Colin Falconer

I’m reading Colin Falconer’s Silk Road. It’s a brilliant adventure historical fiction.  It pairs a Templar with a Dominic papal priest travelling from to the ‘centre of the universe’, Karakoram, capital of the Mongol Empire,  near the centre of modern day Mongolia.  They are on a mission to speak to the Khan but what is so enjoyable are their meeting with people along the silk route, their conversations, the great adventures, the incredible Tatar Princess, and the comparison of her with the Chin Dynastiy women. All the while there is discussion of Buddhism, Mohammedism, Christian Nestorianism and the most rigid Catholicism as opposed to the liberal faith based Templar tradition. Great wars and romance and visual delights woven by the greatest of story tellers.I am so glad I’ve found this new author.

He’s right up there with previous authors of historical fiction like American writer, James Michener’s whose books were a wealth of history, geography and philosophy. Michener’s characters and plot are not  as well developed as Falconer’s whose more comparable to the great African writer Wilbur Smith.  His writing certainly captures conflict well like Tolstoy, but equally the sensual like D.H. Lawrence  His passion in not at all salacious as George Macdonald Frazer, creator of that greatest that great historical fiction character, Flashman. I was excited to find Falconer as I was to find Peter Rimmer whose writer is as ‘full’ and ‘absorbing’.  This Silk Road captured me as Flight of the Fish Eagle did.  Colin Falconer is simply brilliant though in his ability to take the most erudite subject, a discussion of the nature of being, and turn it into a dialogue as good as Franny and Zoey of Salinger or Steppenwolf of Herman Hesse. 

I’ve downloaded several more of his books as happy as I was when I found Baldacci, Daniel Kallas, Ian Rankin, Anthony Melville-Ross,Phillip McCurtchan, Hiiansen, Harlan Coban, Manda Scott, Bernard Cornwall,  Griff Hosker,  Louis L’Amour, Tom Clancy, Asimov.  Each of so many writers has been just that good that I haven’t been able to stop at one.  Like ice cream they cry for more.  I’m an inveterate reader of every genre except perhaps horror though Steven King is the exception.  I can remember young when I ‘found’  Robert Heinlein and later Douglas Adams.  True treasures.  But historical fiction has always had it’s appeal for me a student of history.  I’ve often read a text of ‘non fiction’ history alongside an historical fiction enchanted by the tale woven by the writer who not only is a story teller but a researcher.  

Finding Colin Falconer has awakened that delight I’ve known again and again though less with age. I sometimes feel jaded and a bit ‘bored’ by modern writers, like the too predictable detective story.  I liked reading Tannis Laidlaw recently who adds to the Agatha Christie genre.  As a psychologist her insights into humans are so engaging. Colin Falconer though does all of this and more with his intimate grasp of ideas ,brilliant caracterization and the truly epic adventure tale.  

Thank you.  I now have quite a few books to read when the books shelves were less well stocked than those of the young man. That young man simply soared to meet Dostoyevsky,  William Somerset Maugham , Winston Churchill and H.G. Wells. Now it takes an Abraham Verghese , Cutting the Stone to lift me out of older age and that ennui so well written of in the Bonfire of the Vanities.

Thank you, Colin Falconer for being a truly inspirational  author that keeps me up late at night, glad to be alive, looking forward to the next page like a child enthralled by the campfire tale. .