The third and final issue of Patrick Carman’s “Land of Elyon” trilogy comes to a satisfying conclusion. Alexa is still in possession of the last jocasta, a special stone, more powerful than all the ones before it. It allows her to hear the animals speak — Murphy the squirrel, Odessa the wolf, Ander the bear. But it also brings to her another voice, a voice that whispers on the wind only to her — the voice of Elyon himself, guiding her choices and asking her to do things that seem foolish, even dangerous.At the conclusion of Beyond the Valley of Thorns, Alexa had discovered that Abaddon was a real, evil threat in the land, and was working his evil through the person of Victor Grindall. Victor had harnessed the power of fallen seraphim — giants — who had been turned into rotting ogres by Abaddon’s roaming hordes of bats; think twenty-foot-tall zombies. There’s only one true giant left in the land, Armon, and he’s sided with thirteen-year-old Alexa and her crew, a company that includes the believed-to-be-dead Thomas Warvold.Grindall has taken Alexa’s friend, the diminutive Yipes, as a hostage, threatening to kill him unless Alexa meets him and brings him the last jocasta, which he intends to use to find his way to the fabled Tenth City, the home of Elyon. By bringing the ogres back to their home, he plans to topple Elyon and elevate Abaddon to total, unrestricted power.As our heroes sail aboard the Warwick Beacon, the ship belonging to Warvold’s brother, Roland, Warvold shares with Alexa the reason why he became such a well-traveled explorer: … “Before that — during all those years of my youth, wandering in The Land of Elyon — do you know why I searched, Alexa?” he asked me. It was a question he strained to produce, and he seemed desperate to tell me the answer. “Because you love adventure, you and Roland both,” I answered.He looked back out to the sea once more, and his voice trembled as he spoke the true answer. “I was seized by the power of a great affection.” It seemed as though Warvold had given me the key to his entire life in that one statement, and yet I struggled to understand what he meant. I rolled the words over in my head, trying to see in them what had driven him to live such a dangerous life. I was seized by the power of a great affection. “I don’t understand what you mean,” I admitted. Warvold looked deep into my eyes, the wind blowing strands of white and gray hair across his worn face. “Elyon has only one hope for us, Alexa. That we would know he loves us. Do you understand? The one who made you, the one who made everything.” He swept his hand across the sea. “He loves you. And more than that, there is nothing you or I need do to earn his reckless affection for us. That love has driven me to fight his enemy, the enemy of us all.” “Abaddon,” I whispered. He stared at me then with such intensity I could hardly hold his gaze. “No evil can resist the power of love forever.” He winked at me and smiled, as if he thought that somehow our band of misfits might yet overcome Grindall and the ogres — even Abaddon himself. “I have failed, and failed, and failed again,” he said. “But no amount of failure can move Elyon’s hand of affection away from me. It’s inescapable. To live boldly for that kind of love is the least I can do.”Sound familiar? It should. It’s the core message of just about every Christian denomination out there. Carman, a Christian himself, has incorporated his faith into his writing since the first book, but in this installment, the themes are far more pronounced. Here, Elyon and the Tenth City are quite a few literal steps closer to their allegorical counterparts than are other Christian-based characters and places of similar literature, such as Aslan and Narnia.As well as touching on the love of the Creator for his creation, Carman also brings in other basic tenets of Christianity. Certainly most fantasy stories include such basic mores like good and evil, faith and doubt, justice and unfairness, and The Tenth City has this in spades. But Carman also delivers the message that all things happen according to a grand plan, even if we don’t know what that plan is. Alexa is told by the voice of Elyon to do things that, in the circumstances, seem dangerous and foolhardy; but through obedience, Alexa learns what her part is in the scheme of things for Elyon to rescue the land from Abaddon’s control, and she comes to understand that this life is merely a prelude to a resurrection that is to come. The Tenth City plays out faster and with less grandeur than does C.S. Lewis’s The Last Battle, but the pace is adventurous and quick, and the only cheated feeling the readers will be left with is that the tale of Alexa Daley is — as far as we know — over.
RJ Carter

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