Tag: imagination

“Raven’s Ladder (The Auralia Thread series)” by Jeffrey Overstreet

~ Bob Hayton ~ 3 Comments

The best fiction transports the reader into the setting of the book. The adventure written becomes an adventure experienced. Characters aren’t just described by the author, they are befriended by the reader. This is when reading becomes an engrossing, consuming experience, and books become a work of art rather than a mere production. Jeffrey Overstreet wields this kind of book magic in his “Auralia Thread” series.

Raven’s Ladder (book #3) was my first encounter with the series, and as the story developed I felt like I had stepped into a well-developed, alternate world. The members of a fallen House are struggling to survive in a wilderness, and a mysterious danger lurks below ground. A young king believes in childish myths about The Keeper and risks everything to follow his mystical guides. A group of devious seer-types control an economic stronghold where the people worship moon spirits and follow their own pursuits and pleasures wholeheartedly. And a malady which turns men to beasts has destroyed another House and threatens all the land.

The tale is so different it takes a while to feel comfortable in the story. And when you begin to sense the grandeur of the tale, glimpses of connections to Christianity make the tale all the more alluring. Auralia’s vivid colors mesmerize all who remember them, and visions of beauty stand out all the more starkly against a pervasive and widespread ugliness. Whispers of The Keeper and the mystery of a long forgotten past make figuring out this world much less easy than it seems.

As the tale progresses, high and low points ebb and flow. The conclusion will leave you begging for more, and wondering what is in store for young King Cal-raven and the other heroes of the book. And after finishing this book, you may feel the urge to read the first two books to enjoy the world Jeffrey Overstreet has created to its fullest extent.

Disclaimer: this book was provided by Waterbrook Multnomah Publishing Group for review. The reviewer was under no obligation to provide a positive review.

You can pick up a copy at Amazon.com or directly from Waterbrook Multnomah.

Quotes to Note 2: The Importance of Wicked Step-mothers

~ Bob Hayton ~ 2 Comments

I recently added a books widget from GuruLib (check out my “Books I’m Reading” section in my sidebar). And one of the books I note that I’m reading is Planet Narnia: The Seven Heavens in the Imagination of C.S. Lewis by Michael Ward. I heard about the book from Justin Taylor’s blog, and the few pages I’ve read so far are fascinating.

In starting this book, I stumbled over a quote which has grabbed my attention. As a father of four daughters, the oldest being 4 (and a half), and as one who enjoys a good tale, I found this quote equally insightful and inspiring. It is from the contemporary British philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre from his book After Virtue:

It is through hearing stories about wicked stepmothers, lost children, good but misguided kings, wolves that suckle twin boys, youngest sons who receive no inheritance but must make their own way in the world, and eldest sons who waste their inheritance on riotous living and go into exile to live with the swine, that children learn or mislearn both what a child and what a parent is, what the cast of characters may be in the drama into which they have been born and what the ways of the world are. ¹

What do you think? I think he is making an important point, and stories are more important than we realize.

 ¹ Ward quotes a portion of this quote on pg. 3 in his book citing After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory (London: Duckworth, 1985), pg. 216. My longer quote comes from a chapter by MacIntyre entitled “The Virtues, The Unity of a Human Life, and the Concept of a Tradition” in the book Memory, Identity, Community: The Idea of Narrative in the Human Sciences edited by Lewis and Sandra Hinchman (State University of New York Press: 1997) found with Google Book Search.