CS Lewis meets the FROSTBORN

I got an email from a reader this week asking if a specific scene in FROSTBORN: EXCALIBUR was inspired by a scene from CS Lewis’s THE GREAT DIVORCE.

I had to congratulate the eagle-eyed reader, because he was right!

The specific scene in FROSTBORN: EXCALIBUR (when you read it you’ll know the one) was inspired by this scene in CS Lewis’s THE GREAT DIVORCE when the narrator encounters a man who met Napoleon Bonaparte in purgatory:

‘Did they see Napoleon?’

‘That’s right. They went up and looked through one of the windows. Napoleon was there all right.’

‘What was he doing?’

‘Walking up and down—up and down all the time— left-right, left-right—never stopping for a moment. The two chaps watched him for about a year and he never rested. And muttering to himself all the time. “It was Soult’s fault. It was Ney’s fault. It was Josephine’s fault. It was the fault of the Russians. It was the fault of the English.” Like that all the time. Never stopped for a moment…’

-JM