Page One Review - CSFF - The Shadow and Night

It’s time for another blog tour experience.

I presented on blog tours last week, and I’ve been working hard with L.L. on her presentation at Mt. Hermon (which Becky will hopefully have small role in as well) . Now, it’s time to set aside the numbers and research and fancy quotes from famous people, and get to work on a real tour.

This month, CSFF is featuring Chris Walley’s The Shadow and Night from Tyndale. (You may remember them as the little press that exploded in the 1990s with a series called Left Behind.) You can read more about Chris Walley on his site and his blog. Frankly, I’m excited about this one. So without further ado, here’s page one. Review to follow.

Merral Stefan D’Avanos crested the snow-flecked ridge in the northeastern corner of Menaya, the vast northern continent of Farholme, and reined in his mount. The winter’s sun had just set in a great stained sphere of orange gold. He stared at the expanse of gray hills and darker, mist-filled valleys stretching northward to the ice-edged needles of the ramparts of the Lannar Crater.

Above the Rim Ranges, layer up layer of cloud strands gleamed every shade between yellow and purple in the dying sunlight. Merral tried to absorb all he could of the sights, sounds, and smells of dusk. Down below the ridge, away to his right, crows preparing to roost were wheeling noisily around a pine tree. Far to his left, there was a moving, snuffling grayness under the edges of the birch forests that he knew was a herd of deer. Hanging in the cold fresh air was the smell of winter, new trees, and a new earth.

The beauty of it moved Merral’s heart, and he raised his head and cried out with joy, “To the Lord of all worlds be praise and honor and glory and power!”

The words echoed briefly and a gust of wind out of the north dragged them away, down through the trees and bare rocks.

Silent in awed worship, he sat there for long minutes until another chill gust make him shiver, as much in anticipation as in actual cold. He bent down to his horse. “Now, Graceful,” he murmured, “good girl, onward.”

Obedient as ever, the mare moved forward over the frozen ground.

Merral knew it would not be wise to wait longer. The Antalfers expected him, and the nights of deep winter could be cruel this far north. Besides, as on any young world, there was always the chance of a suddent local weather anomaly. Such an irregularity might be only a few kilometers across—too…

…small to be picked up by a weather satellite—but enough to freeze solid an unprotected man and horse in under an hour.

Page one of The Shadow and Night ends midsentence, so I went ahead and finished out the thought for the sake of closure.

So on to my little formulaic review. What three things catch my eye in this opening excerpt that makes me want to keep reading? In short, what has Chris Walley done here that works?

1) Chris takes care of mechanical necessities efficiently. I’m speaking of the very first sentence, where he provides very specific setting information. We learn the main character’s name: Merral Stephan D’Avanos. And it is good name. Merral is just different enough to be interesting, but not so different as to be a distraction. D’Avanos reminds me of the Three Musketeers’ D’Artagnan. Not a bad thing.

Chris reveals the most important detail about the setting in a way that is especially slick. We see the mountains of Menaya, and learn that Menaya is a continent on another planet, Farholme. Sigh. I’m in classic SciFi territory. That makes me deeply happy as a reader who has been promised a SciFi experience “in the vein of C. S. Lewis’ Space Trilogy.”

Two more interesting tidbits on the back cover as long as we’re talking about marketing copy. First, this is the only book I’ve seen to quote Amazon reviews on the back cover. Interesting. Second, the publisher promises that Chris “weaves together the worlds of science and the spirit, technology and the supernatural, into something unique and haunting.” I don’t know about you, but that peaks my interest. Perhaps Tyndale has finally left behind its own bloated cash cow?

(Sorry, Tyndale folks, I couldn’t resist that sentence. I know you’re just making money with books that people like.)

I’m rambling a bit today. On to point two.

2) This is some beautifully poetic language with regards to the meter and rhythm. I won’t talk too much about the effects of meter here, but you can hear Chris’ poetry if you read the text out loud. In fact, as I was reading the first paragraph the first time, I had to read that last sentence out loud. That wonderful cumulative list of prepositional phrases just made my editorial heart swoon. (More on cumulative sentences and sentence variety here.)

I’m tempted to read this thing out loud for you. So what the hey. Have a listen.

3) Chris Walley understands imagery. Imagery is descriptive language that appeals to any of the five sense. Typically, writers use imagery limited to the sense of sight. You’ve heard of books that read like movies. This isn’t a bad thing, but Chris Walley’s imagery is much richer than just “reading like a movie.” He appeals to nearly all five senses in the first page.

• sight: the sun is “a great stained sphere of orange gold.”
• sound: the “snuffling grayness under the edges of the birch forests”
• smell: “the smell of winter, new trees, and a new earth”
• touch: “another chill gust made him shiver”

That’s pretty impressive. The only sense he’s left out is the sense of taste, a notoriously hard sense to invoke in prose without the proper context.

Final Point: Although the first page of The Shadow and Night does not grip the reader with specific plot details or instant conflict, the quality of writing would get my attention if I were viewing this as an acquisitions editor. Assuming the novel summary involved good story telling elements (which it obviously does), I would definitely want to see more of this manuscript.

[a final note about copyright: Some folks may have noticed the copyright warning at the bottom of Christianbook.com's preview pages. It reads, "The contents on this page are copyrighted. Unlawful use of this content, without prior permission of both the copyright owner and/or the owner of this site, is illegal and punishable by law." However, these posts are educational in purpose and generate absolutely no profit for me. As such, I reprint small portions of books here for promotional page one reviews under fair use.]

And here’s the rest of the CSFF tour group:
Brandon Barr
Jim Black
Justin Boyer
Grace Bridges
Jackie Castle
Carol Bruce Collett
Valerie Comer
CSFF Blog Tour
Gene Curtis
D. G. D. Davidson
Chris Deanne
Janey DeMeo
Jeff Draper
April Erwin
Marcus Goodyear
Rebecca Grabill
Jill Hart
Katie Hart
Michael Heald
Timothy Hicks
Christopher Hopper
Heather R. Hunt
Jason Joyner
Kait
Carol Keen
Mike Lynch
Margaret
Rachel Marks
Shannon McNear
Melissa Meeks
Rebecca LuElla Miller
Mirtika or Mir’s Here
Pamela Morrisson
Eve Nielsen
John W. Otte
John Ottinger
Deena Peterson
Rachelle
Steve Rice
Ashley Rutherford
Chawna Schroeder
James Somers
Rachelle Sperling
Donna Swanson
Steve Trower
Speculative Faith
Robert Treskillard
Jason Waguespac
Laura Williams
Timothy Wise