What's the Name of That Book??? discussion
SOLVED: Children's/YA
>
SOLVED. Fantasy story featuring a red-haired, blue-eyed race (from another dimension/world??) published sometime before 2010.
date
newest »
newest »
For anyone who's curious, someone on another forum came through. It's "The New World Order" by Ben Jeapes.
The protagonists were a man from the race mentioned in the title, and his son, who's half blooded and was raised by humans after his human mother passed away. His father meets him for the first time when he's a teenager and he's brought into the world of the red/blues. The red hair and blue eyes was constantly being mentioned as the defining traits of that race.
The first scene I remember is the man seeing his son for the first time while the kid is asleep, he'd JUST learned that he existed and is overcome by emotion when he sees him, and has the urge to hold him and stroke his hair. Later when they talk for the first time the kid tells him that the human village that raised him called him a bastard for being born out of wedlock and that his mother was a whore, the father gets angry and reassures him that he was conceived the day the man and the boy's mother agreed to get married. But the father had to leave for something soon after they slept together and couldn't come back until the kid was grown.
I also remember a scene where the kid is talking to another teenage-ish boy from the red/blue race, and the other kid uses apples and walnuts to illustrate their culture's concept of a royal marriage, which is polygamous, multiple princes and princesses from different families joining together in "high marriage" to keep an eye on all of them and keep variety in the gene pool and have options for bedmates so there's no jealousy or betrayal in the royal family. The son jokingly asks if he gets to sleep with all the women before marrying everyone to see which one is his favorite.
Another scene I remember is an army of the red/blue people conquering a human village and crucifying all the men as a mockery to Christianity, claiming they're "testing" the belief that a man crucified will come back to life in three days. The father protagonist walks through the ruined village later and is horrified by his peoples' actions. One of the dying men on a cross calls him "_____ bastard," using the name of his race, but I don't remember what that name is.
The last thing I remember is the father trying to explain the human race to some sort of record keeper. This is where I think this race is from another world, dimension, or planet, because I feel like this was taking place during an exodus of these people into earth. The man asks the father the name of the human god and he tells him the name is just "God," and the man replies "but that's like calling a cat 'cat', it's not a name, it's a title!" or something to that effect.