Timothy Stoner

THE PALADINS

Posted on 01. Jul, 2009 by Tim Stoner in Blog, Books, The Paladins

The Paladins is my first book. I tell about my intense struggle to write it and while writing it, in my second book, The God Who Smokes. At the time I never suspected I had a creative bone in my body. I was a lawyer after all. But, through the process I slowly discovered this other more real self. It wound up freeing me as I wrote this story about freeing others.

It is a fantasy thriller aimed at those in their late teens and early twenties, though middle age housewives became its biggest fans. It combines the thoughtfulness of the Chronicles of Narnia and the non-stop action of Perreti’s Piercing the Darkness. While the story addresses issues of anger, forgiveness and alienation, and is carried along by danger and romance it has much more on its mind. It is a fantasy novel which serves also as a spiritual warfare allegory.

It has four main characters, Jotham and Abe Lewis, and Carisa and Bart Crayford, all in their late teens. Mr. Crayford is a pastor. Jotham’s father, an alcoholic, abandoned his family years earlier. As a result, Jotham struggles with rage, rejection and terrifying, chronic nightmares.

Pastor Crayford and Jotham have an encounter with Trent, a young man who is threatening suicide and who they are unaware is also demonized. This experience exposes their weakness and inability to confront the forces of darkness. Inside an abandoned mansion, the youths find an incriminating video and, while fleeing from its producer hide inside an underground tunnel and are catapulted into another world.

Issatar is a land of ancient warrior priests who’ve forgotten the art of battle having been duped into signing a peace treaty with Ghnostar, the two-headed dragon. At King Justar’s castle they are commissioned as Paladins to conquer four fortresses and deliver the captives. Each receives a gift and a weapon which they must learn to use to defeat their enemies and scripts which give daily instructions for battle.

After several harrowing campaigns, the Paladins must confront Ghnostar in a battle to the death. At its conclusion Jotham comes face to face with the writhing oak which has terrified him in his recurring nightmares and must undergo an ordeal of judgment and reward at King Justar’s hand. When the four return to the “real” world they again have a confrontation with the demons which have taken possession of their friend Trent.

If The Paladins has a hidden agenda, it is to help “stir up” an aggressive sense of destiny and calling and stimulate a desire to obtain Christ’s praise, honor, i.e. “glory” when He is revealed. My hope in writing this story is that those convictions that motivated past martyrs of the faith, might be used to do so again.

This book is available by contacting me directly. It’s a long story, but all the rights have reverted to me. It can’t be found on Amazon, but can be found here.  

Tags: demons, martyrs, spiritual warfare