MUSCLE MEMORY AS MAGIC

Good God, why am I telling you all this?” That's the last line in Erwin E. Castillo’s debut novel The Firewalkers that was first released in 1992 by Anvil Publishing Inc. I failed to attend that historic launch, a merry affair as I heard, with Fernando Poe Jr. as the premier guest, sparking talk that the book would be turned into a classic action film. Reading the masterpiece once I returned from abroad, I recall imagining Ronnie Poe as the taciturn hero.

- kripotkin ALFRED A. YUSON

That line, however, actually ended Castillo’s long story, “The Watch of La Diane,” written much earlier, in 1972, but which has been the companion narrative to the Firewalkers novella. That early, the preceding sentence for that story somehow established it, so presciently indeed, as the postlude in what the author has claimed as “intertwined narratives.”

"And I was growing, a burr of static, a dizzying height of fire, right into my mouth with its seataste, and when I blew it was a bramble of lightning, endless as the sea, endless as China, exploding in my eyes.”

It’s easy to see that Castillo's highly heralded prose, elegantly muscular and privileged with memorable, powerful details that marry magic and realism, has given him the right to dance with time zones. Exposition has always been transformed into rhythmic song, dialogue into lessons on the bravery of characters’ memories, and sleight-of-hand into a solid skill that mesmerizes with its command of illusion.

All these years, fellow writers have wished to be entertained further by Castillo’s succeeding works. We might not have to wait much longer,

For now, we have Mara Coson and Exploding Galaxies Books to thank for publishing “lost classics” of Philippine fiction—Wilfrido Nolledo’s But for the Lovers and Linda Ty-Casper’s The ThreeCornered Sun. The 2025 reprint of The Firewalkers is the third in that exalted series.

Cavite of 1913 provides the historic setting.

“Like many of the chieftains of the Revolution, before they were warlords they were shamans, though looking at them now you could scarce believe they could will themselves into creatures of splendor, that they could pass unsinged through flames.”

The young hero is championed as an early warrior, exemplary in hand-to-hand combat.