Review: "The Castings Trilogy" By Pamela Freeman

Happy 2011 to all of you!  I've missed you all terribly and want to apologize for my forced absence.  I have been named acting director of my state agency upon the retirement of my boss, and I have just been way too busy of late.  I have decided though that I must get back in the saddle and keep doing what makes me happy, and posting here on ProSe and interacting with all of you is what makes me very, very happy.

I just finished a novel over the holidays that I am really quite excited to tell you about.  Some of you may know of the Australian author, Pamela Freeman, as it is my understanding that she is a fairly well known author of young-adult literature.  Well, I just finished her first set of novels (I think) written for adult audiences.  Frankly, I have to tell you that it is also completely age and subject appropriate for youth and teen readers as well.  Okay, on with my review.

Ms. Freeman recently wrote a sequence of three books entitled, "The Castings Trilogy," and it is nothing short of brilliant!  The three novels in the trilogy are titled, "Blood Ties," "Deep Water," and the third is "Full Circle."  The titles are quite apt considering the subject and pace of each novel.  I read a larger-sized omnibus edition published by Orbit (2010) at just under 1,400 pages in length.  I have to tell you that I couldn't put it down; it was just riveting!

Firstly, these novels flow quite effortlessly and seamlessly from the first volume to the third.  Ms. Freeman is an excellent writer with a very clean and crisp writing style that immediately pulls the reader deep into her tale.  Somehow, to me, this book seemed particularly poignant and meaningful during our current times, with all of the hatred, prejudice, and violence that we currently endure around the world.  While a superbly crafted work of fantasy fiction, with extraordinarily interesting characters, this is really a book about morality--what is right and what is wrong--and about what it means to be human, and what it means to be different, and how important it is to seek the means to bridge those differences.  There are so many wonderful lessons about how to live a good and decent life in the characters Freemen has created.

As the father of adult daughters, I can't begin to tell you how very much I admired her development and utilization of several very strong female characters through the story-line.  For example, her creation of the young Traveler woman 'Bramble' was sheer genius.  I fell in love with this young, very tough-minded woman.  Then she 'kicks it up a notch' with the characters of 'Martine' and 'Sorn.'  These are women who interact through the course of the plot with other characters in such a fashion that they truly do become wonderful role models for all of us--male or female--in our day-to-day lives.  They are full of strength, intelligence, courage, honor, integrity, and commitment.  In fairness, many of her male characters exhibit many of these exemplary traits too; particularly 'Ash,' 'Leof,' 'Baluch,' and 'Acton.'

Another aspect of the novels that impressed me was Freeman's real talent in her creative utilization of a literary device that has the tale told through the use of multiple points-of-view, some as a voice from the past, and some from the perspective of the present.  It is really a wonderful technique for providing back-story and key information in a very efficient fashion.

While I do not want to give away even a hint of the plot, suffice it to say that this is really the story of a struggle between two disparate groups of people in a world that is essentially dominated by one of the groups of peoples, at the expense of the other.  It proceeds at a relentless pace that almost leaves the reader breathless for want of figuring out what is to become of the world of the Domains and these fascinating characters we've come to know and empathize with.  I would very much recommend this book for a discussion in a book club as it brings up topics and issues that we all need to think about as citizens of our communities, countries, and the world as a whole.  I wholeheartedly thank Ms. Freeman for giving us this thought-provoking series of novels.  While highly entertaining, there's an important take-home message for each of us to ponder, discuss, and bring to bear in our own lives.  I look forward to reading anything else this talented woman writes.

Finally, I will definitely read this novel again; it is a keeper!  I happily assign 4.5/5.0 stars for this superbly crafted fantasy series, and very highly recommend it.

Review: "Ransom" By David Malouf

This is without a doubt one of the best books I've read in a while.  It was so damned good that I turned around and read it again as soon as I had finished reading it the first time.  It doesn't take long to read, at just over 200 pages, but it packs a big wallop.  Ransom, published in 2009, is Australian poet and author David Malouf's most recent offering after nearly ten years; and I have to say that it was well worth the wait.

Malouf's novel takes as its inspiration a series of events that occur near the end of Homer's The Iliad (my review of the Fagles translation of The Iliad can be found here), including the following:  the death of Achilles' friend Patroclus (Book 16), Achilles' killing of Hector (Book 22), the funeral of Patroclus (Book 23), and Priam's late-night visit to Achilles to beg for the return of his son's body (Book 24).  With little more than passing references in his novel, Malouf wisely leaves it to Homer to tell the story of the first three events, and instead focuses most of his book on the last--that of the Trojan King, Priam, and his efforts to claim his son's body from Achilles.  Homer's description of Priam's meeting with Achilles is, in my opinion, the most emotionally charged and powerful scene in the whole poem.  In his novel, Malouf, the poet/author, lyrically and tenderly delves into the psychology of the grieving warrior over the loss of his friend, and the grieving father and his efforts to retrieve the body of his slain son.  While this is surely one of the saddest stories I have read of late, at the same time the reader cannot help but be buoyed up by Malouf's beautiful portrayal of the innate sense of decency, goodness, and the inherent need for redemption that resides in each of us--even in the face of great adversity and tragedy.

My impression of the Trojan War comes from reading The Iliad, and largely seems to be nothing more than a game board set up on a table and surrounded by the pantheon of gods and goddesses who reached down and pushed playing pieces about; with one side gaining a brief advantage, and then the other.  The upshot was that for ten long years the war between the Achaeans and Trojans reeled back and forth across the Scamander Plain outside of the walls of Troy, and resulted in the bloody slaughter of hundreds, if not thousands, of Greeks and Trojans alike.  Reading The Iliad left me with the overwhelming feeling that it all seemed preordained, and that the story just had to play out as foretold.  What Malouf does so brilliantly in Ransom is to 'liberate' a portion of this epic tragic tale from the control of the gods and Fate, and gives the power of 'free choice' and decision-making to two of the primary protagonists--Priam and Achilles.

For ten days in a row, following the death of Hector in single-combat with Achilles, Priam and the Trojans have watched Achilles drag Hector's body behind his chariot around the funeral mound of his slain friend, Patroclus.  Finally, Priam can take it no longer, he must do something.  Late one night he has a vision of something "new" occurring.  He sees that he must go to Achilles, not as King of Troy, but as the father of a dead son, and appeal to him man-to-man for the body of his son.  He will ride to the Achaean camp without all of the trappings of his authority on an old and unadorned cart pulled by two mules with an old grey-haired Trojan country rustic as the cart-driver.

A goodly portion of this little novel is the story of the carter, Somax, and Priam and their journey out of the city and through the countryside to the Achaean camp.  The two old men begin to get to know one another, and slowly but surely develop a tremendous amount of empathy for one another.  After a few hours of slow plodding in the wagon, Somax stops at the bank of the river they have to ford and has the King wade out into the river just to feel the coolness of the water.  He feeds the King some of his daughter-in-law's simply-made buttermilk griddle cakes.  He tells the King about the loss of each of his children, and that all he has left is his daughter-in-law, his little four-year-old granddaughter, and his two mules ('Beauty' and 'Shock').  What Malouf has masterfully done in this part of the novel is to help the King reestablish his connection with his own humanity and the land around him.  It is precisely the preparation that he needs in order to be successful in his upcoming supplication to Achilles.

I don't want to say too much more about the meeting between Priam and Achilles, as it really is the climax of the novel, but suffice it to say that it is an emotionally riveting experience.  With tears in my eyes, I found myself almost holding my breath as the two men quietly talk in a dark corner of Achilles' tent in the middle of the night.  It is heart-wrenching stuff.  I do want to share just a bit of Malouf's beautiful writing of this intimate meeting too, especially these few words from Priam--

"'Achilles,' he says, his voice steady now, 'you know, as I do, what we men are.  We are mortals, not gods.  We die.  Death is in our nature.  Without that fee paid in advance, the world does not come to us.  That is the hard bargain life makes with us--with all of us, every one--and the condition we share.  And for that reason, if for no other, we should have pity for one another's losses.  For the sorrows that must come sooner or later to each one of us, in a world we enter only on mortal terms."

Upon reading this I suddenly realized that Malouf wants us to realize, just as Priam and Achilles have, that being Human, and therefore mortal, is better than being one of the Immortals.  Humans, with all of our warts and short-comings, have reasons to live and love, reasons to do the right things, and reasons to make our brief lives mean something that might be remembered through the ages, or even just for a few moments.  Homer, through The Iliad, makes us remember Achilles and King Priam, and Malouf's novel helps us better understand why we should.

I suppose that there is always the danger of trying to retell even a portion of a story that is so well-known as The Iliad.  I submit that Malouf has not run that risk here at all, and has not over-reached one-jot in telling this powerful story.  This compact novel, with its Homericly noble prose, is rich with pathos, emotion, empathy, compassion and humanity.  It is not the story of the gods and goddesses; no, it is the story of humans and human failings and feelings.  Most of all I think it is the story of the triumph of the human spirit even in the depths of despair and tragedy.  Priam takes a chance to retrieve his son and finds his humanity.  Achilles takes a chance by giving up his rage and finds his inner peace and redemption.  Nearly three-thousand years later we still weep for and admire both of these men for what they suffered and went through.  Malouf's superbly well-written Ransom poignantly and touchingly reinforces those feelings we harbor in our hearts, but may not have fully understood why.

I highly recommend this novel, and unhesitatingly award it five of five stars.  If you do read this novel at some point, and I sincerely hope you will, please consider going back and reviewing the books of The Iliad that I referenced in the opening paragraph.  When you finish reading David Malouf's Ransom, please drop me a note and let me know what you thought.

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