Review - Many Dimensions

Many Dimensions by Charles Walter Stansby Williams

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Charles Williams was a contemporary of Lewis and Tolkien, and a member of the Inklings. His stories also deal with the fantastic, but they tend to take place in our world and have spiritual or ethical themes.

Many Dimensions is about a mysterious stone that has been wrongfully taken from the Persian Empire and is said to have belonged to King Suleiman (Solomon) in ancient times.

Lord Arglay, the Chief Justice of Britain, and his secretary Chloe Burnett try to understand the powers of the stone as they act to prevent its use for the wrong reasons.

The stone seems to be a metaphor for God in the story, but also for power in general--how different people seek to use and misuse it. Ultimately, only those who are willing not to use it for themselves at all, but to submit to its own unknown purposes are able to fully experience it.

I can't say I really "got" or liked the ending as much, but the writing was rich and interesting and the philosophical themes challenging. As much as I liked the theme, though, I felt like the story served too much as a vehicle for it and would have liked it to be more integrated.

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