ERETZEL: Book Two in The Sword of Fire Series

This month, CFRB is proud to present Eretzel by William R. McGrath as our featured novel. Eretzel is the second book in The Sword of Fire series, a continuation of the tale begun in Asulon. The story revolves around Prince Daniel of Asulon and those who travel with him. In the first book, Daniel escaped his enemies after they assassinated his father, heading for his grandfather's court in Logres. Woe upon woe, just as the ship arrives in the port at Logres, his grandfather Anak, last of the earthbound angels of old, is also assassinated by the Antichrist figure Antiochus. The remaining sons of Anak rush to escape total destruction of their household and join the travelers from Asulon, stealing away as quickly as possible to regroup in safety. The ship heads for Eretzel, home of the Abramim (read Jewish) Rachel who is traveling with them.

Eretzel sits at the crossroads of the earth, between the merchants of the West, the warriors of the North, the vast and hungry populations of the East and the gold-rich lands of the South. Antiochus desires to rule the world and his path to conquest runs through Eretzel.

The Anakim, or sons of Anak, play a major role in Eretzel. As sons of an angel, these men are powerful giants with life spans and strengths far beyond those of ordinary men. For them, the first priority is revenge for the death of their father and loss of their kingdom, and so their time in Eretzel is spent mainly in carefully plotting a course of action. Everyone is afraid of them, but they begin to win the hearts of many by going out to the villages and helping those in need.

Prince Daniel, meanwhile, is hopelessly in love with Rachel and seeks to win the approval of her kin so that they may marry. With him is his spiritual advisor, Simon the old priest, and his weapons master and physical trainer, Moor the Etruscan. Moor has great wisdom and skill in warfare but does not share Daniel's faith in Yeshua. Each of the characters matures in one area or another during the sojourn in Eretzel, Daniel in the most incredible manner.

In Eretzel the residents are constantly at odds with the neighbors who wish to destroy them, and so live in ever-vigilant wariness. There are plots and subplots, numerous skirmishes and full blown battles. Overshadowing everything else is the ever increasing malevolence of Antiochus, self-proclaimed emperor of Unicornia, a man totally controlled by evil spirits. He is the Antichrist, bent upon destroying the chosen ones of God and ruling the entire world. With his machinations set in place at last, it looks like nothing and no one can stop him.

This is a fantasy that could probably be described as alternate history, setting the final days of Revelation in a setting where the cultures of the world are basically still like they were a couple of thousand years ago. Bill McGrath has made some interesting choices for his place names and names of people groups, choices that are often based in antiquity. Logres in a name for Briton that I had come across while reading the Arthurian legend. Abramim is an obvious reference to Abraham. Russia is called Magog, as it is in the Bible. I don't know where he got the names Asulon and Eretzel, but McGrath pulls from an amazing storehouse of knowledge to fill this story with allusions to Scripture, political tendencies around the world, historic and modern day events, and various mythologies and religious beliefs from the present as well as the past. The fictionalization is often a very thin veil for McGrath's own stance on any number of matters, including the Illuminati and the Jewish-Muslim conflicts. I'll spend more time discussing these matters in a blog on Thursday.

When I reviewed Asulon, I suggested that it would be a good read for teen guys as well as adults. Eretzel is not quite as accessible for the average teen, I think, but it is rich in material for those who enjoy delving into cultural conflicts, the end times, social commentary, philosophy and history. Bill McGrath, the martial arts instructor and practitioner, is also a deep thinker. His thoughts are what make Eretzel stand apart from the average fantasy/end times novel. This one is sure to stir discussions as well as entertain.

Eretzel: The Sword of Fire--Book Two
by William R. McGrath
Publisher PTIPress.com (2009)
Paperback; 448 pages
ISBN-10: 0980105811
ISBN-13: 978-0980105810



Visit William's website, The Sword of Fire.

Buy Eretzel at:

Author's Store
Amazon.com
Amazon.co.uk
Barnes and Noble
Smashwords eBooks


For more information, check out the following this week:

Easy Win Copy of ASULON: SWORD OF FIRE

Due to a little miscommunication, I didn't tell you this while the CFRB was running a blog tour for William McGrath's book, Asulon: The Sword of Fire Book One. On each of the CFRB sites where the novel Asulon is featured you'll
find a clue to answer this question. "Under which city is the Sword
of Fire hidden?" The first 25 people in the U.S. who answer this
question correctly will receive a free copy of Asulon, plus a DVD
showing the sword fighting techniques used in the novel.

(Hint: It's in the prophecy in the video, more or less. Think of a city with special roots for Israel and Jesus)

Send your answer to: tuhonbillmcg@yahoo.com

Specifically, you can find the answer here and here.

Hurry! I want my friends to be the winners!

VIDEOS: ASULON and Pekiti-Tirsia

These are short videos, both of which I think are helpful for understanding Asulon: The Sword of Fire Book One by William McGrath. I will get into the spiritual and the characters later this week, but I was so intrigued by this Pekiti-Tirsia Pilipino marital arts connection that I wanted to include this video of a demo that Bill did with a grand master of the sport. First the book trailer:





The demo video is a bit grainy, but you'll get the idea. I read the novel before I saw this, and I was amazed because Bill had described the fight sccenes so well that I could easily imagine it exactly like he demonstrates here:





For an even further example of what to expect, Bill has audio and text samples from the book on his website. Three chapters, plus the first chapter of the second book, Eretzel. You can find these here.

I urge you to check out the sample if you are the least bit interested.

Other blogs on Bill McGrath's novel:
CFRB
Back to the Mountains
Bibliophile's Retreat
Virtual Tour de Net
Rebecca Wire

Bill's websites:
http://www.theswordoffire.com and
http://www.pekiti.com/

You can buy Asulon from Barnes and Noble,
Target,
Amazon,
Amazon.uk, or directly from the publisher (see address at the sword of fire website) If you buy it from the publisher, you may also get a package that includes a DVD about Pekiti-Tirsia.

Tuhon Bill: Interview with Bill McGrath, Author of Asulon

Bill McGrath, author of CFRB's book of the month, Asulon: Sword of Fire Book One, was kind enough to answer a few questions for me, shedding some light on himself and his novel.

1. Could you tell us a little about yourself. You know, the basic stuff, like where you live, where you come from, family, pets, etc.

I was born in 1960 in Queens, NY and grew up there. My wife, son and I live in a small town in upstate New York called Fishkill. We live on the edge of a forest and see deer, wild turkey, hawks or some other wild creature almost every day right outside our door.
I work for New York State as a court officer. If you remember the TV show “Night Court” from the 1980’s and the character “Bull” played by Richard Moll, well that’s me – same job, same haircut, only a bit shorter.

2. I understand you have a huge interest in martial arts and even teach it. What kind do you practice?

I’ve been practicing a Filipino martial art called Pekiti-Tirsia since 1975 and have been teaching since the early 80’s. Teaching has given me a chance to travel quite a bit as I conduct seminars throughout the U.S. and Europe. Pekiti-Tirsia is a weapons based art, so I get to use its techniques and principles in the sword fights in my novels. You can learn more about this art (and see some video demos) at my website: www.pekiti.com

3. Have you always wanted to be an author? What has been your writing experience so far?

When I was younger I wanted to be a full time martial arts instructor. I even tried it for a few years, but decided something more stable would be better if I wanted to have a family. Prior to Asulon my publishing history has been articles for martial arts and law enforcement magazines.

4. What influenced you to write the Sword of Fire novels?

I began writing the story in 1981. A friend had called and told me about the storyline of the movie “Omen III, The Final Conflict,” which he had just seen. Typically of Hollywood at that time when handling a biblical subject, the story had very little to do with what’s actually in scripture (in this case, regarding the Antichrist and the Second Coming of Christ). I reacted both as a Christian, “That’s not what the Bible says” and as a twenty year old guy, “I could write a better story than that.” So that’s what I set out to do. I decided to set the story of the tribulation and Second Coming in a fantasy setting, figuring that non-Christians would be more likely to read a biblical story if written that way. I wrote on and off for the next few years, getting about 120,000 word done, but stopped writing when my father died in 1986. I took up the story again in 2001 when my son was born. I wanted to write a story for him that brought together many of the things in the books I read as a teenager that gave me a life long love of reading and, I like to think, help point me in the right direction in life in general. What I envisioned as one book (The Sword of Fire) has now grown into three (Asulon, Eretzel and Apocalypse). The direct spark for my writing was to write a better story than The Omen, but the tinder, the fuel for my story was all the great books I read as a teen. Therefore, you’ll see influences in my story from authors such as J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Dante Alighieri, Edmund Rostand, Alexander Dumas, James Fennimore Cooper, Edgar Rice Boroughs, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and Robert E. Howard.


5. I notice a serious inclusion of mythology in Asulon along with Biblical material. It reminds me of C. S. Lewis’ fiction. Do you have a penchant for mythology like he did?

I grew up watching all those great movies from the 40’s, 50’s and 60’s that had classical mythology at their base: Jason and the Argonauts, Ulysses, The Thief of Bagdad; even those low budget Hercules movies were a wonder to me. When I was a teen, I came across Bullfinch’s Mythology in the library and I was hooked. As a writer, I think Tolkien’s Silmarillion was more of an influence on me than Lewis. I liked how Tolkien “explained” the origins of the Greek gods in the Silmarillion and wanted to do something similar in my own work. What also helped was reading apocrypha, specifically the Book of Enoch, in which a third group of angels who tried to stay neutral during Satan’s rebellion were banished to earth as punishment for their neutrality. That’s the basis for the background of Anak the earthbound angel in my story.

6. I also noticed quite a few political ideas. Did you have a particular message or messages that you were trying to send with that?

I’m a Conservative in my political beliefs and a teacher by nature, so I wanted to teach some of the things I’ve learned about people and politics to the young people who are the target audience for my novels. I always recall my reaction on my first reading of Roman history and how the problems and issues of those days seemed so much like today, (usually the political elements in my stories that a reader will point to as being too much like this week’s headlines are the very ones I wrote more than twenty years ago and took directly from my reading of ancient history). My point is that mankind always seems to repeat the same mistakes over and over again. The political elements I have in my novels are my way of pointing this out to my readers and asking that they not make the same mistakes.

7. Could you give a summary of Asulon in your own words?

Asulon is the first book in my trilogy titled “The Sword of Fire.” My concept for The Sword of Fire was to tell the story of the Tribulation and the return of Jesus Christ in narrative form and to show the images from the related books of the Bible verbatim. That is, when Revelation tells of locusts with men’s faces and scorpion’s tails, that is what I show, rather than translate the locusts into attack helicopters, as some will do when setting their End Times story in the near future. I wanted to tell this story as a fantasy tale, because the images fit so well into a fantasy setting and because clothing a biblical tale in a fantasy story would get a Christian story in “under the radar” of people who would not normally read an overtly Christian novel.
In Asulon, I introduce my major characters (both good and bad), set up some of the major problems that get bigger in book two and reach a climax in book three.


8. In the beginning of the story, you gave a great deal of detail of Daniel hunting a deer and then dressing it afterwards. Have you done a lot of deer hunting yourself?

I’ve only been on one successful deer hunt and have much more experience with small game (when I was 20, there were a few months I spent in Arizona where I pretty much survived on Jackrabbit chili).
The opening scene in Asulon, where the wild country is thought of by Daniel with such affection, comes from my own days in the Boy Scouts and our monthly camping trips in the Catskill Mountains. I live next door to them now and they remain a very special place for me.

9. If you can tell it without too many spoilers, what would you like for readers to carry away from Asulon after they have read it?

One theme I wanted to explore in Asulon was what it means to be a godly warrior; to recall the Christian knights of the medieval tales. In the beginning of Asulon I give what I call the Paladin’s code (shown below).

The Warrior Virtues
DISCIPLINE
LOYALTY
COURAGE
HUMILITY

The Kingly Virtues
WISDOM
HONOR
CHARITY
JUSTICE

The Godly Virtues
FAITH
TRUTH
MERCY
LOVE

I use a phrase as a motto for the young warriors in Asulon that sums this all up. In Latin it is NOBILIS VOS ESTO. In English it is “Be Noble.” That is what I would like the reader to take away from Asulon. The desire to be noble.

Thank you so much for your time and such a wonderful interview. You've give us so much insight into your writing and the person that you are.

Some shots of Bill (in the floppy hat) during summer training with a Pekiti-Tirsia group. Much of the fighting in Asulon is similar to these demonstrations.

Websites for Bill McGrath:

http://www.theswordoffire.com

http://www.pekiti.com

Asulon: Sword of Fire

Asulon by William McGrath is the book of the month of May for the CFRB. As per usual with the CFRB, a new article will be posted each day May 4 through May 10. With this novel, there are an abundant number of subjects to be addressed.

Asulon is a “manly” novel if I ever read one. Hunting, survival in the wilderness, adventure, coming-of-age for a young prince, martial arts, assassins, intrigue, political hijinks, secret society, strategic warfare, swordplay, danger on every hand, the future of a country and the whole world at risk. With great detail and relish, Bill McGrath has written a fantasy filled with elements that are obviously close to his heart, creating a compelling tale of a young prince who is embroiled in a war of epic, even Biblical, proportions. It is not just a war of human enemies but Abaddon versus the forces of Heaven fighting for the souls of men.

Daniel is a young nobleman of Asulon. He is first introduced while on a year-long survival foray in the wilderness, a rite of passage for those of his station. His mentor Moor comes to take him home a bit early because his father Argeus needs him. It seems the old king died while Daniel was out in the forest, and his father had become the new king. This changed the scenario for Daniel’s education a bit, thus the need to return ahead of schedule. The next step in his life was to be a ten year stay in Logres (yes, the ancient name for Britain in Arthurian legend) at his grandfather’s court for training to befit his rank. Unfortunately, there are other forces at work that wish to dispose of the royal family and take control Asulon themselves. Actually, they wish to control the whole world. Thanks to these evil men, King Argeus is murdered the night before Daniel is scheduled to sail to Logres. Although the trip is delayed, it soon becomes apparent to Moor that Daniel will be the next target, and so plans change a bit to a stealthy flight heading for Logres. Only now Daniel is accompanied by Moor, the most skillful weapons-master in all the country; an old priest named Simon who has more than just spiritual insight to offer; and Rachel, an especially gifted young lady, who must return to her people in the land of Eretzel. Their escape and the times ahead are filled with danger and unexpected events, but to tell more may be too much information.

There are so many themes and elements to this story that I would love to discuss further, but I already tend to write too long. Some of these will be addressed in other essays this week. This is a book I would heartily recommend for young adults, young men in particular, but it is also quite appropriate for all adults. Daniel and his family is guided by high moral principles based on scripture and following the will of God, making this not only an exciting fantasy, but also one full of true Christian values.

Book
Details:

Asulon
William R. McGrath
Epic Fantasy
PTI Press; January 1, 2008; 296 pgs; $14.95
ISBN: 978-0-9801058-0-3


Bill McGrath's website:
http://www.theswordoffire.com/

Purchase a copy of Asulon at
the following sites:

Barnes and Noble

Target

Amazon

Amazon.uk

Other reviews and blogs about this fascinating novel can be found at the following sites:
http://cfrblog.blogspot.com/
http://www.breakpoint.org/listingarticle.asp?ID=7433 (This was on Charles Colson's Breakpoint magazine)
http://afrankreview.blogspot.com/
http://ansric.blogspot.com/
http://thetimemistress.blogspot.com/
http://cfvici.blogspot.com/
http://authorlauradavis.blogspot.com/
http://www.carolemcdonnell.blogspot.com/