Reviewer Praise for LAST GUARDIAN OF EVERNESS
A reviewer named Malcolm the Cynic, no doubt a close disciple of Diogenes, pays me the finest imaginable compliment of buying the second volume:
Great book, and I just ordered the sequel off of Amazon. New characters zoom in at the speed of bullets, and everyone is interesting. Azrael de Gray is one of the most entertaining villains I’ve read about in a long time. This is one of the only fantasies I’ve read where instead of saying, “Wow, I wish I lived in a world like this!” I said “Wow, good thing I don’t live in a world like this!” And yet, I get the sense that we’re really heading toward a happy ending regardless, and honestly I like that.
The sequel’s summary tells me that the apparently deceased/incapacitated characters of Gaylen and Peter Waylock are going to be major players, so I’m curious to see how that happens. Wright ended “Guardians” with one Hell of a cliffhanger.
I don’t have too much more to say, really. Wright combines mythologies seamlessly and their is a nice strain of humor running through the book as well which helps lighten the mood. The character of Wendy could be a bit annoying early on, but I got used to her. My favorite character is Raven though. A badass former Russian sailor who also happens to be a crack shot. What’s not to like?
Really looking forward to the sequel.
The reviewer also brings a note of sanity to some hyperbolic compliment which have been paid me in the past. This is also a compliment, because to asses a writer where his strengths stand is the finest salute imaginable, where as calling him equal to his superiors is flattery, and casts doubt upon the wit of any man who believes it.
I’ve heard Wright called a “modern day C.S. Lewis”. All right, I like Wright quite a lot, but let’s not insult Lewis like that. Wright is smart and Wright is an excellent writer, but C.S. Lewis was a genius whose insights penetrated to the very heart of controversial matters in clear, decisive terms, and he’s one of the only writers I’ve ever seen who was able to actively and admittedly preach in his novels and still get away with it.
It is with a small smile in my large white beard I must add that it was not from me anyone has heard that comparison. Lewis is a genius who has never been out of print; I am a craftsman who is skilled at his craft but who has not yet had a single book go to a second printing.
If anyone can point to another author who can capture the mystery and majesty, the wonder and, indeed, the divine love of Jesus Christ in a fictional figure as adroitly as Mr. Lewis did with Aslan, I would be greatly surprised. No figure is more difficult to portray, or runs a greater risk of offending even a generous reader. Even among other gods, prophets, kings and messiahs, Jesus Christ has such a forceful personality, embracing such extremes and paradoxes of mercy and justice, love and kingliness, infinite power yet a fellow sufferer, making His nearly an impossible face to draw in words, and draw accurately. Mr. Lewis squinted against a very great light indeed, and his eye, like the eye of an eagle, could see the armed and crowned archangel standing in the sun that once Saint John the Apostle saw.
On the other hand, if any reader wants to point to the writings of A.E. van Vogt, and read my NULL-A CONTINUUM, and say that I can match what the grandmaster does in much the same way as he does, that compliment I will accept without demur. Space opera, I can do.
About John C Wright
John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.
