ICON by Georgia Briggs

A Review by Perrin Lovett

Today, my friends, we owe a debt of gratitude to the wonderful Matushka Emma Cazabonne for recommending I read a relatively new novel by a talented young Southern author. (Thanks, Emma!) The book is a new take on an old story, or, rather, an old and persistent threat to civilizational states, especially those grounded in Christianity. It is a somewhat disturbing look at an alternative contemporary or near-future Alabama and America. 

(Cover and interior artwork by the author.)

*Briggs, Georgia, Icon, Chesterton: Ancient Faith Publishing, 2017.

Icon, by Alabama author Georgia Briggs, is a stirring dystopian story told from an explicitly Orthodox Christian point of view. Briggs succeeds brilliantly in melding her faith with her genre. If I am not mistaken, this was her first novel, ergo, her success is an amazing achievement and a great testament to her ability. Icon is available from the Ancient Faith Store and Amazon. Also, please visit Briggs at her website. 

In Icon, young Euphrosyne learns that an innocent mistake at school quickly leads to death, oppression, and terror. Some might find the plot initially confusing, especially since it unfolds in the new and grand “Era of Tolerance”. However, others will wisely recall that tolerance was one of the chief sins of King Jeroboam. 

Euphrosyne, her family, and her friends find themselves living in an occupied state that tolerates everything … except Christianity. Clinging to tradition in this new age results in brutal and relentless intolerance. Briggs does a fine and fascinating job portraying how the repression transpires and how it affects those caught in the crosshairs. That she does this so convincingly from the primary perspective of a twelve-year-old girl is very impressive. But the choice of Euphrosyne’s eyes should not necessarily be surprising because, while all people suffer under tyranny, perhaps none are so afflicted as children. The real world gives us constant, daily reminders of that sad fact for those willing to see them.

I will leave the hows and whys behind the rise of Brigg’s draconic fool’s paradise for the discovery of the reader—and the reader will thoroughly enjoy the journey of revelation. Yet I will say I thought Briggs’s moniker for those in control of the new Alabama and new America was a poignant bit of genius. She took an old and famous name from America’s nineteenth-century transcendent enlightenment and progressed it forward to a fanciful but very natural and plausible zenith.

Plausibility. Interestingly, Briggs wrote Icon in 2017, eight years before I read it. Those eight years have been packed with incidents and trends that should have dropped the veils or blinders from many American and Western eyes. In short, only the truly blind (or the complicit) do not, at this point in our history, begin to at least suspect that something has gone very wrong. A century before Briggs’s pen crafted her tale so artfully, J.B. Bury was busy lauding what he thought were the then-present achievements of the Enlightenment and the coming golden age of free thinking and tolerance, the triumph over Christianity and tradition. See A History of Freedom of Thought (1913). As the entirety of the Enlightenment was a lie and a rank inversion, things didn’t work out exactly as promised. Instead of a peaceful, happy Shangri-la, today’s America sees Christians beaten and imprisoned for praying in public. America openly and even proudly supports, funds, and participates in war and genocide against multiple parties of the innocent around the world, a sizeable portion of them Christians. It is not too far a stretch, certainly within fiction, to foresee an America that openly exterminates Christians.

In addition to a moving, alarming story of warning, Briggs also provides an antidote. At certain points in Icon, particularly at the end, I found myself silently hoping for stern physical retaliation from the oppressed or liberating action from outside parties. I will divulge that as the Orthodox Believers of Alabama are hunted, Russian Spetsnaz troops do not arrive to save the day. But Briggs had a far better idea. Someone does show up at the end, and there is no earthly substitute for the deliverance and compassion he brings to Euphrosyne. It is a miracle in a book full of miracles. Just when all feels lost, the young protagonist wins the ultimate fight, via her Christian faith and her acknowledged (if not so-named) eschatological optimism. “[Y]ou lived well,” she is told. Indeed, she survives in glory and learns the true meaning behind Jesus’s reassurance when He said, “If the world hate you, know ye, that it hath hated Me before you. …[B]ut I have chosen you out of the world…” John 15:18-19. 

Briggs salvages eternal beauty out of tragedy and perfidious horror. Her plot, purpose, scenes, and settings are vivid, valid, and believable. Her characters bring to life the best and worst of human behavior and capability. As for the good potential within Christians, she delivers with convincing eloquence stern adherents to our faith who are, despite all else, joyous, reflective, defiant, zealous, and selfless. For a shorter work, and one marketed for the young adult audience, the spiritual lessons within Icon are astounding. Oh, and THE icon is as much a character, as much a hero as he is a title! 

For all these reasons, and for those the reader will find beneath the cover, I happily recommend Icon by Georgia Briggs. I also recommend buying a few extra copies to give as gifts to children, grandchildren, students, parish friends, neighbors, or any other young people the reader might know and care about. Help spread the word. 

Deo vindice.

BONUS! When I submitted the review to Geopolitika, https://www.geopolitika.ru/en/article/icon-georgia-briggs, I was informed that ICON Is already available in Russia, and that it won the Enlightenment book prize. See this excellent interview with the author [RUS].