Trajan’s Arch – Magical and Deep

Have you ever been inspired by something you read and wanted to create a world that is similar but unique to you at the same time? Michael William’s Trajan’s Arch is a tribute to the Lord of the Rings as well as what it takes to be a writer. Filled with beautiful prose and haunting ideas that will not leave you for a long time, Trajan’s Arch is a masterpiece.

Here is the synopsis:

Gabriel Rackett stands at the threshold of middle age. He lives north of Chicago and teaches at a small community college. He has written one novel and has no prospects of writing another, his powers stagnated by drink and loss. Into his possession comes a manuscript, written by a childhood friend and neighbor, which ignites his memory and takes him back to his mysterious mentor and the ghosts that haunted his own coming of age. Now, at the ebb of his resources, Gabriel returns to his old haunts through a series of fantastic stories spilling dangerously off the page–tales that will preoccupy and pursue him back to their dark and secret sources.

A great story that is part of a broader, visionary literary project from Michael Williams, Trajan’s Arch will bring you a unique and enjoyable reading experience!

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The Short Take – From Goodreads

This my first book by Michael Williams and it was quite an interesting read. Gabriel is a teenage boy when Trajan Bell, a middle aged man, moves in next door to take care of his mother. Gabriel and his friends, Del and Joey, are curious about Trajan, and part of the story is the changes that happen in the boys’ lives since Trajan’s arrival. Gabriel makes friends with him and Trajan opens a door into imagination that Gabriel did not have access to before. Being a huge fan of Lord of the Rings and with the doors to his imagination open, Gabriel starts to build his own world of Dacia, inhabited by dwarves, elves and ghosts. What follows is a look at Gabriel’s career as a writer and as a father, the effect that Trajan had on Gabriel and the things that he believed. There are many ghosts in this story – all in Gabriel’s mind, some from his memories and some of his imaginations.

The plot sometimes feels like a slow one, fragmented by Gabriel’s letters to his ex-wife, the mother of his child, stories that Trajan wrote (and later Gabriel finished) as well as psychologist notes from sessions with Gabriel’s son, Dominic. Michael has a way of describing imagination and situations in life that make the book quite captivating. 

What I have described does not even scratch the surface of what goes on. And if you really want to understand Trajan’s Arch, get ready to take some good notes while reading this book. I am sure there will be much that you will gain out of it.

I collected so many quotes from it, which led to many more ideas and thoughts. I found that as I read, I started to think about the process of writing fiction, the effort that authors put into it, and the ways of coming up with a story. At the end, it felt like this was a story about writing a story while reading other people’s stories, a master piece in itself.

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The Long Take – Themes for Thought

Trajan’s Arch is an immersive and enthralling experience in magical realism and mythic fiction. Sometimes, every day objects seem magical and creepy at the same time. The following are my two main take-away from the book. There are many more lines of thoughts that I could pursue from Trajan’s Arch but I choose to focus on these for now.

On Writing and Imagination

Trajan took Gabriel in the forest for hunting one time where they saw an owl. But Trajan told Gabriel to not think it was an owl. Instead, let his imagination show him what it is. That was an important lesson that stayed with Gabriel throughout this life, one he used wherever he could apply it. There is another scene when Gabriel is working on Dacia and he looks at his map of the world that he has created and locates a place in there that he wants to write about. He chose the setting and then looked deeper to see what was happening there.

Both of these together were the highlights of my reading of this book because for the first, someone seemed to have put words to the art of writing based on a map. I wondered if Tolkien had the same process for his books and if George Martin follows the map in a similar way. I actually remembered that in an interview with The Guardian, Martin talks about the process of writing The Winds of Winter, the next chapter in the Fire and Ice books.

“The Winds of Winter is not so much a novel as a dozen novels, each with a different protagonist, each having a different cast of supporting players and antagonists and allies and lovers around them, and all of these weaving together in an extremely complex fashion. So it’s very, very challenging….”
Martin has charts to help him keep track of his vast cast, and “lots of pieces of paper with scribbling all over them”.

The Guardian

There is a reason why “let your imagination fly” exists. 🙂 Now what if those players were ghosts of your imagination?

On Ghosts and Connections

Gabriel was haunted by ghosts of his past and his imagination but in the midst of everything, he is a researcher. When Trajan first walks into his life and tells him that he is named after an emperor, Gabriel searches him out in his encyclopedia. He is always making connections between the life of Trajan the Emperor and Trajan, the neighbor. In some ways, you can almost say that he is trying to reconcile the life of Trajan of the past and the present. There are also retrospective elements within the story where Gabriel compares himself to his childhood – again ghosts.

Don’t worry, there are other ghosts there as well.

Some of them, about letting go of the past.

Once you imagine it, the ghosts will come, Gabriel. And you can face ’em, embrace ’em, and tell ’em goodbye. It’s a process. You imagine your way out of it.

XVIII in Trajan’s Arch

And that links ghosts back to imagination. They need the permission to exist – for one to not put words into their form and just accept them as they are. Acceptance and letting go, together. And then, when it feels right, write it all down.

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I am thankful to the author for making this book available to me as part of this blog tour, in exchange for an honest review. As I read, I thought at times that now I feel I almost have the tools to write my own story. I just need to find my ghosts.

Stay tuned for an exclusive interview with Michael Williams himself (available on the 19th), as part of the Trajan’s Arch book tour! 

** Trajan’s Arch is now out in stores so get a copy and let me know what you think! Let’s have a book-discussion! **

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Trajan’s Arch is a stand alone novel, part of the City Quartet. The other books are Vine, Dominic’s Ghosts and Tattered Men.

Cover image: Photo by Yeshi Kangrang on Unsplash