603. Nisi quia Dominus

A paraphrase of Psalm 124, another Song of Ascents or pilgrimage hymn.

Were God not on our side—
Proclaim it, Israël—
Were God not on our side
When foes upon us fell,
We had been swallowed in their ire,
Consumed by its volcanic fire.

Were God not on our side—
Let all His people say—
Were God not on our side,
We had been swept away.
The raging torrent would have drowned,
Without His ward, this holy ground.

Praise be to Adonai
Who, His belov'd to spare,
The dogs' teeth would deny,
Would break the fowler's snare.
In His name lies our hope of aid:
The One who earth and heaven made.

ART: Gustave Doré, The Great Flood, 1866, public domain.

602. Ad te levavi

This is a paraphrase of Psalm 123, a Song of Ascents or pilgrimage hymn, continuing a series that goes back to Psalm 120 and forward (God willing) to Psalm 134. It's pretty brief, so don't blink. I'm recycling the tune SHEMINITH that I wrote for my paraphrase of Psalm 6, back here.

I lift my eyes to Thee,
Whose throne the heavens spans.
As man and maid beseechingly
Look to their masters' hands,
So too our eyes look the Lord
Till He full mercy doth accord.

Have mercy on us, Lord;
Yea, let Your love descend!
For men's contempt on us is poured,
With scorn that knows no end.
Hear the derision of the crowd,
The cruel catcalls of the proud!

ART: The Mocking of Christ by Matthias Grünewald, c.1503-05, public domain.

601. Levavi oculos

A paraphrase of Psalm 121, another Psalm of Ascents, or pilgrimage hymn. I'm thinking I might paraphrase the whole set of them. Not the whole psalter (goodness, no), just the Ascents ones, from Ps. 120 (which I've already done) to 134. Don't expect me to re-do 122, which I treated way back here. May the Lord bless this modest undertaking.

To the hills I lift my eyes:
Where is He who help supplies?
He so loved me that He willed
Even heav'n and earth to build.

He your every step will keep,
Lest you slip: He will not sleep.
Rest, O Israël, rely
On His watchful, wakeful eye!

See the Lord o'er you revealed
As a helm and sturdy shield:
Neither sun by day shall smite
You, nor fickle moon by night.

With the Lord, fear no alarm:
He will keep your soul from harm
And will guard you round about,
Coming in and going out.

ART: Jerusalem (1935) by Konstantin Ivanovich Gorbatov, public domain.

600. Ad Dominum

A paraphrase of Psalm 120 – a Song of Ascents, or pilgrimage hymn. This is the psalm that references Meshech and Kedar, foreign places far to the north and south of Israel. As I wrote this paraphrase, stanza 4 was originally stanza 1, but I found it hard to let the hymn end the way this psalm does and I was loath to add any new ideas to it. Not that that should necessarily stop a hymnwriter – some of my other psalm paraphrases are actually quite loose – but I didn't feature tampering with this one any more than absolutely necessary. So ...

False tongue, what shall put paid to you?
Bolts from the arm'rer's smithy!
Wry lips, what are you fit to do
But burn like kiln-fired withy?^*

Alas! I sojourn far from home,
For blest communion pining!
How long, Lord, will You bid me roam,
Far from Your precincts shining?

Alas! For I am domiciled
With hateful men surrounded,
And though I plead, "Be reconciled,"
Their war-lust is unbounded.

To God in my distress I cry,
His ears my plea receiving:
Lord, save my life from lips that lie
And from a tongue deceiving!

---

^* a reference to the ancient craft of charcoal-burning.

The Song of the Quarkbeast

The Song of the Quarkbeast
by Jasper Fforde
Recommended Ages: 12+

Jennifer Strange is only 16, but she has a head on her shoulders. She'd better. Since the wizard she works for disappeared eight months ago, the former foundling is the de facto manager at Kazam – part talent agency, part retirement home, catering to a coterie of cracked sorcerers. Kazam has only one competitor in the Kingdom of Snodd (the area around Hereford in the Ununited Kingdoms), recently rebranded from Industrial Magic to iMagic and led by a sleaze named Blix who has just gotten himself appointed as the Royal Wizard. Blix is in cahoots with King Snodd and his chief advisor to turn magic, which powers all technology in their world, into a lucrative, government monopoly. Jennifer and the wizards at Kazam think magic should freely benefit everybody. So a challenge is thrown down: whichever house of wizards gets the farthest in rebuilding the collapsed bridge at the center of town will get to decide.

To make sure he wins, Blix pulls some dirty tricks. Between Kazam's wizards being jailed on trumped-up charges and a few of them getting turned to stone for their efforts to restore their home's magical battery to full use, Jennifer is pretty much down to one wizard – a youth who has only just passed his license exam – to put up against Blix's three-sorcerer team. She turns to everyone she can think of to help. The old crone who ran the home for foundlings where she grew up. The bitter ex-sorcerer who hasn't done a single spell since she was kidnapped in 1975. Even a daring, supersonic trip on a magic carpet to chase down a wizard's premonition of where her missing boss might momentarily appear – smack in the middle of a demilitarized zone patrolled by the kingdom's deadly enemy, the trolls. She must survive being scrobbled by the bad guys and imprisoned in a tower, face a contest of magic with the odds stacked against her – and mind you, she has no magical talent herself – and somehow save magic, and the kingdom, from a dastardly plot.

This is a fun book, set in a quirky world where utter weirdness is taken in stride. I haven't even figured out a way to describe the creature mentioned in its title, let alone the Transient Moose – a quasi-sentient simulacrum that somehow plays a pivotal role in this story. There's a bit of youthful romance in it. There's a stiff snort of sociopolitical satire in it – relating to the way upper classes, and especially royals, treat common people, and especially foundlings. There is a bizarre blend of fantasy world-building and modern technology in it, from Volkswagens to mobile phones (although the tech hasn't been working so well lately, due to magic being in decline). There are hilarious notions, such as light globes powered by sarcasm, and moments of breathtaking danger blended with whimsy, such as when a couple of troll sentries try to coax Jennifer out of hiding with "Here, person, person, person." There are fiendish plots, creepy curses, sweat-eliciting buildups of suspense and, running through it all, a nonstop flow of clever originality that can only be described as magical.

This is the sequel to The Last Dragonslayer, and I've been meaning to read it for something like 12 years. So remiss am I that I only lately discovered the series continues after it in The Eye of Zoltar and The Great Troll War. Jasper Fforde, whose name (I believe) is pronounced exactly like Ford, lives in Wales and is the author of many books I have read and some I have yet to get around to. I'm working on it. His titles include now eight "Thursday Next" novels (the most recent addition being Dark Reading Matter), the two "Nursery Crime" spinoffs, Shades of Grey and its recent sequel, Red Side Story, Early Riser and The Constant Rabbit. Three of these titles are already on my TBR pile.

Just One Damned Thing After Another

Just One Damned Thing After Another
by Jodi Taylor
Recommended Ages: 14+

Madeline Maxwell, a.k.a. Max, takes a demotion from Dr. Maxwell to Miss Maxwell when she goes to work for St. Mary's Institute of Historical Research. It's a secretive outfit that, she learns only after she signs on the dotted line, does its research "in contemporary time." Like, via time travel. Their pods run circles around TARDIS; for one thing, you can pick the exact coordinates in time and place where you want to materialize. More or less. There's still a lot of mapping to do, and there are risks. St. Mary's chews up historians and sometimes doesn't spit them out. But Max survives her first five years with the organization before a three-month study of the Cretaceous period takes a disastrous turn.

You'd think being stalked by velociraptors would be the biggest danger. But as Max finds out, her fellow man is just as deadly. Besides a traitor within St. Mary's, there also seems to be a rival outfit that doesn't bat an eye at tampering with history, so long as they can make a profit off of it. Despite Max's best efforts to protect St. Mary's independence from outside interference, another visit to the Cretaceous uncovers evidence that the enemy is cruelly exploiting dinosaurs for the entertainment of trigger-happy tourists. And their trigger-happiness isn't confined to exctinct reptiles.

Max perseveres through disaster after disaster, getting closer and closer to the center of the conflict between St. Mary's and the villainous Clive Ronan. It all comes to a head during a daring exploit to save what they can from the burning library of Alexandria. Her adventure is packed with danger, devastating loss, heartbreak and discouragement – but also sharp comedy, thrilling adventure and sexy romance. St. Mary's is packed with almost too many eccentric characters to keep track of, lampooning the types of characters many of us deal with among the departments of our real-world workplaces. And Max's narration, which is to say Taylor's writing, crackles with the kind of inventive wit that makes me want to quote it. Like:

He was built like a large brick shithouse. Two large brick shithouses actually. In fact he was so big it was possible he distorted time and space. He had his own gravitational pull, like a blond planet, and he'd fallen for Kal like a sperm whale failing to clear the Grand Canyon on a bicycle. He thought no one knew.

And:

We watched the show and then the disco started, so after shouting pointlessly at each other for a few minutes, we got up to dance. The usual thing hapened. Just as we arrived on the dance floor the good music stopped and they started with the smooch stuff.

I'll stop there, because if I go on, I'll give away the punchlines of a couple jokes that made me laugh loud and long. You wouldn't want that. So go read this book for yourself, and you're welcome.

This is the first novel in the soon-to-be-15-book series known as the Chronicles of St. Mary's. Among its sequels are A Symphony of Echoes, No Time Like the Past, What Could Possibly Go Wrong, An Argumentation of Historians, A Catalogue of Catastrophe and, coming in August 2027, Well, That Could Have Gone Better – all besides several short stories sprinkled throughout the series. Jodi Taylor is also the author of three "Frogmorton Farm" novels and its companion short stories, the quartet of "Elizabeth Cage" thrillers, six Time Police novels plus short stories (which apparently overlap with the St. Mary's series), a couple of "Smallhope and Pennyroyal" books (also related to time travel) and the historical novel A Bachelor Establishment, published under the name Isabella Barclay. If this isn't the first you've heard of her, you probably first ran across her under the rubric "readers who enjoy Jasper Fforde also buy..." Either way, you'll probably see more reviews of her books on this blog in time to come.

Today's Dream

This morning, just before I awoke, I had a weird dream that, in retrospect, makes me feel a bit like I can understand Beethoven's deal. I was responsible for playing the organ for a big, important worship service, but the organ console was apparently sequestered in some kind of soundproof booth and I couldn't hear a note of the music I was playing, or the singing of the crowd accompanied by it. Also to my disadvantage, the sheet music I was given had only the melody I was supposed to play, and I had to improvise the harmony on the spot. I had to make do with hearing what I was playing in my mind's ear. It should have been a mortifying dream. Embarrassing or frustrating, maybe. But other than the impression that I was being judged by some highly critical VIPs, I didn't feel like I was doing too badly. And the hymn tune I was hearing in my mind's ear at the moment I awoke was REX GLORIAE, by Henry Smart, a.k.a. "See, the Conqueror mounts in triumph."

It's not all that far-fetched a dream. I've played the organ at two different churches where the acoustics of the joint conspired with the location of the organ console so that I couldn't get a real-time impression of how loud I was playing. People complained that I was playing too loud and it gave them a headache. In one of those situations, the acoustics were so bad, and the console was in a recessed alcove below and behind the speakers that were aimed out at the nave, that during postludes when people were standing up and talking at the tops of their voices, I couldn't hear a note of what I was playing. You really need auditory feedback to do the job properly, as I stressed when the latter congregation installed a new organ – making sure they put the console up at the front of the church this time.

As for hearing the music in one's head ... well, that's how Beethoven did it, isn't it? And it's not all that exceptional. I've spent hours at the wheel of my car, driving from one state to another, unable to stop my mind from turning over voice-leading problems in my head. Chord progressions that I could both see and hear in my mind, as if reading from sheet music. I felt like it was driving me insane. It gave me an insight into the conditions under which a musically inclined person might feel they just have to compose music. It pours out of one, sometimes.