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Re: (TFT) The Lost TFT book
Jay,
Photinius, a roman/greek merchant/adventurer during the first century AD sets off into the Teutobuger Wald in hope of securing the Amber concession. (Amber comes from the Baltic).
Things Go Wrong.
It's one of my all time favourite novels, absolutley wonderful.
The more you know about the Norse/Germanic mythology, the more wonderful it is.
Here's a quote from another decent author, that gives a bit more info:
"Neil Gaiman: There is, and I think probably the best book ever done about the Norse was a book that I couldn’t allow myself to read between coming up with the idea of American Gods and finishing it. After it was published I actually sat down and allowed myself to read it for the first time in 15 years and discovered it was just as good as I thought it was – which was a book by a man, I believe, called John James called Votan. He did three books: Votan, Men Went to Cattraeth, and Not For All the Gold in Ireland. Men Went to Cattraeth is okay, but Votan and Not For All the Gold In Ireland are astonishing little books. In Votan – and I didn’t realise how good it was until after American Gods where I really had been doing my homework on the Norse and getting all of my headers down in my head – because the idea is that you have this rather dodgy Greek trader in about 3rd or 4th Century A.D. and in Votan he becomes Odin and he winds up in this little village and you realise that everyone in the village…that these are the Asgardians and everything that happens to him during that story, y’know, he goes back ten years later and they’re telling stories about him and he’s realising that all the Odin stuff, all the Votan stuff, is him. Then you get Not For All The Gold in Ireland which does more or less the same thing where he goes off to Ireland. He comes into England at the end of the Romans and goes over to Ireland looking for gold and gets to inspire most of the Mabinogion and stuff, and they’re just witty and evil and nasty and funny and clever.
Paul Kane: Because that sounds like an origins story for a superhero, you start off that way and suddenly become Odin.
Neil Gaiman: What’s fun is that he’s just a wily Greek trader the whole time. But it’s one of those books that I don’t know why it’s not famous, I don’t know why it’s not beloved, I don’t know why it goes out of print for 20 years at a time and will come back into print and nobody notices. It’s one of those books that I probably would never have heard of were it not for reviewing books for the BFS in 1984. It was just sent to review."
You'll have to search for it as it's been out of publication for a while.
John James also wrote "A Bridge of sand" concerning Juvenal's expedition to Mona.
The tradgedy is that John James is dead and almost forgotten.
He may have only written the four books.
My great hope when I go into a second-hand bookstore is to find another book by John James...
Regards,
Chris
----- Original Message -----
From: "maou_tsaou1@netzero.net"
To: tft@brainiac.com
Subject: Re: (TFT) The Lost TFT book
Date: Fri, 19 Jun 2009 22:18:18 GMT
< I heartily reccomend:'Votan'
by John James. It's a wonderful pseudo-historical/fantasy novel on the
accidental creation of the Norse gods by Roman amber merchant. >
That is hilarious!
What a concept!
The thing is, it might just be somethig like that.
I'll keep my eye out for both of 'em.
Where does he get his amber from?
Chris Nicole
www.loran.karoo.net/
--
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