Two Little Known Fantasy Books That Changed My Life

We readers read many books in our lives. Some affect us strongly. Some not at all. Once in a while, though, we read books that have an affect on our world view.

Even more rarely, we read a book that helps us stay on the Straight and Narrow Path. I want to mention two books that have helped me, repeatedly, in my journey toward understanding God and avoiding the snares and nets of the Enemy.

The most interesting thing about these books, from a writer’s point of view, is: in some ways—by some measures—they are not that good. They certainly could have been better written. And yet, they mean so much to me.

I have read them many times, and they have had a profound effect on my life.

Remember that, o’ author, when you have only a few sales. It doesn’t mean your book doesn’t really matter to someone!

Of all the covers, only this one actually shows the Owl Service (as in a set of plates.)

The Owl Service by Alan Garner

Alan Garner is one of my favorite authors. Everyone has books they read at a certain age that influence what they thought a story of enchantment and wonder should be like. For me, those authors are: Lloyd Alexander, C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, Patricia McKillip (strangely enough, not for the book below), Ursula LeGuin, Barbara Sleigh, and Alan Garner…plus fairytales. Alan Garner’s The Weirdstone of Brisingamen and The Moon of Gomrath are among my favorite books from my childhood. But this book, The Owl Service, holds a special place in my heart for a different reason.

The Owl Service is one of those books that used to be common, but I don’t see them as much anymore, where there’s magic, but it is so subtle that you hardly see it. The story takes place in Wales, which I thought was the most magical place in the world when I was a teen (not entirely sure I was wrong). It follows three children who find a service (set of china plates) that shows owls made out of flowers (see the cover above.) The girl puts tracing paper over the plate and begins tracing the design…which then vanishes from the plate the moment her owl is complete.

In some ways, it isn’t a very good book. I usually only enjoy rereading the first half. The characters are a bit to negative after that, and because it just ends the second the main issue is resolved, it isn’t very satisfying.

But it has one aspect that I appreciate so much—it is a story about how we can see things two different ways, how you can be looking at something one way, but if you look at it the other way, everything changes.

Often, when one is healed through prayer, there is this moment when your mind goes: “Oh, how could I have thought that this problem—this broken bone, financial woe, illness, relationship problem, whatever—was real? Obviously, it’s never been that way. I’ve just been looking at it incorrectly.” And then the problem is entirely gone.

That feeling, like waking from a dream and seeing the same thing in a new way, which often, though not always, comes with such healing, reminds me of the resolution of The Owl Service, where a centuries-long curse is broken when they look at something in a way that one could have chosen from the beginning, but no one did.

This has been so useful to me when praying and trying to see God’s view of our experience, not ours.

I realize she’s supposed to have silver-white hair, but I love how evocative this cover is with her magical animals. Sybel was one of the initial inspirations for Miranda Prospero and was the reason I originally made Miranda’s hair silver.

The Forgotten Beasts of Eld by Patricia A. McKillip

In this eerie and beautiful little book, the author does something almost unparalleled elsewhere. By the use of short tales, not more than a sentence long in most cases, she gives ordinary animals such as cats, hawks, swans, boars, and lyons the stature of a mythical beast, such as a unicorn or a dragon.

The main character, a young woman named Sybel, is from a family of wizards that have the talent of calling magical beasts with their minds—so that the beasts come to them and are then under their control. Sybel lives in the mountains, alone with a number of these great, wise creatures. Her quiet life is disturbed when a knight named Coren brings her the child of an aunt she has never met and asks her to raise it.

Sybel raises and loves the boy for about twelve years, and then the world comes back to claim him. She is warned by a wise woman not to use her powers on humans, but she does…leading to powerful men becoming frightened of her and attempting to subdue her.

This leads to intrigue and a war.

Toward the end of the novel, two things happen. The first is Coren comes and tells Sybil about how her animals beguiled him and his brothers, but he suddenly woke up and realized that he was chasing Cyril the Boar, whom he knew, and he walked away and went home.

This moment, eerie and beautifully told, has epitomized to me the act of walking up from being ensorcelled or from being hypnotized. I get the same feeling I did when reading this scene where Coren wakes up, realizes he has been ensorcelled, and rides home.

The second moment in the book that I have found extremely helpful is where Sybel, who has been striving to find something but comes upon something fearful instead, realizes that she needs to look through the fear to the beautiful thing she desires. This idea, of looking at a fearsome thing without fear and having it transform into something beautiful, has also been very useful to me.

The first one reminds me of the scene in the movie Labyrinth where Sarah wakes from the fairy ball she fell into when she bit the peach to find herself in a trash heap with a worm coming out of the enchanted peach, which she throws away.

The second reminds me of the moment in C. S. Lewis’s The Great Divorce, where the sin one carries as a burden becomes the strong steed that carries us forward.

Both of these books are simple stories, simply told, but they have been so useful to me upon so many occasions, casting light on some aspect of the struggle of the soul.

In the Bible, we read:

So shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it. (Isaiah 55:11)

Sometimes, as authors, we feel that our word goes out of our mout and returns void, accomplishing nothing. But these books found their way to me and mattered.

May all our efforts find their ways to readers and matter to somebody.

A later cover with her silver-white hair but lacking the sense of being secluded in the forest.

Isn’t this just so evocative and magical? See the knight in the background?