Genre: Historical
fiction
Description:
“Beral's only goal is to serve loyally as Jonathan's shield bearer and
protect his prince through whatever battles may come. But Jonathan needs a
friend as well, a man he can trust while navigating the precarious footing of
his father's court. Being that friend puts Beral's life in danger and stretches
his loyalty to the breaking point. For what Jonathan wants is to do Yahweh's
will, whether that be through defying his increasingly paranoid father, King
Saul, or supporting the aspirations of young David, whom Jonathan believes is
the rightful heir to the throne.
As he competes with David for the hand of the king's daughter, Beral
struggles to hold true to his loyalties, even while he watches King Saul
descend into madness. If Yahweh withdraws his protective hand, Beral and his
men will be all that stand before their gathering enemies. Only one thing is
certain: Beral's fate, as well as the future of Israel, is tied to the virtue
of their king, and Saul's honor has long since fled.”
Author:
His publishers (Red Adept Publishing) say of him: “A son of the South,
Channing Turner grew up in Arkansas and Louisiana before graduating from
Louisiana State University in Psychology. He did graduate work in marine
biology and became an estuarine biologist along the Texas coast. After retiring
from the petrochemical industry where he worked in Louisiana and Montana as a
laboratory analyst, he managed the 2010 US Census in Montana and northern
Wyoming. He now lives in eastern Washington with his wife, Barb.
Channing served in the army and was discharged as an Armor captain.
Reading and writing are his sedentary pursuits, but he also enjoys riding his
Tennessee Walker in the Blue Mountains of Washington and Oregon.”
This, I believe, is his first published novel. To learn more about Mr.
Turner feel free to visit his Amazon Author Page or follow him on Facebook.
Appraisal:
I enjoyed Jonathan’s Shield very much. Turner has gone to the Bible,
and imagined what the arc of the extraordinary events described in the Book of Samuel
might actually have been. The Bible is fruitful ground for writers. I’ve worked
up a fictional ‘what if’ from the New Testament myself. It offers lots of
opportunities for one to fill in all the frustrating gaps in the story which
have occurred in its transmission through time and various languages down to us
today. But it is, of course, a fiction. It is not a Christian book. It may,
indeed, be a book some Christians will find strays too far into fictional
territory. There is plenty of smiting, a lot of treachery, and hubris gets its
comeuppance, but there is also a fair amount of sex.
The book deals with what happened when the Israelites, under King
Saul, got fed up with being pushed around by the Philistines in particular and
most of their neighbours in general and fought back. Historical figures about
whom we know rather less than, perhaps, we think we do – Saul, Jonathan and
David – get plenty of time on stage and Samuel the prophet has himself an
important role to play; the events of the book are observed, experienced and
related by Beral, the shield bearer of the title.
Turner uses a verse from Samuel as an epigraph before each chapter,
and what follows expands on that, rolling the sparse source material together
and forward to build an exciting story. The author has a good, plain style
without frills or furbelows which suits his subject matter well and keeps the
story moving at a goodly clip. He knows how to pace a story, what to put in,
what to leave out. This is a lean, mean, fighting machine: lots of battles
occur and are excitingly related. Even the drilling of soldiers to become an
everyman army, with the tricks of how to catch the men’s imagination and
commitment, and revelations about Beral the narrator in the mix, is riveting.
Turner fleshes out female characters as well as male ones (not
something the Bible does much of) and the book is the richer for this, as women
are often motivation for upheavals in empire as well as beside the domestic
hearth. Seeing both genders in their familial and societal roles lends
verisimilitude and depth to the work as a whole.
Despite the small quibbles below, this is a work that is well worth
your time if you enjoy biblical era epics, adventures set in the Holy Land, or
sword and sandal fiction in general. And if you haven’t tried any, this book is
a fine place to start.
Buy now
from: Amazon US Amazon UK
FYI:
In a few places, tiny infelicities of expression left me puzzled as to
who someone was, or why the plot had just taken the turn it had. If you go with
the flow it soon comes clear. Two such instances: who is Miriam? (she is a
slave of Saul’s who Beral acquires as a maid later on when one has quite
forgotten her earlier, momentary, walk-through part). And a second: why does
David bring his brothers food? They are in the army, he is not – yet he is part
of Saul’s entourage and it is odd if he doesn’t know that all food is shared
via a commissariat system. It is, of course, an authorial device for getting
him to the army camp, which just needs a teensy tweak to work perfectly.
Original review posted May 13, 2016.
Format/Typo
Issues:
None. Looks very good on the page.
Rating:
***** Five Stars
Reviewed
by: Judi Moore
Approximate
word count: 85-90,000 words
