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Post by twyrch on Feb 10, 2005 12:07:49 GMT -5
I remember reading this after I read the Pendragon Cycle and the Song of Albion. I thought it was an interesting concept but felt it was similar to Steven Hawking meets Stargate.
Don't get me wrong, it was a good read... I am just impressed by how much Lawhead has grown as an author since he wrote that.
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Post by eldon on Feb 10, 2005 12:16:31 GMT -5
I enjoyed it a lot. It was a good departure from his other fiction. But I probably feel that way because I'm a scifi junkie.
I enjoy the Celtic aspect of a lot of his writing, but I feel it's being way too overused in general. Many people have jumped on the Celtic bandwagon, especially people in the church. When things like that happen, I tend to steer clear of that. Go against the flow. That's me.
That's why Dream Thief really appealed to me.
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Post by eldon on Feb 10, 2005 12:17:30 GMT -5
I remember reading this after I read the Pendragon Cycle and the Song of Albion. I thought it was an interesting concept but felt it was similar to Steven Hawking meets Stargate. Don't get me wrong, it was a good read... I am just impressed by how much Lawhead has grown as an author since he wrote that. [/i]  |
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Post by twyrch on Feb 10, 2005 12:34:07 GMT -5
What's wrong with Stargate? [/i] [/quote] LOL! Nothing. I love Stargate. I just thought the resemblances were uncanny... an alien above the world controlling everything like Ra. Hawkins... Hawking.... I just laughed reading it, but I agree with you... It was a good piece of SciFi. I'm a SciFi junkie too... though not as much as I was in my youth. |
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Post by dinadan on Feb 10, 2005 16:34:40 GMT -5
As far as I'm concerned, Lawhead IS the Celtic Renaissance--everyone else just imitates him. Or outright lies.
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Post by twyrch on Feb 10, 2005 17:19:19 GMT -5
As far as I'm concerned, Lawhead IS the Celtic Renaissance--everyone else just imitates him. Or outright lies. LOL... At least your not biased...  |
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Post by dinadan on Feb 10, 2005 17:26:57 GMT -5
Oh, I make no apologies for my biases; I mean, ok, I was intentionally making a hyperbole here, but in some sense it's true. SRL does his homework--and while the Christian aspects appear in the book, they are not as prevelant in his books as the feminist/neopaganism is in the books of people like Marion Z. Bradley, Molly Cochran & Warren Murphy, or the plethora of others that follow on the heels of the idea that the Celts worshiped "The Mother Goddess" and her masculine incaration "The Horned King." That's such a crock that it shouldn't even be seriously considered. The Celts didn't really have "gods" in the sense that we think; their legendary ancestors were gods, and the things that they held to be "holy" and "sacred" were things in the natural world, usually material representations of things that embodied the abstract idea of "boundry-crossing-things." Hence sacred wells, sacred beaches, sacred streams, sacred twilight, etc.
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Post by Daae on Feb 15, 2005 0:28:18 GMT -5
I really enjoyed Dream Thief, but I'm also a bit of a sci-fi junkie (mmmmm...Stargate). And, was it just me, or did Empyrion remind anyone else of Dune? And one last thing, most modern, mainstream adult fiction, especially the "Celtic" stuff, is, pardon my French, crap. Having read some of it, I can say that it's complete and utter crap. Give me SRL, Lloyd Alexander, or C.S. Lewis any day.
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Post by twyrch on Feb 15, 2005 9:57:11 GMT -5
I really enjoyed Dream Thief, but I'm also a bit of a sci-fi junkie (mmmmm...Stargate). And, was it just me, or did Empyrion remind anyone else of Dune? And one last thing, most modern, mainstream adult fiction, especially the "Celtic" stuff, is, pardon my French, crap. Having read some of it, I can say that it's complete and utter crap. Give me SRL, Lloyd Alexander, or C.S. Lewis any day. YES! Empyrion did remind me of Dune. Which authors do you toss into the ring of "Celtic" crap? I am very picky about my Celtic literature, so I haven't read a lot of the authors out there... |
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Post by Daae on Feb 15, 2005 10:39:56 GMT -5
The ones dinadan mentioned, and there's another I really can't stand, and I unfortunately can't remember her name. She wrote the books Dragon Queen and Raven Warrior, and apparently there's a third one. My friends have read her books, and we've talked about them, and she basically mangles Arthurian legend. The whole, Morgan le Fay good, everyone else bad thing really rubs me the wrong way.
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Post by twyrch on Feb 15, 2005 10:53:49 GMT -5
The ones dinadan mentioned, and there's another I really can't stand, and I unfortunately can't remember her name. She wrote the books Dragon Queen and Raven Warrior, and apparently there's a third one. My friends have read her books, and we've talked about them, and she basically mangles Arthurian legend. The whole, Morgan le Fay good, everyone else bad thing really rubs me the wrong way. My story I'm writing has Celtic influences, but I'm trying to be as accurate as I can in my descriptions. Hopefully, I don't fall into that catagory.  |
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Post by calixar on Feb 16, 2005 10:35:20 GMT -5
Oh, I make no apologies for my biases; I mean, ok, I was intentionally making a hyperbole here, but in some sense it's true. SRL does his homework--and while the Christian aspects appear in the book, they are not as prevelant in his books as the feminist/neopaganism is in the books of people like Marion Z. Bradley, Molly Cochran & Warren Murphy, or the plethora of others that follow on the heels of the idea that the Celts worshiped "The Mother Goddess" and her masculine incaration "The Horned King." That's such a crock that it shouldn't even be seriously considered. The Celts didn't really have "gods" in the sense that we think; their legendary ancestors were gods, and the things that they held to be "holy" and "sacred" were things in the natural world, usually material representations of things that embodied the abstract idea of "boundry-crossing-things." Hence sacred wells, sacred beaches, sacred streams, sacred twilight, etc. Well put. Bradley also gets mixed up with the implication that Wicca and Druidism are connected, when in fact they were enemy religions. Wicca being Saxon and Druidism Celtic. I get quite amused when I see Wicca-wannabes interpreting their religion through modern sentiments and ignoring the fact that it was a religion of war and death as well as crops and birth. |
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Post by twyrch on Feb 16, 2005 11:02:21 GMT -5
Well put. Bradley also gets mixed up with the implication that Wicca and Druidism are connected, when in fact they were enemy religions. Wicca being Saxon and Druidism Celtic. I get quite amused when I see Wicca-wannabes interpreting their religion through modern sentiments and ignoring the fact that it was a religion of war and death as well as crops and birth. Unfortunately, I'll have to disagree with you there Calixar. As someone who has studied both Wicca and Druidry, I can tell you that although they have some differences, they compliment each other and the two groups do get along seemingly. Some are Druids and Wiccans. Druidry is a spiritual path, whereas Wicca is a religion. There is an interesting discussion about this very topic topic on the OBOD website.... Here's another Linky related to the same topic at OBOD. I hope this helps. If anyone has questions about Druidry, I will help answer them the best I can or get answers through OBOD if I have to. Selene is always willing to answer my questions. |
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Post by dinadan on Feb 16, 2005 11:23:56 GMT -5
Actually, despite what your average Wiccan will tell you, Wicca isn't all that old. Gerald Gardender (who was a Golden Dawn initiate) actually invented it sometime just before the second World War.
Druidism, on the other hand, is ancien in extremis. However, the actual practices of the ancient druids have passed almost wholly into legend--in other words, their religion died (or was killed, depending on your viewpoint). As far as the spiritual connection to the land that the druids possessed, this is refferred to by anthropologists as "animism." Of course, "animism" is conderidered to be proto-religious spirituality, and not terribly important.
Now, many modern Wiccans can be animists, there's no inherent contradiction; the problem is that Wicca is a syncrotist religion, cobbled together from Old English, Celtic, and Golden Dawn practices. My main problem with it is that it tries to pass itself off as something it is not--i.e. a continuation (or reflowering) of a tradition that goes far back into antiquity, thereby making it "purer" and "more natural" than Christianity (which it truly opposes).
As to the other topics...if Empyrion reminds you all of Dune, then I must really check it out soon. God knows, I am a Frank Herbert junkie--the Dune books (the real ones, not the ones Brian H and Kevin J Anderson have cooked up) rock my socks off. I could spend hour babbling about Leto II Atreides and how he is the best character ever created in literature....but I won't.
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Post by dinadan on Feb 16, 2005 11:33:22 GMT -5
YES! Empyrion did remind me of Dune. Which authors do you toss into the ring of "Celtic" crap? I am very picky about my Celtic literature, so I haven't read a lot of the authors out there... You can add A. A. Atansio to the list of Celtic Crap. Also, I agree with Daae that Lloyd Alexander is great; but, he's great for the same reason SRL is: he does is homework, and isn't trying to convert you with his writing (a la MZB--whom I really have a problem with). Of course, my other gripe against Wiccans, neo-pagans, etc, is that most of them are what I call "fashionable anti-Christian." I have this same beef with "fashionable vegetarians" and "fashionable feminists" and so on. Buying into an ideology because it is "fashiobable" is really just infuriating to me. Like the kid I walked past in the mall the other day who was wearing a Ralph Lauren ANARCHY t-shirt. I almost lost it; I mean, if you can't see the inherent contradiction there, you need help. It's the same with fashionable anti-Christian thinking; Christianity is apparently "pro-patriarchy, anti-egalitarian, and in other ways oppressive and evil." The people who think this need to consider that their arguemtns are ad hominum attacks--the ideology of Christianity is none of those things, but the leaders of it may very well be. If that is the case, their solution of doing away with it is throwing the baby out with the bathwater...what really needs to happen is for Christianity to do a top-down makeover of itself, not let itself pass into oblivion. |
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