Eifelheim & The Silmarillion
Updates May 13 - May 17, 2024
Here are the updates for the past week!
IMBIF Book Club 4 - Eifelheim by Michael Flynn
On Wednesday, May 15, the newest book club for I Might Believe in Faeries came out. John Palmer, Matthew Scarince, and I discussed Michael Flynn’s Hugo Nominated Eifelheim. It was a great discussion. We all took different approaches to reading the book and I think we all grew in our appreciation for it. We covered physics, aliens, feudalism, and death. Who doesn’t love to talk about death?
Just so we’re clear, this is the Michael Flynn we discussed:
Apparently, there is another Mike Flynn who is a political advisor and a Vince Flynn who writes political thrillers. I don’t think either of those other guys has thought as much about Aristotelian physics and Blemmyae as our Flynn has.
The Blemmyae that haunts our dreams:
Star Browed Silmarils, Foolish Oaths, and War
This past week, I also listened to the entirety of The Silmarillion written by J. R. R. Tolkien and compiled and published posthumously by Christopher Tolkien. I found a great channel on YouTube that narrates the chapters while providing maps and images to help the listener keep track of who’s who and where’s where. The channel is called Pamko Elessar and the video on the Ainulindale can be found here.
This is first time in almost 10 years that I have gone through the entire Silmarillion and I will say that, not only is the prose excellent, it brings much spiritual consolation and food for contemplation. Tolkien wrote it in a sort of high, epic-sounding prose that makes the characters seem like they are right out a Christian infused Odyssey. Tolkien’s Lengendarium is full of death, victory, tragedy, but above all, hope. Eru Ilúvatar is behind the scenes guiding events and evil is ultimately defeated.
I imbibed this sweet wine this week because I just had a conversation about one of the last sections of The Silmarillion with Richard Rohlin from The Amon Sûl podcast. I won’t get into the details here, but it was a lot of fun. I’m excited for it to come out in the next few weeks.
Here’s a hint about what we discussed:
That’s all I have for now! God bless you all.