Review of “In The Forests of the Night” by Kersten Hamilton

Book Two of The Goblin Wars Series (my review of Book One, Tyger Tyger, is here), steeped in Irish mythology, is not a standalone book either on the front end or the back end. Rather, it seems a transition from the first to the third, an interlude during which we spend more time with the characters and get to know them better. (And I have no complaints on that score – they are a delight.) Not a lot new happens in this book, except that Teagan is deliberately infected by her evil goblin cousin Kyle with his own genetic material so that she will be more goblin and less Milesian. [Teagan is the mixed blood granddaughter of Maeve (Queen Mab’s sister) and Amergin, the Milesian poet (figures from Irish mythology).] In other words, Kyle is trying to bring Teagan over to “the dark side.”

Again, Teagan struggles with exerting her free will to be what she feels she was meant to be, rather than what others would have her be. But now that she is even more goblin-esque, her task is more challenging as well. Warring within her are a martial hunting instinct and a knack for compassion. “There is no such thing as destiny,” her boyfriend Finn argues. “Just becoming. Choosing to become what you were created to be, or choosing to walk away from it.”

Teagan knows this well from her mother, who taught her the poem of Gerald Manley Hopkins, “As Kingfishers Catch Fire, Dragonflies Draw Flame,” which in part reads:

Each mortal thing does one thing and the same:
Deals out that being indoors each one dwells;
Selves – goes itself; myself it speaks and spells,
Crying What I do is me: for that I came.”

Hopkins means that each individual being has an essential nature, and it is the spark of God. He wrote in his Notebooks at p. 342, “All things therefore are charged with love, are charged with God and if we know how to touch them give off sparks and take fire, yield drops and flow, ring and tell of him.” The purpose of being then, is to strive for moral perfection and to become one’s “highest” self, so as to reveal God’s immanence in the world. The conclusion of the poem reads:

I say more: the just man justices;
Keeps grace: that keeps all his goings graces;
Acts in God’s eye what in God’s eye he is –
Christ. For Christ plays in ten thousand places,
Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his
To the Father through the features of men’s faces.”

It should be noted that Hamilton’s theology is never as overt as this. She, for example, does not quote the end of Hopkins’ poem. But she gives us hints through the centrality of poetry and song to her story, and through the particular poems she selects as themes, especially William Blake’s “Tyger Tyger,” the first stanza of which is:

Tyger Tyger, burning bright,
In the forests of the night;
What immortal hand or eye,
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?”

Note that the title of the first two books of this series are taken from this poem. Blake famously goes on to ask:

When the stars threw down their spears
And water’d heaven with their tears:
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the Lamb make thee?”

Again Hamilton is pointing out through verse that God has put both evil and goodness into the world. But in her second book she seems to be making more of a stand: you can still choose. (Indeed, the stanza immediately above refers to the scene in John Milton’s “Paradise Lost” after the angels win the holy war in heaven after Satan’s revolt against God. Satan too, had free will, and made a choice.)

In Book Two, after Teagan is infected with Kyle’s DNA, so that she becomes less bard and more goblin, she is able to “bilocate,” which means she can leave her body and go into the mythical realm of Mag Mell. Her spirit form has tiger eyes, and the tiger part of her nature becomes more salient. (Like Blake, Hamilton chooses to illustrate the essence of the tiger in both physical and moral dimensions.) And yet, Tea insists she not be called the nickname “Tiger” and is clearly waging a powerful battle with her own instincts.

This is Teagan’s struggle, and one which will continue in Book Three.

Evaluation: This book must be read in close conjunction with Book One, because it is assumed the reader remembers all the characters and mythological background from the first book. For those who do so, this book is like having a pleasant family gathering with those characters, while waiting for more momentous events.

Rating: 3.5/5

Published by Clarion Books, an imprint of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 2011

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