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When you read a book by someone who includes in her interests 'the pursuit of Shamanism' and believes that a novel shouldn't be fully understandable on the first reading, you know there's an implicit dare. It was therefore with that feeling of impending challenge that I started to read American L R Fredericks' ''Farundell', the first novel in her loosely connected Time and Light series.
The central character and the readers' eyes and ears, Paul, spent the war as a medical orderly and so is physically complete. However the sights, sounds and smell of the dead and dying haunt him as they did many of his generation. To begin with he thinks the sight s sights and experiences of Farundell are part of this haunting and a descent into madness. But he's taken in hand by 13 year old, precocious (not in a good way) astral traveller, Alice Damory and his limited understanding is enhanced. Jarlath Quinn (an artist with other, less worldly skills, apparently) and Stephen (tutor to Alice and her siblings) assist in developing Paul's consciousness.
This is certainly an unpredictable story, often making me feel as if I was floundering in the understanding department. There's the main story: Paul wants job, Paul gets job, Paul goes to Farundell and lives with a family who define the word 'quirky'. However there's also a wispy other-worldliness that lurks mistily. Like someone grasping for a life raft, I felt I would be fine as long as I avoided the mist and concentrated on the main story, but, as I gained confidence, the mist started to intrigue me. This also coincided with the arrival of the spoilt, feisty, beautiful Sylvie and the point where, about a third of the way in, the novel starts to take off. Once Sylvie arrives we're launched into a love story full steam ahead. Paul wants to pin Sylvie down (in oh so many ways) but Sylvie is her own woman, so let pursuit commence. (Just a warning: there is one very graphic sex scene that's seemingly designed to shock, along with associated explicit language. It is just this one episode, so easily 'fast forwarded' if you'd rather but not a scene for those anyone whom you don't feel is mature enough to be ready.)
Throughout the novel, though, there remains an elephant in the room: when all the dreams, cryptic comments and other ephemera are considered, what's it all about? Well, I ''think'' it hints of death, life, dreams and wakefulness all being connected like a cosmic Venn diagram. It seems to say that separation doesn't exist and doors in the mind, once opened, release dimensions existing in what we term 'the real world'... maybe. Perhaps these questions will be answered in the second book, [[Fate by L R Fredericks|Fate]], due for release in July 2012. If nothing else we've been promised more of Lord Francis and that, for me at least, makes it an eagerly awaited publishing date.
If you've enjoyed this (and even, perhaps if you haven't) try [[Fate by L R Fredericks|Fate]]. The second in the author's loosely linked Time and Light Series is totally different in both story, feel and, indeed, writing style.
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