay, space travel, or desperate wizards going to great lengths to cast spells. The quotation at the beginning of this post describes how magic works in Walton's sub-creation. It works quietly, in the background, as it were. I won't give away any more of the plot than is necessary to discuss a couple of matters. If you are interested in the plot, I recommend these reviews: This review says that Walton's description of magic, which takes the quotation above as its theme, is the most important aspect of the book. This one says that perhaps none of the magic, nor even the accident and the dead twin, are real, but we have a case of an unreliable narrator. This one, and others, indicate that the book is partly biographical. The location and time correspond to Walton's own life. Walton was, and is, somewhat crippled, and read fantastic literature as a teenager.

The first matter to discuss is fairies. Morwenna is able to see, and communicate, with fairies, mostly Welsh fairies. Such fairies are unlike most descriptions of these folk. They come in various sizes and shapes, some of them being not obviously humanoid at all. They can communicate a little, but aren't good with words, and don't like to talk to people. Most people can't see them.

The second matter is this: the book is a coming of age novel. It isn't much of a distortion to say that it's also about Morwenna's search for God. I quote:

[Humphrey] Carpenter says in the Inklings book that [C. S.] Lewis meant Aslan to be Jesus. I can sort of see it, but all the same it feels like a betrayal. It feels like allegory. No wonder Tolkien was cross. . . . Sometimes I'm so stupid -- but Aslan was always so much himself. I don't know what I think about Jesus, but I know what I think about Aslan. (page 129. Tolkien, though a great friend of Lewis for much of their lives, was not pleased with the Narnia books.)

and

Dear God, if you are there and care and can bless people, please bless Alison Carroll with your very best blessing. (page 212. Alison Carroll is her school librarian. Libraries are very important to Morwenna, and Ms. Carroll and another librarian went out of their way to do good things for Morwenna.)

There are several other indications that she is searching for meaning in life, and hoping to find it, somehow, in God. She doesn't exactly do so, though.

Thanks for reading. If you want to read an ambiguous book about magic, coming of age, and searching for God, Among Others is for you.

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.

Thoreau on fairies

I took a walk on Spaulding’s Farm the other afternoon. I saw the setting sun lighting up the opposite side of a stately pine wood. Its golden rays straggled into the aisles of the wood as into some noble hall. I was impressed as if some ancient and altogether admirable and shining family had settled there in that part of the land called Concord, unknown to me,—to whom the sun was servant,—who had not gone into society in the village,—who had not been called on. I saw their park, their pleasure ground, beyond through the wood, in Spaulding’s cranberry-meadow. The pines furnished them with gables as they grew. Their house was not obvious to vision; the trees grew through it. I do not know whether I heard the sounds of a suppressed hilarity or not. They seemed to recline on the sunbeams. They have sons and daughters. They are quite well. The farmer’s cart-path, which leads directly through their hall, does not in the least put them out,—as the muddy bottom of a pool is sometimes seen through the reflected skies. They never heard of Spaulding, and do not know that he is their neighbor,—notwithstanding I heard him whistle as he drove his team through the house. Nothing can equal the serenity of their lives. Their coat of arms is simply a lichen. I saw it painted on the pines and oaks. Their attics were in the tops of the trees. They are of no politics. There was no noise of labor. I did not perceive that they were weaving or spinning. Yet I did detect, when the wind lulled and hearing was done away, the finest imaginable sweet musical hum,—as of a distant hive in May, which perchance was the sound of their thinking. They had no idle thoughts, and no one without could see their work, for their industry was not as in knots and excrescences embayed.
- "Walking," by Henry David Thoreau. Chapter XIII of Matthews, Brander, ed. The Oxford Book of American Essays. 1914. Public Domain.

Thanks for reading.