C.S. Lakin’s “The Sands of Ethryn”

A king thrown into a trance. A power-hungry vizier. An evil spirit awakening from a sleep of thousands of years. The discovery of what looks like a tall tower, buried in the desert sands. Archivists trying to deciphering ancient scrolls. Add them together, and you discover C.S. Lakin’s The Sands of Ethryn, the sixth novel in the Gates of Heaven series.

It may be well be the best one in the series so far, and that’s saying a lot.

The central idea behind the series is the concept of gates – that from ancient days, heaven had established seven gates to keep evil in the world at bay. Lakin has constructed a story around each of them. In The Sands of Ethryn, the city of Ethryn has developed near the established gate, but it is ailing: the city’s river is drying up, and families have begun to move away.

Nearby an archaeological dig is underway, and a remarkable discovery has been made – a tower, a very tall tower, just how tall no one can yet tell because it is buried in sand. Palace archivists are set to work searching ancient scrolls to find references to the tower and possibly translations of some of glyphs carved into the structure. Then the king of Ethryn visits the dig site to see an uncovered altar, and when he touches an altar gemstone, he falls into a deep trance.

This provides the opportunity for the king’s vizier to consolidate power. He has tapped into an ancient source of evil, one associated with the tower, and it takes over his human form. Standing against the evil are Hashubah, the king’s primary archivist and keeper of the library of scrolls; his granddaughter Ra’daf, who is a young scholar in her own right but limited because she’s prone to seizures and blackouts; and Avad, an archivist who has grown up with Ra’daf and secretly loves her.

As she has in some of the other books in the series, Lakin plays with the idea of time, that characters can slip through time or are suddenly forced to slip through. The king in his trance becomes a young man in a village, who is forced to become part of the massive slave labor gangs building the tower.

With the right mixture of action, suspense, and a little romance, Lakin has written a compelling story. She blends the Biblical account of the Tower of Babel with a work of her own imagination, and she explores how heaven operates outside human understandings of time.

The Sands of Ethryn is not a simple story; it must be closely read to catch all of what Lakin has packed into it. It is, however, a deeply satisfying story, rewarding that close reading.

Lakin was the author raised my interest inw hat fantasy writing can do. She has one book to go in the series. I can’t wait to see how she completes the stories of the gates.

Related: My reviews of the other Gates of Heaven novels:

The Wolf of Tebron

The Map Across Time

The Land of Darkness

The Unraveling of Wentwater

The Crystal Scepter

Photograph by Lynn Greyling via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission.

C.S. Lakin’s “The Crystal Scepter”

A frantic mother, facing the planned murder of her new baby by her husband (and the baby’s father), sends the child out to sea in a watertight cask. A fisherman finds the cask entangled in his nets, and believes he’s the replacement for the son who died. When the boy is 15, events force him to leave behind his father and the life he’s known to do battle with evil and – unknown to him – save his kingdom.

For from the beginning of C.S. Lakin’s The Crystal Scepter, we know what the boy, who’s name is Perthin Quay, does not – he is an heir to a kingdom.

For the past two years, C.S. Lakin has been publishing her Gates of Heaven series – and convincing me there’s a lot more to fantasy than I realized. She has created a world that’s familiar – but one that’s also very different than the reality we usually encounter in fiction (or life). These are wonderful stories, but they’re not written chronologically. Instead, Lakin is taking different aspects of this world she’s created and diving deeply into it.

The Crystal Scepter has all of the excitement of its predecessors in the series – dragons, sea serpents, a magic land buried under ice, an evil king and a desperate queen, and a young hero who does not seem to fit the role of hero, physically at least.

Lakin has utilized a number of Biblical and mythical themes. The story of Perthin, for example, includes both elements of the story of Moses and David. She also blends mythical stories as well, like the Gorgon or Medusa (the one who could turn you to stone if you looked at her face directly). A heavenly army merges to help Perthin when he faces what looks like the insurmountable forces arrayed against him.

Underlying the story and its sub-stories are the themes of grace and redemption, of using “the least of these” to accomplish great things, and the hidden royalty in all of us.

The Crystal Scepter is a rollicking good story.

Related

My reviews of the other Gates of Heaven novels:

The Wolf of Tebron

The Map Across Time

The Land of Darkness

The Unraveling of Wentwater

C.S. Lakin’s “The Unraveling of Wentwater”

A child is born in the village of Wentwater, which seems soaked in superstition and old wives tales. At her naming ceremony, the local witch predicts the child will be the ruin of the village – and the women gathered together immediately drive the mother of the child away, set the house afire with the baby inside, and calmly go on about their day.

But the child doesn’t die; she is secretly rescued and taken to a place of safety, eventually landing in the arms of a childless couple in the Heights, the city in the mountains above Wentwater, where knowledge and reason rule. Years pass, the child comes of age, and is allowed to make a visit to Wentwater for the village festival. She meets a young man whom she falls in love with, and she meets the long forgotten prophecy.

And the prophecy still holds. The unraveling begins, and the young woman – named Teralyn – is at the center of it.

Welcome to the world of C.S. Lakin. Welcome to The Unraveling of Wentwater.

This is the fourth in the series entitled “The Gates of Heaven,” and there are three more to go. I should mention that this is the series of books that introduced and converted me to the fantasy genre. And this one is every bit as good as its predecessors.

Lakin has created a multi-faceted, extraordinarily detailed world. The reader gets the sense of life in medieval times, but this is a world where witches live in castles in swampy marshes and spirits occupy the lakes.

The novel has elements of familiar fairy tales – Sleeping Beauty, perhaps a dash of Snow White (sans dwarves) and Rapunzel (there’s even a short tower scene), to name two. But Lakin moves the story beyond the traditional fairy tale, and explores the contrast between knowledge and superstition, pitting village against town – and ultimately finding that both come up short. It is also a love story, and the story of what one is willing to sacrifice to save loved ones.

It’s a ripping good story.

The Unraveling of Wentwater will be officially published in July; I was provided an advance reading copy by the publisher.

My reviews of C.S. Lakin’s books:

Gates of Heaven Series:

The Wolf of Tebron

The Map Across Time

The Land of Darkness

Other Novels:

Conundrum and Innocent Little Crimes

Someone to Blame

"The Land of Darkness" -- A Giveaway

I can still remember being a young child and having my mother read Grimm’s Fairy Tales to me from a thin but oversized volume with a green cover. I still have the book, and am embarrassed to see that I also used it as a coloring book. But except for the Lord of the Rings novels (read first on college) and the Chronicles of Narnia (read first when my oldest was six), Grimm’s Fairy Tales were my only exposure to the genre of fantasy.

For some months now, I’ve been reading C.S. Lakin’s “Gates of Heaven” series – The Wolf of Tebron, The Map Across Time and The Land of Darkness. Officially they fall into the fantasy genre, but Lakin calls them fairy tales. I’m inclined to agree with her.

Fantasy is not the kind of fiction I usually read, but it is one, thanks to Lakin and Ian Thomas Curtis's The Canticles of Andurun: Dragonsong, that I’ve come to appreciate and enjoy. The sheer creativity of inventing an entire new world of characters, culture, geography and history is impressive, particularly when it’s done well. Lakin does it well. What I find particularly engaging in her novels is how she weaves the story of faith into the narrative in such a way as to make this new world familiar. And I’ve become a fan.

To introduce others to the “Gates of Heaven” novels, we’re doing a giveaway of an autographed copy of The Land of Darkness. The three novels are not consecutive; they can be read independently or in any order. They share geography, culture and history, but they are actually stand-alone novels as well.

To participate in the giveaway, all you have to do is leave a comment here with the title of your favorite fairy tale. That’s it. I like the “pull a number from a hat” approach and what I do is number the comments, place individual numbered slips of paper in a hat, and pull one out – about as random as you can get. But I think it will be fun to see what fairy tales people might cite.

To be eligible for the giveaway, leave your comment here by Friday, Dec. 2 at 6 p.m. Central time. I’ll pull the number from a hat and announce the winner here.

Even if you don’t win, I think you’ll find the entire series of the “Gates of Heaven” rewarding reading. I’m looking forward to the final two novels when they’re published in 2012.

Related:

My review of The Wolf of Tebron.

My review of The Map Across Time.

My review of The Land of Darkness.

C.S. Lakin's "The Land of Darkness"

 I’m becoming a real fan of fantasy.

C. S. Lakin has now published The Land of Darkness, her third novel in the “Gates of Heaven” series. The three stories stand as independent novels, linked by the world and geography Lakin has created and a fshared characters.

Somehow, the stories are getting better. And I really enjoyed the first two novels, The Wolf of Tebron and The Map Across Time.

Each of the novels are subtitled “fairy tales,” and this description becomes especially pointed in The Land of Darkness. The story has everything a (grown-up) kid could want – mysterious creatures, a quest, a story that never falters and even a wicked stepmother and two ugly stepsisters (yes, I know that’s politically incorrect, but that’s the story). And it’s all wonderful.

Jadiel, a 12-year-old girl, lives with her wealthy father and stepmother on a spacious farm. The stepmother is not what she seems, and finds way to bewitch the father while she steps up her mistreatment of and cruelty to Jadiel. After several unsuccessful attempts to kill the girl, the stepmother sends her off to find the leaves of the terebinth tree, which no one seems to have heard of. If Jadiel fails in her quest, the stepmother will kill her father.

Callen, a young man not much older than Jadiel, works for the girl’s aunt and uncle. He becomes interested in old parchment drawings of a bridge, with words inscribed in an unknown language and the drawing of a giant tree. He leaves for the capital city of Sherbourne (which was the major setting of The Map Across Time) – and finds himself rescuing Jadiel from kidnappers.

Together, Callen and Jadiel embark upon a quest, she to save her father and he to find the bridge. Eventually they are joined by an old, scarred guide named Ebed, who directs them forward both geographically and spiritually.

The reader comes to understand that whatever else The Land of Darkness is, it is the story of a spiritual quest, one that transcends the fantasy it’s set within to become something very recognizable – the meaning of faith.

It’s a delightful, enchanting story. Even with the wicked stepmother.

Related:

My review of The Wolf of Tebron.

My review of The Map Across Time.