Spero elaborates on the events described in ‘Fidelis’, but starts and ends in different places.  This may sound like an odd way to tell a story (book two of a series traditionally picks up where book one finished, after all), but it proves to be a refreshing and clever way to - almost literally - weave a narrative, with a different thread of the future history that Horvath is constructing being plucked out of the tapestry of the whole and examined.

We follow the fortunes of two characters who we met in Fidelis, Tasha and King, from their first meeting just after a massive nuclear strike on the USA.  Told initially from Tasha’s point of view, but thereafter mostly from King’s perspective we get a different look at the unfolding events in this post-apocalyptic landscape.  At first the two friends are making their own way through the troubled country, giving us an insight into events not witnessed by the primary characters of Fidelis, but later we come to the first meeting of Tasha and King with Fides and Fermion, now seen and described through different eyes.

Here is where Horvath’s device of overlapping different characters’ narratives in successive books risks becoming repetitive as we are taken through events we have already read about, but the change in point of view and the individual concerns of the new characters (in the teenage King’s case, touchingly recognisable worries about girls are jarringly set against a back-drop of dystopian civil war) make the story fresh and interesting, even if we occasionally know what is coming next.

Some questions from Book One are answered (who is Fermion?), while others are left unresolved (who are the Shadowmen?).  Puzzles still remain at the end of the book about the characters we have been following throughout - for instance, is Tasha, who slays multiple highwaymen with rather more skill than your average elderly lady, really all she seems?  Tune in for Book Three to find out (I sincerely hope!).

Horvath’s villains are a nice mix of well-rounded characters who can be quite difficult to spot, and out-and-out rotters with nothing to recommend them whatsoever.  This balance between the black-and-white good vs evil ideology of a traditional heroic adventure story (or any of George W Bush’s speeches) and a more thoughtful approach satisfies both emotionally and intellectually.

The diverging paths of the main characters preserve an unknown ending, which does not disappoint for a dangling cliff-hanger on the edge of a cataclysmic battle with the evil Pledge forces, with elements of a Tolkienesque epic mythos seen again in the closing paragraphs.

All in all, I found Spero to be an excellent book, which made me want to go back and read Fidelis again.  The only question remains, what’s he going to call the next one?

We’ve had ‘Faith’ (Fidelis), and now ‘Hope’.  If this were a trilogy, I would have to go for the Latin word for ‘Love’ (taking my cue from 1 Corinthians 13:13) - I’m thinking possibly ‘Amare’.  However, since I have it on good authority that there are seven books planned, then I’m going to have to put my money on ‘Caritas’, the third of the seven Heavenly Virtues (the polar opposite of the famous Deadly Sins) after Faith and Hope - Charity.

Danny F, England.

[Editor:  The third book is indeed titled Caritas!  Good job, Danny!]

Political systems really represent individual beliefs, in particular how one’s beliefs impact how one should behave in the wider world and how you believe others ought to behave.  Ultimately, one cannot separate one’s politics from their worldview.  Since the Birth Pangs series is an exploration of worldviews, it follows that political musings will come, too.  A person who derives no political implications from their world view probably doesn’t even understand their world view or doesn’t really believe their world view.

Part of the problem in today’s culture is that many people have a worldview but then political beliefs that are inconsistent with planks in their worldview.  The latent idea is that one’s beliefs are private matters whereas how one feels about the government or governance is in a separate category.  Of course, one’s feelings about politics is in fact a belief, so even the attempt to compartmentalize fails in the end.  Somewhere, somehow, people’s politics relate back to a belief or two that they have.  Much of the heated discourse today arises because people from different political bents cannot trace their political ideas back to their core beliefs and then they present their political assertions as matters of self-evidently true, which of course they are not if you come from a different starting point.

Birth Pangs is very concerned about determining the best starting point.  It is not concerned because it has the goal of erecting a political system.  There certainly are deeper motivations than that!  But it does not pretend that there won’t be political implications.

Now, in the Birth Pangs series, set in the not so distant future in our own country, the various political systems that strive to fill the void have their historic roots in our own past and present.  Socialism and Communism get a special treatment rather than say, a Monarchy, because America has not had anyone advocating for a monarchy for a long time but socialism is constantly advanced under different guises.  There is also a long history with capitalism and a form of democracy, so it is natural that people will rise up who represent shades of that view.

In the Birth Pangs series, though, there is a ‘deeper reflection’ that permeates it all, and that is an analysis of the nature of humanity itself.  In a word, what the theologians call ‘original sin.’  Even those advocating for democracy in the Birth Pangs series tend to forget why there is a need for checks and balances.  Political systems reflect our views about the human race itself.  Do we believe that people are by nature ‘good’?  Do we think that people are in the main ignorant and untrustworthy, not fit for self-governance?  As an exploration of the facts about humanity, a discussion of the political consequences of one’s view on humanity is unavoidable.

Personally, I wouldn’t chalk any aspect of the Birth Pangs series as being merely incidental or superficial.  I wrote it with the idea that the series would be like an ocean… one can dive deep and explore the ocean and it is then filled with excitement and adventure, crushing sometimes, or one can stay in the shallows and have fun frolicing.  I wanted the series to be accessible and enjoyable in the shallows but open to those who wanted to dive deeper at just about any point.  Fidelis is a start to that and it will take the rest of the books to bring to completion. 

Why pick a post-nuclear war setting to explore these themes:  first, the theme of human virtue and fortitude, and, second, the theme of ultimate truth?

Interestingly, what I wanted to do in the book decided this setting.  I didn’t start out wanting to have a Mad Max landscape.  A Mad Max landscape was the natural outgrowth of some of the purposes of the book.  What I wanted to get at is a point where everything is stripped away leaving only individual people striving on their own, free from the structures of government, church, and civilization.  There aren’t many plausible scenarios that can give you that and one of the things I wanted to remain is plausible.  I know that there are fantastic elements to the book… but under my argument (slowly revealed over all the books), is that everything in the books can actually be true in our own world.  So, how do we get from the world we are in now to a world in which every man has to fend for themselves, rebuilding what they believe and how they think free from peer influence?  A post-apocalyptic setting is required, unless I want to have a completely fantastic Perelandra world.

Now, I wanted that setting to help lay out virtue and fortitude and even ultimate truth because I believe we take the crutches of society for granted.  I am not saying that society’s influence is bad or improper, only that we shouldn’t take it for granted.  We like to think of ourselves as good and righteous and brave people, but really, what would we be like if there was no policeman to think about or no armies to concern ourselves with?  I think we need those curbs, but my point is that we shouldn’t fool ourselves about ourselves.  We may only be civil because it is imposed on us.  But what if those curbs weren’t in place?

If the curbs weren’t in place, we’d really find out the robustness of our virtues.  We’d find out if we’d behave if there was no policeman to tell us to do so.  We’d find out if we were brave when confronted with an injustice or a dastardly deed we had no policeman to call, but had to do something ourselves.

This ties in now with the question of ultimate truth.  You don’t have anyone telling you what is right or true anymore, yet each and every one of us has an innate sense that there are right or true things, though we grasp at them and nearly always fail to meet our own standards, let alone the standards of others (think CS Lewis’s Mere Christianity, the first chapter).   What are you going to do?  You can’t rely on authorities- authorities are gone.

In the Birth Pangs world, this is the real situation and the people struggle endlessly with them.  But I do not think that our situation is much different.  We still have to answer the same questions, only now we might say there are too many authorities, too many voices telling us what is true and real.  Our problem is sorting them out and that basically requires the same process and methodology as starting over from ’scratch.’

I should say that I had wished to make a clean slate in the Birth Pangs world, with literally everything stripped away, but found that I couldn’t.  The same principles I explore are the ones that demand that certain realities persist.  There are still lingering tensions from past hates, for example.   The UN has come in and taken away all of the guns, and a gunless world truly gives us an opportunity to be courageous and test our mettle, but I couldn’t realistically get rid of them all.  That meant an on-going discussion about ‘gun rights’ which couldn’t be avoided.  There are various political movements that surface that have their origins in our own times, and I couldn’t realistically suggest that they were completely gone, either.  What to do about them forms a backdrop to the series.

Still, the main objective I think was reached:  people found out what they were made of without the boundaries and crutches of ‘civilized’ society and likewise flail about for ideas on determining the source and nature of real truth.