Time travel, Time Editors, and mysteries abound as Gwydion finds himself on the Island of Serendair centuries before war and the sea take it. Placed there, I and he hope, to save a young lady whom only I suspect is the book's namesake. This series has been sitting on my bookshelf for ages and by the looks of things it will be a wild ride across the waves of Time. Let the harmony begin.
Fulfilling the promise Book One made, The Fury reveals the Chronicles of the Raven as a Fantasy of consistent, incredible, expanding and intricately detailed depth as old intrigues come to fruition or wither depending while revealing
layers that were only hinted at and others utterly unexpected as the
world of Hortus and story itself reaches beyond the borders of Daffyd. A
story that is now far more than a Celtic Fantasy about the women and
men of Green Mount and Lachland protecting their homes from the savage
Barbárs hordes, the Church of the Five, and the blood-magicking Angor
shamans. Powers far greater are now at play as ancient, forgotten legends come to life, and one of Doersch's great
qualities is that he forces to reader to be as keen-eyed as the best of
archers to gain full understanding.
But understanding or not – and the Five know many of the characters themselves are in the not category – the Autumn Equinox is nigh and now the fate of the world depends upon the Raven Corvus Corax and his friends ascending and matching the ancient call: The battle cry goes out as swords are drawn… "Protect the Tor!" In other words, Book Three will open with a literally earth-shaking battle.
(P.S. If you, dear reader, are an author/publisher and reading this review makes you want to ask me for a review too then PLEASE read my Contact Me? page.)
Oh. My. Gosh. (For once I have no other words beyond that this looks INCREDIBLE.)
"Deeper meaning resides in the fairy tales told to me in my childhood than in the truth that is taught by life." – Friedrich Schiller
"Everything you can imagine is real." – Pablo Picasso
"Fantasy is escapist, and that is its glory. If a soldier is imprisoned by the enemy, don't we consider it his duty to escape?...If we value the freedom of mind and soul, if we're partisans of liberty, then it's our plain duty to escape, and to take as many people with us as we can!" – J.R.R. Tolkien
With these quotes do I begin to answer the question of how does speculative fiction build empathy? The simplest answer being the question: how can it not? The article “Literature as more than a window: building readers' empathy and social capacity through exposure to diverse literature” by Sharon Colvin states, quite accurately, that "that nonfiction stories, such as the news, present an obligation to act and that this sense of responsibility lowered empathy. Fiction, on the other hand, is a safe, non-threatening place to approach new people and social situations. These indirect interactions cause less anxiety than personal contact; it is more a cognitive experience that can prepare people for personal contact." Now combine that with the findings outlined in the "Why Kids Can Learn More From Tales of Fantasy Than Realism” by Deena Skolnick Weisberg article: "At the start of the study, published in 2015 in Cognitive Development, children knew less about words from the fantastical books, perhaps because these words were somewhat more challenging. But we found that children’s lexical knowledge caught up over the course of the intervention and, at the post-test, they knew as much about these words as they did about the words from the realistic stories. That is, children gained more knowledge from the fantastical stories than from the realistic ones." Thus does the answer reveal itself, for in speculative fiction one is freed from all earthly obligations and taken on a journey with the protagonists, privy to all their deepest thoughts and feeling from the heights of joy and triumph to agonies the likes of which most of us will never suffer.
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| Golden Sun |
Furthermore, speculative fiction lets readers explore different cultures in addition the to learning about Dragons and whatnot. As Sharon Colvin wrote, "Researchers found when white elementary school children read short stories about multiethnic characters, their attitudes toward African Americans were more effectively improved than when they interacted with a group of African American children. The stories seemed to provide a safe place for children to explore the idea of different cultures." Of course, entirely made-up worlds that are the setting of many Fantasies do not have African Americans per se seeing as these worlds host neither Africa nor America, but, and here is the key, Fantasy is grounded in reality, each world and character created from the mind of an author that has been shaped by real-world experiences and/or drawn from a solid knowledge of history.
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| Redwall |
The gathering storm has broken into a fury, for the Barbárs hordes and their sadistic Angor blood-shaman allies are not defeated yet upon the Green Mount while multi-pronged plots as well as these same foes threaten Lachland. Thus it is a race against the proverbial clock, for the Autumn Equinox approaches and Fel's servants must be stopped ere far more than Daffyd falls. Corvus Corax, Princess Darienne, Captain Zach, and Mama Warad and her three votaries certainly have their work cut out for them.
The battle cry goes out as swords are drawn… "Protect the Tor!"
