Review: Space Captain Smith, by Toby Frost

Toby Frost is obviously a science-fiction/comedy nerd. I know because I am as well. Which makes Space Captain Smith one of the more confusing works I've read in some time. It's not the story, nor Frost's frankly excellent storytelling ability, but that he so obviously inserts pop-culture references liberally into this novel that it makes the (knowledgeable) reader wonder if it's parody or a method of overcoming writer's block by attempting to parody familiar sources.

Undoubtedly the greatest influence on this work is Douglas Adams' immortal Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series, which pits a lone earthman against an ever-expanding universe in which anything is possible. While lacking Adams' universal scope (Who could match it? Or want to?) Space Captain Smith exhibits many of the same characteristics - the ostensible hero's essential Britishness, the importance of tea and the "Keep Calm and Carry On" attitude exemplified by the island Kingdom. Add a handlebar moustache and bluster to Arthur Dent, and you have Isambard Smith.

Frost writes - at most times - extremely well, able to interest you with his ability to maintain a narrative. This skill, however, is thrown into sharp relief by occasional unwieldy sentences and editing errors: mis-spelling "mantelpiece", for example. His apparent literary hero Adams (mine, too) had the ability to write simply but also in a beautiful twisty-turny manner, where he was able to fluidly and languidly take the reader around what he wanted to say without actually writing it. It was, to coin a phrase, in an almost (but not quite) totally unique manner.

While he writes in an easily-understood, frank and smirk-inducing style, descriptions aren't Frost's strong point. The entire novel (305 pages) features a relatively small circle of characters and although you get to experience their thoughts, much of their physical characteristics (with the exception of the mysterious Rhianna Mitchell) aren't drawn well. It could represent Smith's British Raj-style thinking, but any aliens are remarkable only for their colourings and vague descriptions rather than actually being fleshed out well. Unfotunately this includes one major charater, Smith's best friend, the M'Lak (Morlock), Suruk.

Frost leans so heavily on his background knowledge of British SF comedy that if you know the genre, you can pick out where he's lifted certain lines from (in)famous sources. The author either doesn't realise (or care) that we've seen Blackadder's Christmas Carol, or fails to realise there are people like myself who possess a sad gift for remembering throwaway lines of TV. Within the first half-dozen pages he lifts "I give you this much Greeting" from Christmas Carol and makes sure to follow it up with many more deft thefts. It happens so often that one asks if this is still parody or just kind of cheating. I still don't know the answer.

Some of those parodies aren't well judged, either. The entire sequence satirising The Matrix doesn't work at all (Smith and his fellows meet characters in black longcoats, who always wear sunglasses and are named Neil, Trinny and Morris) and feels lie it was added because a ) it scanned well at the time or b) he needed an extra thirty-five pages. On the whole -and this is a statement rather than a criticism - Space Captain Smith reads like a first novel, which indeed it is.

Prosaic SF comedy is tough to do wihtout falling back on cliches. It's what made Hitchhikers' and Red Dwarf so special - neither was afraid to laugh at the situations the characters found themselves in, but both also didn't fall into cliche set pieces. The setting was a vehicle for comedy, rather than comedy thrust into the situation - kind of why so many American sitcoms are set around the home (and end up banal and boring - like Two and a Half Men, eeeeuuggghh), while British ones have a little more variety in location. The last number of "first attempts" I've read in the genre - this and Simon Haynes' Hal Spacejock: First Course - both feature bumbling space captains with preconceived notions of their own importance/greatness, somehow manage to get the girl, in beat-up freighters with a non-human best friend. And that's just the main character - several plot devices are very similar as well. There are heaps of cliches in SF and authors have made full use of them.

The difference is though that Haynes was attempting to be original while Frost set out to employ some and parody others. Space Captain Smith embraces bumbling heroes, beat-up spacecraft and bloodthirsty-but-friendly aliens, but attempts to parody other media sources rather than totally rely on creating a farce and failing.For this, Toby Frost should be congratulated for knowing just how many cliches to cling to.

That's not to say that Space Captain Smith isn't a good book. Parts are very enjoyable - the interplay between characters is both charming and witty and Frost is obviously someone who has a keen comic mind as there are throwaway jokes in nearly every paragraph (some of which work and bring a wry smirk, some of which fail horribly). He's also created some characters worthy of having novels written about them but unfortunately I'm unconvinced at this stage if Isambard Smith, a combination of Arthur Dent and General Melchett from Blackadder Goes Forth, is one of them.

Frost and his publishers Myrmidon obviously think Isambard Smith is worthy of sequels as there have been two subsequent novels published in the series which could be worth checking out. Rating is difficult: somewhere between golf balls and tennis balls, depending on one's sense of humour.

Image courtesy: http://blog.verulamwriterscircle.org.uk/?p=139

Review: The Willow Wand – Derek Birley

The Willow Wand's aim is to explore some of the many myths of cricket. However, for the most part it is somewhat difficult to identify truly what myth is at any one point that being investigated. One must have an in-depth knowledge of cricket and indeed English cricket to truly take in what most of Birley has to say. Despite the significant amount of historical research put into this work, it does not provide a systematic presentation of cricketing history.

But this is not meant to be a negative opinion, just a reduction in the expectations with which I approached this work. What you do get from The Willow Wand is a mosaic of characters and time from throughout the long and rich history of the sport.

The book drives constantly that cricket is a medium in which persons sought to prove distinguishable features. Gentlemen from Players (Amateurs from Professionals), Wealth from Poverty, light skin from dark – none ever proved to be successful and in hindsight all actions of the sort proving petty and hypocritical. Such is the ridiculous extent of sociology that cricket has been pushed and pulled. Birley took time to sum up his beliefs in the final chapter titled 'Fun and Games' whereupon as you might expect from the title he concludes that one cannot see cricket through any other lens.

Refreshingly honest about the figures of the past, Birley does not airbrush over the faults of the game and its traditions. He questions long held views of the cricketing figures of the past such as Lord's Harris & Hawke as well as P.F. (Plum) Warner; opinion on the latter he makes reference to in his updated edition as drawing criticism from some parts upon the books initial print run in 1979.

Of particular enjoyment personally were his descriptions of West Indian crickets background, a topic not often broached, as well as his discussion on whether cricket and art can be stated as being one and the same. For the modern cricket enthusiast stung by the increased commercialism and descent into the abyss of gambling-driven corruption it may hurt to read that the prominent driver of many of the earliest recorded matches was commercialism and gambling. Matches were often fixed not for monetary gain but as an act of patronage to the amateur dignitary!

Being a cricketing nerd, I enjoyed the book as I became immersed in the nostalgia and dreamed of being involved during golden times in cricket history. But it is only a book for those like myself who bring a certain level of background knowledge to it and can enjoy it to the full. Others will become confused and frustrated as it constantly switches back and forth between stories, eras and personalities. The high English used by Birley remains difficult for the modern reader (criticism at this point can be leveled in both directions) - Birley is clearly a man of an age where cricketers of the right ilk never had names, only initials. Somewhere between tennis balls and footballs.

Cover Image thanks to bookdepository.co.uk

Review: American on Purpose: The Improbable Adventures of an Unlikely Patriot, by Craig Ferguson

Craig Ferguson is a funny guy - unless you're Jimmy Fallon, you don't get a late-night talk show by being boring. He's also a guy who went through the wringer with alcohol and debt before he finally making it as a comic actor/writer after fifteen years on the second string. His gift with words isn't in his ability to weave together long, fluid narratives - it's an uncanny expository ability which allows you to see - simply and with a minimum of fuss - exactly where he comes from. His ability to explain alcoholism and how it messed up his is perhaps my defining memory from reading his autobiography, American on Purpose: The Improbable Adventures of an Unlikely Patriot.

I was first introduced to Ferguson as Lister's personified Confidence in an episode of Red Dwarf called Confidence and Paranoia. In said episode, he played a character with a deep, scheister-like mid-Atlantic accent, "like Bing Baxter, the American quiz-show host". Although aware of his work since (particularly as Mr. Wick in The Drew Carey Show), he next captured my attention when hosting an episode of his late night show last November given over to my favourite TV show, Doctor Who. The irony of a man I first knew as an American in a British Sci-Fi sitcom now being a Scot in an American TV format wasn't lost on me - it was, as he seems to be, charming.

Ferguson tries hard to sew together a fractured narrative with an overriding wish to live and work in America - the land of milk and honey (or in his early days, cocaine and Stolichnaya). Though most definitely true, it seems to me to be a muddled way of linking together his life story, but serves mostly to position his memoir for the nearly mutually exclusive British and US autobiography markets. It's always off in the distance but never real. Most of the work is heavy with hindsight and introspection where he's been able to rationalise - but not justify - the mistakes of his past, admit to his youthful shortcomings and portray them in an amusing, but touching way: descriptions of those he hurt while a misguided 1980s party-boy are particularly effective.

As much as he's spent most of the past twenty years here, was naturalised in 2009 and counts his sons as American, he's explains succinctly on closing how citizenship in a global society becomes more a state of mind, rather than a birthright - a mindset dictated often by your experiences and choices. As a new resident of the United States myself, I found this particularly poignant. Ferguson, a Scotsman with staunch Celtic roots, is able to identify with both the people of his birthplace and of his adopted homeland so well that American on Purpose becomes less a showbiz autobiography and more an inspirational piece of self-help literature.

When selecting the book, I hoped for an amusing, yet thoughtful approach from a Briton on a topic which currently vexes me. I chose well. As my life appears set to remain on these shores for the foreseeable future, my inner battle as to my (and any future kids') nationality is an issue which unsettles me in a deep, but non-violent way: I identify myself as an Aussie but accept that a full life in America demands my embracing the country - in all it's self-promoting, freedom-spouting - and occasionally gun-toting - beauty.

As my personal battle for self-identity begins, Ferguson's ends. I could do much worse than learning from his example. Footballs.

Review: The Burning Land, by Bernard Cornwell

Oh, another Cornwell, you say? Yep. He's that good - and so is The Burning Land. The auteur author of military Historical Fiction continues his Saxon Chronicles series (Burning Land is the fifth so far) as Uhtred makes his well-worn transition from unmanageable Lord to manipulable outlaw of King Alfred the Great.

Perhaps the greatest commentary on The Burning Land is how much Cornwell ignores background characters and the novel is overshadowed by the one-book character Skade. While Aethelflaed continues to be one of Cornwell's obvious historical heroines, it seems the author has decided consciously to emphasise the "Behind the Scenes" role played by women in the lives of men and highlight how much influence they are able to wield.

Perhaps now, five books in with a remarkable cast of characters, the major ones - Uhtred, Alfred and now Aethelflaed - are given pages of exposition at the expense of minor players: people we've grown accustomed to, such as Finan and Father Pyrlig. This probably reflects their historical and narrative importance as many of those overshadowed are good men but merely - to use a horribly overstated metaphor - pawns, whereas Uhtred is without doubt Alfred's (and Aethelflaed's) destructive queen. This isn't so much a criticism, but merely comment as this chapter of the Saxon tales becomes less to do with the Uhtred/Alfred dynamic and more to do with the big-picture decisions Uhtred faces as he begins to see for once his own final position in Saxon attempts to expel the Danish invasion.

Named for a Norwegian hunting goddess, Skade becomes the enemy that Cornwell's modus operandi demands must be vanquished in the book's final battle. Indeed, not only is a final climactic battle expected of a Cornwellian novel, but also a final arcade-game type "Boss" that Uhtred must confront himself. (With each "Boss", it seems Uhtred gets closer to reclaiming his family's ancestral home, Bebbanburg. It's telling that at least two of his great nemeses remain - his former "man" Haesten and his usurping uncle Aelfric - so expect at least two more books in the Saxon Chronicles). In The Burning Land, that's this maddened "sorceress" and perhaps, of all Cornwell's creations for this great series, the only character who could be described as totally evil. Where others may be selfish, mad or simply cold-blooded, each is portrayed as Uhtred sees them - with increasingly understanding or sympathetic judgement as he ages - but Skade sees him almost intimidated at his inability to identify with her.

As an older man now - probably in his mid-thirties, the Dark Age equivalent of our sixtyish - the hero finds himself identifying more often with opposing forces than in the previous four volumes, often thinking "Had I been Bishop Asser..." or "Had I been in his position...". Meaning that while he's always narrated these books in his dotage as a retrospective of his life as a warrior, for now Uhtred is faced more with his own mortality. In a series - and an era - in which death is common, in this work it hovers over Uhtred's shoulder like a blackbird, always feeling like a nasty twist is looming.

The Burning Land is also notable as the first time Uhtred is catalogued as having made a dire tactical mistake on the battlefield. While he's acknowledged luck before, this is the first time on the battlefield where he's either been out-thought or made a rash error of judgement.

Perspective seems to be the hero's watchword for this fifth volume. Uhtred ages and finally (or so it seems) is forced to choose whether he is a Northman or a Saxon once and for all. This results in his bidding farewell to another aspect of his heritage and once again, it is strong women on each side able to inspire him into the decision. The choice is coloured as one small decision's ability to turn the course of a larger scenario, serving to further highlight Uhtred's maturation from a brash, but resourceful fighter into an imposing Warlord; able to inspire fear not only because of his physical stature but also through his reputation and guile.

Coupled with his increasing ability to politic and interactions with two Christian priests who enter the narrative at the novel's climax, Uhtred becomes less definite and able to see not just in absolutes. He in fact becomes more well-sketched as a human, following in the succession of Cornwellian flawed heroes -like Thomas of Hookton and Derfel Cadarn - who matured from character to human.

The Saxon Chronicles: The Burning Land, by Bernard Cornwell receives footballs.
Cover image courtesy: en.wikipedia.org

Review: The Golden Compass, by Philip Pullman

The Golden Compass, as a movie, bombed. As a book, it was much more well-received adnn the appeal is obvious. The question really is - as with many movie adaptations - why it was indeed made into a movie at all: as a scene setter to the His Dark Materials trilogy, it serves its purpose as just that: a table-setter. As a self-contained novel, however, it lacks a certain je ne sais quoi. Perhaps this is a direct function of it's status as a children's novel (Classic? It's now 15 years old). Along with Harry Potter, it's regarded as one of the great teen novels of the past twenty years.

Perhaps as a result of this -or a change in Panatlantic vocabularies - The Golden Compass is known in the United States as "The Golden Compass", rather than it's English title "The Northern Lights". It's a strange decision, really, considering the only compass-like object referred to is the heroine's mysterious alethiometer.

Set in a parallel world, the similarities the Potterverse are obvious: there is a child hero (Lyra) whose destiny is important for the future of the entire world. Adults are aware of this while the child remains unaware, meaning the only adults that are trustworthy are antiestablishment figures: gypsies, witches and daemons, the ever-present animal companions of humans. This obvious lack of tustworthiness means for dark undertones beneath a children's fantasy.

The greatest difference between Pullman and Rowling is how easy the plot is to decipher. In the first chapter, certain words are use which can mean - perhaps to the inquiring mind, perhaps not - only one thing. How that affects the characters is also easy to read. Whereas Harry Potter is aware of his special nature and the readers are left to discover at the same time as the main protagonists how that plays out, Lyra is an unencumbered (relatively) free spirit, not weighed down with the responsibilities of the world, but acutely aware of right and wrong: we also pick up enough early to realise just what the mysterious Mrs. Coulter is up to.

Although easy to plough through, there are few characters with whom you can empathise, a reality faced when adults read fiction involving child heroes - but Pullman doesn`t rely on teen angst like Rowling (how many fights did Harry have with Ron? I hope it irritated you as much as me? Hmm. How do I add another layer and 50 pages to "The Deathly Hallows". I know, I'll make Ron and Harry get aggro at each other. Again! 15 billion pounds can't be wrong, can it?" Completely failing to realise that we didn't really care how good HP: TDH was, just that we wanted to see what happened at the end. Side-tirade on JK Rowling is now finished. Probably.) but is obviously enamoured with making Lyra as resilient as kids generally are under stress. Where adults fail to deal with things emotionally, kids are often able but mostly at terrible cost to their futures.

The only characters fully coloured are Lyra and the witch-queen Serafina Pekkala, the rest two-dimensional which makes empathy even tougher. The best stories allow you to relate to the characters or at least identify with their motives. By choosing to make his heroine prepubescent, Pullman - I hope consciously - withdraws an element of identification and simply concentrates on his story, which is bound by fundamental creationism, a Neal Stephenson-type Royal Society science and the relationship between Lyra and her two best friends, her daemon Pantalaimon and the Armoured Bear, Iorek Byrnison. As we said earlier - fantasy books in a series work best when they are able to be read in a self-contained way, and take or leave the series. The Potterverse was wonderful in this way over the first four tomes, where Pullman seems to be drawing readers in simply to be able to expand his story later.

And let's not forget perhaps the most fundamental plot flaw I've seen since watching episodes of Eureka - the alethiometer should make Lyra omniscient. Surely omniscience should allow the heroine to plan things and know the outcome of those plans before even putting them into practice? Following that reasoning, the work should end after Lyra learns to interpret the symbol reader well - after about 150 pages.

I can't recommend it, but it wasn't bad either. Tennis balls. Just.
Cover image courtesy: avclub.com. We recommend their blog "Book vs. Film".

Review: Slick Watts' Seattle SuperSonic Stories, by Slick Watts and Frank Hughes

A re-post from our bro site Balanced Sports.

Having just moved to Seattle, being somewhat of an NBA history-phile and having just joined the public library, I was intrigued to come across Slick Watts' Seattle SuperSonic Stories. The work is a collection of anecdotes by Slick Watts, who during the seventies was the most popular athlete in the state of Washington. They even made him Grand Marshal of of the Sea King. Twice. Not sure what that means, but he's pretty chuffed about it. It's a short, ninety-minute long read about Bad Old Times of the NBA - the 1970s - where public perception of the league was that it was populated by overpaid, oversexed and overcoked players.

Perhaps the best thing about Watts' story is that it isn't overdone in any way, an admirable trait considering sporting autobiographies are invariably either overplay the grittiness or are too self-congratulatory. In this work - one of a series of Player X's Team Y Stories - he includes several references to his on-court play, yet just as much to team dynamics, his relationship with his coaches and how he became so iconic.

The first player ever to rock the baldie and headband, the writing style matches the way Watts' played - a series of short anecdotes, herky-jerky and with really only the bare facts laid out on paper. He doesn't delve too deep into any one particular issue or relive too many moments on court, just seems to shell out featherweight anecdotes like he's finding shooters in the corners; like Slick's play it's inconsistent and has several holes and lacks depth of context. This is an autobiography, so tunnel vision is forgiveable, but not when it leaves the reader asking if there's a bigger picture that we're not seeing.

He devotes an entire chapter to his first NBA coach, Bill Russell. He's honest about the Celtic great, suggesting him a poor coach with an alpha-dog mentality. This attitude meant he was unable to cope with popular players, often benching them simply for being popular enough to overshadow the great Russell. His words "I had a love/hate relationship with Russ. Most players had a hate/hate relationship with him" are particularly telling and fits in with what I've read previously about Russ:confirming once and for all his place as sport's greatest ever a***hole (and that's against some pretty stiff competition - I've met Dean Jones).

Describing his time in Seattle and with Russell - who coached Watts for four seasons - takes up a fair amount of his meagre word count. During his tenure with the organisation, he played with ABA expats Jim McDaniels, John Brisker and Spencer Haywood as well as some Seattle greats like "Downtown" Freddie Brown and Jack Sikma. Unfortunately you get very little detail about any of these guys, few character pieces and are left only with the feeling that some probably should have had to work in order to stick as Watts did rather than being guaranteed their money.

What's more interesting is his description of how and why he became such a marketing boon to the organisation Simply, Slick Watts is a friendly, outgoing guy who reflects well on first, second and forty-fifth meetings. He doesn't come out and say so in the book, but it's easy to infer that he just likes people and enjoys being around others. The average NBA player in the 1970s had to make three personal appearances per year. In 1977, Slick Watts made over three hundred and was simply unable to say no to anyone who asked him for help - it was an attitude like that which earned him Two Sea King Grand Marshal gongs.

After Russell was replaced by Bob Hopkins and then Lenny Wilkens, the book takes a sharp turn as Wilkens decided that Watts didn't fit his mould, subsequently trading him to New Orleans. Watts details Wilkens saying "There isn't room in town for the both of us", supporting his argument that Wilkens has never been a good coach of "stars". Unfortunately here's where poetic licence comes in - Watts was a good player, but never even approached great with major fundamental flaws like defense and shooting - and while it's true Wilkens got the best out of rosters without superduperstar talent and history says that after the trade in 1977-78, the Sonics went to the NBA Finals and won the Championship the following year.

You can tell even though he's honest, happy and forthright, he still hasn't fully come to terms with being traded to basketball purgatory from a city he practically owned. Bitter isn't the right word at all - he's still the happy, go-lucky Slick - but the reader's left thinking that perhaps it just was the right mix of player, team, city and personality which would be impossible to recreate anywhere else. Given Watts has moved back to Seattle and teaches physical education to primary school kids, the affinity he has for the city is obvious and pleasing to read. After his Seattle departure the book falls away as quickly as Slick's NBA career did. He was King of Seattle in 1977; out of the league by 1980.

Entertaining, especially for basketball history buffs, but ultimately Slick Watts' Seattle SuperSonic Stories is a lightweight piece suited for an easy Sunday afternoon's reading. As usual, the best tales are about ABA expats (in this case Jim McDaniels and John Brisker). The final, definitive lesson to take from Slick's first entry into authordom: Bill Russell was, and probably always will be, a tool of the first water. Tennis Balls.

Images courtesy yahoo.com and betterworldbooks.com

Review: Mere Christianity - C.S. Lewis

This volume of work, by one of the 20^th century's most noted authors, certainly sits among the modern fathers of Christian apologetic literature. As purely an apologetic piece it certainly has been superseded, and to continue rely solely upon it for justifications of faith would be erroneous in the least, however it does remain valuable. Nigh on 70 years post the development of its content and original broadcast, and 60 since its original publication, I believe that the value of this work extends beyond the boundaries of apologetics. It is useful for discussions on topics ranging from history, sociology, morality and ethics, and probably has always been so.

C.S. Lewis is most famed for his fictional yet powerful Narnia series. Influencing Mere Christianity (a work of non-fiction) is Lewis' background of a Northern Irish immigrant to England, a serviceman during the Great War, and his scholarly career as an English professor with a specialisation in Medieval and Renaissance English. Probably the most telling fact of Lewis' life that would lead him to produce a work of Christian apologetics was that he was from his own admission an atheist until age 29, and not accepting of Christian faith until 32. The famous group of writers and scholars that Lewis belonged to was the 'Inklings'. Included in this group was Lord of the Rings author J.R.R. Tolkien, a Roman Catholic, who is credited as playing a significant part of Lewis' return to faith.

The work began life as a series of radio lectures broadcast by Lewis to Britain during the depths of the Second World War. He was engaged by the religious arm of the BBC to give hope and education to Britains during a period of such pain and grief. Owing to his own wartime experiences as a young man perhaps Lewis had heightened interest in serving his nation in such a way. Probably because the words began life as orations (later also a series of brief pamphlets) before being edited and compiled into one volume, none are wasted in explanation. I struggled to get more than one or two sentences along before needing to stop, think and extrapolate his thoughts out. This led to the feeling of being immersed in the work at one point, yet I had only completed 40 pages with the best part of 200 to go!

The term 'mere' was not being used by Lewis as a descriptive term for Christianity as a religion, but is part of the name of the topic that he aims to discuss. Lewis is not trying to carry denominational or theological doctrine. What is aimed is to get as close to the core of all Christian beliefs as possible, what Lewis believes all have in common. Neither does Lewis seek to pass judgement on the practices of society. Writing to wartime Britain, Lewis is trying to raise faith among a nation scarred by war and even promote this as a means of reconciliation. He is asking wartime Britain to go beyond the view that the actions of Nazi Germany are bad, and instead identify what the reason behind all Britain agreeing on this view is.

The reason identified for the common attitude is begun by Lewis as some central moral guide. This guide appears common to all – all believe the Nazi actions are wrong – but it cannot be something that comes from humanity and thus begins his exploration of generic faith, followed by the Christian faith. Faith to Lewis, was something in the natural order of life. He calls upon readers natural responses to situations in both thought and action to act as justification for the forgiving God as promulgated by the Christian faith. There is no 'getting of religion' to Lewis, rather you out live out life more honestly and recognise the inherent faith that is there.

From the position of recognising a common morality then that this morality justifies the Christian faith, Lewis moves on to how faith is worked out in life. Chapter by chapter Lewis paints the picture of what the Christian life looks like. These words need not be accepted in full as truth for every reader, but at the very least they are detailed enough to provide adequate base for reflection. Simply brilliant is his chapter on what he believes is “the great sin” of pride. In Lewis' opinion all sin stems from the prideful condition of humanity who seek to rebel against God. Despite his belief that the Christian faith will promote the best of the human condition, Lewis is sure to not place those already of faith as being of higher standing – they are just repentant.

Let me now defend Lewis from criticism he has and continues to receive from theologians on this work as an apologetic. Initially one must first make the distinction between who Lewis was and who such critics are. Lewis by his own admission is not a theologian, he was not an ordained minister, and despite clearly being of high intellect remained as laity in the eyes of the church and theological academia. Furthermore, Lewis is reflecting I believe some of his own path toward faith. While with the benefit of hindsight it may have flaws, one cannot criticise honest reflection. Lewis' justification for Christ's divinity, called the 'Lewis Trilemma', is the most heavily criticised of all his contentions and justifiably so, but I advise using it as a great base for exploring the central contention of the Christian faith.

The language of Lewis and examples used are rooted in the time, and in the experience of his life. Lewis' descriptions include his idea of the Christian battle with sin being a civil war and to read the word of God is somewhat of a battle plan. A life lived throughout the time of great bloodshed no doubt would come through any person's expression and to read such a work permits us a window as to what it must have been like. This in mind, Lewis' reconciliatory request of wartime Britain to worship an omnipotent and loving God is revolutionary given common mindsets rooted in witnessing constant horror.

There are hints of the man Lewis was as well. He seemingly was incredibly pragmatic about faith and how one should behave when accepting of it. Lewis's particular views on marriage, war, capital punishment all come from his own experience. We will certainly have different views but we understand more of the human condition by reading such musings.

His thoughts on marriage I both agree with wholeheartedly in some instances (opinions on divorce) but likewise disagree to the same extent when he describes headship. Despite disagreement, my own understanding is heightened and ultimately I have continued to grow as a person. You need to give grace to Lewis' tone as it is not of this age. He uses the bygone phrase of 'men' when referring to all, and speaks in masculine tones and examples that will be foreign and potentially off-putting. Don't let it be so, trust that he meant well and read through this for the learnings.

Unlike dictators, politicians, even military leaders who write a manifesto there is still an understanding that this work is incomplete and needs more. Lewis draws conclusions but does not draw them as complete, they are his to be expanded upon. This work that began life as an apologetic or promotion of faith, still serves such a purpose, but it can be seen as more across many topics. Let his musings challenge you and drive you toward greater understanding. Do not see this as a work of doctrine, but as a heartfelt musing of a journeying man. Basketballs.

Cover Image thanks to bookdepository.co.uk