Book Review: Alt-Wild West Meets Religious Cult

Red in Tooth and Claw, by Lish McBridge (Putnam)

Red in Tooth and Claw opens in an alt-Wild West setting that's close enough to historical to make the reader feel comfortable with conventions and expectations, yet just "off" enough to be creepy. Sensory descriptions and a truly marvelous POV character voice create a sympathetic protagonist (orphan Faolan, a girl masquerading as a boy whose grandfather guardian has just died) in a vivid, three-dimensional world. In a scheme to gain control of the grandfather's farm, the mayor concocts a scheme to ship Faolan off to "the Settlement" for their own good. Since Faolan is still a minor, she hasn't much choice. She stuffs the deed to the farm into her grandfather's watch, tucks the watch into the toe of an oversized boot, and pretends to be meekly obedient. I'm with her every step of the way at this point.

The Settlement is run by an eerily familiar-sounding cult that worships "the Shining God" and is run by the oily (as in snake-oil salesman) "HisBen" ("His Benevolence").  Despite their isolation, the Settlement is inordinately rich--behind its stockade, there's ample food, for example. Faolan is not the only kid who's been sent there to get them out of the way, and she soon makes friends and allies as well as enemies. She makes plans to escape, encounters a band of Rovers, falls in love, and gets catapulted into a horror mystery when people disappear and bodies appear. Something's out there, thirsting for blood.

For me, this is where the book loses the skillful evocation of the first part. The world is just enough askew from our own to make Faolan's predicament believable. When Faolan, who's finally gotten a decent meal when she arrives at the Settlement, thinks this place might not be so bad, I'm screaming, "Danger! Danger!" It's delicious, shivery stuff. 

Then come the Rovers, who could have provided a counterpoint to the secretive Settlement leaders, with their bond with their horses and the natural world. But, and it's a huge but, the Rover culture is a slap-dash amalgam of generalized Native people cultures, Hollywood-style Roma, and Western Europeans. Many elements of their culture are poorly thought-out, often incongruous with each other. The Rovers, and especially Faolan's love interest, Tallis, lack the thoughtfulness and depth of the earlier settings. 

By the time the monster makes an appearance through a trans-dimensional portal opened by HisBen's rituals, I was so disappointed, I no longer cared what happened. I knew that Faolan would get her very own sweetly tame monster, defeat HisBen, and live happily ever after with Tallis. (I was right.) What began as one type of story devolved into something quite inferior. I really, really wish the author had applied the same solid world-building and dramatic tension as in the opening to the rest of the book and not tried to switch genres.

Reprint: Transgender Saints!

 

Christianity has long revered saints who would be called ‘transgender’ today

Sarah Barringer, University of Iowa

Several Republican-led states have restricted transgender rights: Iowa has signed a law removing civil rights protection for transgender people; Wyoming has prohibited state agencies from requiring the use of preferred pronouns; and Alabama recently passed a law that only two sexes would be recognized. Hundreds of bills have been introduced in other state legislatures to curtail trans rights.

Earlier in the year, several White House executive orders pushed to deny trans identity. One of them, “Eradicating Anti-Christian Bias,” claimed that gender-affirming policies of the Biden administration were “anti-Christian.” It accused the Biden Equal Employment Opportunity Commission of forcing “Christians to affirm radical transgender ideology against their faith.”

To be clear, not all Christians are anti-trans. And in my research of medieval history and literature, I found evidence of a long history in Christianity of what today could be called “transgender” saints. While such a term did not exist in medieval times, the idea of men living as women, or women living as men, was unquestionably present in the medieval period. Many scholars have suggested that using the modern term transgender creates valuable connections to understand the historical parallels.

There are at least 34 documented stories of transgender saints’ lives from the early centuries of Christianity. Originally appearing in Latin or Greek, several stories of transgender saints made their way into vernacular languages.

Transgender saints

Of the 34 original saints, at least three gained widespread popularity in medieval Europe: St. Eugenia, St. Euphrosyne and St. Marinos. All three were born as women but cut their hair and put on men’s clothes to live as men and join monasteries.

Eugenia, raised pagan, joined a monastery to learn more about Christianity and later became abbot. Euphrosyne joined a monastery to escape an unwanted suitor and spent the rest of his life there. Marinos, born Marina, decided to renounce womanhood and live with his father at the monastery as a man.

These were well-read stories. Eugenia’s story appeared in two of the most popular manuscripts of their day – Ælfric’s “Lives of Saints” and “The Golden Legend.” Ælfric was an English abbot who translated Latin saints’ lives into Old English in the 10th century, making them widely available to a lay audience. “The Golden Legend” was written in Latin and compiled in the 13th century; it is part of more than a thousand manuscripts.

Euphrosyne also appears in Ælfric’s saints’ lives, as well as in other texts in Latin, Middle English, and Old French. Marinos’ story is available in over a dozen manuscripts in at least 10 languages. For those who couldn’t read, Ælfric’s saints’ lives and other manuscripts were read aloud in churches during service on the saint’s day.

Euphrosyne of Alexandria. Anonymous via Wikimedia Commons

A small church in Paris built in the 10th century was dedicated to Marinos, and relics of his body were supposedly kept in Qannoubine monastery in Lebanon.

This is all to say, a lot of people were talking about these saints.

Reprint: Why we fall for fake health information – and how it spreads faster than facts

 

Why we fall for fake health information – and how it spreads faster than facts

Should you share that health-related Instagram post? Catherine McQueen/Moment via Getty Images

Angshuman K. Kashyap, University of Maryland

In today’s digital world, people routinely turn to the internet for health or medical information. In addition to actively searching online, they often come across health-related information on social media or receive it through emails or messages from family or friends.

It can be tempting to share such messages with loved ones – often with the best of intentions.

As a global health communication scholar studying the effects of media on health and development, I explore artistic and creative ways to make health information more engaging and accessible, empowering people to make informed decisions.

Although there is a fire hose of health-related content online, not all of it is factual. In fact, much of it is inaccurate or misleading, raising a serious health communication problem: Fake health information – whether shared unknowingly and innocently, or deliberately to mislead or cause harm – can be far more captivating than accurate information.

This makes it difficult for people to know which sources to trust and which content is worthy of sharing.

The allure of fake health information

Fake health information can take many forms. For example, it may be misleading content that distorts facts to frame an issue or individual in a certain context. Or it may be based on false connections, where headlines, visuals or captions don’t align with the content. Despite this variation, such content often shares a few common characteristics that make it seem believable and more shareable than facts.

For one thing, fake health information often appears to be true because it mixes a grain of truth with misleading claims.

For example, early in the COVID-19 pandemic, false rumors suggested that drinking ethanol or bleach could protect people from the virus. While ethanol or bleach can indeed kill viruses on surfaces such as countertops, it is extremely dangerous when it comes into contact with skin or gets inside the body.

Stopping to check the facts helps stem the spread of misinformation. World Health Organization adaptation from Siouxsie Wiles and Toby Morris in The Spinoff, CC BY-SA

Short Book Review: A Romp Through Lovecraft's Arkham

 The Ravening Deep (The Sanford Files), by Tim Pratt (Aconyte)

I’m a long-time fan of Tim Pratt, from his imaginative science fiction to his thoughtful, accessible novels set in gaming worlds. I quite understand why he undertook an adventure that’s part of Aconyte’s Lovecraftian “Arkham Horror” series—it’s a hoot! While it helps to have a superficial knowledge of the mythos, it’s not necessary. Pratt guides us into this world of mysteries and cults, the superficial normal, and the deeply horrific reality beneath.

Poor Abel Davenport! First, his fishing business dries up, then in a drunken stupor he unwittingly becomes the chief priest of a long-dead god (a gigantic, planet-devouring starfish, I kid you not), and before he knows it, the spirit of the aforementioned god has cloned him into extremely not-nice doppelgangers in its scheme to recover the last bit of its mortal flesh. Then there’s Diana Stanley, a shopkeeper who joined Arkham’s Silver Twilight Lodge in the mistaken belief it was a service club, only to learn, once it’s too late to back out, that its rituals are far darker…and bloodier. Ruby Standish, cat burglar par excellence, joins forces with Diana and Abel to pull off a heist at the Silver Twilight Lodge. Now the three of them must convince Carl Sanford, master of the Lodge, where the true danger lies. Part horror novel, part thriller, and very much part tongue-in-cheek romp, The Ravening Deep is a quick, delicious read that left me wishing for the next adventure…and just a wee bit wary of my seafood.

Verdict: Great fun, even for those not familiar with Lovecraft’s Arkham.

Article Review: Women Viking Warriors!

Recently, I came across this article on the widespread misconceptions about Vikings.

 

7 myths about the Vikings that are (almost) totally false

Misconceptions abound about Vikings. They are often depicted as bloodthirsty, unwashed warriors with winged helmets. But that's a poor picture based largely on Viking portrayals in the 19th century, when they featured in European art either as romantic heroes or exotic savages. The real Vikings, however, were not just the stuff of legend — and they didn't have wings or horns on their helmets.

This article sparked an online discussion about the myth that all Viking warriors were male. A friend posted:

A myth they didn't cover is the one that says all the Viking warriors were male. Archaeology is finally recognizing that finding weapons and even a horse skeleton in a grave cannot ensure that the buried person was a man. (It was a myth nurtured by XY archaeologists, convinced they knew it all.)

By sheer coincidence, I saw the article below and mentioned it to my friend. I imagined her grinning as she responded:

Yes - Birka shook everything up in the field, and is making them reevaluate conclusions about a number of earlier excavations.

Weapon-filled burials are shaking up what we know about women's role in Viking society

In Birka, Sweden, there is a roughly 1,000-year-old Viking burial teeming with lethal weapons — a sword, an ax-head, spears, knives, shields and a quiver of arrows — as well as riding equipment and the skeletons of two warhorses. Nearly 150 years ago, when the grave was unearthed, archaeologists assumed they were looking at the burial of a male warrior. But a 2017 DNA analysis of the burial's skeletal remains revealed the individual was female.

Across Scandinavia, at least a few dozen women from the Viking Age (A.D. 793 to 1066) were buried with war-grade weapons. Collectively, these burials paint a picture that clashes violently with the hypermasculine image of the bearded, burly Viking warrior that has dominated the popular imagination for centuries. And it's possible that, due to gendered assumptions, archaeologists may be systematically undercounting the number of Viking women buried with weapons.

Archaeologists often guessed the deceased's sex based on grave goods, such as mirrors, weaving tools and brooches, which archaeologists assumed were typically buried with females, and battle-related weapons, which archaeologists thought were typically buried with males. If a Viking Age sword was the only item recovered, for example, it was nearly always assumed to be a male grave.