I find myself closing most fantasy these days. Closing it before finishing the book. And this is something that is anathema to me. I can’t abide starting something and not finishing it. If you do that too many times in life, it starts to numb your soul. Eventually, it will leave you with little life left.

But I cannot finish most fantasies these days. They leave me in despair, just as most broadcast news, entertainment, politics, the things that pass for popular culture, they usually do the same. Darkness is winning the battle against hope.

There are no more Tolkiens left. He was a unique man, granted, born and educated during unique times. He correctly saw the fall of the West, despite two dreadful wars that were won against the evil of totalitarianism. There are other ways for countries to fall in battle than on mere and literal battlefields. The West, despite defeating Hitler, was losing its war to the Visigoths of culture within the gate.

And Tolkien saw that. He also saw that heroes were not to be found among the might of men, but amidst the humility of the weak waiting upon the divine rights of providence. Aragorn could not save the West. Even Frodo himself could not, but the inexorable and quite hand of providence could, leading the little hobbits along their unlikely path to a fixed appointment with doom and destiny.

If Tolkien’s perspective was not clear, then consider, in The Return of the King, his juxtaposition of Aragorn leading the might of the free West to the gates of Mordor and subsequent despair as the armies of Sauron are revealed, versus Sam and Frodo wearily making their way to the fires of Mount Doom. The message is painfully evident: the heroism of Man can only go so far (and not that far at all). The real cog of history is the tiny wheel that labors away in obscurity and, at the end of the day, must rely on much deeper strengths than itself: the crooked, providentially cursed life of Gollum, the Eagles, sacrifice.

Light in the darkness. As opposed to most stories these days, which are dreary variations of meaningless in the darkness, sex in the darkness, violence in the darkness, navel-gazing in the darkness, darkness in the darkness. When you’ve read one or watched one, you’ve read and watched them all.

Mind you, before you accuse me of complete despair and sweeping statements, I said “mostly.”

And what is my pompous recommendation? Read more of older books. Dip cautiously into newer books with a critical eye and ear. Be careful. Young trees do not have much to speak of in the roots department. But old ones do. And the old trees that had rotten roots dipped down into diseased waters, why, they’ve already fallen down and crumbled away.

Finally. My newest Tormay tale is published and live on Amazon. Still have to get it up on B&N and other places, but Amazon is the gorilla we all have to genuflect before these days.

I’ve only published two stories so far in the Tormay Tales series, The Silver Girl and The Seal Whistle. Tormay Tales isn’t a proper series. It’s just a loose collection of stories that take place in Tormay featuring whatever characters have been whispering the most insistently in my head.

The Seal Whistle is of interest to me because it uses a small story from The Hawk and His Boy as its foundation. There’s a scene in the Hawk when Levoreth Callas is riding across the Scarpe plain and she muses about a certain notable family and one of its rather mysterious members. Anyway, I don’t want to ruin the story for you. It answered some questions for me, and I hope it does the same for you.

The Seal Whistle is almost done. I’m wrestling with the main ending scene. Tying loose strings together into one coherent finish. I find that the dramatic end of a story is quite different, can be quite different, from the personal end of the story for the characters. Which is why I wrote the end of A Storm in Tormay the way I did. It ended with what happened to the characters after the ending climactic scene. After, mind you. That’s the way I see stories ending (I’m writing primarily for myself). Not with a bang and a flourish and a crash of cymbals, but with the long, smooth legato of violins and the sun setting as smoothly and serenely as it always does.

Because that’s who I want to be. And how I want to die. Of course.

I have to bring up death in this context. A great deal of the fairytales, the genuine ones, have to do with death and endings and partings. Things changing irrevocably. The adventure over, the marriage begun, the evil vanquished, the wicked stepmother nailed into a barrel and rolled down into the sea (whatever happened to her next?). That’s exactly what Tolkien did at the end of The Return of the King. He was writing about death and dreadfully solemn endings to life. Things fading away with as much serenity as a ship sailing over the horizon from the Grey Havens. Because those things were even more important than the fall of Sauron.

But, in that, there is joy.

Not for the George R. R. Martins and Abercrombies and Patrick Rothfuss minions of the world. Nope. They’ve thought themselves into a box that is defined, described, bordered (up, down, top and sides) by human self. The style is well done–I won’t fault them on that–but the substance runs dry of hope. Which is logical. The human creature cannot find hope in and of himself.

Which is why you cannot will not will never can never find Tolkien’s eucatastrophe in any of their stories. For me, it’s like deliberately painting in black and white and steadfastly ignoring the dazzling panoply of color patiently waiting on the palette. Waiting and never used. Like going about with a blue plastic umbrella always over your head and thinking, this is my sky. This blue plastic curve is my sky, and that’s it.

And refusing to listen to the crash of thunder and the wind and the lightning and the rain and the sunset splashing down in more shades of purple and red and orange you could every find words to describe. All that true sky happening outside and above your umbrella, and you’re still steadfastly muttering “this blue plastic curve two inches above my head is my sky, the sky, the only sky.”

For me, that’s epic fantasy without eucatastrophe. Without joy.