“Silverlock” by John Myers Myers is a rare and very special kind of book. Not very many people have read it, but many successful fantasy authors count it among their most important influences. To the few who have read it, this book is a treasure, to be read over and over again.

The main character is A. Clarence Shandon, an all-but-spiritually-dead American businessman. His ship goes down in a raging storm, and the only reason he survives the wreck is that he doesn't care if he lives or dies. The ship just happens to bear the same name as the ship Loki will command at Ragnarok, but Shandon wouldn't notice a thing like that.

Nor does he notice that the woman he falls in with shortly afterward is the sorceress Circe, or that the man who saves him from her is the archetypal poet Golias, or that the battle they get mixed up in is the Battle of Clontarf or that the man they meet after that is Beowulf. He doesn't recognize Huck Finn's raft or Job or Robin Hood or Odin or... but you get the picture.

“Silverlock” is the story of a soulless materialist, learning how to become a real human being through the world of literature. The fantasy world he adventures through is “The Commonwealth of Letters,” and his adventure there starts out as a charming romp, more amusing than insightful. Then, in the second half of the book, Shandon descends into literary Hell and the whole story gets a lot more serious. The insights in this section of the story are some of the most profound you will ever find in a work of fiction.

It doesn't matter if you don't normally go for parables and allegories- I don't. You owe it to yourself to find a copy of Silverlock right away.

x