Characters of Note: Wim Brink

On my non-fiction blog... how-to fiction blog? My non-fiction blog about fiction? Whatever, on To Publish Or Not To I review self-published fiction. Every now and again I run into characters that I think are worth letting the rest of the world know about, so...

Say hello to Wim Brink. Wim's the main character in The Dancer's Spell.

He's a unique character, hard to like, but deeply interesting. The Dancer's Spell is set in 1905 as Mata-Hari-mania overtakes Europe. Wim is a devout man, devoted to his family, his church, his job, and entrenched in a stiff 1870s Victorian mind-set. He's a bit of a prig, honestly. And he's very much not the sort of character that wanders into most modern fiction.

I suppose what intrigues me about him is the pitch-perfect voice. He's so repressed and uncomfortable in his own skin, and in relation to the world around him, but he makes no apologies for it. He's an historical character in a piece of historical fiction who seems almost untouched by modern sensibilities. It's rare to see that, most authors seem to be tempted to form their characters into modern molds to make them more appealing to their readers, and rarer yet for that character to be a protagonist.   

So, I don't exactly like Wim, he's not someone I want to hang out with, but I think he is a great example of an author doing a very good job of making a living breathing man out of an idea, and better yet, staying true to the identity and times of that idea.

If you'd like to see the full book review, it's here.