Passage is the immediate sequel to Legacy in The Sharing Knife series. It takes farmer''s daughter Fawn and Lakewalker maverick Dag back to her home farm as a first step on their ''honeymoon trip'' to the Southern Sea, which is analogous to the Gulf of Mexico in The Sharing Knife series'' alternate-world setting. At the farm they add the first of a considerable list of fellow-travelers: Fawn''s older brother Whit. Once on their way again another odd companion is added by accident, quite literally, as Hod the charity-case helper of the teamster taking them to find flatboat passage on the Grace River (the Ohio River) gets his kneecap shattered by Dag''s ill-tempered horse. This begins a series of events in each of which Dag''s ground-working abilities are stretched past old limits, ground being the series setting''s term for what might well be read as chi. Hod happens to owe much of his sloth and sly theft of edibles to a well-grown tapeworm, not suspected by his employer and only noticed in passing by Dag. But by his good curing works Dag has, as he feared, left himself open to an avalanche of farmer folk with ailments. He has, also, unwittingly beguiled Hod—Hod follows him, and wants more of Dag''s ministrations. So there are dangers to the farmers he tries to cure, too. Much of the novel follows out his attempts to present what Lakewalkers do, how, and with what limitations, in ways that farmers should understand. This action violates long-standing Lakewalker secrecy about just these matters. Dag, in his effort to reduce a culture gap that has already led to violent misunderstandings, sees no choice but to risk apostasy. After he, with help from two other Lakewalkers, and many of the so-called farmers (in this book, the non-Lakewalkers mostly work with boats, not farms) defeats a renegade Lakewalker, who has been leading a group of murderers and robbers, Dag even demonstrates, for a group of farmers, the ceremony that turns a knife made from a bone from a deceased Lakewalker into a sharing knife. He also discovers how to remove a beguilement. The core of the novel is set on a flatboat, patterned on craft used in the middle 19th century to move goods downstream on America''s navigable rivers, and large enough to need a crew of around eight (and with space for cargo, chickens, a goat, and Dag''s horse). For the details of this pre-steamboat era Ms. Bujold has drawn from a number of histories and biographies, listed and annotated in an Author''s Note page at the very end of the text. Like the rest of the series this is a romance, but one that rides on deeper questions of personal and social relationship, including those of leadership, honesty, caste relations and power. It also presents some clear moral choices, for those who were recruited to join the renegade Lakewalker. It ends with the motley crew, Lakewalkers and farmers, that has made its way to the mouth of the Gray River (the Mississippi River) having a picnic on the sands of the River''s delta and considering the whens and hows of their return journey up-river. A fourth volume, The Sharing Knife: Horizon, published in January, 2009, completes the tetralogy.

Passage

In 1930, the year of Gandhi''s Salt March, British poet Flora Crewe travels to India for her health. Flora is a thoroughly modern girl who has modeled for Modigliani, hobnobbed with communists, and been accused of obscenity for the racy book A Nymph and Her Muse. In India her portrait is painted by the Indian artist Nirad while she fends off the attentions of a dashing but dimwitted scion of the British Raj. But her bravado hides the knowledge that she is severely ill with tuberculosis. In the 1980s, American academic Eldon Pike seeks out Flora''s younger sister Eleanor to discover the truth about the end of the poet''s life — she died in India soon after meeting Nirad. Eleanor, who married an Englishman she met at Flora''s grave and became a staunch Tory, reveals little to the scholar, sending him off on a wild goose chase tracing Flora''s path through India. But she is more welcoming to Nirad''s son Anish, who also comes looking for answers. Eleanor shows Anish a painting by Nirad done partly in a classical Indian style, and partly in the style of Western realism. The painting''s erotic symbolism convinces him that his father and Flora were lovers before she died.

Indian Ink

Each chapter begins with a quote from Hans Christian Andersen''s, "The Steadfast Tin Soldier." The novel consists of several tales all interlinked around a fictional Captain Lord Henry Baltimore who leads a night attack on a battlefield during World War I, and the men who know him. His entire squad is killed by enemy fire and Baltimore himself is wounded in the leg and left for dead, he awakes some hours later to see giant bat creatures feeding on his dead men. When one attempts to feed off him, he slashes at it with his bayonet and scars its face hideously. The giant creature in return wounds him and infests his leg with such terrible gangrene that when he is later brought to hospital, it is amputated, leaving him with a jointed wooden leg. Unknowingly, Lord Baltimore struck a powerful vampire who is so angered by Baltimore''s permanent blinding of his right eye that he causes a "plague" in warring Europe. People think this to be a sickness which spreads quickly across countries, but in truth it is vampirism. Baltimore returns home from war haunted by his encounter on the field, yet happy to be home early on account of his leg. But upon arrival, he discovers his parents and sister have succumbed to the plague - only his wife Elowen survived. The plot turns to three of Baltimores'' companions who have helped in the past - battlefield surgeon Doctor Lemuel Rose, gentlemen trader Thomas Childress Jr., and sea captain Demetrius Aischros. They have all been called to meet at an inn with Baltimore, and while they wait for him, each tells two tales: how they met Baltimore and why they believe his tale of the vampire encounter to be true. The Doctor treated his leg, Childress grew up on his island home and Aischros shipped him home after the war. From their tales of Baltimore and the supernatural it becomes apparent that Baltimore has become a man bent on a mission to kill the "Red King vampire" (also known as Haigus), who infested his family and then murdered his beloved wife. He travels to kill the lesser vampires in hope of reaching the Red King, and has called his three friends forth in hope of their aid.

Baltimore, or The Steadfast Tin Soldier and the Vampire

Simon Axler is a famed sexagenarian stage actor who suddenly and inexplicably loses his gift. His weak attempts at portraying Prospero and Macbeth on stage at the Kennedy Center in Washington lead to poor reviews, sending Axler into a profound depression and cause him to give up acting and contemplate suicide with a shotgun he keeps in his attic. His wife, Victoria, a former ballerina, is unable to deal with Axler''s depression and moves to California, where their son lives. Axler checks himself into a psychiatric hospital on the advice of his physician and stays there for 26 days. In the hospital, Axler meets another patient, Sybil Van Buren, who tells him about catching her second husband sexually abusing her young daughter. She expresses shame at not immediately reporting her husband or removing him from the home and admits to attempting suicide. Sybil asks Axler whether he would be willing to kill her husband and he tells her he fears he would "botch the job". Months after his stint in the hospital, Axler''s agent, Jerry Oppenheim, visits him at his upstate New York home to tell him about an offer to play James Tyrone in Long Day''s Journey into Night. Axler refuses, fearing another failure. In the fan mail Oppenheim brings, Axler finds a letter from Sybil, thanking him for listening to her problems in the hospital. She says she did not recognize him at the time but decided to write him after catching one of his old movies on TV. Pegeen Mike Stapleford, the 40-year-old daughter of two actors he performed with around the time she was born, pays Axler a visit at his house. Pegeen has just moved nearby to work as a professor at a Vermont women''s college after ending a six-year relationship with a woman who decided to undergo sex reassignment surgery to become a man. Pegeen''s job was secured after she slept with the school''s "smitten" dean, Louise Renner. Simon and Pegeen begin an affair despite Pegeen''s having lived as a lesbian for the previous 17 years. Louise is furious that Pegeen has broken off their relationship and begins stalking her. Months later, Louise calls Pegeen''s parents in Lansing, Michigan, to tell them that their daughter is now sleeping with Axler. Pegeen is distressed that her parents have learned about the relationship she wanted kept secret. Her father, Asa, tells her he disapproves because of the age difference but Simon suspects he merely envies his professional success. Asa directs community theater in Michigan. Axler reads in the local newspaper that Sybil has shot and killed her estranged husband. He contacts Sybil''s sister and offers to help with her murder defense. One night, Pegeen "offers" Axler a 19-year-old college student of her acquaintance named Lara. Lara becomes a fantasy of his and a character in Pegeen''s sexual role-playing. Soon after, while Axler and Pegeen are dining out, he notices Tracy, a young woman getting drunk at the restaurant bar, and they take her home for a threesome. Afterward, Axler asks her why she agreed to go home with them, and she admits she recognized him as a famous actor. After this adventure, Axler feels rejuvenated and decides he wants to perform in Long Day''s Journey after all. He also decides that he wants to father a child with Pegeen and visits a fertility specialist without telling her. Two weeks later, Pegeen ends their relationship, telling Axler she "made a mistake." He accuses her of leaving him to be with Tracy and believes Pegeen''s parents have turned her against him. He calls her parents, shouting at them in an angry tirade. After the call, Axler kills himself with his shotgun.

The Humbling

Due to what they call a ''racial mental block'' a quasi-immortal race called the Isi are unable to prevent a galactic catastrophe. The Isi think humanity (specifically Peter) will help them overcome this hurdle, hence the book''s opening line "Peter, we are losing Armageddon..." Unless he joins forces with them "... the galaxy is doomed...!" While Peter (and the reader) is understandably skeptical, the talking cat, as well as a crash course in telepathy rapidly convince him of Meg''s sincerity. Soon he is using his uniquely human perspective to unveil new applications of ancient Isi mental powers, and develops some startling new abilities. Armed with complete control of his cellular structure (which allows for slow but complete cellular metamorphosis), and a "gnNäáq" (knack) which allows the mental manipulation of electrical energy, Peter and Meg travel to Meg''s home planet of Isis where he will be taught the "mMj''q" (Magic) necessary to help save the galaxy from its impending destruction. Writing in what can only be described in a "Heinlein-esque" style, Palmer deliberately plays with sci-fi conventions. For example he implies that common terms such as witch, familiar, and magic actually stem from alien words. He also turns several clichés on their ear, giving the reader a trip through the protagonist''s ego as he travels across a decidedly hostile planet.

Threshold

The novel is first person narrative of twelve years old Egon who tries to become a normal teenager with normal teenage problems of growing up in a milieu of little industrial town in then Tito''s Yugoslavia with open borders to the West that allowed free visits to the other side of iron curtain that was not so iron at the borders between now Slovenia and Italy, in times of record players and popular and less popular alternative music records. However this is not an easy task to have only normal problems since Egon has to deal with abuse at home and in school. At home he is exposed to nona''s posttraumatic consequences of World War One because of which she keeps having halucinations of dead souls and she makes sure that Egon, too, keeps watching dreadful illustrations of martyrs from her little book of Catholic saints and apologize to dead souls for stepping on them accidentally, which only she can see. As well at home he is exposed to neglect and scapegoating by single mother, his mother who is in conflict with nona. As if that would not be enough (and too much) for a child, he gets sexually abused by teacher at school who keeps molesting also a beautiful girl who is also sexually abused by her own father at home and who because of that - as narrator tells at the and of novel - finds escape from nightmarish life in her death (suicide) at the end. Egon can only dream of having the kind of problems his teenage peers have, this would be sweet dreams for him. Egon survives in the novel, but has to pay a high price for the survival, a price paid by many survivors of childhood sexual abuse. Because the double life they are forced to live daily, they would need help from an adult who they could trust and who would understand them in order to integrate it, they have no other choice but to escape into new identity, which in contrast to their real child''s self, who is helpless, becomes a king over the dark kingdom of nona, mother and school, as the king of (their) rattling ghosts.

King of the Rattling Spirits

A Neanderthal child is brought to the present day as a result of time travel experiments by a research organization, Stasis Inc. He cannot be removed from his immediate area because of the vast energy loss and time paradoxes that would result. To take care of him, Edith Fellowes, a children''s nurse, is engaged. She is initially repelled by his appearance, but soon begins to regard him as her own child, learns to love him and realizes that he is far more intelligent than she at first imagined. She names him ''Timmie'' and attempts to ensure that he has the best possible childhood despite his circumstance. She is enraged when the newspapers refer to him as an "ape-boy". Edith''s love for Timmie brings her into conflict with her employer, for whom he is more of an experimental animal than a human being. Eventually, her employer comes to the conclusion that his organization has exacted all the knowledge and publicity which could be gotten from Timmie, and that the time has come to move on to the next project. This involves bringing a Medieval peasant into the present, which necessitates the return of Timmie to his own time. Miss Fellowes fights the decision, knowing that he could not now survive, having acquired modern dependencies and speech. She decides to smuggle the boy out of the facilities, but when that plan fails, she returns to the ancient past with Timmie.

The Ugly Little Boy

Gleick begins with the tale of colonial European explorers and their fascination with African talking drums and their observed use to send complex and widely understood messages back and forth between villages far apart, and over even longer distances by relay. Gleick transitions from the information implications of such drum signaling to the impact of the arrival of long distance telegraph and then telephone communication to the commercial and social prospects of the industrial age west. Research to improve these technologies ultimately led to our understanding the essentially digital nature of information, quantized down to the unit of the bit (or qubit). Starting with the development of symbolic written language (and the eventual perceived need for a dictionary), Gleick examines the history of intellectual insights central to information theory, detailing the key figures responsible such as Claude Shannon, Charles Babbage, Ada Byron, Samuel Morse, Alan Turing, Stephen Hawking, Richard Dawkins and John Archibald Wheeler. The author also delves into how digital information is now being understood in relation to physics and genetics. Following the circulation of Claude Shannon''s A Mathematical Theory of Communication and Norbert Wiener''s Cybernetics many disciplines attempted to jump on the information theory bandwagon to varying success. Information theory concepts of data compression and error correction became especially important to the computer and electronics industries. Gleick finally discusses Wikipedia as an emerging internet based Library of Babel, investigating the implications of its expansive user generated content, including the ongoing struggle between inclusionists, deletionists, and vandals. Gleick uses the Jimmy Wales created article for the Cape Town butchery restaurant Mzoli''s as a case study of this struggle. The flood of information humanity is now exposed to presents new challenges Gleick says, as we retain more of our information now than at any previous point in human history, it takes much more effort to delete or remove unwanted information than to accumulate it. This is the ultimate entropy cost of generating additional information and the answer to slay Maxwell''s Demon.

The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood

Upon her second husband''s death, domineering matriarch Bernarda Alba imposes an eight-year mourning period on her household, as per her family tradition. Bernarda has five daughters, aged between 20 and 39, whom she has controlled inexorably and prohibited from any form of relationship. The mourning period further isolates them and tension mounts within the household. After a mourning ritual at the family home, eldest daughter Angustias enters, having been absent while the guests were there. Bernarda fumes, assuming she had been listening to the men''s conversation on the patio. Angustias inherited a large sum of money from her father, Bernarda''s first husband, but Bernarda''s second husband has left only small sums to his four daughters. Angustias'' wealth attracts a young, attractive suitor from the village, Pepe el Romano. Her sisters are jealous, believing that it''s unfair that Angustias, plain and rather sickly, should receive both the majority of the inheritance and the freedom to marry and escape their suffocating home environment. Youngest sister Adela, stricken with sudden spirit and jubilation after her father''s funeral, defies her mother''s orders and dons a green dress instead of remaining in mourning black. Her brief taste of youthful joy suddenly shatters when she discovers that Angustias will be marrying Pepe. Poncia, Bernarda''s maid, advises Adela to bide her time: Angustias will probably die delivering her first child. Distressed, Adela threatens to run into the streets in her green dress, but her sisters manage to stop her. Suddenly they see Pepe coming down the street. She stays behind while her sisters rush to get a look—until a maid hints that she could get a better look from her bedroom window. As Poncia and Bernarda discuss the daughters'' inheritances upstairs, Bernarda sees Angustias wearing makeup—and a green dress, which symbolizes freedom within the Generation 98 culture. Appalled that Angustias would defy her orders to remain in a state of mourning, Bernarda violently scrubs the makeup off her face. The other daughters enter, followed by Bernarda''s elderly mother, Maria Josefa, who is usually locked away in her room. Maria Josefa announces that she wants to get married; she also warns Bernarda that she''ll turn her daughters'' hearts to dust if they cannot be free. Bernarda forces her back into her room. It turns out that Adela and Pepe are having a secret affair. Adela becomes increasingly volatile, defying her mother and quarreling with her sisters, particularly Martirio, who reveals her own feelings for Pepe. Adela shows the most horror when the family hears the latest gossip about how the townspeople recently dealt with a young woman who shamelessly delivered and killed an illegitimate baby. Tension explodes as family members confront one another and Bernarda pursues Pepe with a gun. A gunshot is heard outside, implying that Pepe has been killed. Adela flees into another room while the family awaits the outcome. As Bernarda and Martirio enter, Martirio says Pepe escaped with his life, and Bernarda remarks that as a woman she can''t be blamed for poor aim. Immediately she calls for Adela, who has locked herself into a room. When Adela doesn''t respond, Bernarda and Poncia force the door open. Soon Poncia''s shriek is heard. She returns with her hands clasped around her neck and warns the family not to enter the room. Adela, not knowing that Pepe survived, has hung herself. The closing lines of the play show Bernarda characteristically preoccupied with the family''s reputation. She insists that Adela has died a virgin and demands that this be made known to the whole town. (The play alludes that Adela and Pepe had an affair; Bernarda''s moral code and pride keep this from registering). No one is to cry.

The House of Bernarda Alba

Jody Baxter lives with his parents, Ory and Ezra "Penny" Baxter, in the animal-filled central Florida backwoods at the end of the 19th Century. His parents had six other children prior to Jody, but they died in infancy which makes it difficult for Ma Baxter to bond with Jody. Jody loves the outdoors and loves his family. He has wanted a pet for as long as he can remember, yet his mother Ory says they only have enough food to feed themselves. A subplot involves the hunt for an old bear named Slewfoot that randomly attacks the Baxter livestock. Later the Baxters and Forresters get in a fight about the bear, and continue to fight about nearly anything. The Forresters steal the Baxters'' pigs and while Penny and Jody are out searching for their stolen pigs, Penny is bitten by a rattlesnake in the arm. Penny shoots a doe to use its liver to draw out the snake''s poison. Penny recovers, but the doe leaves behind a fawn. Jody adopts the fawn, whom he names Flag, and it becomes his constant companion. The story revolves around the life of Jody as he grows to adolescence along with the fawn. The plot also centers on the conflicts of the young boy as he struggles with strained relationships, hunger, death (of his childhood companion, Fodder-wing Forrester, due to sickness), and the capriciousness of nature through a catastrophic flood. Throughout, the Baxter family is in contrast to their uncouth neighbors the Forresters, and the Baxters'' more refined relatives in the village of Volusia. Jody experiences tender moments with his family, his fawn, and their neighbors and relatives. Along with his father, he comes face-to-face with the rough life of a farmer and hunter. As Jody takes his final steps into maturity, he is forced to make a desperate choice between his pet Flag and his family. The parents realize that the now-adult Flag is endangering their very survival, as he persists in eating the corn crop which the family is relying on for their food the next winter. Jody''s father orders him to take Flag into the woods and shoot him, but Jody cannot bring himself to do it. When his mother shoots the deer and wounds him, Jody is then forced to shoot Flag in the neck himself. In anger at his mother, Jody runs away, only to come face-to-face with the true meaning of hunger, loneliness, and fear. After a failed attempt to run away in a broken-down canoe, he is picked up by a mail ship and dropped off in Volusia. In the end, Jody returns home and assumes his role as the emerging caregiver to his family and their land.

The Yearling

In the first book, The Bourne Identity, Jason Bourne suffered amnesia. Over the course of the book he regained his memory with the help of a Canadian economist, Marie, and later found that he was previously an operative of the Central Intelligence Agency in an elite project in Southeast Asia and Vietnam codenamed Medusa. Following the American forces withdrawal from Vietnam he joined Project Treadstone 71, where he was used as bait for the infamous European assassin, Carlos the Jackal. Bourne took credit for various kills in China and the rest of Asia, acting as a rival to the Jackal, in order to draw him out of hiding. At the beginning of The Bourne Supremacy, Bourne has recovered from most mental and all physical injuries and is teaching Asian studies at a university in Maine under his real name of David Webb. He is also living happily on campus with Marie and is getting regular psychological tests from his doctor, Morris Panov. Meanwhile, high-ranking U.S. officials discuss an increasingly alarming situation in the People''s Republic of China, where a popular Communist official is planning a hostile takeover of the country, using a Bourne imitator to eliminate his political rivals. The officials decide to use Webb to kill the Chinese official, but know of his mistrust of the U.S. government. Aware of Webb''s deep-seated emotional instability due to the loss of his first wife and children in Vietnam, they hatch a plan to abduct Marie and throw Webb back into the default state under which he operated for Medusa. It is then that a representative of the U.S. Government arrives and informs Webb of an imitator in Asia, someone who is killing under the name of Jason Bourne, a name feared in Asia because of the accredited kills during his work with Treadstone 71. Webb is told he requires a more visible security force because there is evidence someone wants him dead. Soon thereafter, Marie is abducted by unknown men while Webb is at the University. Webb returns to the house, finds clues to her abduction, and immediately phones government officials, threatening to leak information about Treadstone and Medusa in an attempt to get assistance. He finds out information has been manipulated in order to make him seem crazy and delusional, and that his only course of action is to follow the instructions left for him by the kidnappers. He turns to the only person he thinks will be able to help him, Alexander Conklin. Conklin is convinced there is government involvement but that they have lost control of the situation and the hired guns holding Marie are no longer in their control. Webb who now has transformed back into his hated persona of Jason Bourne now has no choice but to go to Hong Kong and play out the scenario to get Marie back. There he meets with a wealthy Tai-Pan who wants Bourne to bring back the imposter Jason Bourne because the imposter killed his wife. Marie, held captive in a British hospital, fakes an illness and escapes, taking refuge with Catherine Staples, a former colleague employed at the Canadian consulate in Hong Kong. She is later contacted by Conklin, who confronts Under-Secretary MacAllister and Ambassador Havland, the orchestrators of the plan to manipulate Webb. Webb, tracing the impostor Bourne through Kowloon and Macau, tracks him to mainland China, where he encounters Echo, another former Medusa operative, who is also tracking down the impostor Bourne, who he personally trained. They track Bourne to a meeting in a bird sanctuary, where Echo is captured, and executed by Sheng Jo Yang, the Chinese nationalist leader that Havland has been desperately trying to eliminate. Webb captures the impostor Bourne, but in attempting to swap the impostor for Marie, is misled by MacAllister, as Marie is still held in secret by Conklin. Without Marie, Webb has stated clearly he will kill the impostor, whom Havland and MacAllister need to track down Yang. Thinking Marie has been killed, Bourne assaults Havland''s "sterile house" estate, where the impostor is killed and Bourne nearly as well, saved only by the timely arrival of Marie and Conklin. Bourne is then told of the whole plan and why Havland had to abduct Marie. Since Bourne has seen what Sheng is capable of, he says that he must go back into the fray and kill Sheng. McAllister goes with Bourne, and during their search for Sheng, McAllister explains that he must be the one to kill Sheng, that was his plan from the start. The meeting between Sheng and Bourne and McAllister takes place on the Chinese border, and during the meeting McAllister is shot before he can make the kill, so Bourne has to kill Sheng instead. They escape with Sheng''s helicopter. The story is set during the British negotiated handover of Hong Kong to the People''s Republic of China on the expiration of its ninety-nine-year lease on the New Territories.

The Bourne Supremacy

The narrator inexplicably finds himself in a grim and joyless city, the "grey town", which is either hell or purgatory depending on how long one stays there. He eventually finds a bus for those who desire an excursion to some other place (and which eventually turns out to be the foothills of heaven). He enters the bus and converses with his fellow passengers as they travel. When the bus reaches its destination, the passengers on the bus &mdash; including the narrator &mdash; are gradually revealed to be ghosts. Although the country is the most beautiful they have ever seen, every feature of the landscape (including streams of water and blades of grass) is unyieldingly solid compared to themselves: it causes them immense pain to walk on the grass, and even a single leaf is far too heavy for any to lift. Shining figures, men and women whom they have known on earth, come to meet them, and to urge them to repent and enter heaven proper. They promise that as the ghosts travel onward and upward, they will become more solid and thus feel less and less discomfort. These figures, called "spirits" to distinguish them from the ghosts, offer to assist them in the journey toward the mountains and the sunrise. Almost all of the ghosts choose to return instead to the grey town, giving various reasons and excuses. Much of the interest of the book lies in the recognition it awakens of the plausibility and familiarity, along with the thinness and self-deception, of the excuses that the ghosts refuse to abandon, even though to do so would bring them to "reality" and "joy forevermore." The narrator is met by the writer George MacDonald, whom he hails as his mentor, just as Dante did when encountering Virgil in the Divine Comedy; and MacDonald becomes the narrator''s guide in his journey, just as Virgil became Dante''s. MacDonald explains that it is possible for a soul to choose to remain in heaven despite having been in the grey town; for such souls, the goodness of heaven will work backwards into their lives, turning even their worst sorrows into joy, and changing their experience on earth to an extension of heaven. Conversely, the evil of hell works so that if a soul remains in, or returns to, the grey town, even its happiness on earth will lose its meaning, and its experience on earth would have been hell. None of the ghosts realize that the grey town is, in fact, hell. Indeed it is not that much different from the life they led on earth: joyless, friendless, and uncomfortable. It just goes on forever, and gets worse and worse, with some characters whispering their fear of the "night" that is eventually to come. According to MacDonald, while it is possible to leave hell and enter heaven, doing so implies turning away (repentance); or as depicted by Lewis, embracing ultimate and unceasing joy itself. In answer to the narrator''s question MacDonald confirms that what is going on is a dream. The use of chess imagery as well as the correspondence of dream elements to elements in the narrator''s waking life is reminiscent of Alice''s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass. The narrator discovers that the vast grey town and its ghostly inhabitants are minuscule to the point of being invisible compared with the immensity of heaven and reality. This is illustrated in the encounter of the blessed woman and her husband: she is surrounded by gleaming attendants while he shrinks down to invisibility as he uses a collared tragedian to speak for him. Toward the end, the narrator expresses the terror and agony of remaining a ghost in the advent of full daybreak in heaven, comparing the experience to having large blocks fall on one''s body (at this point falling books awaken him). This parallels that of the man with his dream of judgment day in the House of the Interpreter of The Pilgrim''s Progress. The book ends with the narrator awakening from his dream of heaven into the unpleasant reality of wartime Britain, in conscious imitation of The Pilgrim''s Progress, the last sentence of the "First Part" of which is: "So I awoke, and behold, it was a Dream."

Over 8000 Takeaways For Your Brain!

Read - Listen - Learn

Passage

By Lois McMaster Bujold

Indian Ink

By Tom Stoppard

Baltimore, or The Steadfast Tin Soldier and the Vampire

By Mike Mignola

The Humbling

By Philip Roth

Threshold

By David R. Palmer

King of the Rattling Spirits

By Miha Mazzini

The Ugly Little Boy

By Isaac Asimov

The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood

By James Gleick

The House of Bernarda Alba

By Federico García Lorca

The Yearling

By Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

The Bourne Supremacy

By Robert Ludlum

The Great Divorce

By C. S. Lewis