Today I am going to share some reflections on reading this book, The Book of Names by D. Barkley Briggs. You got the main review yesterday.

Briggs wrote this book not long after losing his wife. It is somewhat autobiographical; he is the father in the story, and the four boys are modeled on his four sons. As a result, their characters are finely drawn. It’s a nice basis for a story, the characters of your individual sons.

In addition, the boys in the story are processing their loss. So the story seems doubly real.

The Book of Names has a nice transition from our world to the Hidden Lands. First the characters are introduced in our familiar world, and then they move to the Hidden Lands where everything is of course unfamiliar to the reader, except for the two characters of Hadyn and Ewan. This is a nice way to draw the reader into the story, instead of dumping the reader into an unfamiliar world where it takes some work for the reader to get oriented.

Briggs, like other fantasy writers, writes fantasy fiction in order to paint his convictions on a large canvas. Here’s what he has to say on his blog:

“This is the power of fantasy: to capture the mind, to both focus and liberate the emotional, imaginative faculties, to form real and symbolic connections, to viscerally associate yourself with a magical, desirable, grand-scaled life.”

Personally, I love reading fantasy, provided it has a right worldview (God’s in his heaven, all’s right with the world!) This is a great example.

These are fellow Christian Science Fiction/Fantasy Blog Tour participants:

Sally Apokedak
Brandon Barr
Keanan Brand
Rachel Briard
Valerie Comer
Frank Creed
Amy Cruson
CSFF Blog Tour
Stacey Dale
D. G. D. Davidson
Shane Deal
Jeff Draper
April Erwin
Karina Fabian
Andrea Graham
Todd Michael Greene
Timothy Hicks
Joleen Howell
Jason Isbell
Cris Jesse
Jason Joyner
Carol Keen
Magma
Rebecca LuElla Miller
Mirtika
Eve Nielsen
Nissa
Steve Rice
Crista Richey
Alice M. Roelke
Chawna Schroeder
James Somers
Rachel Starr Thomson
Steve Trower
Speculative Faith
Jason Waguespac
Phyllis Wheeler
Timothy Wise