Category: Reviews of My Books

Latest Review (7/9/11) – The Cellar Beneath the Cellar by Lee Duigon

Recommendation: Excellent

Originality: 5/5             Writing Style: 4/5              Plot: 5/5                 Characters: 5/5        Aesthetics: 5/5

God is at work in Obann.

A thousand years ago, King Ozias, the last king, placed a bell on top of Mount Yul. Scripture says that when someone rings that bell, God will hear it.

But no one ever has rung the bell.

Until now.

Many people, from the head priest to a small-town teacher, have felt God stirring their heart to ring it, but the only ones obedient enough to answer that call are two children – Jack and Ellayne.

Jack is a poor boy, a child of misfortune; Ellayne is a rich girl, child of the town’s chief councilor. Together they will make it to the top of the mountain and fulfill their calling.

Bell Mountain is such a fun read for people of all ages. It’s interesting and moves at a quick pace with lots of action and adventure. As you read, you’ll meet new creatures, an expert assassin, Helki the Rod, Obst the Hermit, and Wytt the…? (Well, you’ll just have to read about Wytt.)

It’s a perfectly clean read with a ton of depth and good Christian messages. One of my favorite themes was the question of how we should treat Scripture. Is it to be taken at face-value and treated seriously, or is it just a collection of myths and metaphors?

I give Bell Mountain an enthusiastic recommendation of Excellent and will look forward to diving into the sequel, The Cellar Beneath the Cellar.

Bell Mountain is available in print from Amazon.com.

SOURCE

Sequels rarely equal the first book in a series, with notable exceptions.

Lee Duigon’s The Cellar Beneath the Cellar is one. Duigon, one of the most cogent and entertaining Christian cultural columnists, picks up where his earlier fantasy novel Bell Mountain left off.

It’s fair to say that Cellar might even top Bell Mountain – no easy task. Like any worthy sequel, The Cellar is intriguing enough to stand on its own, although I would recommend that readers start with Bell Mountain. As with its predecessor, this new book is geared to young readers but does not coddle them. Thus, it is a joy for adults to read as well.  It could even serve as a guilty pleasure for secular reviewers who set out to trash Christian novelists. But beware, if you are one of them. You just might be bewitched by Duigon’s character-rich adventure and lose some of your armor against the Hound of Heaven.

Since the plot is full of surprises, I will do my best not to spoil it here. And those who want first to read Bell Mountain should stop here, since that book, too, is full of plot twists.

Our young hero Jack and heroine Ellayne are once again immersed in a mysterious mission that might free their country of Obann from the grip of a false religion and evil overlord. Along the way, great and small battles are fought, hearts change and characters grow in wisdom. Trust – or lack of it – is a central theme.  Lord Reesh, the faux keeper of the faith whose manipulations are superbly crafted, demonstrates why villains are so entertaining.

Faced with savage threats not only from their own rulers but from invading hordes of pagan tribes, Jack and Ellayne take us on a wild ride. They are aided and abetted by the reformed heretic and assassin Martis, plus the lovable and still somewhat savage and tiny manlike creature Whit, who wields a sharpened stick with the efficiency of a Samurai. Also, Helki, a giant of a man with a warrior spirit and a father’s protectiveness.

Questions abound. Can the young adventurers trust Martis? After all, he was initially sent to kill them to stop them from ringing the ancient bell atop Bell Mountain.  And what exactly is so important about a “cellar beneath the cellar?”

The benevolent hand of God is palpable throughout the novel, even as the Great Story is told in allegorical terms. Like J.R.R. Tolkien, Lee Duigon weaves Christian sensibility into his narrative without being heavy handed. Like Tolkien, Duigon knows that the most effective apologetic isn’t compelling without a great story. So he delivers one. Again.

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The first in a series of five (thus far), Bell Mountain marks the fantasy debut of author Lee Duigon, and it is an enjoyable debut too. The story follows two children, Jack and Ellayne, as they attempt to make their way across the corrupt kingdom of Obann to climb Bell Mountain and ring the legendary bell that sits atop its peak. Long ago the bell was built by the last good king, King Ozias, but not many believe in the story any longer.

Prompted by haunting dreams of the bell and a mysterious promise made by God in the ancient Writings, Jack and Ellayne believe that the ringing of the bell will reshape the world forever. This call to climb the mountain and ring the bell is not a quest they would want to do, either. It is believed by many that the ringing of the bell will mark the ending of the world. Will they find their courage to ring it? First, of course, they must get there; the road is fraught with many dangers, like child slavers, barbarians, outlaws, and bizarre creatures emerging from the mists of legend, as well as an assassin sent to prevent them from ringing the bell by the corrupt First Prester of the Obann church.

The book is a solid one, set in a fantasy world that borders on being an alternative, or parallel, world to our own. Duigon is a Christian, and so leans heavily on events and ideas taken from the Bible. This is tastefully handled, however, and he always shifts the stories enough to make them original, while maintaining their familiar echoes. King Ozias, for instance, is something of a King David figure, and I caught allusions to other biblical stories such as Adam and Eve, and Cain and Abel.

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The quests of each of the first two books in Lee Duigon’s children’s fantasy series pertain to legacies of the renowned King Ozias which must be activated by two children, Jack and Ellayne.  Book One ends with the inauguration of a new age produced when Jack fulfills the first quest by ringing the Bell of Ozias on the summit of Bell Mountain.  The second quest is retrieving the secret scrolls of Ozias by descending deep underground into a secret cellar.

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Lifeless. Bloodless. Predictable.

That describes too much of Christian fiction for young people, once you get past C.S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia and a few other good reads. But now comes Lee Duigon’s Bell Mountain, a new novel that’s full of life, is modestly and discretely bloody in places, and is anything but predictable. Here’s the opening sentence:

This is a story about a boy who was so haunted by a mountain that it gave him bad dreams. You may have had bad dreams when you were Jack’s age, but not like these.

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