The Strange Nighttime Journey of Father Stephen Marlowe by Ambrose Stolliker

Muddy Paws Press, 2022

ISBN: 9788986056906

Available: Paperback, Kindle edition (Amazon.com)

The basic plot device is one readers have seen before: a preacher who has lost his faith goes on a journey and faces hardships while attempting to regain his spirituality.  Why read this one?  It’s a quick-paced story that keeps the reader engaged, and shows good imagination.  Describing it as “strange” doesn’t do justice to Father Marlowe’s journey: some parts of it are straight off the clouds in Cuckoo Land.  It’s the creativity that pushes the book to success, and it’s got plenty of it.

Father Marlowe has good reason for his lack of faith: his brother (also a priest) killed himself, and Marlowe feels somewhat responsible.  As the book explains later, he may have some justification for feeling that way.

Father Marlowe goes to talk to a priest who specializes in faithless preachers, and that’s where his journey into strangeness starts.  The only literary equivalent for his odyssey that comes to mind is Alice in Wonderland, although Father Marlowe falls through a floor instead of down a rabbit-hole.  No world of smoking caterpillars and vanishing cats for the Father Marlowe, though: he winds up in the ocean of the Well of Lost Souls and must journey to the Black Fortress That Sees, in the land of A’ch’Ba’Hu.  (everybody got all that?)  His journey for faith, and his brother’s soul, takes him across all types of terrain, through many hardships, and has quite the collection of eclectic characters: some helpful, some not.  Does he succeed?  Maybe, maybe not… you’ll have to read it to find out.

This is written well enough that it’s a page-flipper. It’s got good pacing, and makes you feel for the character.  By partway through, you’ll be wondering how much poor Father Marlowe can handle before he throws in the cassock.  He’s a sympathetic enough character to get the readers on his side.

But the real star of the story is the journey itself, and what the Land of Lost Souls holds for the intrepid priest.  Flying boats captained by midgets with wings, demons that have full human bodies as feet, and a really weird take on Charon the boatman, among other things.  The journey becomes a little more “normal” (relatively speaking) towards the end, but it’s engrossing enough to keep the reader zipping through it.

There’s also a little hook at the end that leaves room for a sequel, and based on this book, most readers would want to continue the Nighttime Journey.   The only area that maybe could have used a bit more bulk were the flashback sections about Father Marlowe and his brother growing up.  There are enough of them to explain the story, but more would have been nice.  They were engrossing parts, and it felt like there was plenty more narrative to be mined in that section.

Bottom line, The Nighttime Journey is a well-written book that scores high on the creativity scale.  Most readers should enjoy this one, regardless of their feelings on theology.  Recommended.

Reviewed by Murray Samuelson