The Paradise War

Don't you love that title? It gives me chills - The Paradise War. It's the first book of a trilogy, so when I've finished the next books I'll review them as well. An introduction to the book: it was written by Stephen Lawhead (an author you'll no doubt see here again, as I love everything he's written) and is set in Britain. The time of the book is harder to pin down - it starts in modern times and then the main characters accidentally find themselves in Albion, which is a timeless place that is perhaps best described as a prototype of our world. Albion is what Britain (and apparently it encompasses the rest of the world too, but you don't get to see that) really is underneath it all. It feels like we've gone back in time about a thousand years or so to the time of the Picts and Scots - the main difference being that these people apparently don't age. The idea behind it all is that whatever happens in the manifest world affects what happens in Albion and vice versa - so that if Albion were destroyed, our world would be devastatingly affected by it. As Albion goes, so goes Britain - and as Britain goes, so goes Albion.

Getting to Albion seems a little too easy and makes me want to try it. All you have to do, according to the book, is get to one of the markers the ancient Celts made (standing stones, stone circles, etc) at the "time between times" - that is, dawn or dusk - walk around the thing a few times and the door will open. If I am ever in the British Isles again, you can bet I'm going to try it! :)

The characters in this book are what make it interesting in my opinion. The plot and storyline are excellent, as they always are in Lawhead's books, but I am very caught up in the characters themselves. The two main characters are best friends who met their first year at Oxford. One, Simon Rawnson, is a wealthy Britain of good birth. He's had bred into him the idea that he deserves what he has simply because of who he is. The other, who is telling the story, is Lewis Gillies, an American student who has worked for everything. He describes the difference between them like this:

"Everything he had - everything he was - had been given him, granted outright. Everything he ever wanted came to him freely, without merit. People made allowances for Simon Rawnson simply because of who he was. No one made allowances for Lewis Gillies. Ever. What little I had - and it was scant indeed - at least was mine because I had earned it. Merit was an alien concept in Simon's universe. It was the central fact of mine."

I think this is the central point of the development of these two characters. Thrown into a world where they are unknown and life is completely different from anything they have ever known, Simon still believes he deserves honor and privilege because of who he is, while Lewis works to earn it. In the culture in which they find themselves, ruling power flows not by birth but by merit. Lewis, as an American, understands and accepts this without question, while Simon bucks the system because of his belief in "divine right". When lines are drawn, Simon sides with the son of the king - even when the son opposes his father - because of his birth, while Lewis stands by the king himself because of his merit.

I think if the two men had stayed in their own world they would never have seen their personalities and abilities develop so strongly and so clearly, but being in Albion seems to make everything bigger and fuller. As they learn to survive in a new culture - students becoming warriors - parts of their personalities that they never knew existed come to the forefront and change them forever. It makes me wonder what I would learn about myself if I were thrown into a similar situation - and would I be pleased with what I saw?