“Song of Locke”: The Adventure You’ve Been Longing For
Have you ever felt a longing to be in Tolkien's Middle Earth? To be surrounded by that sort of myth and power? If you're familiar with the works of Tolkien's Inklings, you might know the…
Category: Literary & Media Analysis
Where the Shadows Lie: The Problem of Evil according to Tolkien
There are two subjects which Tolkien's works are very careful never to touch: the first one is sex, and the other is the machine. Tolkien talks at length about each of these in his Letters…
Telescoping Hope: The Role of Stories
A story is a telescope, bringing the distance within arm’s reach. So often, the lives we lead seem long, perhaps uneventful, twisting and turning from one instance to another, usually before we have time to…
Mystery and Adventure on the Sea: A Survey of Nautical Literature and Why It Entices Us
What is it that is so enticing about the sea? What is it that keeps people coming back to it, whether to see it in person or to read about it in books? Water in…
“The Ring of Fantasy”: A Book Review
My first novel is a children’s fantasy adventure initially penned (literally) when I was 13, in a series of used copybooks lying on the garage roof. It was revised in 2012 and self-published. The official page…
Music and the Frysian Translations of JRR Tolkien
On the brink of the turn of the millennium I read most of Tolkien’s books, most of them in Dutch and some in English. At the time I was wondering how Tolkien would look in…
Not A Legend, Not A Flop: A Review of “King Arthur: Legend of the Sword”
Author's Note: The original version of this review was published on The Cat’s Cradle on June 5, 2017. Many thanks to Avellina Balestri for joining me on this venture into Arthurian legend! ~ I will not pretend…
Nothing’s Forgotten: My Appreciation for “Robin of Sherwood”
There have been a host of bad Robin Hood shows in recent decades, but none of them ever reached the heights of Robin of Sherwood, easily one of the more interesting contemporary portrayals of that…
Wolves in the Woods: A Review of “The Forest Lord Series” By Steven A. McKay
When you take such a well-known and well-loved tale as Robin Hood and his Merry Men, it would be only too easy to go down that well-trodden path so familiar to all who know the…
Tolkien, Lewis, and the Saints: How the Inklings Found Heavenly Inspiration for Character Names
We all know about Tolkien’s firm faith and Lewis’ incredible conversion, and we certainly all know about their fantastic stories, and Lewis’ commentary of the truth. But have you ever wondered where they got the…