Heir Of Hope, Book 3 – Follower Of The Word

By Morgan Busse

Desciption

The great city of Thyra has fallen and shadows spread across the land. Rowen Mar, the last Truthsayer, is taken before the Shadonae. But the Shadonae are not who she thought they were, and now they want to claim her as their own. Caleb Tala, former assassin and prince, is now a Guardian of mankind. Exiled from his country, Caleb wanders the desert in search of his mother’s past and clues to who he is. These are the last days of the Eldaran race. Rowen and Caleb must find their way along the dark path set before them by their ancestors: to heal what was wounded and love where hatred grows. But the road is narrow and the darkness beckons. If either of them fails, all will be lost… And the human race will be no more.

Book three of the Follower of the Word series.

Excerpt

All of it, gone.

Caleb staggered against the wall inside the dark back rooms of the tavern, the shock at last catching up to him. The air was hot and stuffy, but he welcomed the darkness. He needed a moment to gather himself before going back out to Nierne.

A couple chairs lined the wall across from him and a candle burned from one of the rooms down the hall. The sound of laughter drifted between the wooden beads separating the back rooms from the main tavern. It smelled like a tavern too: smoke, bodies, and a subtle hint of the wines Dena stored back here.

Caleb leaned against the wall and lifted his right hand. The mark across his palm barely glowed now. As he watched, it faded until it looked like a patch of light skin, shades lighter than his own brown tones. So normal looking, so . . . inconsequential. Yet just over an hour ago he had pulled a blazing sword from his palm and fought with a monster he’d thought only lived in stories.

Sands! He still say Velyni in his mind . . . her beautiful body, her long dark hair, her sensuous lips. And the way her skin had peeled back, revealing what she really was: a shadow-like wraith. A Mordra, Nierne said.

Velyni almost killed him. If it hadn’t been for the Word’s power—

He closed his hand into a fist and dropped it at his side. Enough. The battle was done. He had survived. But the fight . . .

Had cost him everything.

He leaned his head against the wall and closed his eyes. Everything he had worked for, everything dear to him, gone. He could still hear Corin’s voice and the crazed look on his face when he discovered Caleb had banished Velyni from the Lands.

“You are no longer a Tala. I strip you of your title, your family, and your wealth.”

No longer a Tala. No family. No money. No title. Everything he desired from life, now gone.

All but a handful of gold coins in the pouch hanging around his neck and a little more hidden here in Dena’s tavern. Not enough to start a new life elsewhere. And he couldn’t go back to his family’s estate. He had to leave Temanin now, and never come back.

Caleb released a soft moan and turned his face toward the wall. He pressed his forehead against the cold, rough stone. How ironic. He’d become the hunted. An exile with a death mark on his name.

What would he do now?

Caleb Tala. What a pleasure to see you.”

He started and looked up.

A woman stood to his left, an empty platter held against her hip. Her deep purple silk shirt opened low, and her long dark skirt hugged her hips, flowing to the floor in liquid waves. Black kohl lined her eyes and her lips were painted a deep red. Hoops hung from her earlobes, and a matching silver comb held back the rich, dark hair piled on top of her head.

Caleb straightened. “Dena. You look . . . well.”

She threw her head back and laughed, a deep throaty guffaw. “Always the flatterer.” She winked. “Been a while since you visited my humble tavern.”

“It has.” The last time was a year ago, when he staked out Delshad’s estate. How much had changed since then?

“So what can I do for you?”

He blinked, bringing his mind back. “My usual room. Wait, no.” He shook his head. “I need another room as well. Just for tonight.”

Her eyes widened. “two rooms? Someone with you?”

“Yes. No.” He rubbed the area just above his right eye with two fingertips. “I have a woman with me.”

Dena raised one eyebrow. “And you need two rooms? That doesn’t sound like you.”

He dropped his hand. “It’s complicated.”

She laughed again. “It always is with you. All right then. Two rooms. I’ll put you both at the end of the hall. Anything else?”

“Dinner. Brought to my room.”

“Wine?”

Caleb shook his head. He needed his mind clear, to be ready for anything. He waited for Dena to leave, but instead she stood there, studying him. Her smile ebbed, leaving behind a frown. “Something is going on, isn’t it?”

He didn’t respond.

Dena nodded. “Yes, I can see it on your face.” He opened his mouth, but Dena held up a hand. “Come now, Caleb. We’ve known each other for years. I’d say I know you better than most, if anyone can know you.” Her dark eyes searched his. “I can see there is something wrong.”

He sighed. She was right If anyone knew him, it was Dena. He had spent years here in her tavern, using her place as a stakeout for his missions. A foul taste filled his mouth. Missions done for that monster, Velyni. He seldom talked to Dena when he came. He did his business and she made sure he was taken care of . Her concern now . . . touched him. Perhaps she would be willing to help. “You have no idea.”

“Anything I can do?”

Caleb hesitated. She might hand him over to the Keepers. Then again, she had watched his back before . . . “The Keepers are after me. If they come—”

“I’ll keep them off your back. Not the first time I’ve done that for you.”

He let out a long breath. I don’t want to see you get hurt.

Her eyes went wide. “Caleb Tala, I’m shocked. Do you have a heart now?”

A small smile crept across his lips. “Maybe.”

Dena shook her head. “The world must be coming to an end. Now go.” She motioned to the doorway. “I’ll take care of everything. Dinner will be up shortly.”

“Thank you, Dena.” He pulled his pouch from beneath his tunic. “Here, for everything.”

Her lips turned up in a wry smile and she held out her hand. He placed two gold coins in her palm. Her fingers closed around the gold.

If he could trust anyone, it would be Dena. If nothing else, she hated the Keepers and would thwart them out of spite.

Caleb cinched up the pouch and turned. Time to get back to Nierne.

He passed through the beads strung across the doorway, sending them clattering behind him. Nierne stood a couple feet away, her hood back. Brilliant red curls cascaded past her shoulders, a bright contrast to the dark room. He stared at her hair. How in the Lands could a woman who looked like Nierne be a scribe?

Realm Makers is excited to promote this year’s Clive Staples Award for Christian Speculative Fiction. We will announce the winner as part of the Realm Makers Awards Dinner on August 7th.

Similar to last year, the final winner will be decided by a panel of judges, so the award becomes a hybrid of “readers’ choice” and panel judging, which combines popularity and critical acclaim in the process. We’re very excited to be able to recognize the book that earns this honor, and therefore, the Faith and Fantasy Alliance is once again committing sponsoring funds to the cash prize that will go to the winner.

The nomination period is upon us and will be conducted via an online poll. If you would like to nominate a book for this award, please read the guidelines below before jumping to the poll.

Nomination qualifications

Eligible books must be all of the following:

• Containing themes consistent with a Christian worldview, whether implied, symbolic, or overt.

• Published in English.

• Published between January 1 and December 31 of the current contest’s year. (For example, for the Clive Staples Award held in 2015, entrants must have been published between, Jan. 1, 2014 and Dec. 31, 2014.)

• In the science fiction/fantasy/allegory/futuristic/supernatural/supernatural suspense/horror/time travel category, or any sub-genre or mashup of these.

Nomination guidelines

• Authors, agents, and publishers may not nominate books with which they are affiliated. Likewise, book authors or affiliates may not campaign for votes on behalf of their books. A conservative number of social media posts to make readers aware of the voting process is welcome. The contest committee reserves the right to disqualify any entry if it is determined a book’s affiliates have campaigned for votes.

• Readers may only nominate books they have actually read.
• Ebooks and books in hard-copy print are both eligible

Nomination instructions

• Navigate to the nomination survey

• Add between 1 and 3 books you’d like to nominate. Please include the Title, Author, and Publisher (indicate “self-published” if that is the case.)

• Submit your answers

After the nomination period is over, the award committee will tabulate the votes and declare the semi-finalists.

Readers’ Choice Semi-finalist Voting

Voters will be eligible only if they have read two or more of the books nominated. We want this to be a selection by readers of Christian speculative fiction, not just the fans of particular authors.

Below are standards to consider.

Standards for Clive Staples Award books

• Quality writing style and mechanics

• Believable and well-developed world-building

• Depth of characterization

• Well-structured, original, and interesting plot

• Deftness of integration of the worldview into the story’s plot and characterizations

Contest time line:

5-15-15: Reader nomination period begins

5-29-15: Reader nominations close

6-1-15: Semi-Finalists announced; second round of Readers Choice voting begins

6-8-15: Readers Choice voting closes

6-15-15: Finalists announced

7-7-15: Winner announced at the Realm Makers Costumed Awards Dinner, cash prize awarded

Thank you for lending your voice to help us choose the best speculative fiction out there. Spread the word that the contest is open, and good luck to all you authors.

[The nomination poll is imbedded in the original of this post at the Clive Staples Award site.]

After Israel destroyed the eastern Amorite kings, they journeyed on to the Jordan. There they camped on the plains of Moab, covering the land.

Moab was, understandably, alarmed. Balak son of Zippor, Moab’s king, wanted to fight and drive out the Israelites, but he was shrewd enough to seek an advantage before attempting what two kings had already failed. So he sent for Balaam son of Beor, and so opened one of the most memorable episodes in biblical history, starring one of the most enigmatic figures in biblical history. Balaam spoke with God and practiced sorcery, received visions from God and practiced divination; he was rebuked by a donkey, nearly slain by the angel of the LORD, and left a legacy to be anathematized more than a thousand years later by Jesus Christ and His apostles.

Balaam cursed and blessed, evidently with power, and Balak’s idea was that if Balaam cursed Israel, he would be able to defeat them. But God thwarted him, turning Balaam’s curse into a blessing. Balaam went home, but the story didn’t end.

Unable to curse Israel, and apparently unwilling to attack her, Balak turned to what is, when honed to a fine edge of malice and cunning, the subtlest, most treacherous form of warfare: seduction. With the help of Midian, he enticed the Israelites to sexual immorality, and from there to worshiping the Baal of Peor. Israel incurred God’s wrath, and before it was all over, 24,000 Israelites died in a plague.

And it was all Balaam’s idea. He was the one who taught Balak how to entice the Israelities into sin, who advised the Midiantes to seduce them into worshiping the Baal of Peor. Even when Balak was offering Balaam riches to curse Israel, the sorcerer understood what the king did not: That you could not curse those whom God has blessed. It didn’t matter who was against Israel as long as God was for them.

Nor did it much matter who was for Israel when God had turned against them. Often, when Israel was unfaithful, God “sold” her to her enemies, who were unwitting instruments of His discipline and justice. They didn’t understand that it was not their own strength, or even Israel’s weakness, that made her their prey; it was her sin. Only Balaam, with his scheme to lead Israel to prostitute herself at the altar of Baal, ever seemed to understand.

It was probably worse for his soul. But it also made Balaam, in his way, the most impressive of the Old Testament villains. His cleverness in turning God’s people against Him, and so He against them, is frightening, but not nearly as frightening as his audacity.

Balaam belongs to that type of villain that is my favorite in fiction – the smart villain. (In real life, I’d rather the villainous and criminally-minded come dumb. It’s safer that way.) Intelligent villains are the best – the most worthy opponents, the most interesting to see in action, the scariest to deal with. A genuinely clever villain elevates the plot and even the hero. And once you combine Balaam’s level of cunning with his level of audacity – well, the fun would be worth the price of admission.

What about you? What type of villain do you prefer?

I have a pile of novels on top of one bookshelf consisting of books I started to read and stopped. In fact I have one book from my church library that I’ve continue to renew since January! (No one’s put a hold on it, so I’m safe). At some point, I either have to plow through or admit defeat, but I postpone that decision with my little stack.

Most of these are speculative fiction; some are gifts. I should read these books. They’re my genre and someone I know thought I’d like them. But so far, I’ve not managed to get past . . . wherever I stopped reading.

In this regard, speculative fiction is no different than any other fiction. The author has to grab readers early and hold on. But the challenge might be greater. Speculative writers must give some attention to world-building, so readers will understand the way things work in this imaginative place—whether it’s in space or in a parallel world or in this world some hundreds of years in the future.

In that world-building, the author can sometimes forget that the story needs to move forward if the reader is to stay engaged.

So here are some of the books in my “I tried to read” stack.

* A Game Of Thrones. Yes, yes, I know it’s horrible that I as a fantasy writer haven’t read A Game Of Thrones. I’ve tried three times and the last time managed to get through the prologue. I understand it’s a dangerous world, but from the start, I’m not connecting to a character. I don’t have a reason to keep going (other than that I think I should).

* A Christian science fiction. I got half way through this 350 page book. I had no intention of stopping—my bookmark is actually in the middle of a chapter. But obviously the story didn’t keep me wanting to know what would happen next. I suspect I didn’t find enough tension to drive me on to the next page and the next and the next.

* Adam, Christian horror. I don’t know that I got past the opening page introducing a serial killer. It might be a good book. It might be well written. It might have an engaging character and a plot that pulls readers forward. I just don’t like reading about serial killers.

* Shaman’s Crossing. I should like this book. I don’t remember actually starting it and there’s no bookmark, but the first word is “I.” For a long time I really didn’t care for stories told in the first person. I’ve had to read a number of them now—for contests and critiques and edits and blog tours—so I’ve gotten over my antipathy, but I suspect when I first opened Shaman’s Crossing, I closed it again because of the point of view.

* The Runes Of The Earth. This is book one of The Last Chronicles Of Thomas Covenant. I’d read Stephen Donaldson’s two previous Thomas Covenant trilogies and was so excited to read this one. Until I started. My bookmark is on page 37. I’d have thought by that time I would have connected with a character or been captured by a story question. Nope and nope.

* A self-published fantasy. Wonderful voice, though I had to start a couple times. Each time I got a little farther until I stopped mid-chapter—page 61. As I recall, the character didn’t particularly want anything. Rather, stuff was happening to her. I didn’t have a reason to get in her corner and cheer her toward a victory.

* Another self-pubbed book. This one opened (in first person) with a confusing paragraph. I was struggling to sort out who the I and you and other strange-named characters were.

* Yet another self-published book. This one, I’m not sure I got past the cover. Inside the book looks professional, even has a map (which I consider a must for fantasy), but it looks to be an angels book. Maybe it isn’t, but that’s what it looks like, and I have never cared much for angel books and have truly developed angel weariness.

* Magician: Apprentice. I should like this book. Maybe I will like this book. I got it when I already had a number of other books to read, and the opening simply didn’t grab me. On page one, the character (who I assume to be the protagonist) catches some sea creatures then falls asleep. I should keep going, get further, find out why a friend recommended this book to me.

There are others in my stack, but this is enough. Here’s what I’ve learned from these books I’ve tried to read:

* In fiction, something needs to catch my attention. Sometimes, or maybe most times, a friend’s recommendation will do that—which is why I have these books in the first place and why I gave them a try at all. Sometimes, though, a blurb about the book will sell me. I’m less sold by a cover, but I realize I can be turned off by a cover.

* I need to engage with a character very quickly. If I don’t get a sense of who the protagonist is, I don’t care enough to keep going. (And surprisingly, I find it harder to get to know a first person narrator than I do a third person point of view character).

* I need to know what the character wants, at least short term, so I can hope for his success as he goes after it.

* I need some kind of tension pushing the story forward, generating a desire for me to keep reading so that I can find out what happens.

* I need the first page to grab my interest, and I need the chapters further along to hold it. I realized, for example, that Stephen Donaldson writes with a much more flowery, descriptive style than what I’m used to. I’m sure his early trilogies were in the same style, and I remember skimming passages that were too hard to follow. Now, however, I’m not patient enough to deal with his writing style. I’m not hooked into the story or invested in a character, so I’d rather find something else to read.

What about you? Share your reading duds. Have you started books you haven’t finished? (Please don’t give titles or authors if you think it would embarrass them). Do you know what made you stop reading? Do you try and try again until you get into a book? (I actually think I could finish all these if I’d stick with them—probably why I have the stack I do). Have you persisted with some book and discovered it’s a keeper, one you’re glad you read and would recommend to others (with the caveat that they must push past a slow opening)? Feel free to tell us what books those are.

I’m looking forward to hearing from you.

Caution: Generally I try to avoid spoilers, but this piece must involve a few.

Some critics are hell-bent on reading ill motivations into Marvel/director Joss Whedon and others by condemning Avengers: Age of Ultron for Black Widow’s role in the superhero story.

In the film Natasha (Black Widow) and Bruce Banner compare notes about their dark sides.

Bruce: I can’t have this. Any of this. There is no place on Earth I can go where I’m not a monster.

Natasha (about her assassin training): You know what my final test was in the Red Room? They sterilized me. Said it was one less thing to worry about. You think you’re the only monster on the team?¹

I had a feeling this moment would be controversial.

For example, one critic complained, “Haven’t we gotten to a point where the one lonely female superhero in our current landscape can just pursue the business of avenging without having to bemoan not being a mother?”

At The Washington Post, Alyssa Rosenberg gives a deep, balanced, yet devastating rebuttal.

Marvel’s critics aren’t wrong that the franchise has been oddly slow to put women at the center of its movies. But this line of criticism, or Jen Yamato’s contention that the films have treated Black Widow like nothing more than a cheap temptress, seem to me to miss the mark.

Rosenberg quotes a description of one strong woman “who burrowed into her work, kept secrets, shopped with glee, cooked with flair, and tenderly looked after her friends’ kids.”

And ultimately that’s a great deal of what I want from my female action heroes: that they not be required to take off their femininity when they suit up for battle, and that they not be required to leave it hanging in the closet when they return from the wars. Certainly, there are some female characters for whom violence may be straightforward and have few other implications for their senses of self. But isn’t the whole point of having women as well as men be superheroes and swordfighters that they bring a new range of perspectives to our experiences of these very old stories?

Some critics, of course, took to Twitter with vengeful rage. And Joss Whedon left in protest.

Later Whedon observed about the fanboy rage as well as the “social justice warrior” rage:

I have been attacked by militant feminists since I got on Twitter. That’s something I’m used to. Every breed of feminism is attacking every other breed, and every subsection of liberalism is always busy attacking another subsection of liberalism, because god forbid they should all band together and actually fight for the cause.

The Avengers know when to revel. I’m not sure perpetually outraged fanboys or “SJW” critics do.

Perhaps Whedon misses that for some folks (on Twitter and elsewhere), attacking is the cause. When you live for the battle as a means to its own end—when conflict itself is your “paradise”—you have no standard of victory or what Thor would call “revels.”

I can’t help but make a few casual and necessarily very-generalizing remarks about this.

First, this may confirm that unregenerate folks—who remain “dead in trespasses and sins” (Ephesians 2:1)—don’t have the long-term capacity even for simple pleasures. Something new comes along and we love it, start the fandoms, get hyped, share excitement with others. But it can’t last. Even with small gifts, eventually our Me-ism and desire to abuse storytelling and Art and all that trumps even our honest popular-culture enjoyments.

It’s not that these things are necessarily bad. It’s us who are bad. We’re not big enough for even these tiny gifts. How much more infinitely too small are we to enjoy the Giver. That’s why something must change. He must bring us to life and start making us bigger so we have capacity for Him. Only then can our view of His gifts be transformed (1 Tim 4:1-5).

Second, some critics are apparently  opposing simple pictures of human weakness. So is it oppressive to show Black Widow crying? Or suffering? Or in any kind of vulnerability?

Third, I would go so far as to say this demonstrates a possible desire to place moral-agenda over story. In the minds of some who call themselves “social justice” activists, there is no joy, no peace, no fun, and no simple pleasure. There is only The Cause. If we cannot picture a world in which all unjust enemies are gone and leave only beauty, truth, and goodness to enjoy, even a secular version of Heaven is impossible—a cosmic square circle. How much more inaccessible would be God-centered true eternity?

Fourth, we need to stop being so legalistic and uncharitable about stories and their makers. Even some of the best “social justice” critiques of this scene and its supposed insidious motives are far worse than the worst fundamentalist Christians’ pop-culture criticisms. They do not presume the best about the story-makers or even care to ask what they meant.

As one internet acquaintance informally remarked:

I saw the movie and I picked up on a few of the moments that people are angry about, but I just interpreted them differently. Like when Natasha’s character thinks she’s a monster for being sterile, the message I got was that she had a wrong view of herself, but that love could help heal and show her the truth (ie show her that her identity is NOT in her fertility). I certainly never felt the message to be that sterile people are actually monsters. To get that impression is to interpret each character’s feelings as the literal intended message and belief of the story-writer, which is the dumbest, most asinine, flat-minded thing a person could do.

Another friend said:

This is one of the main problems with the internet: people suck at hermeneutics. Their emotions, stories, histories, limited comprehension become the ultimate and immediate standard by which a piece is to be judged. No patience, no interpretive charity is shown.

Or ponder this wisdom from James Gunn, director of Guardians of the Galaxy:

As a young person I was very angry, and it’s something I have worked on, both personally and through years of therapy. And if I can say one truth about anger, it is that anger is almost never anger. Anger – especially aggressive and abusive anger – is a way to deal with feeling insecure, sad, hurt, vulnerable, powerless, fearful, or confused. Those feelings, for many of us, are a lot more difficult to deal with and acknowledge than anger. Anger makes us feel “right”. And powerful. But it also usually exacerbates whatever the underlying, more uncomfortable feeling is.

I had to respond with an example from Gunn’s own story (“trigger warning”: bad word).

Drax says, “I just wanted to tell you how grateful I am that you’ve accepted me despite my blunders. It is good to once again be among friends. You, Quill, are my friend. … This dumb tree is also my friend. … And this green whore is also …”

Gamora irritatingly shushes him, but then when Nebula appears to (in Drax’s view) insult Gamora even worse, he blasts the heck out of Nebula.

Drax: “No one talks to my friends like that.”

Not to “juke” this moment full of awesome, but I think this scene goes a long way to illustrating something about human nature: Yes, often we use words intentionally. Other times we don’t mean to do this at all; instead we are naive (or metaphor- or vocabulistically-challenged) and would actually die (or raygun-blast) to protect the friends who would have taken offense at something we thoughtlessly said.

So keep this in mind, in this and any other internet comments section—or their real-life equivalents—that words mean things, but sometimes speakers mean differently. Let’s keep that in mind especially if we get into fandom-fights or other disputes over Age of Ultron!

While most of the world is going gaga for the new Avengers movie, another cinematic juggernaut is bearing down on us.¹ A film that is part of a legendary franchise which hasn’t seen a new entry for thirty years. A film that promises to have more automotive mayhem than Vin Diesel can shake a stick at.

It’s time to get mad.

Mad Max: Fury Road looks awesome. I mean really AWESOME. I can truthfully say that this is the most excited I have ever been about a new movie in my entire life. I don’t know what it is, but I’m a sucker for post-apocalypse movies, and the Mad Max films are the cream of the campy crop.

Of course, there are hundreds of entries into the post-apoc category. They range from cheesy (Waterworld) to serious (The Road) to I’ve-lost-all-will-to-live (Threads) to strange (A Boy and His Dog, which gets my vote for best post-apocalyptic movie ending ever) to just plain bonkers (Six-String Samurai). And don’t forget the zombies. Grunge fashion, heavy weaponry, desolate landscapes, and motorized maniacs are staples of the genre, which give directors plenty of excuses to be as crazy as they want to be. The stakes are either very high or non-existent, the characters are either naively hopeful or utterly nihilistic, and thespian craft usually gives way to copious action and violence.

Anyone who has ever picked up a Bible certainly knows about the post-apocalyptic nightmares in its pages. Daniel, Ezekiel, and Isaiah laid it on pretty thick, as did New Testament writers Peter and John. Fire, plagues, famine, war, demons running amok, pale horses, and bowls of judgment assail our humble planet, purging the world of its wickedness to prepare the way for God’s kingdom on Earth, which is where Heaven will actually be.

Many post-apoc films take cues from the Bible, and some, such as The Book of Eli, make it a central part of the story. But is there any way to reconcile the cynical worldview of Hollywood’s apocalypse with the ultimately hopeful horrors of the Bible?

That depends on where you start. A worldview without God would likely regard the desolation of mankind as an inevitability, with the remnants of humanity rising from the ashes and rebuilding their world which would eventually head back down the same road, or perhaps the entire annihilation of the species. The vehemence with which humanity pursues war and aggression is hardly any cause for hope, especially since the bullets get bigger by the day. The ruination of our planet and civilization seems like only a matter of time.

Someone with a Christian worldview would feel the same way, except there is a hope for salvation at the end of it. I believe with confidence that the human race will not be annihilated, despite our best efforts, because the promises of the Bible, upon which I base my faith, would be worthless. I don’t know what state humanity will be in when God finally returns to establish His kingdom, but there will be something here.

There is rarely any God in Hollywood’s idea of the end of days. Humanity is left to fend for itself, and it usually does endure thanks to the actions of a brave hero. This does not necessarily mean that filmmakers are deliberately ignoring Biblical prophecies when making their films, but the humanistic element in these movies is undeniable. What is worth saving is human civilization and culture, not souls. Morality and conscience are often tossed out the window in favor of survival of the fittest. Staying alive is the ultimate virtue, and the cost is usually great. Theistic fantasies like organized religion have been burned away, leaving the raw human animal fully exposed. It’s a simple worldview – survive at all costs – but the futility often peeks through the rags.

This hopelessness is very prominent in a series like The Walking Dead. As season after season trudges on, there is hardly any hope for the characters to grab onto, and I must confess that even my tolerance for grimness is tested. The human race needs hope to survive, and if you remove God from the picture, the only source of hope is ourselves. When I read the headlines every morning, I don’t see much cause for rejoicing.

A real-life apocalypse would be far less sensational and entertaining than what we see on the screen, but if I am unfortunate enough to experience a cataclysmic event in my lifetime, I know that it won’t be the end. The world won’t end with a whimper, nor with a bang.

It will begin with the cleansing light of God’s glory.

Jupiter Winds

By C. J. Darlington

Recommendation

A fast-paced, character-driven space adventure that’s reminiscent of science fiction’s golden age. —KATHY TYERS, author of the Firebird series

Description

In 2160, a teenager becomes the bait to capture her missing revolutionary parents she thinks are long dead.

Grey Alexander has one goal—to keep herself and her younger sister Orinda alive. Not an easy feat living unconnected in the North American Wildlife Preserve, where they survive by smuggling contraband into the Mazdaar government’s city zones. If the invisible electric border fence doesn’t kill them, a human-like patrol drone could.

When her worst fear comes true, Grey questions everything she thought she knew about life, her missing parents, and God. Could another planet, whose sky swirls with orange vapors and where extinct-on-Earth creatures roam free, hold the key to reuniting her family?

Excerpt

Grey Alexander crouched behind a fat saguaro cactus and tried not to think about getting killed.

“Hear anything, Rin?”

Her younger sister Orinda listened with her auris plug then shook her head. So far, she’d heard nothing but a thundering herd of thirsty zebras. But that didn’t mean they were safe.

Grey knelt in the hot, gritty dirt. Flyovers didn’t happen often in the Preserve, but with a bounty on the heads of the unconnected, some pilots considered them easy money. And Mazdaar didn’t care if the bodies were still breathing or not.

She tapped at her bracelet controller, and the turquoise stone transformed into a grid of thumbnail touchscreens. Running her finger across the grid to activate the ocelli contact lenses in her eyes, Grey focused on a stretch of sage-pocked desert a quarter mile away. They hadn’t been able to afford implants for both of them, instead designating Rin as the ears of the mission and Grey as the eyes.

The ocelli immediately brought the area into sharp focus. Along the edge of Grey’s vision field, tiny red numbers indicated 8x zoom and F16 aperture. She sometimes imagined she could see the voltage of the invisible electric border fence shimmering in the desert heat.

Grey tapped her wrist again, wishing the lenses could perform x-ray scans. What if she missed a robot drone?

“Looks clear to me,” Grey said, giving her sister a thumbs-up. They sprinted across the desert floor, darting around the scattered scrub and ironwood trees. Her heavy pack thumped uncomfortably against her back, making her glad Orinda had the lighter one.

The sisters zeroed in on their target, a sandstone rock they’d strategically placed to mark where they’d dug under the fence last time. As soon as they reached it, Rin tuned in for any sounds of a patrol. Grey waved her hand over the ground. Her DNA registered in the chameleon cloth sensor and an outline appeared in the dirt, revealing a three-foot=square piece of fabric. Able to match the image of any surface and project the picture onto itself, it masked their hole perfectlyh. Grey had traded a month’s worh of food for it.

Quickly jerking the chameleon cloth away and being careful to keep her hand on her side of the fence, she stared at the thick, black wire snaking across the ground above the hole. Grey licked at her cracked lips and slipped out of her pack. Luckily, the fence only emanated an electric force field upward and Mazdaar hadn’t bothered to bury the wire more than a few inches.

She shoved her pack under the wire before slowly slithering after it on her stomach. Many had died trying to cross this border, and now she could hear the wire humming with voltage that could kill her too. Halfway across, with the wire only inches from touching her tack, she sucked in a breath and caught a mouthful of dust. She suddenly felt trapped, pinned down, and unable to escape.

“You have plenty of room,” Rin encouraged her.

She forced her body through the rest of the way and clambered to her feet on the other side of the border, gasping in air. She gave the area one last scan, glad no cameras were installed out here. It was just them and the lizards.

Grey waved for Rin to follow, and her sister didn’t hesitate. She slipped under the wire and joined Grey on the other side. Grey repositioned the chameleon cloth, and they were off again at a jog.

This stretch of the border between the Alamo Republic and the North American Wildlife Preserve was always the least patrolled. Only drones traveled this far from the city zones, and the few unconnected people who managed to stay alive in the land of canyons, cacti, and lions didn’t want anything to do with Mazdaar.

Still, they could never be too cautious. As far as Mazdaar was concerned, both she and Orinda were outlaws just by being unconnected. The contents of their backpacks alone could send them to the Mars prisons, not to mention their black-market implants and the small, unregistered coilgun Grey wore in a holster around her ankle. It would never be as powerful as any of the laser weapons of Mazadaar, but it would protect them.

Grey huffed a little as they jogged, sweat trickling down her temple. If she and Orinda were to race, Rin would win every time. Thinner, stealthier, and with the grace of a coyote, her fourteen-year-old sister was the only reason Grey had taken these smuggling jobs in the first place. Alone, she might’ve given up when Mom and Dad disappeared, but Rin gave her a reason to survive.

“Two more miles.” Rin was barely breathing hard.

“He said to wait in our usual spot,” Grey said. She pulled out a rag and tried to clean up her dirt-streaked face as they slowed their pace. She didn’t want to look like a wild animal when they met up with Jet.

Rin sent a grin her way. “Tired?”

“Nope.”

“Liar.”

They laughed, but Grey kept award of her surroundings. They could still be shot on sight.

For years authors—the few, the proud, and the prolific—who wrote fantasy seemed to write only one type of story: the dwarfs-and-elves classic fantasy taking place in a medieval setting. Then along came Harry Potter and a handful of other stories. Suddenly fantasy mushroomed into a wide array of sub-genres, from urban fantasy to dystopian, fairytale, post-apocalyptic, steampunk, and a host of others.

At one point, young adult fiction took over the genre. Seemingly, every other YA book was some type of fantasy, and the best-seller lists were dominated by the likes of series such as Harry Potter (the latter books no longer falling into the middle grade category), Twilight, and Hunger Games.

Vampires and dark retellings of fairy tales hit the small screen, too, but in the book industry, the interest in fantasy of any kind seemed to be slowing. In fact, science fiction appeared to be the new point of interest.

Until classic fantasy re-emerged.

I don’t know what the catalyst was. I do know several young adult series such as A Throne Of Glass by Sarah Maas and Falling Kingdoms by Megan Rhodes harkened back to classic fantasy. And then there was Lev Grossman‘s recently concluded trilogy: The Magicians, The Magician King, and The Magician’s Land.

Grossman in particular seems to be an apologist for fantasy. In a phone interview last August with The Atlantic, he said, after praising C. S. Lewis (“He came up with a new way to describe magic that made it feel realer than it ever had”) and Narnia in particular,

I bristle whenever fantasy is characterized as escapism. It’s not a very accurate way to describe it; in fact, I think fantasy is a powerful tool for coming to an understanding of oneself. The magic trick here, the sleight of hand, is that when you pass through the portal, you re-encounter in the fantasy world the problems you thought you left behind in the real world. Edmund doesn’t solve any of his grievances or personality disorders by going through the wardrobe. If anything, they’re exacerbated and brought to a crisis by his experiences in Narnia. When you go to Narnia, your worries come with you. Narnia just becomes the place where you work them out and try to resolve them.

Patrick Rothfuss, author of The Kingkiller Chronicle and other related books set in the same world, hasn’t hurt the status of classic fantasy either. Nor has Brandon Sanderson with his completion of Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series and his own Mistborn series.

Christian fantasy, late to the prom with dystopian and post-apocalyptic fantasy, seems primed to take advantage of this new resurgence of classic fantasy. Among others, Jill Williamson will be releasing in the near future a traditional type fantasy from Bethany House, along the lines of her Blood Of Kings trilogy.

Classic fantasy—largely epic fantasy—is what I most like to read and what I happen to write. But I’m seeing the genre move in a different direction. There’s a distinct movement away from Tolkien remakes. Writers are taking a fresh approach in the storytelling, in the worldbuilding, and in the creation of the characters. Above all, the aim seems to be to avoid the predictable.

Which is as it should be, as far as I’m concerned. Stories are retreads. We can’t seem to get away from that. It’s the “no new story” truth we all live with. But there are unique ways of presenting stories, new twists, characters who “don’t belong” yet show up that can make a story feel new.

Whether it’s Anne Elisabeth Stengl‘s shape-shifting faeries or Patrick Carr‘s drunk protagonist or Jill Williamson‘s good bad guys and bad good guys, Christian fiction writers seem more than capable of keeping pace with the resurgence of classic fantasy.

Long may it continue.

What’s your take on the fantasy genre? Are you surprised to see its resurgence? What do you think has led to it? (I have my theory, but I’d love to hear yours first).

“In my teens, I was trying to figure out who I was. In my twenties I was trying to prove who I was. In my thirties I knew who I was but cared what people thought about me. In my forties I stopped caring about anyone’s opinion except my own, my husband’s, and the Lord’s.”

This is how a friend translated my especially long babble about why I felt so happy and free lately. Someday I hope to be more like this friend, whose joy is tempered with hard-earned, valuable wisdom. She went into my brain, gathered all the clutter and organized it into one of those gorgeous but affordable storage units from IKEA. I wanted to print her summation on a bookmark and give it out to people to explain my life. I wouldn’t give it to random people, just the ones who see me all the time, like the checkout ladies at the grocery store and the stop-go sign guys working construction down the street. Then I would write thank you notes to the folks who’ve loved me through all those stages and still talk to me at church on purpose. I am filled with gratitude when I see God’s faithfulness in my life, and I don’t have a single regret. (That is a lie. I totally regret the body glitter phase of 1998.)

I want to see considerations of age and experience played out in the fiction I read. Age is only one facet of character-building, but it can often be overlooked as a fantastic way to set characters apart. Age is important in speculative fiction. A wizened old man can have the mind of a child, a sentient ship can embody the playfulness of a kindergartener. However, when you shuck traditional developmental stages, you better sell it like a kid hawking lemonade with the bicycle page from the Walmart flyer in his pocket.

For example, if you are writing a first kiss between your characters in a Young Adult novel, remember that their instinct will not be to groan and sink their fingers into each other’s hair. At least one of them should be anxious that they’re doing it wrong. If your middle-aged ship captain keeps losing sailors because he forgets to sign the paychecks, you need to explain how he got this far without learning how to be an adult. Unless there is a good reason to the contrary, readers will not believe children who are perfectly behaved and erudite (unless they’re robots, or Charles Wallace), or a twenty-something who rules planets with the cool detachment of an octogenarian.

I’m perfectly happy to believe all the crazy worldbuilding you can throw at me. I will overlook a few tropes if the plot is halfway interesting. But if your characters do not “act their age,” then you need to explain why that is so. If the young ruler has been trained since birth to rule the galaxy, okay—but when does she let her hair down, and with whom? Certainly not all those stuffy advisors who are loyal to her father. Some aspect of this girl will have to act twenty. Maybe when she gets that illegal tattoo she will love every second of the itching when it heals…and is the tattoo artist involved with the rumors of rebellion that have been churning around her empire?

Mmmm, intergalactic rebellion.

Another example of age-appropriate plot/character issues is the male protagonist who cannot maintain close relationships. Cool! I love me some slightly damaged alpha males who lead the troops to victory. However, if in the course of the novel nothing affects his hard heart, his character comes off as immature. Rampant, unrepentant immaturity is not a desirable trait for a hero. At least, not the kind of hero I want to root for over the long term. In Chris Wooding’s Retribution Falls, the male protagonist is a sketchy, reckless lone wolf, but by the end of the novel he has cobbled together a team he really cares about. He grows up. And in return, I read the next book in the series.

Our age informs how we write, but it does not stifle our creativity. Similarly, the age of our characters does not limit their behavior, but should not be a red flag of confusion for the reader. So, let’s infuse our characters with the same kind of honest, personal journeys we get to enjoy as we walk with the Lord. Body glitter optional.

QUESTIONS:
Can you think of a good example of “traditional age issues” driving fictional characters? Examples of those traditional things being flipped on their ears to thrilling effect? Here’s another application question: Apart from YA stories, are there ages/life experiences you would like to see represented in speculative fiction? Tropes in YA fiction you wish would moulder and die? Let’s talk about agey things!

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Megan Ebba was a staffworker with InterVarsity Christian Fellowship before becoming a librarian and eventually, a writer.

In 2014, she won the ACFW’s Genesis Award in the speculative fiction category for her novel, TANGLED IN GOLD. Megan lives in New Hampshire with her husband and three children. To learn more about her and to read more of her articles, visit her web site or friend her on Facebook.