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Talking Tolkien: Religious Themes in Lord of the Rings – Joe Bonadonna

Talking Tolkien: Religious Themes in Lord of the Rings – Joe Bonadonna

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Talking Tolkien is back and it’s Black Gater Joe Bonadonna, musing on religious themes in Lord of the Rings. Since Tolkien set out to compose a mythology for England, and was himself a devout Catholic, it’s no surprise that the topic of religion is certainly relevant to his work. Take it away, Joe…

First, I want to say that I am most definitely not an expert on Tolkien’s writings and his history of Middle-earth. Certainly, the myriad fans of Tolkien’s work will be familiar with the ideas and concepts that are laid out in this article. Most of what I set down here will be obvious to Tolkien fans and aficionados. I’m not really adding anything new here; this is just an exploration of themes I’ve always found interesting, and whenever I find myself in a discussion with other fans of Lord of the Rings, I always find myself bringing up the topic of religious ideas in the books, and the fact that there are no churches or other holy places. (It can be argued that all Middle-earth — every forest, every river, every mountain, every pasture is sacred, I suppose.)

Why aren’t there any priests, nuns or priestesses in The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings? Do Hobbits go to church? Do Elves worship at a temple? Do dwarves belong to a mosque or synagogue? Do they all pray to Eru/Ilúvatar? And where do they go to pray? A special house of worship or is anywhere they pray become a sacred place?

Those are some of the questions I inevitably ask.

Since first reading The Hobbit in 1968, I’ve read it only one other time; I’ve read Lord of the Rings three times, but have only read The Silmarillion once. When The Children of Hurin was first published, I read that. I am pretty unfamiliar with the professor’s other works, however. My sources used in research for this article are: Ruth S. Noel’s The Mythology of Middle-Earth, Robert Foster’s The Complete Guide to Middle-Earth, Paul H. Kocher’s Master of Middle-Earth, William Ready’s Understanding Tolkien, Humphrey Carpenter’s Tolkien: The Complete Biography, as well as The Hobbit, The Return of the King, and The Silmarillion.

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Talking Tolkien: A New Black Gate Series

Talking Tolkien: A New Black Gate Series

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Possibly because Black Gate leans more towards sword and sorcery than to high fantasy, the varied works of Robert E. Howard are a lot more discussed here than those of J.R.R. Tolkien. But there are quite a few devotees of both, and the writings of the two fathers of fantasy are favorites.

Back in the summer of 2015, writers from all over waxed eloquently on various aspects of REH’s life and works in a series we called Discovering Robert E. Howard. Some fascinating stuff was covered, and the final essay was posted in March of the following year!

Because I never know when to leave a good thing alone, we took things a step further in 2019. From January through June, a different writer looked at every original Conan story (randomly assigned to them) written by REH, for Hither Came Conan. It was, quite simply, a spectacular series with some amazing essays. It was so good, that it was incorporated along with a blog series by Howard Andrew Jones and Bill Ward, into a new book from Rogue Blades, into THE definitive guide to the Conan Canon. With some new essays added, Hither Came Conan belongs on every REH shelf – right alongside the terrific Del Rey Conan trilogy, on mine.

Well, since the Black Gate firewall still hasn’t figured out how to block me, I decided why not expand the Tolkien footprint here at BG?

Joe Bonadonna, Gabe Dybing, Rich Horton, David Ian, Ruth de Jauregui, James McGlothlin, Thomas Parker, Fletcher Vredenburgh, and myself (the only way I get included in these types of All Star things is to put it together myself…) are going to spend the next couple months talking about different aspects of Tolkien’s life and works. And it’s not just Middle Earth (though of course, much of it is).

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Bob’s Books – Shelfie #6: (Cook, LeGuin, Gygax, Hardy, Hendee, Flint, Smith, McKillip)

Bob’s Books – Shelfie #6: (Cook, LeGuin, Gygax, Hardy, Hendee, Flint, Smith, McKillip)

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It’s installment number six in Bob’s Books’ Shelfie series. Combining a couple fantasy shelfies from my Reddit series, and I kick it off with the terrific GLEN COOK.

When I see a fantasy shelfie here in this bookshelf subreddit, there always seems to be the same few authors popping up – Martin, Sanderson, and Rowling. I’m a little surprised I haven’t seen much Tolkien beyond The Hobbit and the Trilogy – not many Silmarillions appear. I’ve got a SERIOUS Tolkien shelfie coming.

When there’s something a little darker, it’s usually Joe Abercrombie, or Stephen Erikson’s Malazan series. The latter is fantastic, and the books that co-creator Ian Esslemont has added, are pretty good too.

I don’t think I’ve seen any Glen Cook yet.

I’ve not read his Dread Empire series, which seems to be rather heavy. And I’ve read a little of his science fiction, though not much.

He has written a couple of other fantasy series’ I haven’t checked out. But Cook has written two SUPERB series’ that I put up with any modern fantasy in the past several decades. Including the ‘big-name’ stuff that gets most of the attention.

His Chronicles of the Black Company tracks a mercenary company across a deep fantasy world. Abercrombie, Lawrence, and the other leading dark fantasy writers are following in Glen Cook’s footsteps (and of course, Michael Moorcock’s).

It’s a tremendous series that I hear is popular with current and former members of the military, for its depiction of the military lifestyle.

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New Treasures: The Kirilli Matter, Book 9 of The Fey by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

New Treasures: The Kirilli Matter, Book 9 of The Fey by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

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All 9 volumes of The Fey by Kristine Kathryn Rusch
(WMG Publishing, 2013 – 2023). Covers by Dirk Berger and WMG Publishing

In the mid-90s Kristine Kathryn Rusch wrote The Fey, a 5-volume fantasy series released by the hottest publisher in fantasy, Bantam Spectra (publisher of, among other things, A Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin). Jayme Lynn Blaschke interviewed Kristine for my old website SF Site in 1998, and she gave a great synopsis of her ambitions for the series.

When I started working on The Fey, I described it to my editor as a Hundred Years’ War. Now, if you’ve read The Fey, you realize I haven’t gotten anywhere close to a hundred years. We’re in the first twenty years, and I’m starting in on book five. If this series sells well, I could probably go the full hundred years. It may take me twenty years to write, but I know the cycle is going to be long. We’re talking War of the Roses here. And there are a lot of stories in there, and they don’t necessarily have to be about the same characters.

Kristine followed the first five books in The Fey with a 2-volume sequel, The Black Throne, in 1999 and 2000. When the rights reverted back to her, she repacked the books in handsome new editions and re-released them through WMG, the publishing house she runs with her husband, the talented Dean Wesley Smith. As she predicted back in 1998, she is still writing the series 20 years later, and in fact she just released volume 9, The Kirilli Matter, last month.

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Bob’s Books – Shelfie #5: (REH, Moorcock, Kurtz)

Bob’s Books – Shelfie #5: (REH, Moorcock, Kurtz)

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It’s installment number five in Bob’s Shelfie series. This time, I’ll do a shelfie for my favorite fantasy author (Tolkien is second) – Robert E. Howard.

He is of course best known for his Conan the Cimmerian (the movies made it ‘the Barbarian’). They are terrific sword and sorcery stories. If you only know the movies, you should read some of the stories.

On the bottom left are the Del Rey volumes, covering most of his writing. Howard struggled to make a living as a pulpster in Cross Plains, TX, during the Depression. He wrote fantasy, weird menace, westerns, boxing,spicy, horror, historical – the guy was an extremely talented writer. And those Del Reys are superb collections – with some great intros from very knowledgeable folks.

He was an extremely prolific letter writer, and I’ve got several books of his –mostly with fellow Weird Tales contributor, HP Lovecraft.

I never got into graphic novels, but I really like the Marvel Omnibus’ of the color comic that started in the seventies. The three mini-memoirs from Roy Thomas, covering the first hundred-ish issues, are fantastic and great buys.

Up top are various pastiches by other authors. I used to have all the Tors, but don’t any more. Many are pretty poor. For me, L. Sprague de Camp did pretty well (though he was an ass toward REH) and John Maddox Roberts was the best of the Tors, along with Chris Hocking’s lone book (he wrote a second, which has had a long, torturous path to still not being out there – but is due out soon). I like Robert Jordan’s six books, though they all kind of feel the same by the end.

And those two plaques are awards I’ve received from the Robert E. Howard Foundation for my work in the REH world.

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Future Treasures: Fall of the Iron Gods, Book II of The Mechanists by Olivia Chadha

Future Treasures: Fall of the Iron Gods, Book II of The Mechanists by Olivia Chadha

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Rise of the Red Hand and Fall of the Iron Gods (Erewhon Books,
January 19, 2021, and April 30, 2024). Cover design by Lisa Marie Pompilio. Covers by Rashed AlAkroka

Liz Gorinsky is one of the most respected editors in science fiction and fantasy. In fact, when I finished my first novel The Robots of Gotham, Liz was the first person I brought it to (she didn’t buy it). Liz left Tor Books in 2018 to found an independent speculative fiction publishing company, Erewhon Books. Liz left Erewhon last year, but not before growing it into one of the most exciting new publishers of SF and fantasy.

One of their recent discoveries is Olivia Chadha, a Colorado author of literary novels (Balance of Fragile Things), comic books, and SF/Hopepunk. Her first SF novel was Rise of the Red Hand, the tale of a group of rebels in a climate ravaged future South Asia who discover an appalling government conspiracy, which Nerd Daily calls “a stunning read from beginning to end.” The sequel, Fall of the Iron Gods, is due next spring.

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Vintage Treasures: The Flashing Swords! Original Anthologies, edited by Lin Carter

Vintage Treasures: The Flashing Swords! Original Anthologies, edited by Lin Carter

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Paperback editions of Flashing Swords! #1-5 (Dell Books, 1973-1981).
Covers by Frank Frazetta (1 & 2), Don Maitz (3 & 4), and Richard Corben

Lin Carter is best remembered these days as the editor in charge of the Ballantine Adult Fantasy line, which was by any measure a monumental achievement, bringing back into print a truly impressive array of important fantasy books, many in serious danger of being forgotten. But Carter’s career extended beyond that. He was a very prolific author, with his best-known series being the Thongor books, with the hero a barbarian quite openly modeled on Conan.

With L. Sprague de Camp, he produced a great many “posthumous collaborations” with Robert E. Howard, featuring Conan — in stories either expanded from fragments Howard left, or new stories featuring Conan. Carter’s Callisto series is fairly derivative of Edgar Rice Burroughs. He also wrote pastiches of Lovecraft, of Dunsany, of Clark Ashton Smith. Carter was also an historian and critic of fantasy fiction, producing book length studies of Lovecraft and Tolkien, as well as Imaginary Worlds, an ambitious introduction to and history of fantasy.

And he was a prolific anthologist, putting out a number of reprint anthologies, a Year’s Best series devoted strictly to fantasy, and finally the subject of this article, the five original anthologies collectively called Flashing Swords.

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Monsters in a Mist-locked Kingdom: The Shepherd King by Rachel Gillig

Monsters in a Mist-locked Kingdom: The Shepherd King by Rachel Gillig

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One Dark Window and Two Twisted Crows (Orbit Books,
September 27, 2022, and October 17, 2023). Cover design by Lisa Marie Pompilio

I enjoy a good fairy tale. Also a well told-gothic romance. My true love, of course, is monster movies. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a novel that took a stab at mixing all three. At least, not until I read this tasty copy on the back of One Dark Window:

Elspeth Spindle needs more than luck to stay safe in the eerie, mist-locked kingdom she calls home — she needs a monster. She calls him the Nightmare, an ancient, mercurial spirit trapped in her head…

When Elspeth meets a mysterious highwayman on the forest road, her life takes a drastic turn. Thrust into a world of shadow and deception, she joins a dangerous quest to cure the kingdom of the dark magic infecting it. Except the highwayman just so happens to be the King’s own nephew, Captain of the Destriers… and guilty of high treason.

One Dark Window is the debut novel by California author Rachel Gillig, the opening book in a duology. Sequel Two Twisted Crowns arrives later this year.

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Bob’s Books – Shelfie #4: Shared Universes – Thieves World, and Heroes in Hell

Bob’s Books – Shelfie #4: Shared Universes – Thieves World, and Heroes in Hell

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I’ve done three shelfies posts. If you missed those (shame on you!), I’ve been posting shelfies, with comments on some of the books, over in a bookshelf subreddit. With over 2,000 physical books, I’ve got a lot of shelves.

And to me, if you’re talking about a shared universe, you gotta start out with Thieves World. I own a (non-RPG/comics) almost complete library; including one few folks know about, let alone have.

THIEVES WORLD

The first Thieves World book came out in 1979, and I have a first edition Ace paperback. I started reading the series almost from the start, and re-read that first book as recently as 2020. It’s probably in my Top Five Fantasy series’.

Thieves World was a shared universe, where multiple authors wrote short stories around the Empire outpost, armpit town of Sanctuary. Writers could use others’ characters in their own stories, and the authors came and went in the series, but their creations were fair game for anyone.

Many of the biggest names in fantasy joined in, and there were also spin-off novels. There were twelve collections, from 1979 – 1989 in the original series. I’ve got all of them on that bottom shelf. I really liked the art-style on the first six books. A friend of mine has at least two of the original paintings by Walter Valez – I suspect more than just those two, which I got to stand right in front of. LOVE them!

Tempus, Hanse Shadowspawn (my favorite rogue in all of fantasy), Molin Torcholder, Jubal, Crit, Niko – SOOO many cool characters. It got a major shake-up later, when a sea-faring race arrived (foreshadowing of the Seanchan?), but it still works. I think that the current crop of Dark Fantasy writers were influenced by Thieves World, which was well before of them.

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Senator, You’re No Jack Kennedy. Continautors – Yes or No?

Senator, You’re No Jack Kennedy. Continautors – Yes or No?

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Official continuators of a literary series can engender mixed emotions. Some folks are happy to see more stories of a character they like – even if the creator has died. Others feel that only the original author should write that character and they should lie in the grave together.

Characters eventually enter the public domain. Though exactly when varies in different countries; and it’s not always clear, regardless. But the rights holders (often the family of the author, or their Estate) contract with someone to continue the series. I have read several official continuations (though I still haven’t gotten around to Ben Black’s Philip Marlowe. And as I recall, Poodle Springs didn’t do anything at all for me). I’m gonna talk about a few, with comments on the concept, mixed in.

Tony Hillerman/Anne Hillerman

Anne Hillerman had previously written some non-fiction when she took over her late father’s Navajo Tribal Police series. The ONLY reason she is writing these books is because she owns the rights. Quite simply, her continuation novels are terrible. And are a bastardization of her father’s books. I wish someone could prevent her from any more of them.

Anne completely transformed her father’s series. She was not interested in writing more books in his style. Expanding from ‘Leaphorn and Chee.’ they are now officially ‘Leaphorn, Chee, and Manuelito Novels.’ She has completely shifted the emphasis to Bernie Manuelito. Chee is an emasculated husband who would be better off completely out of the books. They’re now like Lifetime movies about Bernie and her issues with her mom and sister, and unhappiness with Chee’s attitude at least once a book. It’s exhausting read them.

Louisa Bourbonette is now so annoying, I wish that Leaphorn (who was actually lobotomized by a gunshot wound in the first two books) would dump her.

Stargazer (the sixth book) is the worst continuation novel I’ve ever read. Well, I actually, partly read. The first five books were bad, and that one was so terrible, I abandoned it part-way through.

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