Joshua Wise

No one was asking for a collection of academic theological essays comparing Christianity to the fantasy world of The Elder Scrolls video game series (still less my review of it), but Past the Sky's Rim nevertheless proves to have some worth for the few strays who will stumble across it. The Elder Scrolls – particularly in its three modern-era games Morrowind, Oblivion and Skyrim – has some of the most developed worldbuilding in fantasy, and crucially it also has a well-developed, explicit theology (pg. xii). It is this which the essays of Past the Sky's Rim primarily concern themselves with, and though I would have liked more cultural analysis along the lines of the observation that our post-Christian Western world is underpinned by Christian assumptions (pg. 16) and this is reflected in our storytelling, it is easy to see why the book's contributors trod the path they did.

It is striking to be reminded that the gods of Tamriel – the Aedra and the Daedra and everything else – are not throwaway names but show considerable depth of thought on the part of their creators. The lore stands up under the academic scrutiny of the book's contributors. Nor is Past the Sky's Rim a cheap attempt to make Christianity 'cool' by appealing to gamers. It lays down its marker early on, rejecting the easy comparison between the Christian Trinity and Morrowind's Tribunal (pg. 26). Instead, the book makes a number of astute remarks on the nuances of The Elder Scrolls' world, and in particular the commentary on the story of Nerevar at Red Mountain shows that the lore is often quite sophisticated.

It's hard to know who the book is for: gamers will be put off by the overly-dry academic noodling (though only the final two essays jump the shark on this) and I'm not convinced by the authors' framing argument that the comparison to The Elder Scrolls shines light on the study of Christianity. The discussion of Christian theology is very dry and, if anything, its only insight is an unintentional one. You see, the opportunity to lose yourself in the world of The Elder Scrolls is one of the great joys of modern fiction. "Those of us who have spent hours (more than we'd like to admit) wandering the frozen lands of Skyrim, or the ashy wastes of Vvardenfell can attest to the deep longing inside us. We want to go there; we've tasted what it means to 'live another life in another world' and want to with a powerful desperation. And this, I suspect, 'is the love of God'" (pg. 130). But aside from this one allusion to the anticipatory thrill of Heaven (in what is the book's finest essay), Past the Sky's Rim does not delve into the transcendental nature of the series' storytelling, or storytelling in general. Theology is dry and uninspiring largely because it abstracts itself from Christianity's instinctive storytelling roots, and The Elder Scrolls comparison throws this into relief.… (més)