Ellison Blackburn

I wasn’t sure what to expect with this because when a book comes from the scientific discipline of archaeology but dips into areas of fantasy (angels) and some unproven and arguably only metaphorical teachings (religious origin stories), then there’s a cross symbol at the top of each chapter, one might suspect that it has an agenda. However, I am pleased to be able to report that this book was pretty evenly balanced between championing religious mystical folklore for adventure purposes and putting it through the unforgiving process and evidence structures of science. The only thing I’d add to that is, the peer review process for scientific publications isn’t portrayed accurately (I work in the area of academic journals). You can’t just send your results to all the publications and they print it. That said though, this is intended to be an entertaining work of fiction and should not be picked at using a different set of criteria.

The basis of the mystery is that the author has introduced a situation where impossible objects are found in a place where they could not be, so it’s inexplicable. My instinct is to say “Ah, but that can’t happen because…” and then I bite my tongue and have to accept that this has been done deliberately to anchor the story. It’s okay then, I guess. Should I just point out the inconsistencies anyway to let the writer know I’m aware of them? Is that pointless?

In essence, sensible archaeologists discover an anomalous site that doesn't fit accepted and evidenced human history; specifically, that there are remains on site that shouldn’t be in good condition, don’t fit the evolutionary (fossil record) or developmental (technology) pattern and could be open to religious or alien interpretation. We have many clock systems, from very short (atomic clock) to very long duration (radioactive decay), yet these objects refuse to fit the established tools we use to make sense of everything else. Is it a prank?

Imagine the fuss that would ensue if we found a mobile phone in a rock stratum from the Devonian period (or a rabbit fossil, for that matter). It would undermine our entire pyramided knowledge system. The Aquatic Ape theory and the Palace of Knossos as a necropolis theory were both attacked by the establishment mainly because that's not what scientists had been taught at lectures by the previous generation of scientists. How do you overturn orthodoxy when every professional in your field has been taught it? Religious dogma matches this level of intransigence of course, as when Copernicus said we orbit the sun and religion contested that their Bumper Book of Bronze Age Guesswork said it didn't. It also said the mustard seed was the smallest seed, which it isn't, and I' d have been burned at the time for saying so but would have said so anyway because I can’t hold my tongue.

My position is quite realistic because I’ve never witnessed anything supernatural and therefore tend to put my confidence into things that have been evidenced. However, I would love, just once, to see something that turns everything I know to be (highly probably) true on its head. I would give anything to see a real dragon in the sky, have a chat with a spirit, find evidence of time travel or watch an extra-terrestrial vehicle land but this sort of super exciting thing doesn’t happen – except in escapist fiction – so if you want to experience what it would feel like, you have to read books. So here I am.

A few years ago, a sort of popularity surge seemed to happen in angel fiction. People in increasing numbers claimed to have had an angel intervene in their life. One person I met told me that an angel had guarded their tent all night from bandits. Whatever that really was, the person who told me was convinced it was an angel. There’s never any evidence of course (proof denies faith) but it was an intriguing puzzle.

Behoove, that’s a beautiful word. Bringing lesser-used words back into use always gets the thumb of appreciation from me. There are also characters called Aberdeen, Kincaid, Paisley and Abernathy – why is there a pattern of Scottish place names? Another mystery that isn’t revealed.

I take issue with “Biological remains are not normally found in henges” because the grave marker blue stones of Stonehenge ALL originally had cremation remains buried under them. The stones were later moved inward to the central circle to their present resting places and the biological remains stayed in their original post holes (apart from the ones collected and re-interned jumbled together in about 1925 with a little plaque from someone unhelpful who thought they were helping) but the current hypothesis is exactly the opposite of what’s said in the book – that each stone marked the grave of a human leader.

"Prehistoric man existed alongside the dinosaur, who knew?" This is the sort of line that pitches the story head over tail into the realms of fantasy, as large dinosaurs (not the ancestors of modern birds) all died out 66 million years ago and then humans became recognisable in their current form, or near enough, only four or so million years ago. To find evidence which would over-turn that gap enough to leave overlap would be staggering. Our form would have evolved again, for a start. Also, why didn’t civilisation or any progress at all happen during that supposed seventy million year waiting time? Have human brains only very recently started working? Perhaps we’re are still waiting. An evolutionary form “Part way between an ape and a human” is again a big no-no, something an archaeologist would not say. We, and all great apes, are evolved from the same common ancestor. We came from them and chimps also came from them, both evolving from the earlier form in parallel. We didn’t become the final evolutionary form of a different primate and then change into humans from that. Am I getting pedantic? Okay, okay.

The other awkward reality, although the mystery has been introduced deliberately, is extracting DNA (or alien equivalent) from anything older than a certain point isn’t possible. All soft tissue that we are aware of fossilises (is fully replaced by minerals) in about ten thousand years. The bones have gone and all that we find is mineral/stone that has seeped in and hardened in the shape of them. In this story, radio carbon C14 dating suggests two very different possibilities, that the remains are comparatively geologically recent (but they would still be fossilised) and that they may be some sixty million years old. The author is here introducing two mysteries, i.e. leaving the reader to decide if they prefer a supernatural age, origin and reason for no decay or alternatively that there might be a more realistic explanation.

Lightening (sic) bugs (in UK?). I’ll have to look that up but I’ve never heard of any. come to think of it, perhaps the story switched to the US and I was reading this in sleepy mode.

I’ve learned from this book what Nephilim means: a race descended from fallen angels that have gone native and mixed in a genetic capacity with humans. Many races have their ‘superman’ myth (See: George Bernard Shaw’s Man & Superman, the Aryan superman of Nietzsche and its derivative, that comic book character who flies around in his pants). Kings also loved to believe this stuff, that they were descended from Thor, Ra or Noah, so therefore had a divine right to do what they like. It’s a complete load of tosh of course, a fantasy designed to con the ordinary people into accepting authority. The Nephilim is a cute idea, that there might be semi-divine travellers among us, but it’s another manifestation of a very old control fantasy. It does help to generate the light romance theme of this book, which twines happily with the light scientific archaeology, light Christianity, light fantasy and magical mysticism. The researcher characters are serious and professional, so it’s a good thing they don’t get carried away with one belief system over another. We’re left with a firm sense of intrigue, with an overwhelming sense of the unproven which might just be true (the X Files used to play this card).

Despite all of that, I didn’t have many objections to the fictional direction of the story or the structural progression. The possibility of angels is interesting to a lot of people and what they might really be is a secondary aspect to explore. I did think the ending was too hurried and "how to militarise this advantage (tall, strong people) isn't convincing in a modern world with nuclear, biological and chemical weapon capability. The northern white rhino is tall and strong but the humans have made it extinct anyway, with conventional tools, so tall, strong people would be fatally vulnerable too. We’d probably use them for entertainment. Oh, the book’s just come full circle.

This is a well written story, decent, on the sensible side for a fantasy, not shoving religion down your throat and not superficial at all, delving in a semi-realistic way into several kinds of fantastical romantic relationships. It establishes that archaeology isn’t boring and doesn’t over-step the mark of realism too much, so keeps the reader on-side. A little diluted though. The threat posed, or complications in response to the discovery, needed a lot more gumption for this to ignite any imaginations. It needed a ticking clock to race our pulses and I think the ending lacked thump. That could be because this novel is followed by further instalments in the series, in which case read on in hope there’s a crescendo.… (mais)

I received a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I was intrigued by the premise of this story, but disappointed that it moved so slowly. For me, there just wasn't enough tension in the plot to hold my interest. The budding romantic relationship was promising, but the tension fizzled there as well. I was rooting for the main character (female archaeologist, YAY! Supernatural beings, YES!) but in the end she just fell flat for me. I still think the idea here has promise, so I'd give the next book in this series a try.… (mais)