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Saints Alive! New Stories of Old Saints: Volume II Celtic Paths

Andrew M. Seddon,

Cheryl Dickow (Editor)

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Jun 22, 2014 Werner rated it it was amazing

Shelves: historical-fiction, short-stories

Note, May 27, 2021: I've just edited this review to update one item of information.

Goodreads author Andrew Seddon and I have been pen pals for about 10 years now, and he kindly gave me a signed copy of this latest book from his pen --not as a way of angling for a review, but as an expression of friendly generosity. While I've stated here that I read the book one time, I've actually beta read most of the dozen stories earlier (and Andrew graciously noted that in the acknowledgements); but I don't Note, May 27, 2021: I've just edited this review to update one item of information.

Goodreads author Andrew Seddon and I have been pen pals for about 10 years now, and he kindly gave me a signed copy of this latest book from his pen --not as a way of angling for a review, but as an expression of friendly generosity. While I've stated here that I read the book one time, I've actually beta read most of the dozen stories earlier (and Andrew graciously noted that in the acknowledgements); but I don't think I did the last three, and since it had been awhile for the other nine, I felt the review would benefit from a reread. These tales were every bit as good the second time around!

This is a sequel to the author's Saints Alive! New Stories of Old Saints: Saints of Empire, which focused on saints from late Roman antiquity. The quality, technique and tone of this volume is very similar, and many of my comments in my review of the first book apply to this one as well (see www.goodreads.com/review/show/555923014 ). Here, though, the focus is on the saints of the immediately following period --the "Dark Ages," roughly the 6th and 7th centuries A.D.-- flourishing in the Celtic fringe of Europe. (Andrew, a convert from High Anglicanism to Roman Catholicism, is a co-author of Walking with the Celtic Saints: A Devotional, so has familiarized himself with that milieu as well as the earlier one.) Written sources for the lives of these saints are even less extensive and less reliable, with much legendary accretion and often conflation of accounts of saints with the same name. (Andrew's main reliance here is on Butler's Lives of the Saints and The Lives of the British Saints by Sabine Baring-Gould and John Fisher.) The best-known Celtic saint, Patrick, isn't represented, the focus being on those less known; I'd previously heard only of St. Columba, St. Brigid, and St. Brendan. The world of these saints is less prosperous and civilized, and if danger and persecution come, it's from the unsettled condition of a war-torn continent, not from the persecuting machinery of a centralized state. In some ways, the Celtic mindset was more mystical than the Roman, with a conviction that the Otherworld is never far from this one. This allows Andrew to give freer vent to some of the motifs that make him a top-notch writer of speculative fiction, such as St. Columba's confrontation with Nessie (which actually is recorded by St. Adamnan!) and the apparent temporal slip in a half-waking state of "The Sun on the Liffey," perhaps the most thought-provoking tale here --and what if St. Brendan's voyages ever took him to the Bermuda Triangle?

These are well-crafted stories, each one a polished jewel, faith-filled, imparting a quiet wisdom, and often graced with gentle humor. Some of them may reflect the violence of a violent time, but there's nothing gross or gratuitous. It's hard to pick a favorite, but "Autumn Wolves" is a special treat for any reader who has a soft spot for wolves and knows how unfair their distorted popular image is. But none of the tales disappoint! ...more

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