CSFF Blog Tour for C.S. Lankin's The Wolf of Tebron: Day 2 Post

 The Review:
(Thanks Living Ink Books for this complimentary copy of yet another quality book from your library!)


   The curve of difficulty for this review is high. Why? Typically, reviews are such a commonplace feature of this blog: How then could these reviews pose such problems for a seasoned reviewers such as myself? Well, I'm not seasoned since my sum total years is still drastically lower than most blog reviewers. But, this review caused me many problems because the book leaves you with a sense of over-stimulation. It is the beneficial over stimulation that leaves the listener of a great opera with a a feeling of delirium. Afterwords,  you are stunned to the point where you cannot sort out the emotions that this particular work elicited. You're just left with a feeling that you marveled such an awe-inspiring beauty that you can no longer hold that full remembrance in your head. 

  Maybe the wolf in this story can elaborate on this phenomenon that this life in itself feels greatly incomplete. Every-day, we wake up with these preconceived ideals for the day that will reap the greatest amount of fulfillment. Where do these ideas linger? In our dreams, perhaps? Well certainly, this story itself leaves one with the feeling of good incompleteness. It stirs in us this insatiable longing for the continuation and progression of all the greatest elements of our world. Whether you believe in God or not, doesn't the Christian life exist as a doubtful journey because we are anxious for the full scope of the many potential wonders of our world. 

   The hero journey resonates because it models our journey through the world. In this book, we are given a very innovative, edifying portrayal of the hero journey. In many ways, the book "Siddhartha," in that the main character is searching for meaning through the restoration of his lost wife. There are far more weightier issues  that underlay this search for a lost wife. Siddhartha searches for a viable form of true love and peace throughout that novel. In this novel that peculiarly reflects the spiritual journey of this one, the hero searches and scrutinizes the four different human moods  as  represented by the elemental figures of this world. Within Siddhartha, the main hero tries different approaches to connecting to the ever-present metaphysical forces within his world.

      "The Wolf of Tebron," had some issues including a tendency for the prose to become far too imposing. Sometimes, the beauty and sensuality of the language overshadowed or distracted too much from the important events that unfolded in the book. Again, the descriptions were skillfully written and effectively enthralled you. Occasionally, the dreamlike images transposed themselves on the leftover thoughts after you read the book. So, in a sense, the rich images were very important when it came to drawing the reader in. I could not stop reading the story because the images lent themselves to obsessive reading. C.S. Lankin wisely followed her writing peers in using the tactic of "show, don't tell," and did not appear didactic or false when presenting various moral truths. Instead, the images powerfully showed the dynamics of the main character's emotional struggle. Every adjective used became a way for the author to amplify the effectiveness of the images instead of over-describing the characters.  Still though, sometimes the images were a bit too excessive and sometimes stilted the flow of the story.

   But this issue is largely minor and may not even be a chief concern for many readers. Story-wise, this book is very good and shows the author's adeptness in structuring meaningful literature. It is hard to find something that promotes so much thought and ethical evaluation. This book did this without instructing me under the threat of losing favor with God. The naturalistic beauty of the world that I beheld in this book made me hunger for the unseen promoter of love and morality in my own world. Certainly, the sequel coming out soon will be a required read for me because C.S. Lankin proved that she can master the technique of "show,don't tell," with flying colors.  I highly recommend this beautiful, thought-provoking book to all my blog readers. It is a wonderful homage to the tried and true way of creating stories that serves a function to entertain and makes us deeply think about the architect of our world and ourselves.