by David C. Downing
Sometimes you run across a work that sits in a limbo spot: it is neither so bad that you give it a “thumbs down,” nor so good that you feel comfortable recommending it. For me, Downing’s Looking for the King has landed in that place.
David C. Downing
The premise has an American scholar visiting 1940s England, to research sites connected to Arthurian legend. His researches throw him into the company of a young woman whose visionary dreams also seem connected to legend. They are given information by the Inklings. It’s not a bad idea and could provide quite an exciting story.
Instead, Downing’s tale is rather bland. Tom McCord, the American scholar, gets tossed into a quest for the Sword of Longinus, and although his journey begins with a sinister encounter with suspicious characters and unusual incidents continue to occur, he remains oblivious to both the worldly danger and the spiritual implications of the quest.
Additionally, although the book is subtitled “An Inklings Novel,” the presence of the Inklings is not made sufficiently integral to the story. I was left feeling that they were present so the author could write conversations he wished he could have had with the Inklings. Downing does make a slight attempt at weaving Charles Williams’ handling of supernatural and spiritual matters into his story, but he doesn’t really commit to it.
Supermatural influences are only hinted at. The sinister characters are connected to Nazi Germany, but they don’t actually come across as dangerous. And almost everything the Inklings tell the American questers could as easily be put into the mouths of any encyclopediac source.
Downing has expended a scholar’s care, for the most part, in trying to convey the Inklings’ words from actual texts. This is commendable. But the one occasion when he ventures away from actual text is to reference Tolkien’s theory of non-Christian myths as reflections of the True Myth. Where Tolkien used the phrase “splintered light” of myths, Downing conveys it (in paraphrase) as “dappled light.” By this one change, Downing undercuts the forcefulness of Tolkien’s description: splintered light has not lost any of its brilliance, it is sharp and clear, and merely incomplete; dappled light is diluted, shadowed and darkened. This one change is consistant with the lack of boldness in the whole story.
Some readers have responded quite favorably to Downing’s book. The adventure is adequate. I just feel it could be better, stronger.
