There Will Be Blood ... and Judgment

Blood and Judgment
by Lars Walker

After reading a great review for Wolf Time by Lars Walker I turned to the library to see what they might have by him. Turns out they had only one book ... Blood and Judgment.

A combination of Shakespeare, fantasy, time travel, and parallel universes, this is an action-filled book that manages to also examine relativism, political correctness, honesty in education, and many more issues of our time.

The story in a nutshell is that in the midst of putting on a local production of Hamlet, the entire cast is whisked off to the "universe" where Hamlet is real. It turns out that there really was a person upon who Hamlet's character was based. He and the actor playing Hamlet wake up having had their souls put in each others' bodies ... which are also in different dimensions from each other (so to speak).

If this sounds confusing, it accurately reflects my state of mind as I delved into the book. I really enjoyed the beginning when the author took enough time to introduce to some characters, allowed them to interact enough to examine ideas, and gave us background on motivations. However, once the dimensional "switch" took over, I felt as if just when I started enjoying a scene the author was grabbing me by the hand and telling me to "no more time for that; run over here and see this!" I am no expert but I believe that more time taken with the characters, as well as fewer characters and subplots would have been a plus. Or perhaps a much longer book in order to adequately allow Walker to discuss all the ideas therein. It did not need to be densely packed as Eifelheim but it simply was not fair to the author's concepts to handle them in a book this short. More importantly, this author has something to say about Christians and Christianity that needs more space and discussion so that it doesn't just "preach to the choir" but opens others' minds to the elemental concepts here.

I did enjoy this book. It just was not all that it could have been and the potential was clearly on display which became a frustration toward the end. I definitely will be on the lookout for others of Walker's books, hoping that they are not as rushed.