BOOKS: Fantasy novel transports readers through time

Local writer Roger Dubin has accomplished something with his first novel that every fiction writer desires: a book that utterly transports the reader into the story’s universe.

In part, he accomplished this in “The Coin of the Realm” through his fully realized characters and artful turns of phrase.

In fact, Dubin’s prose often reaches a kind of lyricism that is all too absent from most adventure/thriller stories. On a few occasions, he overreaches, but this is rare.

“The Coin of the Realm” must also transport its readers in part because of the notion of movement and traveling both across time and distance is so integral to the very plot of the book.

First, there’s the coin itself, a mystical artifact that has traveled down the years from the Russian court of Peter the Great. It was designed by the czar’s official jeweler, a Jewish convert to Christianity who, himself, traveled all over Europe before arriving in Russia.

Its mystical properties allegedly help whoever possesses it to find whatever their heart is seeking. And it’s ended up in the hands of Rick Weisman, a merchant marine (are you starting to see the traveling motif?) with a troubled past whose father mysteriously died in a plane crash.

Whew.

Of course, laying out the initial plot — the reader gets all this back-story in an admirably-packed first few dozen pages — hardly does the story justice, which at its heart is an international mystery and adventure.

It’s filled with symbolic imagery and clues to decipher, like when Weisman loses consciousness after being attacked on the boat he’s taking to North Africa. As he lies on the makeshift operating table in the ship and a terrifying storm rages outside, he has these visions.

“New sounds in the wind — a fearsome black castle, black banners flapping at its turrets. Off in some vague other distance is a sphere of exquisite whit and fabulous blue, like the earth from space yet not, familiar and welcoming and he wants to go towards it but cannot,” Dubin writes. “He wrestles against the invisible yet it flexes to the match.”

Then, the reader gets a few koans like the following from a disembodied voice.

“The black castle would have you for itself,” the voice tells Weisman. “Your desire for the light fuels its strength. Drop your struggle or it will devour you.”

This reviewer has always been a sucker for books that contain riddles, overarching destinies, journeys and strong sense of the battle between good and evil. (See “Star Wars,” anything by Tolkien, the Narnia books, etc.)

“The Coin of the Realm” engages these grand — and admittedly, at times, grandiose — themes, but its final joy comes in the form of Dubin’s writing about being a sailor or merchant marine.

The brief biographical sketch on the back cover of the book mentions that the author joined the merchant marines as a 16-year-old and his novel is filled with the wonderful argot of ships and sailing.

Terms like fo’c’sle (forecastle) and bos’n (bosun) pepper the text and may send the reader (if he or she hasn’t already read any of Patrick O’Brian’s books) running for the dictionary.

All in all, “The Coin of the Realm” is a good, solid read — the kind of book that makes you look forward to Dubin’s next effort.

Media critic Andrew Junker is a staff writer for The Catholic Sun. Comments are welcome. Send e-mail to letters@catholicsun.org.

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