Todo Tiene Su Como-Se-Llama

Shredding Shadowmancer

I'm really wrestling with myself here . . . I'm too smart to shoot myself in the foot on this one, but at the same time there are issues that someone is going to want to address.

First things first: I finished Shadowmancer, and it got a 36% from me. Throughout the book, I was trying to compose at least a few thoughts for some kind of coherent review, but the thing itself was so scattered that I found it quite difficult to even begin to know what to address.

Should I go after the quality of the book? It is most certainly an issue, and a big one . . . but I wasn't certain that it was the issue.

Should I address theological issues instead? Could I address theological issues without sounding like I had a double standard, and I was ignoring similair issues with Harry Potter? The fact is that I sort of do have a double standard . . . I believe that if you are going to try and do Christian fantasy (or Christian anything, be it books, movies, music, or art) you have to be held to a higher spiritual standard . . . and at least an equal standard of quality (I'm certainly not going to let you get away with writing drivel just because you're a Christian). Lest I be misinterpreted however, I don't find Harry Potter to be spiritually murky at all. I'm not letting it slip by under any lower standard.

I could pull a high quality Sunday school lesson out of any Harry Potter book in five minutes. I could also (were I so inclined) plug Satanism convincingly using only quotes from Shadowmancer. When it comes to literature (or "literature" if you prefer), almost everything is perspective.

While I tried to put my thoughts in order (and avoid flaming the thing in a review that was just me blowing off my accumulated steam) I decided to wander the internet a bit. I wanted to see what sort of information on the author and the message I could nose up, and also check out what other people thought. This book (and I'm still utterly baffled by this) was #2 on the bestseller list in England last summer, right under you-know-what (The-Book-That-Must-Not-Be-Named).

What I found shocked and surprised me, and for a few hours I even started to doubt my faith (in the existence of any intelligent human beings on this planet). I came across these three interviews with the illustrious author: G. P. Taylor, himself. You are free to read them all yourself, of course, but some of the material is redundant, and all of the important material will be quoted below.

First of all, let's take a look at Taylor's qualifications as an author (i.e. Why did this guy think he could write?):

You name Eminem as inspiring you to write. Please comment

Marshall Mathers is a very good poet - even though I don't like his cussing, I admire his use of language and his ability to communicate with so many people. As a teenager I was heavily influenced by David Bowie and know of the effect it had on my life - dyed hair - strange clothes and some odd looking girlfriends. He is still a hero and his music is a great influence on my writing especially his latest album. It was Marshall Mathers and One Shot from Eight Mile that really made me want to get the book to a larger audience - you only get one shot . . .

Now wait just one cotton-pickin' minute . . . I'm expecting him to cite C. S. Lewis and Charles Williams as his inspiration . . . perhaps Tolkien and MacDonald as well. Instead I see . . . Eminem and David Bowie?! I'm just going to keep going before I have another seizure . . .

You have said that you think that villains in children’s books are not scary enough. Do you really believe that?

Voldermort is a wimp! Lord Asriel wouldn't get out of first grade. But when it comes to wicked then even Snoop Dog better sit up and check Obadiah Demurral out - he is a mean dude and a villain with attitude.

I wanted to make my villains scary, frightening, horrible and realistic – something that would really frighten the crap of out the kids!

I'm more than slightly disturbed by this British vicar's apparent obsession with American rap "artists," but that aside . . . Just who does he think he is? Is he being serious, stupid, or deliberately inflammatory? Allow me to quote a review that I found:

"The villain, Demurral, is especially implausible because he is so utterly evil that he is almost cartoonish -- much like the Dursleys . . . in the Harry Potter books."

Let me lend the weight of personal experience to that sentiment . . . Vernon Dursley is precisely the example that comes to mind when trying to find a villain "type" to compare the sad, sorry Demurral with.

Oh, yeah . . . and that whole thing about scaring the kiddies . . . isn't that a beautiful sentiment? I mean, not that he's capable, but still . . .

Do you feel that Shadowmancer owes a debt to Tolkien, and C.S. Lewis, and historical adventures by J. Meade Falkner, Russle Thorndike,and Leon Garfield?

If I knew who they were I would say yes, but I didn't start to read until I was sixteen and got into George Orwell. Girls were reading books, so I started reading the books that they were reading to not appear thick. I started with Lord of the Flies, then 1984 and Animal Farm, then Ted Hughes poetry and Sylvia Plath. I was really flattered when one reviewer called Shadowmancer a cross between Roald Dahl and Charles Dickens

I read a couple of chapters of Tolkein but that was it. My influences come from films especially seventies American cult films like Taxi Driver and Dirty Harry.

Turns out, he really hasn't read anything . . . just enough to try and impress the ladies.

Literate? Barely. Literary? Don't make me laugh . . .

Again, I was expecting to see him referencing Narnia, Middle Earth, All Hallow's Eve . . . Maybe even stuff like Treasure Island, but . . . Dirty Harry?! I think it was at this point that tears came to my eyes.

You have been called a Christian answer to J.K. Rowling and Phillip Pullman. How do you respond?

Shadowmancer is not a Christian book, it is a book about good and evil and appeals to Jews and Muslims as well as atheists. I was ordained after youthful experiments with punk rock, druidism, the occult, and transcendental meditation. I read the Qu’ran before reading the Bible and I am just as happy to talk about the Talmud. My writing is informed as much by Judaism and Islam as it the by the Christian tradition. It is the account of an eternal truth.

I think the story resonates at a deep level, but my character Raphah is never named as Jesus, so to Jews he could be the coming Yeshua, to Christians he could be Jesus, to Muslims he could be the Prophet and to pagans he is in some ways an avenging angel.

Do you think that people feel that Shadowmancer is a Christian story?

Certainly not. I get letters from people of all faiths claiming it is about their particular way of belief. It's amazing...everyone is claiming it as their own.

It's a story which deals with issues of life, death, faith and hope in a "non-Goddy" way . . . and then people can draw their own conclusions.

Just wait . . . it gets better. Oh, and as to that last statement, I cry "Bull!" "Heavy-handed" doesn't even begin to describe it. The story "subtly suggests" religious themes like a blackjack to the back of the head subtly suggests that you fall over unconscious.

Can Jesus survive the Church?

He has survived it for 2,000 years. He works much more outside the church than within the church. I see Jesus on the street with youth workers and helping kids with AIDS, amongst prostitutes, hookers, in the police force and in schools. Of course he can survive the Church, I think he is better off without the Church.

Okay, there are certainly some worthwhile sentiments in there, I guess . . . but this guy is, after all, a vicar. What's with that last phrase? Since when is it a good idea for Church leadership to start publicly writing off the Church?

And it keeps getting better . . .

Was Jesus religious?

Was he hell! Definitely not. Anyone who tells the archbishop of the day that he is a whitewashed toilet full of dead bodies . . . that is about as unreligious as you get. Jesus was a guy who laughed, joked, fooled around, enjoyed life . . . what a wonderful man to follow.

No, Jesus was not "religious." But that is hardly the way for a vicar to go about answering that question . . . And I really hope that "fooled around" means something else in Britain.

Anyway, moving forward, here's a tidbit that certainly explained a lot to me.

It's one of those fairy stories that we occasionally hear about. Having paid an agency to critique his novel, only to be told it was the worst writing they had ever seen, [Taylor] self published the book, which due to the demands of large book chains effectively cost him 10p a copy. Through a magical chain of events, it ended up in the hands of a major publisher and now his original editions are selling for £1000 on the internet.

No comment.

When I tell him that I was amazed that Faber and the press would be so interested in what is an overtly Christian book, I am thoroughly admonished. "Its not a Christian book, I refuse to have it called that. Yes I've quoted from the Old Testament, but the Old Testament is the book of the Jew and the Muslim as well."

To further prove his point, Taylor tells me that "It has not been accepted well by Christians, I have faced blockages in the Christian press, where it certain Christian papers have refused to carry articles on it." It reminded me of Pilgrims Progress, I counter. "I'm a philistine, I've never read Pilgrims Progress."

"I know that God is alive and as a Christian and a minister he's an interesting part of my life."

A philistine indeed . . .

God is . . . "interesting?" Not "important?" "Vital?" "Quintessential?" Oooookay.

One would assume that such a successful first time novelist would have had a grand plan for the book but apparently not. "I didn't - honestly. I started to type and just finished it; I just sat down and wrote and wrote and wrote. I had no plot; it was chapter one and then off with the words and that was were we went.

It sure was! My goodness! That, at least, was expected.

"It is also written in coded language for occultists, any witch reading this would think I'm a witch, it's in there at the beginning of the book and they read it and go 'wow we know what this means, we know where this writer's coming from.'"

Really, now? Uncountable hours scouring the Internet and I've never found Rowling's much-hyped confession of being involved in genuine witchcraft and deliberately using actual spells, etc. in her books. Five minutes after I start researching Taylor, and this is what I turn up. Ohhhh, my.

"I think that the 1700s are the most important time in history, especially with Wesley and Whitfield. I think God actually had them birthed in that time for a particular reason. I think that we are coming to a time when the problems of the 1700s are resurfacing; a new enlightenment where people are now playing God, whereas in the previous enlightenment people thought that God was of no use.

"Everybody's trying to get rid of God and sanitize God out of the environment. We are in the new enlightenment and I think there will be men and women raised up to stop God being marginalized. I personally think it will be the Islamic faith who have a go, as they they're not going to take this sort of enlightenment lying down."

Wait, hold the phone . . . God had a plan for certain people during a certain time in history?! Stop the presses!

So, Judaism had its day pre-Christ, and Christianity has been dominant for, what? . . . Let's call it 1600+ years. And now, Taylor tells us, it's Islam's turn to be raised up by God and bring revival.

Ohhhh, boy.

I was having even more trouble collecting my thoughts after reading all of this stuff, so I wandered a bit in search of reviews. Mostly, I just needed to know that someone agreed with me . . . and it would be nice if they also sounded intelligent. I found a pretty nice assortment of people who were thinking exactly what I was thinking, and I was quite pleased.

It is grossly unfair to compare this author's work with Rowling and Tolkien. The aforementioned authors are geniuses, with Rowling raising the bar on "children's" books (indeed, we've seen some wonderfully written children's books that challenge children since the publication of The Sorcerer's Stone), and Tolkien single-handedly created a genre and wrote one of the great classics of the 20th century. Shadowmancer *barely* works, and only by the thinnest of margins. It has the distinct feel of a rough draft, with misplaced metaphors on virtually every page. In any fantasy, whether it is aimed at children or adults, everything within it must be credible. Emotional reactions, the good magic, the bad magic - everything. In here, there is very little that is credible, even though the author is using Christianity as the focus, differentiating only by giving the various deities and angels different names. I say that the book *barely* works because there is at least a hint of inventiveness, but even that hint of inventiveness disappears due to a distinct lack of credibility. I should care immensely for Kate and Thomas - and I don't. With the "cliffhanger", I should be excited at reading the next book in the series. Personally, I can't believe there's going to be a second book.

The "cliffhanger" that is referenced here consists of Taylor literally ceasing to write in the middle of a sentence (and practically in the middle of a thought). I had known all along that the book was 275 pages long, but I couldn't believe that it was actually over . . . I turned the page expecting to find a closing quote, or a Bible verse, or an epilogue . . . Nothing but a blank page. It was at that point that I chucked it at the most distant wall and went to lie down on the couch for a few minutes.

Take a cup full of "Harry Potter." Add a teaspoon of hokey religious thrillers, a sprinkling of Tolkien ripoffs, and a dash of the fantastical. Mix thoroughly, and heat to lukewarm. That's basically the recipe for vicar/author G.P. Taylor's debut novel "Shadowmancer," a lame and limp semi-spiritual fantasy.

Like many a fantasy villain, Obadiah Demurral wants to play God, and the corrupt vicar does so by trafficking with evil powers -- all-out sorcery and devil-worship. Enter Raphah, a mysterious man from Africa who is after a mystery amulet that will be incredibly destructive if evil people get their hands on it. (Wow, that's original)

Are our heroes going to let Demurral and the forces of evil win? Of course not. Troubled teen Thomas Barrick (who has quasi-religious visions) and his pal Kate team up with Raphah to somehow keep Demurral from becoming king of the universe with the help of that amulet. But can our heroes win out against Pyratheon (read: the devil)?

No way is religious fantasy a bad thing in itself -- after all, C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien rooted their stories partly in religion. But Taylor's brand of Christianity is very watered-down, very generic, very politically-correct and VERY preachy. He lays this bland religious goo on so thickly that it's hard to read without feeling twitchy and uncomfortable.

"Riathamus [God] stands at the door of your life and knocks. If you hear his call and answer him he will share your life and live with you always," Raphah announces. It's like he's reading from a pamphlet.

Nor can you expect much in the way of character development; everyone is a symbol rather than a person. Demurral is a cackling, mustache-twirling devil-worshiper. Saintly Raphah is as dull as the proverbial ditchwater, and so are the plucky kids who accompany him. There are no shades of grey here. A flawed person either is evil, or he's just waiting to be redeemed.

One-dimensional isn't the half of it . . . I normally hate it when people say that because it's so over-used, but in this case . . . Characters do not get more flat than this.

The supposed good guy, Raphah, has mysterious powers that are very occult-like, and he turns out to be one of the "objects," but in the flesh, that the evil Demurral wants for his sorcery.

So is he an angel, a boy, a statue come to life, or what? Identities are very confusing in the story and we are never sure who several mysterious figures really are. The story is more frustrating than anything.

This particularly confused me . . . The artifact that everyone chases is never described . . . you just know that it's gold. And pretty. It is heavily implied on numerous occasions that it is the Ark of the Covenant . . . but you can carry it around in one hand. Very confusing.

There are also numerous magical objects that the characters (both good and bad) make use of when fighting each other. Some of them are good, and some of them are evil, but . . . Since when does God arm us with magic crystals for fighting off demons?

There are also several quotes from the Bible but they are given in ways that make them mean something different than they do in the Bible. Also, some of the quotes are changed from the original words or mixed with other quotes that don't go together.

This really bothered me, let me tell you. The Bible was "quoted" almost constantly . . . standing in for a good 50% of the dialogue. But it was done in very chopped and confused ways, and words were often changed. It sounds sorta Christian, but it isn't.

Example, from the random Christ figure that pops in at one point: "I will be with you always, even to the end of the time."

What the hell does that mean?! The more I think about it, the more asinine it sounds . . .

Most disturbing are several warnings and hints that Demurral could actually fight Riathamus (God) and get his power. Raphah tells Thomas and Kate that if Demurral gets the Keruvim, he could control the world and even the power of Riathamus. Later, Thomas tells Kate that Raphah told him that Demurral has a power that can call up the dead and control the wind and sea.

I mentioned this before, but it bears repeating.

I finished the book because I read some of the other reviews and thought that maybe I was missing something, maybe the author somehow pulls this off in the last 100 pages, 50 pages, even the last 10 pages, but when I closed the book, I knew I had been tricked just like all the other good people had been in the story. The evil ones lost, the good guys won and I was out the money I spent on this book. I've read in reviews (from Newsweek of all places) that this book may be the next Harry Potter - please. Harry -relax, you've got nothing to worry about.

Sigh.

Sigh.

I really did (foolishly) keep expecting him to pull something out of his hat as the book progressed that would make me understand all of the crazy hype I saw. No such luck.

Creaking plot, cardboard characters, overt evangalism, overused Bible quotes and tired cliches in the place of dialogue - Shadowmancer has nothing to recommend it, unless you're looking for a cynical laugh at the author's heavy-handed attempt at fundamentalist anti-occult propaganda.

("KIDS! Magic is DANGEROUS! Don't try this at home!!!") The sound of one or two characters - the obligatory feisty girl sidekick/token female character, for example - struggling to develop personalities is drowned out by the clanking of the plot and the chorus of hallelujahs.

If you're raising kids in the Christian faith and want good fantasy fiction for them, for goodness' sake stick to CS Lewis or even Pilgrim's Progress. Don't touch this book with a bargepole - it'll put them off for life, not to mention the dangers that the sloppy writing poses to their English grammar.

In all honesty: recommended only for punctuation-impaired fundamentalists.

I love this reviewer.

Random aside: I would like a bargepole.

For every hit there are bound to be misses. I should have known from the rather non-indicative reviews on the back of 'Shadowmancer' that this was not a book to be trusted. Two quotes do nothing but describe the book as an event. Another is a simple description of what the book is about. In fact the latter - "a magical tale of vicars and witches" - is the title of an interview with Taylor - not a review at all. One of the other quotes leaves off half way through - a very cynical maneuver - the full quote being: "The adventure unfolds at a vivid and breathless pace, but the religious symbolism is rather too fundamental and proscriptive for comfort."

Anyway, when I wrote my "midway review" of this . . . *thing* . . . a few days ago, I was fully prepared to a) be pleasantly surprised, or b) give Christian fantasy and Christian fiction and the general Christian culture that responds to them the going-over they so richly deserve. Not only does the book turn out to be not worth the effort . . . It turns out to not even be Christian!

Yeah, yeah . . . You can read it that way, and if it floats your boat, more power to you. After all, I read Harry Potter with a Christian's perspective (that's kinda what I do). But the author seems very anxious (for whatever reason) that people not mistake this for a Christian book, and I'm perfectly willing to oblige him. Trust me, my fellow believers . . . We don't want it!

Stay tuned for a long-overdue, Christian look at the Harry Potter series, coming soon.

Posted by Jared at June 16, 2004 10:03 PM | TrackBack