This new book written by Anita Daher, Peanut Butter and Pandemonium, a second book following Peanut Butter and Chaos, we read about Sam's exploration of his new fantasy world rooted Nordic mythology.
By Anita Daher
A through-line for The Mythic Adventures of Samuel Templeton, emphasized especially in the first book, Peanut Butter and Chaos, is that “magic” is simply truths we cannot yet explain. But that isn’t to say we shouldn’t try. Through exploration, imagination, and science, we’ll get there. Just as during long ago times populations may have considered astronomical events, magnets, and mirages as magical, humans will continue to poke and learn and suppose and study each curiosity until we land on theories and eventual proofs. Quantum physics leads the way in many of these explorations, often made publicly palatable through the imaginings of writers and movie makers. Curiosity did not kill the cat. It is still very much in a box, daring us to look closer and/or dream bigger.
In this second of the series, Peanut Butter and Pandemonium, Sam’s world expands in a quantum way into what we would consider fantasy but is rooted in Nordic myth. Perhaps one day we will call it magic realism. I believe the origins of Nordic myth can be found within real history and the people who lived it. More on that another time.
In this story, following his arrival on Goat Loops within the Niff Realm, (inspired by the mythological Niflheim), Sam interacts with various individuals drawn from Nordic mythology, but twisted. Writing Sam’s adventures has been a form of play for this author. I respect certain fantasy tropes but also take liberties, particularly in terms of our—and certainly Sam’s—mythological heroes.
Like most writers of fiction, my stories are made up but influenced by life and living. Four books ago, after a chance conversation with a photographer (who turned out to be a cousin, in that Western Icelandic way), I began to delve more deeply into my Icelandic family background.
I joined the online Icelandic Roots Database, and there discovered records and stories of my family going all the way back to the early kings of Norway. Within those records are accounts of farmers, priests, Vikings, and sorcerers. In specific ways, as Sam searches the Icelandic Roots Database within this series, his discoveries mirror my own. In an author’s note at the end of the book I explain the inspiration behind my bad-dude sorcerer, Loft. No spoilers here (yet), other than to say that this sorcerer connection is one of two, and that the second will be more deeply explored as the series continues.