Jepp, Who Defied the Stars - a Review

For centuries, human beings have disagreed about our destinies. Is the world only chaos, full of random choices, yet free ones? Is there freedom? Or are we bound to a fate written before our birth, written in a book that cannot be changed? Is God in control – or are we in control – or both?

 

That’s the question tackled in Katherine Marsh’s novel, Jepp, Who Defied the Stars. As the years have passed, I’ve grown less interested in YA fiction (though I continue to write it), but when I saw the title on a library shelf, it sounded too promising to pass up. Also, I love unlikely heroes, and Jepp seems certainly, ha, short, on the heroic potential.

 A teenage dwarf living in 16^th Century Europe, Jepp is immediately a distinct and unique voice, mixing old-fashioned, somewhat archaic language with simple, clear thinking. Living in the small town of Astraveld, he is raised to believe the stars decree a man’s fate. In this, he is similar to the author, who was raised in a family that focused strongly on astrology. But Jepp mixes the astrology with Christianity, and frequently uses Biblical allusions, something refreshing in a 21^st Century novel.

 

“There is no luck,” [Don] confided. “There are only the stars, Jepp. That is where our fortune or lack of it resides.

“Not with God?”

“God made the stars….But it is the celestial bodies that make us.”

A Christian Hobbit?

Martin Freeman as Bilbo

Over the years, I've had to argue in the favor of The Lord of the Rings as a Christian epic. At first, as a kid, I took it at face value and said, "Look, it's just a fun adventure story." But with the increase of spiritual maturity, I've seen plain Christian themes in the Rings books, and even in the atheist-produced movies. Re-reading the books for the first time in years, God has shown me things I missed for years - the overt themes of humility, trust, providence, love, mercy, hope, and heaven are hard to miss, but then, I always read Rings for the fantasy stuff. Dark Lords, battles, elves, and dwarves were much more interesting to my twelve-year-old, adventure-starved self even when couched in lessons on moral relativism and absolute truth. As a kid, I knew there was some sort of great moral goodness in these books I loved, but I wasn't old enough to understand it. Now, it's like reading them for the first time, and I'm savoring the experience. But I digress. When talking Tolkien, this is prone to happen.