An old-fashioned narrative poem that deftly captures the deadly wonder of the Silk Road.
An old caravan trader tells a tale of treasure and greed in this long debut poem.
With a bit of cajoling, a group of children convinces an old trader who lives in the town’s “caravanserai” to tell them his story—one he seems reluctant to talk about. Years ago, in a time of war and instability, the trader traveled alone, attempting to make money in a neighboring city. He overheard two brothers discussing the location of a hidden treasure: a cup of great power that showed its owner visions of the past and future. The trader imagined himself in possession of it: “With such powers I could rule / with greater sanity, I swore, / than these cruel and heedless / rulers with their cruel and senseless wars.” He presented himself to the brothers as a desert guide, able to lead them to the remote Devil’s Springs that they sought. At the springs, the trader encountered the eponymous demon of the well, who made an infernal deal with the man in exchange for the cup. It was a pact that would have consequences that still plague the trader—and his country—in the storyteller’s present. Hendricks’ tale has an ancient quality to it that comes both from its setting and its form. Told in rhyming couplets, the poem reads like something concocted by one of the Fireside Poets: “I was growing quite impatient / when at last he reappeared. / And brandishing the magic cup, / he brought it up quite near. / ‘A bargain is a bargain / as a trader would agree. / And now for this handsome treasure / you must give your soul to me.’ ” The imagery, which the author says was inspired by the landscapes of the Tarim region in modern China and by the historical Silk Road, is evoked with skill and subtlety. There are a few lines where the rhymes feel forced or the rhythm gets clunky, but overall Hendricks manages to sustain an aura of mystery and magic. One could imagine hearing the poem read aloud around a summer campfire or on a chilly winter night.
An old-fashioned narrative poem that deftly captures the deadly wonder of the Silk Road.Pub Date: Jan. 18, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5439-9334-9
Page Count: 74
Publisher: BookBaby
Review Posted Online: Dec. 24, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A heartfelt and engaging Christian parable about the mechanisms of divine will.
A novella focuses on the hidden workings of God in the lives of ordinary people.
This story by Paul and Bland opens with a seemingly incongruous sight: Two men eating their lunches on a bench in a freezing downpour. And the more readers learn about the men, the more bizarre things get. The younger-looking one is Charlie, a substitute mail carrier who was recently finishing up his route when he suddenly died. And his companion is Everett, an unconventional angel Charlie sometimes suspects may be a kind of substandard model. Charlie knows that it’s part of Everett’s purpose to “show how the mighty hand of God worked in people’s lives.” Witnessing this is a step in Charlie’s own post-death journey. As for Charlie himself, “he could feel evil and how it tried to latch on to anyone within reach”—the diametric opposite of the heaven he had experienced, a place that “pulsated with love.” This eager reaching of evil to seize everyone around it informs the meetings Charlie and Everett quickly have—with Martin, the owner of a local bike shop; Eva, a postal worker already frustrated on her first day on the job; middle-aged waitress Karen, who “went about her life without realizing she was a mighty warrior, a saint who was troubling the Enemy’s plans”; and others. With clear, inviting prose and remarkable concision, the authors draw readers into these separate lives and twine their tales together. The fantasy backstory of angels is seamlessly woven into the well-realized depictions of regular town life, and the chapters are paced with a page-turning sensitivity. One prominent atheist character is portrayed as the thinnest straw-man caricature of an unbeliever, but readers willing to overlook that flaw will find a surprisingly complex and heartwarming tale in the rest of the book.
A heartfelt and engaging Christian parable about the mechanisms of divine will.Pub Date: Feb. 22, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-982221-36-2
Page Count: 104
Publisher: BalboaPress
Review Posted Online: May 8, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A strange and not altogether satisfying novella about an eco-aware, ghostly road trip.
The spirits of two famous dead men come back to save our warming planet in Magnus’ novella.
An unnamed woman—a lover of music and history who lives in 21st-century Los Angeles—has a dream. In that dream, God decides to do something unusual about climate change. He dispatches the ghosts of American President Abraham Lincoln and Russian composer Sergei Rachmaninoff to Earth to fix things. (Exactly how they’re meant to fix things isn’t clear.) God has chosen someone else, too, to help Abe and Sergei on a mission—that same unnamed lover of music and history who will serve as the ghosts’ tour guide and driver. The woman meets her new teammates (appropriately enough) at the Angel’s Flight funicular railway in Downtown LA. She’s excited to work with the two famous men—both of whom, like her, suffered from depression in their lifetimes—but also embarrassed to show them the state of the world. “I was sorry these greats from the past would comprehend how modern America had become a land of refuse,” she thinks, “and for that matter, that the whole world was becoming a giant garbage lot.” The three of them have five days to drive up the California coast in a 1967 Lincoln Continental. Along the way, they pick up a UCLA music student named Destiny, who may not be exactly what she seems. The crew stops at famous sites along the way, encountering a varied assortment of angels, spirits, demons, and even the ghost of Ulysses S. Grant. Can this otherworldly assortment of characters really do something to save the planet, or is this trip up the coast just a one-way ride to oblivion?
There’s something magical about the odd combination of elements and the way Magnus brings them together. She manages to capture the randomness of dream logic, though thankfully, the novella is not quite as shapeless as an actual dream. Even so, the choice to frame the story as a dream removes any potential stakes, and the writing isn’t quite gripping enough to make up for the lack of a traditional plot. The ghosts’ historical reenactment–esque dialogue sits oddly beside the narrator’s reflexive climate doomerism: “Sergei brooded at the treble clef design in the foam on top of his cup, but Mr. Lincoln glanced around with curiosity. ‘Excellent coffee!’ he said, ‘although a bit different from what I’m used to…delicious, except for the taste of the paper cup.’ ‘Yes, and all that paper is from trees that will unfortunately be wasted,’ I said. ‘The earth is in crisis.’ ” There’s a lot of explaining how history unfolded to the men who weren’t alive to see it. Ultimately, the book is less about climate change itself and more about climate change anxiety, but even that concept isn’t explored as thoroughly as the reader might expect. The book functions best as a celebration of one of America’s great road-trip routes—State Route 1 between Los Angeles and the Redwoods—inviting readers to seek out the beauty of the California coast while they can.
Pub Date: Feb. 26, 2023
ISBN: 9780578552576
Page Count: 111
Publisher: Mirasol Press
Review Posted Online: July 5, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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