VoVatia

Christmaker: A Life of John the Baptist, by James F. McGrath – The author attempts to write a biography of John, using various sources and traditions. The criterion of embarrassment, that the early Christian writers probably wouldn’t have included details that went against their narrative unless there was a historical reason they couldn’t be avoided, comes into play, as the Son of God appearing to be a follower of a different preacher could be controversial. But John was a well-known figure who was considered a necessary part of an account of Jesus. He’s right there at or near the beginning of all four canonical Gospels. It’s interesting that McGrath thinks Jesus and John being related, as the Gospel of Luke indicates, might actually be true, as connections in that time and place were usually made through families. He also points out that the similarity of John’s birth story to that of Samuel might not have just been a repetition of an existing story, but a reflection of how John’s parents might themselves have made that connection. His father Zechariah is described as a priest, while John himself essentially presented an alternative to the Temple in his use of immersion in water to forgive sins, something that had some basis in earlier Jewish tradition but would mostly have been a new thing. It’s also mentioned that the common image of John as some sort of wild man isn’t really accurate and is largely a misinterpretation of the way he’s described. He casts doubt on the statement in Mark that Herod Antipas didn’t initially want to have John executed, comparing it to how unlikely it was that Pontius Pilate thought Jesus was innocent; they’re both attempts by later writers to shift the blame. And there’s a story in the Protoevangelium of James that interrupts the story of Jesus to tell how his parents saved him from Herod the Great’s massacre of the innocents, and includes the detail that Herod thinks John would be the one to take his place as king. Also frequently referenced is the Mandaean Book of John, from a Gnostic religious group mostly active in Iran for whom John is the most important prophet. I found a copy of this book online that was translated by McGrath.

The Book of Lost Things, by John Connolly – I got this one confused with its recently published sequel, so I read them out of order, and now I can’t remember the second one very well. I did like this, though. It’s about a boy named David living in England during World War II, whose mother dies and father remarries, and he doesn’t get along with his stepmother. He reads a lot, and is transported to a place where stories are created, many altered or combined versions of fairy tales he’s familiar with. Snow White has decided to live with the dwarves, and they got so annoyed by her overbearing attitude that they gave her the poisoned apple; Little Red Riding Hood and the wolf produced a species of hybrid offspring; and Gretel takes the place of the cannibalistic witch. The king of this place turns out to be a relative of his stepmother’s who was lured there by the creepy Crooked Man, the same one who tempts David himself, and who is identified with Rumplestiltskin. Along the way, he’s helped out by a woodsman and Childe Roland, both of whom serve as parental figures. It ends with his coming to terms with his grief and accepting his new situation, which is fine as far as it goes, but his dad really was rather unfair to him and he apparently doesn’t have to go on a journey of self-discovery. After the end of the story, Connolly includes the most famous versions of the stories he’s reinterpreted, with some explanation of his background with them and how he used them. The sequel, The Land of Lost Things, also has someone dealing with grief ending up in the land of stories, in this case a mother whose daughter is in a coma. She encounters some familiar characters, including the woodsman and the Crooked Man. The protagonist, Ceres, is related to David, who had written about his own experiences.

While the Dark Remains, by Joanna Ruth Meyer – This is a book where I enjoyed the writing and thought the main character’s voice was interesting, but wasn’t always able to follow the plot. Brynja is an acrobat who was forced to perform for King Kallias of Daeros, a cruel man who keeps child entertainers as slaves. Kallias’ son Ballast helped her escape, and in the present, she returns to the castle of Tenebris in the guise of a princess hoping to broker a peace deal, but actually planning to overthrow Kallias. At first, it alternates between the present and Brynja’s memories of the past. Later on, it says a lot more about the magic and gods of the world, and the protagonist’s own magical powers.

Heroics for Beginners, by John Moore – This is the third book in Moore’s Twenty Kingdoms series that I’ve read, and I’ve noticed some trends between them. There are a lot of jokes, references, cliches, and anachronisms; but even beyond that, there’s a preference for trickery and subterfuge over traditional heroic escapades, and couples getting together over the course of their experiences even when they’ve already had marriages arranged. In this case, the beautiful but allegedly cold Princess Rebecca of Deserae is engaged to the military leader Logan of Angostura, but is more interested in Prince Kevin of Rassendas, who’s concerned about what his historical reputation will be. He goes on his own quest to defeat Lord Voltmeter, an evil overlord who got his start as a bullying schoolteacher and worked his way up, and has gotten hold of an Ancient Artifact to power a doomsday device. He’s also styled himself He Who Must Be Named, so that everyone has to refer to him by his name, and never just pronouns. Kevin gets instructions on being a hero from a book by an author who’s also written about fly fishing. Rebecca joins him as his comic sidekick, and has a bit of confusion with armor that ends in her being dressed in a chain mail bikini. Kevin also makes one of the overlord’s attractively evil assistants question her career when he suggests that she might age out of the position. It’s nothing revolutionary, but it’s pretty funny.

Snow White and Other Examples of Jealousy Unrewarded, by Amelia Carruthers – I’ve read several other books from this series, but not in a while. Each one gives several different versions of a fairy tale, with an introduction discussing similarities and differences. The first printed tale of this sort is Giambattista Bastile’s The Young Slave, in which the character Lisa dies due to a fairy’s curse at seven years old, and is buried in seven separate glass coffins before being accidentally restored by her jealous aunt. The account of the curse is similar to the one in Sleeping Beauty, except even more petty as the fairy is reacting to a twisted foot that isn’t anyone’s fault but her own. In the Malay poem Bidasari, which is summarized in parts, the evil queen enchants the young girl by stealing the goldfish that held her soul. I was already familiar with the version by the Brothers Grimm, which also makes Snow White only seven during the events of the story. When the queen asks her magic mirror who the hottest person in the kingdom is and it says that it’s her prepubescent stepdaughter, you’d think she’d have some questions about the mirror’s opinions, but apparently not. I’ve also noted that both the poisoned comb (which was also in The Young Slave) and apple, when removed, apparently remove all the poison from her body, which isn’t usually how such things work. But then, they ARE magical. In the Celtic Gold Tree and Silver Tree, the evil queen seems more resourceful than her Grimm counterpart, as she only needs her daughter’s finger to poison her. In this one, the girl is already married to a king at this point. He marries someone else after she’s enchanted, but then when she’s restored, he keeps both wives. And it’s the second wife who saves Gold Tree from the queen’s next attempt. Silver Tree also gets magical advice from a trout instead of a mirror. The last selection is a very brief Swiss story where a puritanical woman has the dwarves killed because she thinks they’re having a sexual relationship with Snow White.