The Mindruler, (The Mindrulers, Book 1).
A student, a lecturer, a web designer, a retired teacher: four unlikely strangers suddenly find themselves in an unknown country on an unknown world, their ears assaulted by the clash of swords on armour and the whizz of arrows. Caught up in a mediaeval battle, Steve, Gil, Lannie and Denise are rescued by the losing side and hustled to the dubious safety of a basement in a burnt-out castle.
Here they learn that their hosts—people not unlike themselves—are the only survivors of a rebellion against the vicious regime of Mindruler Shambor dom Beldet and his country-wide network of Mindbenders. These brutal overlords have mastered telepathy to the point where they can invade people’s thoughts and control their lives. Their eyes and ears are everywhere.
But in the last free community in the castle basement, the new arrivals are hailed as the long-awaited “Restorers of the Way”—the “strangers and loners” of prophecy, who will overthrow Shambor and bring peace and freedom to the tormented land of Dûrion. The foreigners find this idea ludicrous. How can they, four ordinary people, pose as revolutionaries in a country they don’t even know?
Captured, enslaved, barely escaping, betrayed by one of their own, they are pursued across the country from one precarious refuge to the next by a tyrant bent on their destruction. En route they find friends and helpers in unexpected places, along with other powerful resources—resources the tyrant cannot control.
Even so, how can they succeed against his all-pervasive network of mentally-controlled slaves? Can the God they call upon overcome even the Mindruler’s unimaginable powers? Are they truly the long-awaited Restorers, who will end his tyranny and set the suffering people of Dûrion free?
The first of three novels in The Mindrulers series, this book is written by a linguist with significant cross-cultural experience and a love of history. It is set in a richly-imagined world featuring convincing languages, fascinating cultures, and meticulously detailed maps of the characters’ journeys. The setting is thoroughly worked out, creating an inner consistency and a breadth of history and geography that gives the reader a sense of reality, and of hidden vistas that may yet open up.
Perspective by Peter:
When I read the description for this novel and read some of the reviews, I had an impression that this would be a great read. I have not been disappointed. In fact, this novel has exceeded this impression. It looks like the remaining two novels will be the same or better and culminate in this series being memorable and placed up there in one's list of favourite novels/series, the author as well.
This novel is very absorbing and immersive. Just how I love it. Others novels have done this to me but this novel is one in a small minority where I have become totally removed from my reality. This occurred at 630 am before work, at lunchtime and at 9 pm before bedtime and at all those times, I was unaware of my surroundings. I was transported to the land of Dûrion. So many times, after reading this novel, I found it hard to return to the stark reality of real-life (starting work, resuming work and sleeping). It was as though I had been transported back and forth between Earth and Dûrion. Honestly, it felt like a mild form of PTSD, but in a positive way, if any positivity can be associated with this disorder!
Steve's background in linguistics, being a master storyteller, his love of history and maps are some of the many pillars that undergird this novel and make it epic fantasy. The foundation of this novel is his love of God's truth and His Gospel that forms a strong and secure foundation that these pillars are embedded. This very much reminds me of the parable to have your house built on a firm foundation and spiritually we need to be founded in God's Truth and a righteous relationship with Him.
This novel is highly imaginative. It is like an onion, there are many layers:
- Highly entertaining
- Relational, well developed, three-dimensional characters.
- Diverse levels of worldbuilding:
- detailed maps,
- a Dûrian language with its own sayings/terms and pronunciations,
- artefacts with supernatural powers implied that these are powered by God seeing they are used by the Restorers chosen by God,
- people have an aura (shiláy) that is their individual "mental" signature and can be determined whether the person is of has the Light of God in them or not, and if it is the person is a foreigner.
- A spirituality that is similar to and based on the foundations of Christianity and the Bible, all the tenets of the Bible and Christianity are there but with details changed. This does not detract or change any of the Bible as we know it.
- A level of evil that is based on Gadesh (evil worldruler, satan in our world), where it is not him or his demons that possess people but these are controlled from their minds being "mindbent" with a mind-altering drug, teméyn. This is virtually the same as being possessed in that, the mindbent person cannot control their actions, movements or exercise their free will as these functions are inactivated from the combination of the drug and a supernatural alteration to the brain's function by the mindruler. They hear his commands in their minds, and if they disobey or need to be punished, the mindruler can inflict severe physical pain or make them in a catatonic state where they are frozen (mindlocked), and in severe pain.
- People are not the only ones who can talk and have a relationship with God. The Dorbians are a wolf-like creature who talk, and have a human-like similarity in their thinking but are very attuned to the presence of evil as well as those of Light, who are called Lightists, (Christians in our world)
- In Dûrion, they refer to God as the One, or the One Creator God. Jesus is called Prince or Prince Orrénne.
- Those who have a relationship with God are called Lightists and those who do not are part of cults of different gods who are under the rule of Gadesh.
There are many more layers and these I have mentioned can be explored deeper in the Appendices at the end of the novel or on Steve's website.
Those who have read The Chronicles of Narnia, will see the similarity here. Instead of children being transported into a foreign land, we have four adults who are transported to another planet, ("...different sky" as described by the Dûrians). Just as the Pevensie siblings were foretold in prophecy that they would break the curse of the land and restore it to its former glory under King Aslan, so too are our four adults to do the same. Now, Pillinger might be criticised for borrowing this from Lewis but I feel the differences overturn this criticism. For a start, the Pevensie children were transported by accident (by venturing into the wardrobe by curiosity on Lucy and Edmund's part and then the all of them to hide from the overbearing housekeeper) whereas our four adults in this novel are transported upon their willingness to confront their shortcomings (...in a "different place") as a challenge from Father Martin, who seems to be so intuned to God and sees each individual's failing as God sees them.
It was through the four main characters from this "different sky" testimonies of how they arrived in Dûrion that led me to consider that is Father Martin just a minister who has a unique understanding of man's fallen nature and in tune with God or is he either an Angel sent from God to challenge people to confront their failings or is he Jesus in this form to do the same thing? I would love for Pillinger to develop this further. It could well be a great prequel novella or full-length novel in this Mindrulers world. There is also future scope for the same in developing the character and history of James Turner who was a previous resident of Earth who had been sent to Dûrion in its founding years. How did he get there hundreds of years earlier? Was there a Father Martin type character, or was it the Angel or Jesus in a person of this time period doing the same thing as experienced by Steve, Lannie, Gid and Denise? I discussed this with the author and he is not averse to this, but again, with all authors, it comes down to time, circumstance, and the desire to go there. For reader's sakes and those who love this trilogy, I sincerely hope he does. I feel it needs to be told!
And here is another similarity to The Chronicles of Narnia. The Professor in The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe had been to Narnia as he built the Wardrobe with wood from Narnia and inscribed all the symbols and events from his stay there on the doors and side of it. So James Turner is likened to this here. He left relics for the next visitors to use in their quest, that the Restorers are now benefitting from.
And this is as far as any further comparison to Lewis's Narnia series I will go as this review is not a comparison of the two stories despite these similarities.
I read that another reviewer said that this novel is not a character-driven one but rather a plot-driven. However, I see Pillinger having a healthy balance of the two. And this is another strength of this novel. When too much attention and development is on the plot and not the characters, the latter become two dimensional or less and very unrelatable with little or no connection from the reader to these characters and the reader gets swept along with the pace and action of the plot. When the development swings too much on the character side, the reader can become frustrated with them and end up wanting to inflict some not very nice things on them. In this case, it can be seen as if the characters do not matter, they are of secondary importance.
However, Pillinger must have been aware of this as his balance is well-done. This series is based on the four characters being sent to Dûrion to confront and overcome their failings in various aspects of their lives and so the focus has to be on this as they venture into the world of Dûrion and the obstacles they face in completing their mission of becoming the prophesied Restorers and in the process, overcoming their failings and become a better version of themselves, albeit one that is more of God and less of themselves.
And in depicting this, the plot has to not overtake the plot arcs involving the characters. Pillinger has intertwined both. The action scenes and obstacles they face are also platforms for them to learn about their failings and develop themselves so that upon their return to Earth they have become overcomers and have a stronger relationship with God and as I mentioned before, more of God and less of them. This is Biblical as this touches on why we suffer in this world. Overcoming our failings by focussing on God, being obedient to what He wants us to do and allowing Him to change us, gives glory to Him, is a witness to who He is and what He can do in an individual's life. It also shows sin for what it is and the snare of the evil one. We see this in The Mindruler. Each of the four Restorers by the end of the novel is changed for the better, not as enslaved to their failing with more evidence an improvement and change appearing. I am sure their transformation is complete by the third novel, The Strongholder. And I am sure there is a little (or maybe a lot!) of ourselves that we can identify in each of the four Restorers. This is another way we relate to them.
I have read discussions amongst Christians who don't believe that God has/could create life on other planets and who died for them as well. But this presumes that a created being on that planet has sinned and then has a fallen nature and is therefore short of God's glory just like mankind as we know on earth. But it definitely falls into the speculative side of it where the question is raised what if.... (there were other created beings on other created worlds by God who have sinned and Christ died for them as well. Would the death he died once for all as recorded in the Bible be for them as well?). Pillinger has this premise in this trilogy and it is the main plot arc he has developed.
Sometimes these speculative endeavours can be a risky thing in a novel as it tends to polarise the reader and some may then not finish (but still write a scathing review and almost character assassinate the poor author!) and then go about telling all their fellow Christians not to read anything from this author and he needs deliverance from the spirit of heresy! Maybe an exaggeration but I am sure some would do this, human nature being what it is. However, it cannot be denied that Pillinger has done this well in this novel (and if this novel is any indication, the rest of the trilogy as well). Putting aside this setting of salvation, redemption and spiral into evil on another God-created world, this novel (and trilogy) does show how fallen man can overcome their sinful nature and individual sin by a relationship with God and living out His Word (Bible). I found the example here of Lannie applying the Word of God to her being in her mindlocked state to be an effective one. It showed the power of the Word in overcoming evil and the transformation of her faith in the process. The same can be said for Jomel when she came to the end of herself upon condemnation as a sacrifice to Gadesh and called upon the name of the Lord, He heard her cry of anguish and repentance and gave her the assurance of being delivered.
Pillinger, deliberating or not, has shown what the Body of Christ is like in the four main characters. In Gil, we see how vulnerable someone is to being taken over by evil when there is no relationship with God, in his sinful state. And in order for him to become a Restorer, he would need to be restored to God and this must take place in one of the remaining novels. In the other three who are Christians (or Lightists) in the Dûrian world, we see how each of their talents, abilities work together for the whole in achieving their quest and in becoming more Christ-like in the process. All different but compliment each other.
This novel takes off in action and pace from about the halfway mark and never lets up. This leads to an action-packed finale and sets the scene for the next novel, The Restorers, where this novel is going to become more involved and everything is upped. I was left panting and exhausted by the end of this one. I am rather frustrated as I will be unable to start this second novel straight away as I am scheduled to review another novel by the end of next week so will have to wait until after this.
This is yet another novel that ticks all the boxes of what I like to see in Christian fiction:
- it has entertained me immensely,
- it has encouraged my walk with God,
- it has not deviated from known biblical doctrine, and it will not, I believe, lead a non-believer astray or promote false doctrine,
- it honours God,
- it does not encourage worship of the created (eg angels) instead of the Creator (God).
This novel (and by the looks of it, this trilogy) could be considered a Christian classic up there with Lewis and Tolkien, who were instrumental in the creation and development of fantasy as a genre.
This novel has been such a blessing. To bring some of my comments together, this novel is absorbing and immersive, highly imaginative, highly entertaining, encourages your faith and relationship with God, action-packed and fast-paced. It should be regarded as a Christian classic in the calibre of Lewis and Tolkien.
I am so looking forward to the rest of this series.
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