Subject: (urth) Re: Digest urth.v028.n089

From: Alice Turner <akt at attglobal.net>
Date: Sun, 21 Nov 1999 18:39:26 +0000

Rostrum said, a while back:

> I was just thinking about recommending Lewis's book _Till We Have Faces_
> to fans of Wolfe's Solider series.  It is a re-telling of the myth of
> Cupid and Psyche, but also a tale of adventure and intrigue set in a small
> barbarian kingdom on the outskirts of Greek civilization.  It has a little
> of the same flavor as the Solidier books, featuring inscrutible gods
> meddling in the lives of the characters.  TWHF also attempts to answer the
> question of why God, if he exists, does not simply show himself to us, but
> the book is much less overtly Christian than Lewis's other fiction.  I
> think it's a great story, but would be interested to know what folks who
> aren't Christians think of it.

Which intrigued me enough to go back to TWHF to see if I could give it a
Christian reading. And I couldn't; in fact, I kept forgetting that I was
trying to winkle out a Christian sub-text. What did amaze me, however, was
how close Lewis's tone here is to Wolfe's in TBOYNS. There are many
paragraphs where, proper names aside, you would scarcely know which writer
had penned them. Also, Orual as monarch seems to me very similar to Sev as
monarch. And there's even a hallucinatory judgment, based on the old story,
to be sure, but having somewthing of the feel of Sev's judgment.

Those of you who love NS for its tone will surely like this book. The rest
of you might like it too.

-alga

*More Wolfe info & archive of this list at http://www.urth.net/urth/