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primeidealIn "From All False Doctrine," Charlie Boult is a teenage car thief from the mean streets of Toronto, who's in the process of changing his ways and becomes an acolyte at Kit Underhill's church. In the last couple chapters, everyone (including Charlie) witnesses a miraculous event, and then has to deal with "how do we go back to our normal lives after we've just seen this."
"Neither Have I Wings" picks up twenty years later, as World War II is wrapping up in Europe. Charlie is an air force pilot stationed in Yorkshire; the other POV character, Evgenia ("Evvie") is volunteering at a hospital for recovering amputees. But one day, the police come by investigating a murder, and Evgenia is curious about the mystery; meanwhile, Charlie discovers something very strange hidden in the outbuilding, and all of the sudden he's back in the world of demons and miracles...
"From All False Doctrine" was a slow burn with a lot of wrong-genre savvy. "Neither Have I Wings" is brisker, faster-paced, and Charlie's plotline in particular is clearly supernatural from chapter one. Points for "Wings." (The title comes from a folksong called "The Water Is Wide." It's funny because Charlie is an airplane pilot. And angels sometimes have wings. Get it?) Evvie's, however, is a mix of "I've had supernatural visions in my life before so I'm primed to suspect miraculous events even on very weak evidence," and laser-guided amnesia, which leads to more "this is suppposed to be a fantasy book but a lot of it is a comedy of manners."
At first it seems like a legit standalone sequel--for the most part, you don't really need to know what happened with Kit, just that it was a miracle in the midst of Charlie's otherwise-mundane life. But towards the second half, as more characters get introduced and others get re-introduced, I was more appreciative that I'd read "False Doctrine" first, I'm not sure the entire thing would work on its own.
In "False Doctrine," Peachy tells lots of lies about him and Kit avoiding military service in WWI. It turns out that Kit volunteering put Peachy to shame, and he's uncomfortable with this, so he just lies and Kit rolls with it. But when Peachy is confronted by demonic forces, his hero-worship of Kit turns unhealthy--on some level, he wants to be Kit. Charlie takes this kind of hero-worship in a different direction; Kit served in WWI, so he'll serve in WWII. He is admirably honest with himself in a way that Peachy couldn't be. But the gap between the impossible ideal of goodness Kit represents to both of them, and their own flawed selves, is still there. Meanwhile, a completely different character turns out to be lying about almost everything in her life. I can understand a need for secrecy, there is a war going on, but the completely over-the-top frivolous details seem more distracting than helpful. She couldn't possibly have come from the Peverell Peacham school of Blatant Lies...unless...??
This was recced as subverting the friends-to-lovers trope, inasmuch as Charlie and Evvie are friends but don't become each other's lovers. I would caveat that, while their paths cross briefly early on, it takes a long time for them to actually interact with each other as friends. Their plotlines run parallel but don't directly intersect for a while (which makes for some funny moments when I realized how a couple minor characters were related).
Like "False Doctrine," "Wings" is very positive/optimistic about Christianity (specifically Anglo-Catholicism, and here also Greek Orthodoxy) and the power of God's love to overcome human prejudice and fear. "False Doctrine" featured two hetero love stories against the social conventions of 1925. "Wings" is far less heteronormative, and has more emphasis on the terrible things that can be done in the name of religion (including a character who's either the greatest or worst example of nominative determinism, you'll have to keep reading to find out which).
Charlie's plotline might feel a little too sweetness-and-light at times, things are not going to be easy with or without supernatural beings in the mix, and after the author makes a pretty powerful statement about love and commitment, trying to increase the tension by being all "what if it was just a lie" comes off as "Like You Would Really Do It"/"Unfortunate Implications." But in the long run, after some grief and pain, we can infer it's going to be a case of Earn Your Happy Ending.
Evvie's plotline was harder for me to make sense of. I could understand a case of "I know what I'm called to do in life, other people might not understand, but that's okay;" I could also have seen it as "I thought I knew what I was meant to do, but meeting people from different walks of life has opened my mind to different possibilities, and now I see how I might be able to serve God in a different vocation." What we got instead was a late swerve followed by a quick unswerve, and that didn't seem to resolve anything. Fic potential?
This book :handshake: Amina al-Sirafi :handshake: A Master of Djinn
What if we found the mystical artifact King Solomon used to control angels and demons. Solomon is having a moment!
This book is also very much cut from the same mold as "To Say Nothing Of The Dog." Keeping calm and carrying on in the war, aspiring to be cool detectives like Peter Wimsey and Harriet Vane, criticizing architecture that's trying to look medieval but is actually just Victorian pseudo-medieval...The Anglicans know what they're about.
There's a running joke about "angel wings need to change color to match the liturgical calendar," and like, I am very much part of the niche target audience this was targeted at. And if you think this is very amusing:
then you might be also. ;)
Bingo: Criminals (not a major emphasis but Charlie is an expert car thief), Dreams (and how), Prologues/Epilogues, Self/Indie Published, Romance, Multi-POV (including the prologue/epilogues), Disabled Character (neither of the POVs but a fairly prominent character and several minor ones--they are at a rehabilitation facility.)
"Neither Have I Wings" picks up twenty years later, as World War II is wrapping up in Europe. Charlie is an air force pilot stationed in Yorkshire; the other POV character, Evgenia ("Evvie") is volunteering at a hospital for recovering amputees. But one day, the police come by investigating a murder, and Evgenia is curious about the mystery; meanwhile, Charlie discovers something very strange hidden in the outbuilding, and all of the sudden he's back in the world of demons and miracles...
"From All False Doctrine" was a slow burn with a lot of wrong-genre savvy. "Neither Have I Wings" is brisker, faster-paced, and Charlie's plotline in particular is clearly supernatural from chapter one. Points for "Wings." (The title comes from a folksong called "The Water Is Wide." It's funny because Charlie is an airplane pilot. And angels sometimes have wings. Get it?) Evvie's, however, is a mix of "I've had supernatural visions in my life before so I'm primed to suspect miraculous events even on very weak evidence," and laser-guided amnesia, which leads to more "this is suppposed to be a fantasy book but a lot of it is a comedy of manners."
At first it seems like a legit standalone sequel--for the most part, you don't really need to know what happened with Kit, just that it was a miracle in the midst of Charlie's otherwise-mundane life. But towards the second half, as more characters get introduced and others get re-introduced, I was more appreciative that I'd read "False Doctrine" first, I'm not sure the entire thing would work on its own.
In "False Doctrine," Peachy tells lots of lies about him and Kit avoiding military service in WWI. It turns out that Kit volunteering put Peachy to shame, and he's uncomfortable with this, so he just lies and Kit rolls with it. But when Peachy is confronted by demonic forces, his hero-worship of Kit turns unhealthy--on some level, he wants to be Kit. Charlie takes this kind of hero-worship in a different direction; Kit served in WWI, so he'll serve in WWII. He is admirably honest with himself in a way that Peachy couldn't be. But the gap between the impossible ideal of goodness Kit represents to both of them, and their own flawed selves, is still there. Meanwhile, a completely different character turns out to be lying about almost everything in her life. I can understand a need for secrecy, there is a war going on, but the completely over-the-top frivolous details seem more distracting than helpful. She couldn't possibly have come from the Peverell Peacham school of Blatant Lies...unless...??
This was recced as subverting the friends-to-lovers trope, inasmuch as Charlie and Evvie are friends but don't become each other's lovers. I would caveat that, while their paths cross briefly early on, it takes a long time for them to actually interact with each other as friends. Their plotlines run parallel but don't directly intersect for a while (which makes for some funny moments when I realized how a couple minor characters were related).
Like "False Doctrine," "Wings" is very positive/optimistic about Christianity (specifically Anglo-Catholicism, and here also Greek Orthodoxy) and the power of God's love to overcome human prejudice and fear. "False Doctrine" featured two hetero love stories against the social conventions of 1925. "Wings" is far less heteronormative, and has more emphasis on the terrible things that can be done in the name of religion (including a character who's either the greatest or worst example of nominative determinism, you'll have to keep reading to find out which).
Charlie's plotline might feel a little too sweetness-and-light at times, things are not going to be easy with or without supernatural beings in the mix, and after the author makes a pretty powerful statement about love and commitment, trying to increase the tension by being all "what if it was just a lie" comes off as "Like You Would Really Do It"/"Unfortunate Implications." But in the long run, after some grief and pain, we can infer it's going to be a case of Earn Your Happy Ending.
Evvie's plotline was harder for me to make sense of. I could understand a case of "I know what I'm called to do in life, other people might not understand, but that's okay;" I could also have seen it as "I thought I knew what I was meant to do, but meeting people from different walks of life has opened my mind to different possibilities, and now I see how I might be able to serve God in a different vocation." What we got instead was a late swerve followed by a quick unswerve, and that didn't seem to resolve anything. Fic potential?
This book :handshake: Amina al-Sirafi :handshake: A Master of Djinn
What if we found the mystical artifact King Solomon used to control angels and demons. Solomon is having a moment!
This book is also very much cut from the same mold as "To Say Nothing Of The Dog." Keeping calm and carrying on in the war, aspiring to be cool detectives like Peter Wimsey and Harriet Vane, criticizing architecture that's trying to look medieval but is actually just Victorian pseudo-medieval...The Anglicans know what they're about.
There's a running joke about "angel wings need to change color to match the liturgical calendar," and like, I am very much part of the niche target audience this was targeted at. And if you think this is very amusing:
“It’s hilarious. Perhaps I won’t be court-martialled for desertion after all. Perhaps I’ll hang for murder instead.”
“Desertion?” Hal looked serious now. “You are absent without leave? You did not tell me that.”
“I wasn’t sure you’d understand.”
“Of course I understand,” said Hal. “I am myself essentially a soldier.”
Charlie hadn’t thought about it that way. “Right. But you couldn’t exactly desert, could you?”
Hal opened his eyes very wide. “Is that what you think? Your theology is very defective. Of course I could.”
“Oh. Free will. Yeah, I did know that.”
then you might be also. ;)
Bingo: Criminals (not a major emphasis but Charlie is an expert car thief), Dreams (and how), Prologues/Epilogues, Self/Indie Published, Romance, Multi-POV (including the prologue/epilogues), Disabled Character (neither of the POVs but a fairly prominent character and several minor ones--they are at a rehabilitation facility.)
