2015: The Bark of the Bog Owl: The Wilderking Trilogy – Jonathan Rogers

I have mixed feelings toward The Bark of the Bog Owl. In one sense I obviously enjoyed the book since I devoured it quite quickly. The other part of me just found the storytelling a bit lacking and even heavy-handed. Part of this has to do with it being a children’s book, another has to do with being a rather dramatic telling of the story of King David from the Old Testament, albeit a very loose telling. I think one of the more difficult things to swallow with Bark is the incongruence of pretty archaic lifestyles and tanks. Where did the tanks come from?

Those kinds of thing really get to me in a story. Whenever a world is established you tend to know the rules that accompany it. If the story is modern you know the world is like you are currently experiencing. If the world is future you know the writer is freedom to do all sorts of crazy things. If the story is Victorian they need to follow through with certain conventions. But then Rogers introduces tanks, or at the very least cannons to the biblical world. That was just strange.

It is also strange for a 12-year old to be a nearly unflawed hero. Aiden just does not really make mistakes and I don’t get that. I also don’t get how his brothers just jump from railing the guy about being the king to honoring him as such. There are other leaps too as this group of people all of a sudden aid their normal enemies without any warning. There is some allusion to why they did it, but it is not well explained.

These are the things that bother me with Bark. It’s not that the story isn’t compelling…it is. It’s not that overall his writing is sloppy…it’s not. It’s simply that Rogers ignores certain conventions that readers take for granted and you have to stop in the middle of a story and ask, “How did they come up with the technology for tanks, let alone the technology to transport the tanks to an island, and how did a 12-year old figure out how to destroy them when a whole ton of adults were thinking, ‘Oh no…we’re going to die!!!’” That makes for difficulties to give a ring endorsement.

All of that said, will I read the second book? Yes. I believe I have already even purchased it. Rogers knows how to retell this story in such a way that I know generally what to expect, but have no idea how he is going to present it or bring about solution. So far we have the prophet proclaiming him the king and we have Goliath gone. That is where we leave off. I look forward to battles, and Bathsheba and Jonathan, and the mighty men, but don’t know exactly how Rogers will bring those things about, which is to his credit that he is not just going to lift the text and try to present it as fresh. This is where Rogers surpasses a lot of “Christian writers” who do not display the originality that he does.