The centre won't hold?

I am still having to limit my computer time, but this was such an awful week—for the US and the world—that I had to post this. I was appalled by the blood spilled by terrorists—first in Charlottesville, Virginia, then in Barcelona, Cambrils, and Alcanar, Spain, and very likely in Turku, Finland, too, although authorities there have not yet confirmed the attacks were acts of terrorism. In the face of such carnage, it is hard not to fear what tomorrow may bring. I find the beginning of Yates’s haunting poem, The Second Coming, echoing in my head over and over.
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

The next verse is even scarier. And yet the centre somehow does hold. So many times in human history, men and women have despaired, convinced that anarchy was loosed upon their world, and they were often right. Savage wars. Plagues that killed millions. Slavery and slaughter. Reading history is not for the faint of heart. But there can be a weird sort of comfort in remembering that there has never been a Golden Age for mankind; no mapmaker has ever been able to locate Utopia. The innocent have often suffered horribly, for JFK was right; life is unfair. People persevered, though, found ways to hold on, even to cling to hope. So we can, too.

Aren’t you guys glad that I stopped by to cheer you all up like this? At least I can share some good news. There is a new historical novel out that is likely to interest many of you. I have not read it, of course, for pleasure reading was one of the Deadline Dragon’s first victims. But it is on my “To Be Read List”. It is called The Half-Drowned King, by Linnea Hartsuyker, and it stakes out literary territory unfamiliar to many of us, certainly to me. It has gotten excellent reviews, called a “top-notch Viking saga” by Library Journal, and compared to Game of Thrones in its “deliciously complex” plot by the usually snarky Kirkus Reviews. The first of a trilogy set in ninth century Norway, it is likely also to appeal to viewers of the History Channel’s series, The Vikings, or maybe The Last Kingdom, which brings Bernard Cornwell’s magnificent Saxon series to life, or at least to television.