Reading Journal 2024: The God of Endings

Reading Journal 2024: The God of Endings

Author: Jacqueline Holland

Didn’t love the non-linear approach, but for every moment I found myself wavering there was an encounter with a page, a plot turn, a section, a conversation that grabbed me and pulled me right back in. It is those moments of beautiful and inspired prose that govern the larger narrative, providing a powerful reflection on the nature of the forces of life and death. Yes, it is in its own way a horror story about a vampire. But this is a long ways from your atypical stories of vampires. This is, at its heart, an essential human drama facing down some of the hard questions of human existence.

Here are portions of the book that, for me, outline and shed light on the meta-narrative that resonated for me:

“They aren’t just for me, you know- the visions. I see, on occasion, what is always there is always true. It’s all there right now: this world the lower branches of a beautiful, fruiting tree, and the perfect glory of God filtering down through the branches, radiant creatuers filling the air, everything singing with joy, and all of it pulling us up, me and you, into love.”

He laughed softely, threw a twig into the fire. ‘I used to never speak of it. I knew it made me sound like a madman. But then, it stopped mattering. People thought I was mad no matter what, so I stopped hiding it. I began just to offer it, to say “the glory and the love that surrounds you, that you breathe in with every braeth, it’s there, if you want it. ‘ What I see is yours as much as it is mine– if you want it…. I have my God. I have my painting. I have my love. I have the world. It’s too much goodness.”
– excerpt from Jacqueline Holland’s The God of Endings

“Like you, I have sensed the pursuit of both Czernobog and Belobog for most of my life– not singly, but as one. I have heard and seen strange and terrifying and wondrous things, just as it seems you have, but I have noticed a pattern– and this is a conclusion, mind you, so place no blind trust in it– but the pattern I have seen is that the Emptier must empty before the Filler can fill, a space must be cleared for a gift.”

“… We children do not like emptying, clearing. We do not want Czernobog’s darkness, only Belobog’s light. Even us very old children. We forget that light, without shadow or variation, is blinding. We malign and fear and slander the Emptier, Czernobog, the Dark One, the god of endings. Perhaps we would do well to wait, like children learning patience, learning trust, and see what fills the space he clears, what light breaks into his darkness.”
– excerpt from Jacqueline Holland’s The God of Endings

“One short sleep past,” reads the line in the stone, “we wake eternally. And Death shall be no more. Death, thou shalt die.”
We wake eternally.
Vano was right, as always. A new way, a gift I could never foresee. And his beloved spirit- I can feel iit near me now like a hand in mine, a gentle midwife, speaking reassurances and coaxing the trembling laborer through the loss of all that was and the birth of the unimaginable.”
– excerpt from Jacqueline Holland’s The God of Endings