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The Jevlir Caravansary

Author: jevlir

  • Parental Choices on Reading and Viewing

    My wife has some thoughts on this topic.

  • Tom Sims is Cheering You On

    Sometimes when you’re a bit of a visionary or an ordinary dreamer, and people look at you with a tolerant look that tells you they believe you’re doomed for failure, it’s nice to have someone do a little bit of cheering.

    Tom Sims does it in poetic form.

  • Book: The Cat Who Dropped a Bombshell

    Somehow because I use a bunch of long words and write on weird theological topics, people sometimes expect me to like only “serious” books on “serious” topics. Nothing could be further from the truth. I like fun and humor. I’m reading nearly constantly, and I like books that I can pick up when I’m really tired of thinking books and just want to relax with a story.

    Lillian Jackson Braun and her Cat Who series is a perfect fit for such times. I noticed recently that I’d never written anything on this blog about her books, and that’s a truly sad thing. I just completed The Cat Who Dropped a Bombshell (Cat Who…) and I enjoyed it as I have so many previous books in this series. The humor is delightful. Cats are always fun. Koko rules!

    I just love a fast moving, friendly tale in which I don’t have to wade through incredible evil, or pick through really obscure lists of suspects, or spend my time longing for a character to like. This book is filled with sympathetic characters. There are a few bad guys, and generally they “get theirs.” All’s well that ends well, and this whole series of books manages to do that every time.

    Braun doesn’t present us with talking cats (though I don’t mind that sort of thing). She always leaves one wondering just how much KoKo has actually done. But the cat lovers will all be aware that Koko is a true genius, and truly the world 400 miles north of everything would be in much worse shape without his wisdom.

    So grab one of these volumes at the bookstore or library and relax a bit. It won’t hurt you!

  • Writing Lessons from the Bible

    I located this post through preparations for the Christian Carnival #179. Due to the time frame requirements on posts I couldn’t include it in the carnival, but I wanted to call attention to it in any case, as it’s a good post from an interesting blog.

    From Savvy Writer: Top Three Writing Lessons from the Bible:

    This post is not meant to cause an uproar of any religious sort. In my personal opinion, the Bible is the greatest piece of literature every written. Even if you do not believe what it says is true (which I do), you still have to admit that it is one of the greatest writings of all time. It lasted centuries and it the most sold book. So, what can an aspiring learn from the great writings of the Bible?

    Go read the three lessons for yourself.

  • Civilian Targets

    [This is a work of fiction. The people, places, and events are entirely products of my imagination. I have used Names appropriate to the United States for the players, but by leaving out place names and other signs of ethnicity it is my intention that this not look like any particular war. It could be anyone, anywhere.]

    Captain Ron Terrell entered the Colonel’s tent. “Sir,” he began, but the Colonel cut him off.

    “I have a job for you. Before I tell you what it is, let me tell you that you’re not going to like it. I’m going to make it easy for you. If you don’t do it completely as instructed, I will see to it you are shot, with or without a court martial. I will have written record of the order and of this conversation and my promise to kill you if you disobey.”

    Colonel Jerome Anthony was known out of his hearing simply as “the evil bastard.” Nonetheless, Terrell knew that his orders would be recorded in writing. He knew further that if he failed the Colonel, he would be shot. The only commandment the Colonel did not break on a regular basis was the one about bearing false witness, whatever number that was.

    “Very well Colonel,” said Terrell, “Since you give me no choice.”

    “Precisely. Further, this order comes from me, and not from any of the staff, nor from my superiors. You will discuss it with no one, not even with your own troops until you’ve left camp.”

    Terrell nodded.. It was all he was expected to do at this point.

    “You see this village here?” continued the Colonel. “I need it eliminated. My battalion has to pass near there, just to the west, early tomorrow, and we need to do so without being noticed.”

    The village in question was in a mountain valley. It was generally assumed that no substantial number of troops could move through there without being noticed. If they did, it would place the defenders of the city that was just a little further south in some jeopardy. But there were also observation posts on several peaks on either side, providing excellent reasons why the defenders were confident they didn’t need to post any more troops in that area. The advantage of going through the valley was in time saved, and if you were noticed, the defenders could redeploy and turn the tables on you.

    “What about the observation posts?” asked Terrell.

    “Don’t worry about them. They will be taken care of. But it is important that you follow your precise timetable. I will be two hours behind you. That’s all the time you have. Do not carry out your attack before the specified time, and do not take more than two hours. Make damn sure you get everyone.”

    Terrell stood there looking for words or for thoughts. He knew that Colonel Anthony had been on trial for various rules violations, including civilian deaths, four times. He had been hoping that “eliminate” would leave him more options. Clearly the Colonel meant for him to round up and kill everyone in the village. He could ask how many people were there, just to emphasize the number, but he already knew. He’d seen the marker on the map—less than 100, more than 50.

    “Don’t go soft on me, Terrell.” The Colonel was clearly reading his expression. “You know that any pilot in a plane might kill more civilians than that by dropping a couple of bombs or firing a couple of rockets. You know very well how many civilians have died under your guns, and it’s lots more than that.”

    “I know that.”

    “Besides, I’m giving you no choice. You can thank me for that.”

    The Colonel really meant it. Terrell wondered what had happened to this educated man, with a doctoral degree in philosophy, to make him into the most dedicated killer in the war. Everybody thought there must be some atrocity, some terrible thing that had happened to his family, but nobody had ever found anything like that. As far as anyone knew he had a wife and children, living comfortably at home. He gave orders in educated English. He could argue philosophy with the best of them, but he usually chose to keep it simple. “You kill them, or they kill you,” he would say.

    Another of his favorites was, “Civilians are just a legal fiction politicians and lawyers created to make them feel better about slaughtering soldiers.”

    “Further,” said the Colonel, “You will patrol the area south of the village for any other people who may show up, and then you will meet me here.” He stabbed a point on the map just out of the valley. It would take three or four hours to get there. You should only be a couple of hours behind my men at that point.”

    So now, for Terrell, it had become close up and personal. He liked the legal fiction, if that was what it was. If he machine gunned a position, or called in air support or artillery fire and civilians got killed that was OK. If he walked up to a civilian and blew her brains out, that was not OK. It was clear and simple enough to him. But what was the point of arguing? He knew precisely what the Colonel would say about his hypothetical civilian woman: “Do you think she’ll be any less dead if you drop a bomb on her?”

    He gathered his company, really more the size of a platoon, though he did have a couple of Lieutenants and all of his troops were too senior for their work. They weren’t formally special forces. In fact, the unit was ad hoc. Though most of them were Army, he actually had representatives of the Navy, Air Force (a couple of SPs), and the Marines. They were not precisely his troops. Most of them had been collected by the Colonel. If they weren’t here, they might be in jail. No, not ordinary troublemakers. Nobody had been selected who was charged with petty theft, or insubordination (with exceptions for officers who really deserved to be disobeyed), or murder on their own account. They were people who had generally gone a step too far in carrying out a mission.

    For Terrell himself it was the artillery. The Colonel had hit close to home about civilian casualties due to artillery. He had had the choice between remaining pinned down by fire or calling an artillery strike that was almost certain to cause huge amounts of collateral damage and civilian casualties. Unfortunately, the incident had been videotaped for the news. His commander at the time said that he could have fought his way out. Even so, nobody could find a real reason to court martial him. He had been on his way to holding a desk down at home when the Colonel had grabbed him.

    He simply told his men and women that they had a job to do. It was only minutes before they were on the trail. He was proud of what this group could do.

    They arrived at their target precisely on time. Terrell decided that the best thing to do was round the people up and then kill them. If they started killing them in their homes there was a possibility someone would catch on sooner, and start running. Then they would have a mess on their hands. Or maybe all of that was just a way to delay the moment when he would have to give the order to slaughter them. He wasn’t sure.

    He had told his two Lieutenants what was going to happen on the way. He’d told them the Colonel promised to kill him if he didn’t carry out the mission, and he would kill them. They shrugged and nodded. They realized they were too far down the food chain for their view to make any difference.

    One of them approached him now. “I don’t know why you gathered them all here in the square, but let me suggest that we take a few of them away at a time and kill them quietly. Otherwise we’re going to have a riot on our hands out here. It will be hard to claim they were killed as traitors by their own army if they are gathered in the square with our identifiable bullets in them.”

    I should have thought of that, thought Terrell. “OK, he said out loud. Let’s get started. We don’t have long.”

    Just then an elderly man separated himself from the group and moved toward Captain Terrell. Two of his troops moved to stop the man, but Terrell waved them aside.

    “I know what you are going to do and why,” he said in speech that was accented by clear and easily understood.

    “You do.” It wasn’t a question.

    “I was a Colonel in the army. I’m retired. Since you’re going to kill us all, I don’t think it matters if you know that.”

    “True. It makes no difference. What do you want?”

    “To ask for our lives.”

    “If you know what I’m going to do and why, you know I can’t give them back to you.”

    “Oh, but you’re wrong. There are always choices.”

    “Make it fast.”

    “Look at me! I think you can see that I’m an honest man.” Terrell did look. He saw almost a mirror image of Colonel Anthony.

    “I give you my word as a soldier,” continued the man, “That in exchange for our lives I will see to it that nobody here reports anything, and I will even give you some information on observers that are further down the valley, ones who arrived recently. I don’t believe you know about them. They have radios and will report you.”

    “How will you do this?”

    “I will order our people to report and hand over all radios, all weapons, all signaling devices. You can search us, but I will order cooperation. They will do it. We will go up the hill to the east into a small canyon. Your people can see that we do so. We will promise to stay there, all except me. I will lead you to the observation post you do not know. Then you can kill me or not, as you wish.”

    The conversation seemed unreal. The man was calm. He showed no fear. Yet he was offering to betray his own country in order to save these villagers’ lives. Should he not be ready to sacrifice his life and theirs?

    “You’re a retired Colonel. Aren’t you a patriot?” asked Terrell.

    “I am. A patriot and a traitor. To save this village I will betray countless other troops. But the big decisions, the big numbers, the troops across the hill don’t seem nearly so important to me as they used to. You see, my grandchildren are in that group over there. If I don’t preserve my country for them, who am I sacrificing my life for?”

    “Don’t do it, Captain,” said one Lieutenant. “If the Colonel finds out you didn’t follow his orders he will kill you.”

    Terrell shrugged. “Make sure they have nothing that can be used to signal, nothing that can be used as a weapon. Escort them to the place this man shows you.”

    To the villager he said, “If you betray me, I will make sure that you die before me.”

    “That is fine,” said the man.

    His troops were relieved that their job had been taken from them, but nervous about the Colonel finding out what had happened. Killing in the heat of anger, accidental killing, collateral damager—all of these were things they could handle. But lining up 64 people (which was what the count turned out to be, that was difficult.

    Well before the two hour deadline the village was quite and empty.

    It was two hours later that he stood face to face with the villager again. “What are you going to do with me,” the man asked.

    “Go!” said Terrell. The man disappeared into the woods.

    “What are you going to tell the Colonel?” asked one Lieutenant.

    “That I fulfilled my mission.”

    “And if he finds out otherwise?”

    “He will, and he’ll probably shoot me. He’d say that if you threaten someone and then don’t carry it out you lose all authority. He’d say you’re either in charge or you aren’t. There’s nothing in between.”

    “What about us?”

    “Tell him whatever you want. With 45 witnesses you don’t think I expect to keep it secret, do you?”

    “You knew that, and yet you did what you did?”

    “Yes. In the middle of the night I discovered there really was something worth dying for.”

    [Some people will think this is unfinished. I can’t think how ending it would help. Terrell would have to either be killed or not, and the coming battle would either be a victory–or not. Would that change the meaning of Terrell’s decisions?]

  • The Birth of Traitor Tad

    [The following is a work of fiction, as would be obvious even without this note. It is copyright © by Henry E. Neufeld, 2007]

    I wake up, but I don’t recognize where I am. For a moment I think I’m in the barracks back home, but there is a strange light.

    Slowly it begins to come back to me. I’m Captain Tad Tillman, a tank company commander in the Terran Defenders, charged with combating the alien menace. I should be out commanding my tanks in the invasion of, oh, I can’t remember the number. Some planet somewhere, inhabited by aliens. That’s the job of the Terran Defenders—get them before they get us.

    My eyes are adjusting slowly to the light. My head aches and makes concentration impossible. This room looks something like the inside of a tree. The shape looks natural, with none of the straight lines and sharp edges so beloved by humans. The light is dim and diffuse. It looks like I’m on the inside of one of the native dwellings.

    I’ve been inside one or two of these dwellings over the last few days. I am excessively curious, or so my superiors have always told me. I haven’t let on, but the native dwellings are extremely interesting. It appears that they are produce by guided growth. I have seen no signs of the natives using tools. We were told in our briefing that they must, that the level of control they exercise over these growths means they must have some unknown tools using unknown power sources.

    The word “unknown” is designed to strike terror to our hearts. The alien menace operates by unknown means destroying human colonies and perverting various humans by unknown means. I fight the dread that rolls over me. I am inside an unknown dwelling built in an unknown way by unknown creatures.

    So why am I here? Clearly something has gone wrong. For a moment I panic, thinking I have been captured by the aliens, a fate worse than death. We are told to take our own lives before capture.

    But I’m certain that I was not in any danger. The aliens who live on this planet appeared unable to do anything to stop us as we invaded their homes.

    No! Not that! Now I begin to remember. There was the briefing. Major Nachson assigned us our target, admonished us to be careful and to avoid casualties. It was then that I mumbled to myself, “As if these aliens are capable of causing any casualties.” That would have done it. Nachson didn’t like me very much to start out with, and that line would have been enough for him.

    “Denying the alien menace,” was the informal name for the charge. The formal line in the law books was “treason.” It had built up to that point as the war progressed. At first people would be removed from their post and sent to bases near home, but that turned out to be an easy “out” for people who wanted soft duty. Soon people were sentenced to the brig, eventually for life. Now the standard sentence was death, administered in the field, with no appeal.

    That had to be the reason I had been put in this native dwelling. My life was over. Nachson would simply be waiting until he had a suitable audience and the proper video equipment before he had me hung. Oh yes, absolutely. Hanging had come back into fashion as the main means of execution for treason.

    I start to get up and examine my surroundings. Why should I do that? I can hardly plan to escape. I would just be killed? And the problem with being killed is what, I wonder. I might get shot instead of hung. Out here in the wilderness, half the time they bungled the hanging and you strangled to death over minutes. Perhaps getting shot would be a good idea.

    I look out what appears to the a door. It’s not blocked. A few feet away there’s a guard . He’s slouching against another plant—something like a tree—and looks like he’s daydreaming. Nobody else is in sight. Apparently they don’t expect me to try to escape. Why should they? There’s nowhere to go. I’m on an alien planet, with no equipment, and nothing but aliens and empty space around. Except, of course, for a crowd of humans who would be anxious to get rid of any alien menace denier.

    On the other hand, what difference would it make? I might as well run as hang out here and wait. It was the work of moments to knock out my guard. I grab his equipment, most importantly a particle beam rifle, a knife, a PDU (personal data unit), and some ration bars. The data unit will identify organic material that I can eat and water that is safe to drink. It should also have a complete map of the planet.

    What do I do now? The sound of voices answers that question. Move! So I move away from the voices, reversing all my instincts. I have been repeatedly indoctrinated that to separate from the Terran Defenders is to court not only death, but potential capture by the alien menace. Nobody knows what happens to people who have been captured by the aliens. Nobody has ever returned with the story. All are absolutely certain they don’t want to find out. I, however, have decided—I don’t know when—to run as long as I possibly can.

    Four hours of hard hiking lead me to, well, does it really matter where? The problem is that I can hear the sounds of firing. I am coming up on an active battle. I should avoid the battle. There will be both humans who want to execute me and aliens whose intentions and abilities are unknown. But what difference does it make? I intend to run, but I have no destination. Curiosity drives me.

    I find a vantage point on a small hill. Aliens are fleeing a small village, and our troops and tanks are driving them in a classic formation. In years of training, hundreds of simulated actions, and two previous actual planetary actions, I have never really considered the value of these classic actions. We are not taught to think out our tactics; we are taught to apply the right response to the right situation.

    The commander of this brigade sized force is using the classic attack pattern for attacking a position where defenders are expected to stand and fight. As it happens, however, the defenders are not fighting. They are fleeing, and from my position, I can see that they are doing so in a fairly orderly fashion, avoiding the fields of fire of most of the attackers.

    It’s an odd picture, now that I look at it from outside. Then I hear the sounds of approaching troops. They have to be human. Besides, I haven’t seen any non-human troops on this planet. They are clearly approaching this very hill to get a better line of fire and kill the escaping aliens. The aliens look helpless. They appear to be some kind of herbivores, very vaguely like Terran deer.

    I look behind me and see five soldiers approaching with a heavy particle beam gun. Should they get that in position, hundreds of the aliens will die. Perhaps I am disoriented. Perhaps I’m angry that my own people would execute me for a few muttered words. I swing up my rifle and before the troops have time to react, I sweep the beam across them. I break away from my position at a run, just in time. One of the tanks targets the hilltop, and vegetation burns off. I would be dead had I stayed up there.

    I run straight toward the aliens. It’s a bizarre feeling. Why should I run into the unknown when all my training tells me to run away? Perhaps it’s because the actually look like an exceptionally well organized herd of deer.

    The aliens don’t react to my presence in any way that I can detect. It’s hard to tell whether I’m making room for myself, or they are making room for me, but I begin to move along with them away from my own people. Are these the terrifying aliens who do unspeakable things (though unknown) to everyone they capture?

    We continue away from the village. The aliens are moving through deep valleys. They show an exceptional concept of where fields of fire might be. It won’t save them in the end, but they are going to stay alive as long as they can. They might even leave behind the current group of attackers as they take time to secure the village itself. Our human tactics are thorough, if not efficient.

    It appears that the aliens are diurnal, as they find a camp for the night. They move me into the center of a circle, and gather around me. It appears that they sleep standing up. I am so tired that I sleep all night, and awaken to one of the aliens nudging me forward. It offers me some organic material. I check it with my PDU and it registers as poisonous to me. I point at my device and then push the item away.

    We begin to travel again, heading for nearby mountains. They look pretty rough. Perhaps 15 minutes further along, another organic sample is pushed at me. I can’t tell if it’s the same alien. This time the PDU approves the organic material. It doesn’t have much taste, but according to the analysis, it has some major nutrients. I will still need some of the rations I have with me, taken from my first guard.

    Toward noon we’re attacked from the air. Several aliens are killed. I struggle to find a position from which to fire. It seems to me that the aliens are moving to protect me. I am an excellent shot, and I have success shooting down the shuttle. It is a lightly armed vehicle. Later, I suspect they will send more.

    It is only another hour before I note another shuttle, equally light. There are numerous vehicles available to the invasion force that could shrug off anything I can do with my rifle, yet here comes another. It lands nearby. I try to use hand signals to indicate that I need to go toward the shuttle. I don’t know how well my signals are understood, but the aliens seem to support me effectively. For the most part this means that they put their bodies between any attackers and me. They seem to instinctively recognize that I’m their sole offensive weapon.

    This protection proves critical. There are a dozen men coming who have spread out in a skirmish line and are moving toward me. I wonder how they have such an accurate position. I’ve been traveling for most of the day in places that would not be visible from orbit. After a moment of reflection I feel incredibly stupid. Here in my hand I’m holding a PDU, connected into the Terran Defender data network. They would know my position within inches! How stupid can I be?

    There’s nothing to be done about it now, so I just continue to move forward. I pull out the PDU and query it for the positions of the attacking troops. It appears that someone else is as stupid as I am. I am immediately given a complete map showing myself with a hostile icon, and the twelve attackers. I lead the attackers on a merry chase as I keep moving toward first one end and then the other of their skirmish line. They are not expecting the aliens to act in this way, and they apparently are unaware that I know their position. Each time they move to surround me, I allow them to almost close the trap and then escape by the only possible means. I had expected the aliens to die by the dozens, since they seem determined to defend me by placing their bodies between me and my attackers. As it turns out, only three of them are killed and several more wounded. I am uninjured when I shoot the last attacker. I use the attacker’s clothing to attach some of their equipment to the aliens. Inexplicably, they permit me to do so.

    Then I go get the shuttle. It is in good condition with an indefinite power supply. The way these small shuttles work, I can travel anywhere in this star system for years to come using this one vehicle, always assuming that I am not destroyed. I point toward the mountains, and try to mime flying with the shuttle. It’s impossible to tell what the aliens are thinking but they don’t try to stop me when I enter the shuttle.

    Now’s the time to discover just how stupid some people are. I give my voice commands, using my name and rank as I normally would. I’m authorized quite a bit of latitude in requisitioning and using a shuttle such as this. Will my voice be recognized or have I been personally tagged as a traitor? My icon showed me as an enemy on the tactical display of the PDU, but that could have been input manually.

    The shuttle accepts my codes, and I fly toward the mountains. They are very close now, only minutes using the shuttle. I hope there is a cave or a very deep canyon where I can try to hide this shuttle temporarily. What I will do after that, I don’t know. Living on this planet for the rest of my life is just too terrifying to contemplate, so I don’t. I will just take one step at a time.

    I get the shuttle into the mountains and with the aid of the scanners I locate a small cave, just large enough, a place where it will barely fit. That’s good. I settle in to wait for the aliens. I ask the shuttle’s artificial intelligence to provide me with the news that had been gathered before I left.

    The headlines are all about the fierce fighting on this planet, and about the captain of armor who is now under the control of the aliens. The accompanying video shows fierce fighting with considerable fire coming from alien positions and severe casualties taken by the Terran Defenders. In the midst of this some captain jumps into the fight on the enemy side. The only explanation for this activity, says the reporter, is alien mind control.

    It takes minutes of watching for me to realize I’m the subject of the story. The scenes are cut from my experiences of the day, but all of the aliens are supplied with high tech weaponry, which none of them possess. The fierce battles that surround all of the actions are completely fictional. In each case my actions are portrayed as tipping a very tight balance in favor of the alien forces.

    Then there is commentary. There’s a legal officer explaining the position of the military. “We have long maintained that indications of poor morale, or of disbelief in the alien attack were acts of treason,” he says. “And even without today’s evidence they were, considering that every ounce of our strength is required to turn back the alien tide.”

    “But this,” he continues, “Shows that there is an even greater treason involved. Apparently this weakening of one’s commitment to Terran values and Terran solidarity permits alien mind control to take over. Captain Tad Tillman, now popularly known as ‘Traitor Tad’ to the troops, merely muttered a single phrase of negativity, and he was so thoroughly taken over that he was not only lost to our forces, a terrible enough consequence, but he was taken over to the alien side completely.”

    I sit in the pilot’s seat of the shuttle in complete shock. I had always assumed that the massive battle scenes, while enhanced and based on reconstructions, were generally true. I thought that I always just happened not to be where the action was. I had assumed at some point that I would personally be in such a situation. Now it seemed possible that there never had been any such battles, that the entire war was created.

    For some reason that idea was more disorienting than the idea of living out my life on this alien planet had been. I looked out the front of the shuttle. The aliens were gathering quietly outside. It was very strange, but their presence was comforting.

    To be continued . . . [Next episode]

  • The “Evil” Chronicles of Narnia

    I can’t help calling attention to this page from the Balaam’s Ass web site for the rampant paranoia, lack of humor, and failure to comprehend represented throughout.

    The following opening says it all:

    John F. Kennedy, C.S. Lewis, and Aldous Huxley all died on the same day.

    They all went to the same place.
    Kennedy went to hell because he trusted in the Roman Whore.
    Huxley went to hell because he trusted in himself alone and his hybrid Eastern mystic notions.
    And, Lewis went to hell because he invented a new god, and he ended his life a Taoist.
    We will prove it here.

    Oh well, not quite all:

    Though a highly acclaimed and widely published “Christian” author, when judged by his own words with the King James Bible it becomes clear that he was indeed a fool in the most extreme sense of the word, yet a very subtle one that was and is extremely useful to his father the devil.

    As soon as someone says they are going to judge something by the King James Bible, I know they are not to be taken seriously. The level of vitriol in this material on Lewis is interesting, though amongst KJV-Only advocates, it’s not too surprising. Once one sets out to pursue ignorance, where does one stop?

  • Book: Raining Cats and Dogs

    I’ve been missing in action for a couple of weeks, as I was finishing a manuscript (non-fiction, When People Speak for God), but I haven’t quit reading.

    I just completed Laurien Berenson’s Raining Cats and Dogs, a Melanie Travis Mystery. I picked up the book because it has to do with animals though I didn’t look all that carefully at the details. I do like to pick up books I have never heard of and just check them out.

    What I got was some good relaxing evening reading. The dogs in this mystery don’t solve crimes or do anything other than just be dogs. Now I’m not much of a dog person. I’d prefer if it was cats hanging around being cats. There are a certain number (large to no-cat-people) of cats involved, causing a certain amount of feline trouble, but the dogs are stars.

    The mystery seems to me to play out a bit in the background which is also not my preference. Melanie Travis is a detective more by accident than intent, which changes the way she operates. Nonetheless, the story line itself is interesting. The suspense is light. We are not made to feel that another crime is around the corner or that great evil is lurking. In fact, such evil as there is seems very human.

    I rate this a 3 of 5. (I remind readers of the explanation for my ratings. One or two people seem to have felt that 3 was a negative rating, when in fact the bulk of my reading is works that I rate as a 3.)

  • Book: The Christmas Candle

    Why am I talking about a Christmas book when it’s nearly June? Well, my wife got it from the library and recommended it to me, and I have never really cared when I read seasonal literature, so bear with me for a few moments on this.

    I generally don’t like cute little inspirational books. Their sweet stories are just too blatant and obvious, and they don’t do that much for me. In this case there are some exceptions to that rule. Yes, this book is sweet. It’s in a cute binding. It’s not terribly complex.

    But there are some profound points. This story invites us to think not only about whether miracles are possible, but how they work as well. It invites us to think about how God can work through the simplest and most subtle of things rather than the most obvious and exciting.

    In a village, every 25 years there is a special candle that seems to work miracles for whatever person receives it. In the year of our story there’s a new young pastor who doesn’t want to be there, and believes that all the talk about miracles just raises hopes that are sure to be dashed.

    You’ll be surprised by the ending. It was great fun for me.

  • Book: A Ruinous Wind

    I looked back at previous notes and found a brief note in this general post in which I am not too excited about Pilkington after reading a previous work, The Maiden Bell. I did indicate that I would probably read something else by the same author, but wasn’t in a hurry. Now I have, and I enjoyed it a great deal. I would call it a four, rather than the three I gave the previous book, and I can’t actually see the difference. I just must have been in a different mood when I read this one.

    Thomas the Falconer is an interesting character, a very intelligent person stuck in a hierarchical society as a commoner. He manages to do well under those circumstances and he has a good, honest employer/lord who provides him with the freedom to do what he needs. He would prefer just taking care of the hawks, but he ends up spending a good deal of time solving mysteries.

    In this story, he is thrust into a situation in which both he and his lord are in great danger. A very violent murderer is on the loose, and it is almost impossible to discover his motives or where he will strike next. I was surprised by the finish, which is one criteria I have for enjoying a novel. I don’t mind figuring out who the guilty party is early provided I feel clever when I do it. If it’s obvious and just falls into my lap it tends to annoy me.

    In any case, the solution doesn’t come till the end and there are plenty of moments of action and suspense between. Reading A Ruinous Wind makes me more anxious to find more John Pilkington mysteries.