The Bright Sword by Lev Grossman

Published by Viking on July 16, 2024

The Bright Sword takes place at the end of the time of magic. King Arthur is believed to be dead. Without his guidance, Britain is changing. Change is irreversible, but the future can be shaped. The few remaining knights of the Round Table feel a duty to choose Arthur’s successor and to defend Camelot from attack by lesser kings.

After the battle in which Arthur was lost, the Round Table is 94 knights short of a quorum. Having failed to save Arthur, Lancelot is living in a monastery, where he plans to spend his life in total seclusion. He is trying to atone for his many sins. Canoodling with Queen Guinevere seems to be high on that list.

The rollicking story begins with and focuses upon young Callum, who journeys to Camelot with a plan to beg Arthur for a position as a knight at the Round Table. Callum acquits himself in an unexpected encounter with a knight as he travels to Camelot. The knight’s identity, when finally revealed, fits well within the tradition of Arthurian tales.

Callum is dismayed to learn of Arthur’s death. The surviving knights seem to have lost their purpose. Britain has been forced into an early version of Brexit by the loss of its unifying force. Competing claims for the throne distress the knights, who aren’t used to making nakedly political decisions.

After winning a challenge, Callum is invited to join the group and to undertake new quests that will eventually determine Britain’s leadership. Adventures ensue, including encounters with magicians, giants, gods, the Lady of the Lake, and other characters drawn from Arthurian legend. From jousting competitions to farmers armed with pitchforks running across a field toward knights in armor, Lev Grossman assures that action scenes will keep the story from dragging. Yet the novel’s real interest lies more in its characters than in their adventures.

Backstories occupy much of the plot. We learn how Callum acquired the skills of a knight when he wasn’t being abused by his employer. We learn about the eventful lives of Sir Bedivere, Sir Dinadan, Sir Dagonet, Sir Constantin, and Sir Scipio. Gawain plays a small role in the story, but it’s appropriate for some of the lesser knights to enter the spotlight.

The knights were a diverse bunch. Bedivere’s physical longing for Arthur explains his loyalty. We hear less about the well-known past of Sir Lancelot, but we see him in the present, where living up to his legend proves to be his greatest challenge.

We don’t hear much about Merlin’s past but he plays a key role, often in battle with his former apprentice, Nimue. The story’s gossipy style exposes Nimue’s plan to seduce one of the knights. Whether she needed the assist of magic is not quite clear, even to Nimue.

The most interesting backstory belongs to Sir Palomides. The former prince of Baghdad is more intellectual than the other knights. Still, he found the struggle between Islam and Christianity to be less troublesome than his struggle for the love of Isolde.

By the end, most characters are transformed by adventures that expose them to miracles and force them to do (or attempt) great deeds. Just when it seems that their lives will normalize, along comes another invasion. That’s British history in a nutshell. “Change is the only certainty.” That’s also the ultimate lesson that the reader — like each character — is invited to internalize.

Yet the novel’s most profound question is one a knight contemplates in the moments before his death: “why it should be that we are made for a bright world, but live in a dark one.” In that respect, the world of Arthur parallels and continues to illuminate the modern world.

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Desperation Reef by T. Jefferson Parker

Published by Forge Books on July 16, 2024

Jen Stonebreaker married a surfing fanatic and became one herself. Her husband John died while surfing a Big Wave at Mavericks. Jen had been towing his board into the waves on a jet ski. She blames herself for not doing more to save him, but there was really nothing more she could have done. Unless there was.

Casey and Brock were born almost nine months later. They are now in their early twenties. They are twins but, apart from their love of surfing, are very different men. Casey is religious in a conventional way. Brock started his own church and invented his own god. He calls the church and its god Breath of Life. Brock also founded the Go Dogs, a volunteer organization that helps people survive fires and other natural disasters.

Brock is opposed by a group of far-right activists who believe he is a heathen because he doesn’t share their intolerance. The threat of a violent confrontation between the groups provides a tense undercurrent to the story.

Casey believes in turning the other cheek. Brock volunteered to fight in Ukraine and believes in vengeance. Both believe in the possibility of bringing people together. Forgiveness and letting go of grievances are the novel’s dominant themes.

Casey catches blue fin tuna for his mother’s successful restaurant in Laguna. He makes an enemy of the Wu family when he takes a video of their illegal enterprise of cutting the fins from sharks before dumping the de-finned sharks back into the sea. He starts a small-scale war when he posts the video to his blog. This leads to the kidnapping of his dog, a ransom demand, Brock’s intervention, and threats against his family. Whether the Wu crime family will make good on those threats is one of the novel’s mysteries.

Casey is a decent person and a terrific surfer but only his mother tells him he’s smart until Bette Wu compliments his intelligence. Bette convinces him that she doesn’t share her family’s passion for crime. The fact that she’s hot sways Casey’s opinion of her, although his mother and brother retain their skepticism, as will the reader. Bette claims she wants to have Casey’s baby, but it will be difficult for anyone to trust Bette.

The Wu crime family plot is credible but unexciting. The subplot involving Brock’s encounters with far-right troublemakers is less believable but it adds action to the story. Characters have just enough personality to carry the story in between action scenes, although Casey's relationship with Bette Wu is unconvincing.

The novel’s competitive surfing scenes are its strength. Intense descriptions of riding 50-foot waves and struggling to escape the pounding water after a wipeout offer more thrills than the crime story or the clash between Brock and the rednecks. I don’t follow competitive surfing, but the novel obviously benefitted from careful research. Readers don't need to be surfing enthusiasts to enjoy the vicarious excitement of riding Big Waves.

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Mysterious Setting by Kazushige Abe

Published in Japan in 2006; published in translation by Pushkin Press on July 2, 2024

Kazushige Abe’s 2006 novel tells the story of a teenage girl who finds meaning in her brief life that she was denied when she realized she would never be a troubadour. Shiori had her heart set on being a troubadour ever since she looked up the word and decided that it described the life she wanted to live. It turned out to be a poor choice for a girl who is tone deaf and afraid to compose lyrics that don’t capture her true emotions as fully as the sounds that her audiences interpret as screeches. Maybe she's a young Yoko Ono.

The narrator learns Shiori’s story from an old man in a park. The narrator returns repeatedly until the old man brings the story to a resolution.

Shiori was tormented by her older sister’s brutal honesty. Her sister recognized that Shiori’s first boyfriend was only with her because she paid for his CDs when they went shopping.

Shiori shopped for cat food at a pet store. She became captivated by the parakeets. The birds seemed to be upset by her singing, although Shiori thought they were encouraging her. Shiori blames herself when things do not go well for Japanese birds.

Shiori makes no friends at music school (she refuses to sing or to compose lyrics) so she begins to correspond with random pen pals. One is a Peruvian drummer who invites her to hear his band. The other band members quickly realize that they can take advantage of Shiori’s generous and gullible nature. The Peruvian takes the story in a different direction when he entrusts Shiori with a suitcase nuke — or maybe it’s just a suitcase.

Shiori is a lonely teen who has no talent for making friends. Even her family abandons her. But Shiori is true to herself. While the inclinations to which she is true might be unwise, Shiori will win hearts for standing her ground.

Mysterious Setting is odd and unpredictable, qualities that make the story a pleasure to read. Shiori is initially incapable of recognizing her faults and then is unable to stop blaming herself for them. There’s some of that in most of us, although Shiori’s tendency to take those qualities to an extreme generates the story’s dark humor.

The end of the old man’s story tests the boundaries of plausibility, but this isn’t a story the reader is meant to believe. Absurd situations fuel its humor while the dark ending makes Shiori even more likable.

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The Entire Sky by Joe Wilkins

Published by ‎ Little, Brown and Company on July 2, 2024

The Entire Sky is a story of choices, primarily the choice between suicide and endurance, but also the choice to notice when people need help or to leave them unseen, to help those we see or to condemn them. The story is heartwarming because good people dealing with tough circumstances, including poor decisions they've made in the past, decide to make the right choices.

Justin lived in Seattle. He wasn’t big enough to protect his mother from her boyfriend’s physical abuse, but he tried. His mother didn’t have the physical strength to protect Justin from her boyfriend’s retaliation and didn’t have the emotional strength to make her boyfriend leave. So Justin left instead, running away at first, later going to Montana to live with his mother’s brother Heck.

As the novel begins, Justin is running away again, this time to avoid the consequences of caving in Heck’s head with a maul. Justin’s backstory leading to that violent moment is interwoven with the story that unfolds in the present.

A key to Justin’s personality is his physical resemblance to Kurt Cobain and his love of Nirvana’s music. Apart from committing a murder (and nobody will be sorry about Heck’s death), Justin is polite, kind, and respectful — a young man readers will easily like.

With his guitar and a backpack, Justin hitchhikes to Billings, where he earns a few dollars busking. He doesn’t understand why people appreciate his “tribute” to Cobain until he reads about Cobain’s death in a newspaper. Justin’s travels end when a rancher finds him hiding in a bunkhouse and leaves him breakfast.

The rancher is Rene Bouchard. He’s old and battling pain in his knees, but he still tends his flock of sheep. His wife has just died. His daughter Lianne returned to Montana to help her father care for her dying mother. Lianne teaches at a community college but has separated from her husband and isn’t sure she wants to return to her former job, particularly after she shags Ves, her old friend from high school.

Justin is astonished at how easily he fits in at Rene’s ranch. He loves watching lambs being born although he is appalled by the harsh realities of Rene's business. Rene and Lianne display decency and kindness that Justin has rarely experienced. Ves’ daughter Amy shares Justin’s appreciation of Nirvana’s music. Justin is even thinking of enrolling in school under a new name, but remaking a life is never easy. Justin will have more than his share of troubles to overcome as the novel moves toward a resolution.

Suicide is the novel’s primary theme. Cobain’s is probably the most notable celebrity suicide of his generation, the most notable in American life since Hemingway and Marilyn Monroe. Rene is planning to end his life when Justin’s sudden arrival causes him to postpone his death. Justin reminds Rene of his son Franklin, who also committed suicide. The novel asks why so many boys choose to take their own lives, why American society fails to identify and help them.

Prejudice against gay men, harbored by Montanans who think of themselves as cowboys, is a secondary theme. Justin isn’t gay, but his long hair and earrings make him gay in the eyes of rednecks. Men like Heck who are ashamed of their attraction to other men use violence as a substitute for self-awareness. Franklin was gay and was targeted by other boys (and even some girls) despite his efforts to hide his sexual identity.

A third theme is the difficult relationship between fathers and sons, particularly when fathers (like Rene) find it difficult to express (or even feel) their emotions. Rene blames himself for Franklin’s suicide, as does Lianne for not responding more urgently to Franklin’s cries for help. They both regret that they didn’t listen to him.

Joe Wilkins conveys the unassuming lives of his Montana characters, finding virtue in their hard work and unselfish lives. Without wasting words, he strings together robust sentences to tell a powerful story. He calls attention to all the boys we don’t notice, the boys who succeed at being too small to see, the boys who drift, who sleep in the weeds or in the back seat of an abandoned car or, if they are very lucky, on a friend’s couch for a few nights. The story reminds us that we can look away when we see them, or we can see them as possibilities.

I didn’t try to guess how the story would end but I dreaded a realistic outcome. Wilkins satisfied me by offering two endings, perhaps to emphasize that life is about possibilities and choices. One is a little sad but far from hopeless. The one I preferred is closer to happy. Either one is a fitting conclusion to a powerful story.

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Happy Independence Day!