It's hard to find well-written books out there, and I feel like that's especially true for Christian Fiction. Maybe I'm biased towards finding bad CF. But still, most CF that I've read hasn't been anything shake your bonnet at (sorry, I can't help making bad Amish jokes when talking about this genre...). I want to say that it's even on a slightly lower level than regular/mainstream/whatever-you-want-to-call-it fiction, but again, perhaps I have higher standards for CF.
Blaggard's Moon has all the characteristics of a quality book (I used it as the example of a "delicious, well-rounded meal" in this blog post). It is artistically written; the reader can tell that Polivka took pleasure in crafting his words. He doesn't just tell what happens, but he describes settings and characters, uses analogies in a tasteful way, and sneaks humor into the middle of the story.
While reading, random phrases jumped out at me that spiced up the writing and made an impression. Here are a few:
"Belisar Whatney was the rotund pirate captain, soft of jowl and hard of heart, wide of girth and narrow of purpose, who had left his sailor here." (10)
"His eyes were small and sharp, and they were placed close in, right next to the thin bridge of his long, crooked nose, so close in fact that Delaney often wondered if Lemmer saw everything like he was looking from two sides of a wall at once." (13)
"The echoing boom [from cannon fire] trailed behind like a lazy watchdog finally aroused. Damrick felt heat in the wake of the shot, as though the midsummer sun had suddenly crossed the sky in a flash." (29)
"Sleeve harrumphed. 'Ain't gonna be no trial, ye blame fools.' He rattled the bars vigorously and vainly, using all of his strength and most of his vocabulary." (75)
"...'And then, just when she's startin' to catch the fancy of many fine gentlemen, Jenta's suddenly yer...girl.' He lolled the final word out of his mouth like he was dropping a musket ball down a gun barrel." (108)
These little gems are scattered throughout the book, making everything from the characters to the plot that much richer.
A part that makes my English major heart happy is when Delaney is thinking about part of the story that the storyteller, Ham, had told him. Ham had said "'Wentworth Ryland was smitten, from his first look at Jenta.'" (56) The word "smitten" catches Delaney's fancy, and the pirate applies it to his own life, when he was smitten with a girl named Maybelle. Then he makes the interesting observation that "the priests had used such a term to threaten him, telling him that God would smite him if he kept stealing for his Pap." (56) We usually don't connect those two meanings of that word It is worthy to note that Delaney uses the more violent meaning of it in the context of God, instead of the meaning having to do with love, even though God is love. This provides insight into Delaney's view of God at this point in the story.
Later, Polivka wonderfully conveys the simplicity of Delaney's character in a humorous extended metaphor that Delaney's ironically comes up with himself. While trying to think of a way to escape from his predicament of being stuck in the middle of a pond, Delaney thinks to himself, "For some people, it seemed like ideas popped up in their heads like their minds were gardens, somehow, where ideas grew like tomatoes, and there was always a ripe one to pluck off the vine whenever it was needed." (69-70)
Delaney goes on to mourn the fact of his tomato-less mind: "Delaney's head wasn't full of tomatoes like that. He'd never grown a tomato in there, as far as he knew. Instead, his garden grew whatever it wanted, and that was weeds, mostly. Even now, now that he'd thought about tomatoes, the more he tried to think of ideas, the more he ended up thinking about tomatoes." (70)
He then thinks about how tomato plants need water to grow because the tomatoes are so juicy. So he decides that ideas need water to grow too, because ideas are like tomatoes, and he goes through an elaborate process of getting water from the pond without being eaten by the piranhas waiting below him. But "he didn't need much of a drink, he figured, because the tomatoes he wanted to grow weren't real tomatoes, just idea tomatoes...he could shinny back up and sit for a while, let that water get sucked up into his brain, and he could grow some ideas. He wasn't sure it worked that way, but since he didn't really know how it worked, it sure made sense it might work like that. And besides, he was thirsty." (70)
Later in the book, he realizes that he actually can think up ideas because he thought up the ideas of the thought-tomatoes. Good for you, Delaney. I'm so proud.
Last example, I promise: Conch Imbry, a ruthless pirate captain, is the main antagonist of the book, both in Ham's story and Delaney's past. He's one creepy, powerful dude. For example, he invites rich people to play poker with him on his ship, and he always manages to win (obviously through cheating). But the rich people accept his invitation anyway because 1) it's dangerous to decline an invitation from him, and 2) there is an unspoken agreement that he will attack their merchant ships less if they sacrifice the money to him up front through poker.
Delaney and some of his fellow crew members were put in jail, before they were technically pirates. They were jailed in a town that the Conch controlled, and they were scheduled to be executed. On the morning of their execution, the Conch visits them and gives them two options: either die by execution, or join his pirate crew. Some have no problem turning pirate. But Delaney is hesitant, and another man named Avery refuses to compromise his morals (more on that in the next post).
The Conch poses his choice of death or piracy as if he is giving them a merciful and kind bargain, a chance at escaping death. It is a tense situation however, because everyone knows that with one wrong word, the Conch could decide that they die anyway. After Delaney accepts the Conch's offer to become a pirate, the captain turns to the others.
"'How about the rest of you men?' Conch then asked around. 'What say ye? Death, or piracy?' He said it with a surge of energy, as though offering a wondrous choice, perhaps selling some healing potion or leading a prayer meeting." (83)
"Leading a prayer meeting." The religious language there only serves to emphasize the evilness and corruption of the pirate captain. To compare his threat-disguised-as-an-offer to a prayer meeting is ridiculous yet artfully effective. Conch Imbry would never do any such thing because of the level of his depravity.
Have I convinced you to read this book yet? If not, part 3 might do the trick...