The Gaming Outpost

The Reverend James Aubuchon has done more for Christian acceptance of fantasy in this generation than perhaps anyone will credit.  He spearheaded the creation of the Christian Gamers Guild, and if that has not been the evangelistic outreach to gamers he originally envisioned, it has still had significant impact in bridging the gap between Christians and gamers.  I am twice indebted to him, first because as chaplain of that organization I have gained significant recognition in the gaming community for my defense of both Christian faith and fantasy gaming, and second because not so long ago when I was seeking someone to publish my own book, What Does God Expect?  A Gospel-based Approach to Christian Conduct, he introduced me to Lulu.  Now he has followed his own good advice, by taking advantage of that publisher to produce his own book, The Heartstone, a short fantasy book.  For some reason that still surprises me, even before I had mentioned my intention to write a review of another fantasy book, (The Kakos Realm:  Grinden Proselyte), Jim asked if I would review his, and mailed me a copy.

I have now read it twice.  It is an enjoyable book apparently aimed at a younger audience.  The language and text flow all have that children’s book feeling to them, and the layout is reminiscent of books aimed at late elementary and middle school children.  The print is a bit on the larger size (it appears to be fifteen point) and well spaced between the lines, each page decoratively framed.  At the same time, there is an allegorical feeling to it, reminiscent of the Narnia books, and particularly A Horse and His Boy or The Silver Chair, which deal with similar material, that of select people on a divinely-appointed journey.  I was surprised by one mildly crude expression in a passing thought of one character, but more because it was unexpected than that it was inappropriate.

Although I have a number of complaints about the book, these do not include problems with the writing, either technically or stylistically.  The author is competent.  There are very few technical errors, and these are all in the realm of simple typographical problems–a couple of dropped quotation marks, a misplaced apostrophe.  I noticed one sentence fragment outside the dialogue, and that was well within the boundaries of the vernacular.  Also, it did not in the main feel like I was reading the account of someone’s game set to paper.  He brings the story across as a story, not as an account of events.

It gets off to a bit of a rough start, however.  Before the story begins there is a prologue, in which the author attempts to set the scene by describing his world and how it works.  Very little of this was truly necessary at this point, and reading it only caused me to wonder up front whether it really did make sense.  It is complicated by that which is supposed to simplify it, as we are introduced to a set of characters whom we never again encounter, a storyteller who is given a name never again used and a group of villagers, particularly the children, who gather once a week to hear his stories.  Thus the book itself is set up as one of those stories, while the prologue is the conversations held before the story begins.  Yet although this seems a reasonable way to present the background information, it fails on several levels.  For example, one of the children asks how time is measured in their world, and the storyteller goes into detail explaining that a barrel is dropped from the top of a two-hundred mile waterfall, and when it reaches the bottom that measures one “fall”.  Three falls make a day, and each fall is divided into ten presumably equal “portions”.  Although there is never any night, everyone sleeps during the third fall.  All of this only raises questions that do not matter.  What child would ask a question about how time is measured, unless he had been somewhere where it was done differently?  How long would it really take a barrel to fall two hundred miles?  How would the people at the top know that it had reached the bottom?  How do they know when it has passed the various portion marks, and communicate that information elsewhere?  Why does everyone sleep at the same time, if it is always day?  Meanwhile, the references to time within the book are so rare that what was necessary could have been explained more concisely when it mattered.  Similarly, we are told that the seasons are determined by the direction of the wind, but only once does the direction of the wind matter, and it would have been simple enough to explain it then.  The author never returns to his storyteller, and I saw nothing in the prologue that would not have been better explained during the story.

There are two other details that are complicated by the fact that we begin with the storyteller.  The first is the use of the familiar technique of starting the story at a critical point and then telling how the character reached that point.  This is done quite well enough, and successfully introduces the real characters of the story, four adventurers trying to reach the top of the mountain.  It is well written for a book.  It is not, in my experience, the way storytellers tell stories.  Begin at the beginning, as they say, and that is what they generally do.  The second problem is that we are quickly given the impression that this is the story of someone’s ascent to the top of the mountain–that is the framework of the story that matters–but that is not the story we are told.  The prologue might have made sense were it paired with an epilogue, in which perhaps our child asked what happened next and the storyteller said that would have to be next week’s tale.

Indeed, that is either the strength or the weakness of the book entirely, that it tells a part of the story.  It is as if instead of publishing The Hobbit (another book which came to mind for its feeling that this was a story being told to children) Tolkien had published a volume about Bilbo and the Dwarfs’ adventure with the trolls.  It would have begun with a storyteller explaining a bit about Middle Earth, and then moved to Bilbo slogging through the rain complaining about the road and wondering where that wizard got off to, then giving us the backstory about how the dwarfs all suddenly showed up at his house acting as if there were already some agreement that he was going with them, and he got dragged along and here he was.  After that, it would have introduced the trolls and their dinner, and Bilbo’s efforts to steal a bit which got him, and all the dwarfs, caught, and the way Gandalf rescued them, and the treasure they found in the cave, ending with their preparations to continue their journey.  It is not the story; it is a part of the story.  Thus as this story opens, the four adventurers have just left Verndorf and are trying to recover the stolen Heartstone for that town as they pursue their objective of reaching the top of the mountain (the people of Verndorf can provide them with transportation to this end), and in the end they are back in Verndorf accepting a ride from the dwarfs to go meet the elfs and continue their quest.  The story itself was well worth telling, but it was part of the longer story, and left the reader puzzled concerning why this is all of it.

I say, though, that it may also be its strength.  Many books started as serials, and if it is Aubuchon’s intention to continue the story through several similar short books, he has a good start to the series.  One could read this story aloud at bedtime on four nights easily enough, and continue with the next book, the next several books, until the full story was told.  I think this is going somewhere, and he left me wanting to know where it was going.  Our adventurers have already learned that the Great King who called them to make this climb has more planned for them than merely reaching the top, and I’d like to see what it is. If he continues to ask so little for each installment (particularly as downloads), I will be sure to find out.

In response to this review, Reverend Aubuchon is considering a few revisions to the text.  He also informs me that he is planning to tell the ongoing story through a series of future books, to which I am anticipating favorably.  It is a story about the adventurers learning to trust providence, which the author feels (I think rightly) is a much better adventure than, as he put it, “climb the mountain, fight the monster, climb the mountain.”