Bookish Tuesday: Literary Libraries

by Jeanette O'Hagan @jeanetteohagan

What book-dragon doesn't love a library?

Libraries are heavenly places, crammed full of books to get in lost in. I'm a frequent visitor to our local library and have found many treasures there - including books by Karen Kingsbury, Dee Hendersen, Stephen Lawhead, Ted Dekker, Rosanne Hawke and Adele Jones.  And I have many wonderful memories as a child raiding the school library, the Nkana Mines club library, the local council library or any library that would let me through its doors for my next favourite read.

It recently occurred to me that I've included a few different libraries in my stories. It got me thinking about the fantastic fictional libraries other writers include in their books.


There are certainly some great libraries in what might be deemed secular fiction -- Umberto Eco's Name of the Rose revolves around the labyrinthine abbey library at an Italian monastery, some heart-warming scenes occurred between Edward and the Dashwood girls in Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility, the Hogwarts library looms large in J K Rowling's Harry Potter novels, while in Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 future hope resides in the living libraries,  and then there's the Beast's library that captured Belle's heart in Disney's Beauty and the Beast.

Here is a list of some more, if you want to check them out.

Libraries in Christian fiction

And what about Christian fiction? Is it devoid of libraries? It took a while and the help of a few friends to track them down, but they are there.

Fantasy and Science Fiction

My imagination conjures up visions of Bilbo Baggins the hobbit spending his last days in the library at Rivendell full of ancient books and scrolls. Though apparently, this scene is not in the book -J R R Tolkien's Lord of the Rings -  Gandalf does search through the archives of Gondor to confirm his theories about the One Ring.

From memory, in Stephen Lawhead's Bright Empire series, the society of ley travellers keep a depository of unique and strange books in the house at Damascus, including a mysterious book which provides a clue to the disastrous shrinking universe and strange, out-of-time events.

And there is the faerie library in George MacDonald's Fantasies. Anados, the hero in this allegorical tale, discovers that the books pull the reader into their pages, to experience the events with all five senses, a truly immersive experience.

In C S Lewis' The Great Divorce, departed authors congregate "about public libraries to see if anyone’s still reading their books." A somewhat depressing thought. Though the people in the Great Divorce are those who have failed to move on and accept in full the gift of God's grace.

Christian author Steve Rzasa is a librarian and a library makes an appearance in For Us Humans, a sci-fi where a human cop and an alien investigator need to team up to track down a missing artifact and prevent dire, world-threatening consequences, while dialoging about Jesus.

Romance, Historical and Biblical Fiction

And it's not just speculative fiction that contain delightful libraries.

Bodie Thoene’s Jerusalem Scrolls  The Zion Legacy Series No 4 references a library of ancient scrolls under Jerusalem.

And in sync with the times, Carolyn Miller's regency romances often feature libraries. Manor house libraries in The Eluisive Miss Ellison and The Captivating Lady Charlotte, and borrowing libraries in The Dishonorable Miss DeLancey and Winning Miss Winthrop while both The Dishonorable Miss DeLancey and Carolyn's lastest release, A Hero for Miss Hatherleigh, have some scenes where the heroine meets significant people at the (public) libraries of Regency England.

Carolyn Miller is clearly an author after my own heart.

Paula Vince, in her post Stories with Libraries and Librarians, mentions at lease three other occurrences of libraries in Christian Fiction.

Elizabeth Camden's Beyond All Dreams features a a research librarian named Anna, who archives maps, and in the process, discovers an explosive and dangerous secret.

In Lynn Austin's Wonderland Creek, a shy librarian is pressured to become a mobile librarian to a hillbilly community, with some dangerous and life-changing results.

And in Julie Klasson's The Ladies of Ivy Hill,  Miss Rachel Ashcroft inherits her father's books even though she doesn't like reading, so she sets up a small lending library with wonderful consequences.

Libraries in Nardva

And there there are my fictional libraries.

The Palace Library in Tarka

The Great Library of the Golden Place features in Akrad's Children. A large area that takes almost one wing and two levels with a mezzanine floor and a domed skylight over the reading tables, it is the hero, Dinnis' favourite refuge. Dinnis curries favour with the cranky librarian, Ralton, so he can spend more time there and earn a little metal. Prince Mannok on the other hand, caused havoc inside the library as a young boy, and would rather be anywhere else as a young man who loves riding and hunting.

In my short story Lakwi's Lament, young Lakwi loves books and wishes she was allowed in the library, but her father has banned girls from entering. Her big brother, Prince Rokkan gives her books and the ideas and stories she drinks in help her when she does find herself in deep trouble. A story about a girl, a library and a puppy (among other things).

The Library of Alexgaia

In a short sci-fi 'space opera' story, Rendezvous at Alexgaia, Dana and Avonis have to get into the hidden library at Alexgaia, run by the technomonks, to find a clue for a code. Getting in is one thing, getting out is another thing altogether as they dodge lethal autobots among the library stacks. 

And in a short story A Rookie Mistake, time traveller, Sandria is in a private library looking for precious artifacts to save from the 1666 Fire of London when her mission goes badly wrong - or maybe right, depending on how you look at it. (As Time Goes By: Mixed Blessings. Breath of Fresh Air Press.)

Both stories have been republished in Ruhanna's Flight and Other Stories.

And my latest library creation?

The Seven-Tiered library of Sillantis

In my latest release, Shadow Crystals, the fourth and penultimate novella in the Under the Mountain series, the heroes spend some of their time shifting through the scrolls and codices of the Library in Siltanis, search for the clue to breaking the bond of a soul-stone. Of course, when the rebel ebed invade the city, things become rather fraught and dangerous, but those days in the library are not wasted.

Do you love spending time in a library? And what fictional libraries would you long to visit? Let me know in the comments.

Thanks to Paula Vince, Susan Bruce, Adam Collings and Mazzy Adams for some great suggestions to add to the list :)

Giveaway

And as a bonus, I'm giving away to one commenter an e-book from the Under the Mountain series (a choice of either Heart of the Mountain, Blood Crystal, Stone of the Sea or Shadow Crystals).

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Jeanette spun tales in the world of Nardva from the age of eight or nine. She enjoys writing secondary world fiction, poetry, blogging and editing. Her Nardvan stories span continents, time and cultures. Many involve courtly intrigue, adventure, romance and/or shapeshifters and magic. Others, are set in Nardva’s future and include space stations, plasma rifles, bio-tech, and/or cyborgs.

She has published numerous short stories, poems, four novellas in the Under the Mountain series, her debut novel, Akrad's Children and Ruhanna's Flight and other stories.

Her latest release is Shadow Crystals, the penultimate novella in the Under the Mountain series with Caverns of the Deep due in April/May.

Jeanette has practised medicine, studied communication, history, theology and a Master of Arts (Writing). She loves reading, painting, travel, catching up for coffee with friends, pondering the meaning of life. She lives in Brisbane with her husband and children.


Find her on:


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Bookish Tuesday & Giveaway: Delving Deep

by Jeanette O'Hagan

Delving Deep

Heart of the Mountain, the first novella in the Under the Mountain series started out as a short story exploring the ideas of an underground realm deep beneath the mountains. It was a realm that had shut itself off from the outside world for over two hundred years. Over time, things begin failing, but the people have all but forgotten that there is life beyond their tunnels - until a young stranger, a shapeshifter,  arrives and begins stirring things up. 

In Heart of the Mountain, Blood Crystal - and the prequel, Shadows of the Deep, I enjoyed exploring what it would be like to live totally underground, how it would affect the society, how they would find food, what things they would value. And when the taboo to leave the caverns is finally broken by two brave youngwuns, how things that are familiar to us would appear to them, things we might take for granted. Like the stars, moons (two in this world) and sun. Like the openness of the sky and the unpredictability of the weather. Like the swings in temperature from hot to freezing.

In Stone of the Sea, the story ranges wider and, in part, explores another 'deep' - the ocean. I'd recently written Before the Wind (in Ruhanna's Flight and Other Stories) in which the winds, the waves, the ocean are integral to the plot. When the Bible speaks of the Deep (Tehom, the abyss), it refers mostly to the deep ocean and to the waters of creation. In many ways, the ocean is the most untamed space on earth (and Nardva - the imaginary world on which my stories are set), yet even such a seemingly chaotic force is under God's control (e.g. Ex 15:8). 

The final 'deep' in the Under the Mountain series, is the human heart. The people under the mountain find themselves in a desperate circumstances. There are different ideas about how their problems may be solved and who should pay the cost. Ultimately, the stories are about who we should trust (the Maker or the Dark Ones or some other force), what (or who) we are prepared to sacrifice to cling to life, and who we become by the choices we make.  This is explored even further in the remaining two novellas - Shadow Crystals and Caverns of the Deep.

The Under the Mountain series have young protagonists - I won't say teen because they come from longer-living races and age differently - but adolescents. Yet the challenges they face, the decisions they have to make have, I think, relevance to us all. I write for the general market, yet God's love and grace and providence is like a scarlet thread woven through the pattern of everything I write.

I hope you take the opportunity to read this series. Commenting on this post and the October new releases post, gives you a chance of winning one of the books in the series.  And for the next two weeks,  Heart of the Mountain and Blood Crystal ebooks are on special at 99c USD, to give readers a chance to catch up with the latest release Stone of the Sea.

Enjoy the Read!

Stone of the Sea by Jeanette O'Hagan

A desperate journey into the unknown

Food is scarce, the Glittering realms in chaos and solutions fast disappearing. Twins Delvina and Retza have always stood shoulder to shoulder. Will new challenges pull the twins apart? Will they, and their shapeshifter friend, Zadeki, find food before the people under the mountain starve?

Join Delvina, Retza and Zadeki as once again they face their fears and rescue a realm. Stone of the Sea is the third novella in the Under the Mountain Series. 

Giveaway

Jeanette O'Hagan is giving away a copy of your choice of Heart of the Mountain or Blood Crystal or Stone of the Sea (the first two are available as both print and ebooks, Stone of the Sea as ebook).

To enter the giveaway, please leave a comment on this post and/or October 2018 New Releases post. Receive two entries in the drawing by commenting on both posts.  Entry will open for a week (until midnight Monday, 5 November), with the winner to be announced in a comment on both blog posts.

Available at Amazon.com

Jeanette started spinning tales in the world of Nardva at the age of eight or nine. She enjoys writing secondary world fiction, poetry, blogging and editing. Her Nardvan stories span continents, time and cultures. They involve a mixture of courtly intrigue, adventure, romance and/or shapeshifters and magic users. She has published numerous short stories, poems, two novellas and her debut novel, Akrad's Children and Ruhanna's Flight and other stories.

Her latest release, Stone of the Sea, is currently on preorder for 31 October release. Also available on other retailers.

Jeanette has practised medicine, studied communication, history, theology and a Master of Arts (Writing). She loves reading, painting, travel, catching up for coffee with friends, pondering the meaning of life. She lives in Brisbane with her husband and children.

To keep up to date with latest news and blogs, sign-up to her newsletter - and receive the short story Ruhanna's Flight.

Find her on:

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Bookish Tuesday: All At Sea

by Jeanette O'Hagan @jeanetteohagan

I was born in far inland, in semi-arid outback Queensland. Water was scarce until first one and then two big dams were built. Each year we would spend time on the coast, and, when I was on the verge of ten years, we sailed on an ocean liner across the Indian Ocean from Melbourne to Durban, part of our journey to another inland abode, Kitwe Zambia. Two years later we repeated the journey.

A visit to the beach is one thing. Two weeks on the southern ocean something else altogether. At the beach the ocean is (mostly) tamed, It comes in and breaks upon the shore in curly waves. Okay, not altogether tame, it has a limit to it. In fact, ancient sailors (before compasses, and sextants) often sailed within sight of the land so as not to get lost in the vast trackless wilds of the ocean. Even so, sailors in the Pacific Island used wind, currents, birds and other signs to venture out into the wild, blue deep.

For me, those two weeks swaying, slipping and staggering on the ship's deck, fighting nausea, was still a magical time. The sparkling blue-black waves stretched as far as my eye could see in every direction. Albatross and gulls followed the wake of the ship. Flying fish, dolphins, jelly-fish brought wonder and fired the imagination.

In a few of my recent stories, I've recaptured something of that wonder of the ocean. It got me thinking about books set at sea.

Jonah and Paul

In the Bible, the ocean is often a symbol of chaotic, unruly forces arrayed against God, forces that he has subdued and tamed. We can see this in the story of Jonah in the Old Testament and Paul in the New - where a disastrous storm brings fear and devastation - yet also God's sovereign control, as a great fish swallows Jonah, while Paul and all his companions lives are saved despite shipwreck. On the Sea of Galilee, Jesus both calms the storm and walks upon the waves. However fierce the ocean may be, God is stronger. After all, He created it.

The Classics

A number of classic books are set at sea. Books like Gulliver's Travels by Jonathon Swift, Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe,  Twenty-Thousand Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne, Moby Dick by Herman Melville or The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway to name a few.

Migration stories

In Australia - many early historical stories (both fictional and non-fictional) start with the First Fleet (the perilous journey, and the arrival and establishment of the convict colony in Jackson Bay, Sydney) or later ship arrivals in the eighteen century. Carol Preston's Mary's Guardian or Kate Grenville's The Secret River are examples.

No doubt there are also a great many stories surrounding the Pilgrim Fathers a couple of centuries earlier, stories which also include the privation and dangers of the voyage, as well as the challenges of settling in a new land and encounters with the original inhabitants. Mercy Clifton: Pilgrim Girl by Peter Marshall and David Manuel is a charming example aimed at young adult readers.

 The Light Between the Ocean

The Light Between Oceans by M. L. Stedman is set on a lighthouse on remote (fictional) Janus island situated off the coast of West Australia and between the Indian and Great Southern Oceans. While technically land, this small rock is at the mercy of the might waves and wind. The beautiful, wild, remote setting is integral to the dramatic ethical dilemma that confronts the main characters, Tom and Isabel and Stedman's descriptions are exquisite.

Voyage of the Dawn Treader 

C S Lewis' Voyage of the Dawn Treader, is part of his Narnia series and is almost wholly set at sea. King Caspian sails to the end of the world in search of the banished seven lords, friends of his father. He is joined by the youngest Pevensie children and their insufferable cousin, Eustace. The ship's company face dangers and stop by on a number of strange and perilous islands on the way. From Eustace's transformation, to the albatross that leads them out of danger, to the Far Country and Aslan appearing as a lamb, there are numerous biblical and spiritual allusions woven into a delightful adventure story.

Rose of Admirias

I loved Charis Joy Jackson's floating kingdom in her Beauty of the Beast adaption Rose of Admirias. This story is rich in imagery and has an allegorical undertone. It is a story of betrayal, of bitterness, revenge and forgiveness with great characters in Averie, the Beast, the Elderpine Bryce and others.

Jewel of the Stars

Adam David Collings first episode of his Jewel of the Stars series, Earth's Remnant introduces us to a crew and passengers of a cruise ship - with two main differences. The ocean this 'ship' sails on is between the stars (or space) and, early on in the cruise,  it becomes clear that earth is under devastating attack by an alien force. The Jewel of the Stars is on its own and must flee earth space to survive. Earth's Remnant kept me flipping the pages, and I'm looking forward to the next instalment.

On my to-read list

While many stories are set at or by the beach, an ocean is setting is less common.  With a bit of searching, I found some other Christian Fiction with a marine setting such as Forsaken Dreams by MaryLu Tyndall - a voyage to Brazil to establish a utopia in 1866  -  or My Enemy My Heart by Laurie Alice Eakes - with heroine facing the capture of her father's ship in 1812 by a privateer on the high seas.

In the world of Nardva

Earlier this year, I wrote Before the Wind for a collection of my stories  Ruhanna's Flight and Other Stories (released in March 2018). Tamrak leads his people across the ocean to search of safety after his island is attacked. Researching and writing the effects of the winds and waves, the type of sailing crafts, ancient ways of navigation was both challenging and exhilarating, but most of all, I love immersing myself in my characters.

"... he dropped like an anchor-stone beneath the foaming surface.
       Cold gripped him and the roar and thunder of waves and winds, the hoarse shouts and cries from the other wakans were doused in a sudden muffled silence.
      The currents tossed him this way then that like a strand of dried seaweed in a high wind. Trails of silvery bubbles tracked their way to the surface, joining the foam of the crashing wave and collecting along the bottom of the hulls.
      He had to surface before he ran out of breath and the ocean claimed him. Clamping his mouth shut and tightening his chest muscles, he held what air he still had and kicked upwards.
      Something jerked him backward."

Before the Wind in Ruhanna's Flight and Other Stories

With my near release Stone of the Sea (release date, end of the month; novella 3 in the Under the Mountain series), Delvina and Zadeki continue their efforts to save the under the mountain realm, including a sea voyage of a crystal powered White Ship into unknown dangers. 

And earlier this year, I wrote a short story for an anthology (due release later this year). My story, Maroon's Sanctuary, is set deep in the ocean beneath the icebound surface of a frozen moon.  The story required another foray into pressures, depths, moons, breathing underwater, and cloning, as I explored the depths of the ocean. While the other two stories are epic fantasy, this one has a more futuristic slant. 

The ocean can be both mysterious and dangerous. Sometimes we need to leave the safety of the shore, to risk the storms and unseen perils.  But even in the storms of life, we know our Lord is with us.

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Jeanette started spinning tales in the world of Nardva at the age of eight or nine. She enjoys writing secondary world fiction, poetry, blogging and editing. Her Nardvan stories span continents, time and cultures. They involve a mixture of courtly intrigue, adventure, romance and/or shapeshifters and magic users. She has published numerous short stories, poems, two novellas and her debut novel, Akrad's Children and new release Ruhanna's Flight and other stories.

Jeanette has practised medicine, studied communication, history, theology and a Master of Arts (Writing). She loves reading, painting, travel, catching up for coffee with friends, pondering the meaning of life. She lives in Brisbane with her husband and children.

To keep up to date with latest news and blogs, sign-up to my newsletter - and receive the short story Ruhanna's Flight.

Find her on:

Facebook |Jeanette O'Hagan Writes | Twitter | Instagram | Pinterest