The Indigo King - James A. Owen [123]
There are fathers and sons, and nephews and uncles, but they are not who you expect them to be. And the difference between good and evil is not always clear. Sometimes good people make bad choices, and vice versa. And that makes it harder to praise—or condemn them.
The history of the Cartographer is in many ways the history of cartography itself; and the history of the Caretakers is the history of the world. Geoffrey of Monmouth was the first great Arthurian scribe and the first “real” Caretaker. His Green Knight, Abelard, was a contemporary that suited the role I put him in.
As to Chaz, I wanted a way to address Charles Williams’s very influential works, which had a great effect on Lewis in particular but are much less well known than either of his friends’ tales. His theories of many dimensions gave me a means to create a “what if” story inside my own book.
And as for Hank Morgan, he was the first real time-traveling character from Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, and since I’d already earmarked Twain as Jules Verne’s predecessor, Hank fit in nicely in several ways.
As to some of the other characters, Reynard the fox was a minor player in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight; Gwynhfar is, obviously, a nod to Arthur while giving me my Holy Grail connection; and as for Rose … Well, as Bert said, only time will tell.
James A. Owen
Silvertown, USA
Table of Contents
Cover Page
Title Page
Copyright Page
Table of Contents
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Prologue
Part One: The Mythopoeia
Chapter One: The Booke of Dayes
Chapter Two: The Door in the Wood
Chapter Three: The Royal Animal Rescue Squad
Chapter Four: The Unhistory
Part Two: Fractured Albion
Chapter Five: Tatterdemalion
Chapter Six: The Serendipity Box
Chapter Seven: Noble’s Isle
Chapter Eight: The Infernal Device
Part Three: After the Age of Fable
Chapter Nine: The Storyteller
Chapter Ten: The Shipwreck
Chapter Eleven: The Grail
Chapter Twelve: Imaginary Geographies
Part Four: The Iron Crown
Chapter Thirteen: Betrayal
Chapter Fourteen: The Sword of Aeneas
Chapter Fifteen: The Stripling Warrior
Chapter Sixteen: The Crucible
Part Five: The Isle of Glass
Chapter Seventeen: Animal Logic
Chapter Eighteen: The Sacrifice
Chapter Nineteen: The Enchantresses
Chapter Twenty: The Good Knight
Part Six: The Silver Throne
Chapter Twenty-one: The Fallen
Chapter Twenty-two: Exiled
Chapter Twenty-three: Restoration
Chapter Twenty-four: The Bird and Baby
Epilogue
Author’s Note