Book Description
An unforgettable first novel about a young boy growing up in rural Ireland, in the shadow of a dark secret.
Customer Reviews:
Truth and Beauty.......2006-05-07
As the New York Times and The Washington Post suggest, this is, indeed, a beautiful, heartbreaking tale in which the lives of real people in difficult circumstances are explored. This may, truly, be depressing to readers who have never had to endure hardship or poverty or experience violence in their lives but O'Malley has a need to explore people whose lives aren't as comfortable as ours, people who endure and succeed despite the hard choices that they must make-this seems such an integral and necessary function of the human condition and of living and O'Malley captures this fully. Perhaps those readers (I'm amazed by the reviewer who critiques the book without even finishing it?) who have never had to experience hardship or never been witness to it are merely more complacent than some of us and desire fictions that offer a safe, alternative perspective to this reality. That is entirely their choice. Myself, I eagerly await O'Malley's next work!
Semantics.......2006-04-20
A number of reader reviews have used the word "heartbreaking" to describe this book. I have not finished reading it yet, but I'm not sure about "heartbreaking": I'm finding it downright depressing. The writing is magnificent: O'Malley's powers of description are formidable - darkly poetic and even magisterial. But the gloom is relentless. In the hope that it will begin to soar as it reaches its resolution I'll persevere.
Chuig an mé mhuinta scafóideach .......2006-03-16
In the Province of Saints is an exquisitely written book that reveals the real Ireland that many of us Irish experienced in the years before the Celtic Tiger. It's too bad that the reviewer, Seaghaan Mar, cannot see past his petty prejudices to truly read and appreciate this beautifully crafted book. Perhaps he was reading a book other than this one? It is clear from his comments that he has no real understanding of the Irish or of our experiences (hardly folklore). O'Malley's characters are rich and fully realized, and every moment of rural life is captured with such precision and authenticity that one feels the author's love and respect for these people. There is darkness here and the hardships are those that many Irish have experienced, but this does nothing to dim this distinct vision nor does it lessen the worth and meaning of such hardships. O'Malley writes without a shred of self-pity or sentimentality and this is a testament to his maturity, and that in the very dark yet very real moments of these character's lives O'Malley casts light, tenderness, and hope. He shows us all the darkness so that we may see the light, something every person (Irish or otherwise) can understand. With In the Province of Saints, O'Malley reveals his authority and command as a writer, a writer mature beyond his years, and already, it seems, masterful in the form. No wonder Booklist has chosen this book as one of the ten best first books of 2005 and the New York Public Library has picked it as one of the best twenty five books from last year, in their Books to Remember for 2005.
I look forward to reading more from this promising writer.
Yerra, Be-Jaysus, not another one of the lot.......2006-03-09
Another dreadful sceal on mBealoideas e seo (a story from the folklore this is)about the horrors of Loife in Oul' Oireland, the bogs, mud, eternal rain, crucified mothers, drunken, good-fer-nothin' Da's, poverty so crushing it could be called Gaelic, emotional poverty so deep it's a wonder everyone doesn't commit suicide. Except they are Catholic, with all of those penitential burdens. They just run off--to Sasana, Boston. This story needs Myles na gCopalin to do it justice. Are any people as deeply self-deprecating as the Irish? Are they soon to be done with this penitential flogging of themselves in books and go back to ascending Croagh Patrick barefoot? My relatives came out of County Galway, Irish speaking, long ago and had as much good as bad to say about the Old Country. I wish this guy, who can write, at least in short bursts, would lend his story-telling more balance.
That said, he has promise when he matures.
A brilliant story, richly told.......2005-12-14
Thomas O'Malley's In the Province of Saints is a novel to savor. It tells the story of Michael McDonagh, a young boy in a poor, broken family rural Ireland in the late 1970s, from the time he is 9 or 10 until he is 13 or 14. The novel is told in heartbreakingly beautiful prose that is completely absorbing; as a reader, you will feel you are there, in Michael's skin, watching the clouds brood on the horizon and smelling the pigs in the yard.
The novel concerns Michael's confrontation and struggle with, and ultimately his understanding of his father's repeated abandonment of his mother and his family, first through his philandering and later through his departure for America; his mother's growing illness and imminent death; Michael's own sexuality; and finally, his sense of responsibility for his family and for himself. This is a world in which right and wrong, historically spelled out by the church, social hierarchy and the family, are ostensibly black and white. But in the late 20th Century, it is a world in which right and wrong are often reversed, and in which survival and even salvation depend upon violating traditional boundaries. Thus, we see, time and again, a cycle of transgression, punishment, penitence and redemption that Michael, his father, other members of his family and those around him not only endure but embrace both to get along day to day and to grow beyond their circumstances. For example, we see Michael at the age of 9 or 10, stealing eggs and bread from the neighbors because the family is in arrears with the dairy man. His mother discovers his wrong, and slaps his face in punishment, but the boy stands fast, and despite her rebuke, the mother keeps the stolen food. The scene is rich in moral ambiguity and the struggle of both characters to find what is right. Much later in the novel, this transgression is echoed by Michael's blatant vandalism of a neighbor's shed -- payback for the neighbor's exaction of penitence from Michael's father. The spiral goes on, with Michael eventually witnessing the ultimate transgression by others, which places him in the position of deciding whether to step into the role of judge and mete out punishment or to take another path.
The story is both compelling and moving. One of O'Malley's many great accomplishments in this novel is a portrayal of a land and characters that is panoramic in scope -- with respect to both the exterior and interior landscapes. Likewise, young Michael's growth from a boy to a young man is meticulously, yet subtly drawn, even down to the language, which early on seems deliberately (and rightly) hesitant and tentative, but which becomes bolder and more forceful as Michael matures.
This is a novel that will engage you completely, that will absorb you with the richness of its language and that will endear you to its noble, fallible characters.
Customer Reviews:
eclectic .......2006-08-31
From an objective standpoint, this is a good collection, but for some reason ... reading it was not pleasurable. There's a lovely story by Isak Dinesen, but nothing else haunted me. It may be your cup of tea though.
International Lightning Bottled Up.......2003-12-08
~~It's a great book to have. You can read it on the subway and chew on a few stories in one transit, or just scan the beginnings and look for what catches your eye, or you can curl up on a rainy day and devour the whole book. You can consider this book an appetizer to an entree of international literature. It whets the palate. There are some very good writers, from many cultures, and writing in many languages, with many types of stories. Rarely can you find such a wide range of talent in one book. There¡¯s Argentine Julio Cortazar¡¯s zany surrealism, Margaret Atwood of Canada with her bizarrely constructed feminist romance deconstruction, and Krishnan Varma of India with an exotic tale of poverty. Each of these stories is immensely different but all are captivating. Most stories are marvelous; they have no wasted words yet come with tightly woven plots and compelling characters. These stories are a marvel to see and a must for anyone interested in fiction. It's incredible how much depth and diversity is possible in such a short space. Mark Twain once said "the difference between the right word and almost right word is the difference between lightning and the lightning bug." Here is lightning (and the bug?) bottled up.
Great for an aspiring writer.......2002-07-19
I used this for a class in creative writing. Anytime I got writers block I would read a few of the stories in Sudden Fiction. It didn't always help but all the stories are highly entertaining and from time to time the stories inspired me to pen up my own experiences in their voice or mine. All in all, whether you're using it seriously or not, you'll enjoy this book's short stories. There's a wide variety for all moods and writing styles. It'd be hard not to like at least some of the stories and if you're a writing student or pro I'd think this type of material would be essential for those lean times.
A fine and comprehensive anthology.......2002-07-17
This is priceless collection of very short stories from all over the world.In this cosmopolitan range of stories many known authors such as Gabriel Garcia Marquez,Julio Cortazar,Heinrich Boll,Nadine Gordimer and Mrozeck are joined by those we will come to know better later by reading their well crafted short short stories.
I have translated 37 of these collection into Farsi.The Farsi title is Dastan e Nagahan meaning Sudden Fiction.
Thanks to the talented authors of this anthology and its fine predecessors,Sudden Fiction and other titles like Flash Fiction and Sudden Fiction Continued.
I recommend the readers to buy this book and enjoy its taste in discovering a world wide scenery,multi cultural surprises and find new friends.
The stories are indeed perfect for bed time reading
A feast of short international fare.......2001-01-11
A great book for those with short attention spans, short story writers (or aspiring short story writers), and those who want to see the variety of short shorts available. These stories are short but they have a sharp impact on the reader. The Afternotes section provides extra information about the author, which is often not included in short story collections. It also provides interviews with the authors on their inspiration for the story of theirs included in this volume and occasional interviews with translators on how they set about getting the most accurate translation of the story.
Product Description
Winner of national fiction chapbook competition Seven short-short stories
Customer Reviews:
Slim but Fat.......2007-09-17
Shaphard's stories are thoughtful, quirky and touching and, at their best, worthy of inclusion alongside some of the major writers whose stories he has anthologised with James Thomas. I particularly liked the stories seen from a child's perspective.
Average customer rating:
- Kinds of value
- The most provocative book on Sade in years.
- The Divine Marquis re-evaluated.
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Sade: A Sudden Abyss
Annie Le Brun
Manufacturer: City Lights Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
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ASIN: 087286250X |
Book Description
The literary adventure of D.A.F. (1740-1814) is unique and paradoxical. He was widely read in the nineteenth century, but his books disappeared almost completely from circulation in the century. Meanwhile the exegesis of Sade poured from the presses of the Western world in a flood of words in which the writer, the novelist, and the exceptional pet disappeared.
In France today, J. J. Pauvert, who considers Sade "the greatest French writer," is publishing a new edition of the complete works with a new introduction by Annie Le Brun. Sade: A Sudden Abyss is the translation of this introduction, which shows Sade as the inventor of an entirely new language through which he fathoms human nature, desire, and relationships of power.
In this fresh and authoritative survey of Sade's work as a whole, Le Brun frees it from such critics as Bataille, Blanchot, Klossowski, and Barthes (who see Sade's language as a metaphor for history, society, or writing itself). She asks, Where is Sade himself in these texts? What exactly does Sade tell us? What is obscured when Sade's writing is placed in a "universe of discourse" rather than understood as a manifestation of a life spent in eleven prisons over twenty-seven years? Like a powerful laser beam, her reflections cut through two centuries of intellectual hide-and-seek and let Sade for the first time be seen and read in his own light.
Annie Le Brun is a French poet and literary theorist. Her books include Lachez tout, a critique of the French neofeminist movement; A distance; and Les chateaux de la subversion, a study of the Gothic tradition.
Customer Reviews:
Kinds of value.......2001-07-01
The difficulty of coming to a view of Sade is that he represents several things of widely different value. (1) As a man who routinely victimized people less powerful than himself, he deserves contempt. (2) To the extent that he suffered as a result of what he wrote, he deserves sympathy. (3) As a litmus test for intellectual freedom, he continues to challenge us today. (4) Sade's Crimes of Love, which includes a brief preface considering the history and theory of the novel, shows him to be a student of fiction and a practitioner who, though perhaps not of the first rank, can write entertaining stories; in this mode, he deserves respect.
Possibly taking for granted that the reader knows all about the first mode, and admiring him in the second and third, Annie Le Brun gives him passionate, perhaps excessive, praise in the fourth.
Le Brun presents Sade as driven to search for the truth, however politically incorrect, about human motives and human relations. He goes the Enlightenment one better: not content with his contemporaries' unmasking of the deceptions of religion, he proceeds to unmask their backstops in economics, convention, public opinion, ideology, law, and government.
In A Treatise of Human Nature (1739), Hume declares with straightforward good humor that reason is the servant of the passions and can never be anything else. Sade plays out the implications of seeing this, and those of refusing to see it: everything that happens in the human world is driven by the personal desires (acknowledged or disguised) of the people involved, plus chance--but we are surrounded by constant efforts to wrap veils of hypocrisy around this fact.
Sade is out to cut those veils away. He insists that we are a part of, not above, nature. He focuses on sex as the field of our most powerful, and most veiled, desires. Through literary means ranging from philosophical discourse to shock therapy, he wants to make us face the reality of the physical world (and the reality of our own wishes) and reject the high-sounding abstractions that issued, before Sade's eyes, in the free use of the guillotine. Le Brun notes that Sade opposed capital punishment, at considerable risk to his own head. (To suggest the kind of argument he might have made: when a government denies its citizens the right to kill but claims that right for itself, it is claiming to stand above the people--when in fact it is a creature of the people and its "moral authority" is only power, the combination of majority rule and force.)
For Le Brun, Sade's mission is to free us to face the facts of spontaneous, individual human desire and its fate in the world of nature. This drive to clarity makes him a worthy member of a tradition that includes Machiavelli, La Rochefoucauld, Nietzsche, Freud, Rimbaud, and the surrealists. We might also add Stanley Milgram, whose book Obedience to Authority shows how fragile is the veneer of enlightened morality in the life of everyday people.
Le Brun considers earlier critics of Sade, pointing out how they shy away from, or bury under "blind erudition," certain aspects of his work. She herself occasionally falls into obscurity, and the translation suffers a bit from lack of close proofreading. But these flaws are minor beside the surprises and insights that appear on nearly every page. The book makes a passionate, if not entirely convincing, case for Sade as one of the greatest French writers, one whose challenge those who want to live without veils must face. It gets five stars, not because it is necessarily right, but because it is the work of a writer for whom writing is life itself.
The most provocative book on Sade in years........1999-05-29
Annie Le Brun is clearly the most thoughtful and honest interpreter of the Marquis de Sade extant. Beyond all the other books written on Sade during these past several decades, SADE: A SUDDEN ABYSS not only provides a cogent vision of Sade, how he worked and why he wrote his many books and plays, but explains why we moderns have had such a difficult time in accepting him for what he expressed -- not what critics too often impune that he expressed. With Annie Le Brun we now have a vehicle to return to Sade and to read him, not so much without preconception, but by way of recognizing whatever preconceptions we throw up so as to obscure our enounter with him. The title to Le Brun's book is also precise to its intent -- to open up, for anyone who dares to read him thoroughly, the moral abyss of a world he attacked with such vehemence, erotism, irony and humor, and which remains our world. SADE: A SUDDEN ABYSS is book of intelligence and courage. If you are at all interested in Sade or, more generally, in the relationship of thought to the body, I urge you to read Annie Le Brun's SADE: A SUDDEN ABYSS.
The Divine Marquis re-evaluated........1997-01-15
Annie LeBrun, perhaps better known for being a
self-described hermaphrodite than a scholar, has provided
the sort of critical review which the Marquis de Sade and
his writings have not received since Guillaume Apollinaire
branded him "the divine Marquis." In recent years,
criticism about Sade has been limited to comments such as
"boring," "repetitive", and "predictable". Rather than
attempting to justify Sade to the critics who use such
subjective adjectives to dismiss Sade both as a writer and
philosopher, LeBrun ignores the critics and stakes out new,
although also subjective, territory of her own. It is
literary criticism with personality, a much-overlooked
genre, as she suggests new theories concerning Sade's
masterpiece _The 120 Days of Sodom_, and tries to look,
unflinchingly, into the abyss through the eyes of the
very, very human Marquis.
Average customer rating:
- Why suffering is neccassary
- One of the best writers of short stories in the world today
- This is a most excellent collection of short-stories....
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A Sudden Liberating Thought (Series B: English Translations of Works of Scandinavian Literature)
Kjell Askildsen
Manufacturer: Norvik Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
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ASIN: 1870041240 |
Customer Reviews:
Why suffering is neccassary.......2001-12-31
As any other writer, Askildsen is linked to many other authors. I've seen Kafka has been mentioned. One can also add Beckett, Raymond Carver, Robbe-Grillet, Claude Simon, Hemingway, Albert Camus and many more to that list.
I've learned norwegian mainly to read his books with his own direct words, which are translated to almost 20 languages now.
In Askildsens books, you won't even see a dark-brown color in the end of the tunnel. His characters are all, in one way or the other, physically or psychologically suffering. Love, Sex, Religion, Politics, everything is jilting. Bu they go on. And you go along with them.
And in the end, if you're trying hard enough, I think you'll get a deeper understanding of why suffering is neccessary.
One of the best writers of short stories in the world today.......1999-10-27
Askildsen may very well be one of the best writers of short stories alive today. His extremely consistent style brings you some of the most scary, and bitingly/bitterly funny, stories this side of Kafka. More people than those reading a Scandinavian language deserve to meet Askildsens bleak yet brilliant universe.
This is a most excellent collection of short-stories...........1998-05-23
This is a most excellent collection of short-stories where Askildsen writes in words what we all know about the psychological game of the everyday life. It is poshly hidden behind the most impressing author-skills I have encountered in a very long time. His style can very much be compared with Kafka's The Trial, at the same time there is resemblence with the first parts of Tolstoy's Anna Karenina. This is most complete short-story collection, full of innovative and elaborate characters, still highly with their feet on the ground. It is also full of sarcasm, and it will force you to smile. It is excellent for reading in groups. Feel free to contact me for more thorough information, or if you want to discuss the interpretations of the book:)! (excuse my english)
Average customer rating:
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Una duda razonable = A Sudden, Fearful Death (Punto de Lectura)
Anne Perry
Manufacturer: Suma de Letras Suma de Letras
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Mass Market Paperback
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ASIN: 8466308695 |
Book Description
In the Royal Free of London Hospital, death is an enemy; it is very unusual that somebody be assassinated. When the corpse of nurse Barrymore is discovered in a laundry basket, the police turn a blind eye towards Dr. Kristian Beck's probable guilt, just because he is a foreigner. The commission that directs the hospital orders the case to be investigated. As the investigation advances, everyone will begin to doubt the impartiality of justice.
Description in spanish: En el hospital Royal Free de Londres la muerte es el enemigo diario. Sin embargo, es menos usual que alguien pueda ser asesinado. Cuando descubren el cadáver de la enfermera Prudence Barrymore, una mujer agradable y de buena familia, en un cesto de la lavandería, la policía se obceca en demostrar que el doctor Kristian Beck es el culpable, sólo porque es extranjero.
La comisión que dirige el hospital encarga al detective William Monk que investigue el caso. Monk contará con la colaboración de sus colegas: la enfermera Hester Latterly, que conoció a la mujer asesinada, y el brillante abogado Oliver Rathbone, que actuará por parte de la defensa. A medida que la investigación avance, los tres empezarán a dudar de la imparcialidad de la justicia...
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Sudden Change
Wassim Sayadi
Manufacturer: Writers Club Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
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ASIN: 0595100899 |
Book Description
In Sudden Change, Wassim M Sayadi wrote stories with purpose and towering emotions. I created characters who reflect the incalculability of life. I chose endings that close like supernovas and leave you breathless. I went for texture, settings, lingering aroma, the juice-drenched fragrance of life. Some stories in this collection try to provide you with a hatchet to chip off the frozen wastes within us all, and do so benevolently. Others merely carry an echo of the unbreakable bonds between the triumphs and the tribulations of our lives and in these the hatchet slashes deeper, making no attempt at subtlety. Still others drop the hatchet altogether, and just want to amuse you.
Average customer rating:
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Sudden Impact: Unsafe Reading at Any Speed
Rick Lawler
Manufacturer: iUniverse
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
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ASIN: 1583485856 |
Book Description
Sudden Impact is a collection of 15 short stories. These are not your ordinary "slice-of-life" stories. They will knock your socks off. Firmly planted in the sub-genre of "dangerous fiction" author Rick Lawler takes the reader on one wild ride after another. Each story in this collection was written to shock, frighten, upset, or smack the reader upside the head. Slightly over half the stories in this collection have been published before. The others are seeing the printed page for the first time between the covers of this book.
Book Description
This digital document is an article from Siempre!, published by Edicional Siempre on August 7, 1997. The length of the article is 803 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.
Citation Details
Title: Ficción súbita. (cuento corto)(TT: Sudden fiction) (TA: short story)
Author: Renato Prada Oropeza
Publication:
Siempre! (Refereed)
Date: August 7, 1997
Publisher: Edicional Siempre
Volume: v44
Issue: n2303
Page: p59(1)
Distributed by Thomson Gale
Customer Reviews:
A pleasant Read.......2007-05-20
What can I say, a pleasant read form Lora Leigh and Veronica Chadwick. I enjoyed the interaction between the characters but it was a little bit predictable. Girl moves back to small town, falls in love with town sheriff, who she had a teenage crush on, abusive ex boyfriend follows girl . . .
Customer Reviews:
Book 3.......2006-05-22
Imperial Guard's Commissar Ciaphas Cain is still trying to avoid any serious action that may get him killed. Yet he keeps finding himself and his gunner, Jurgen, in the worst possible places. This time Cain must also deal with an old classmate, Commissar Tomas Beije. The two were never friends. Beije is still as pig-headed and stupid as always, but his jealousy of Cain's career makes things much worse.
Cain's latest mission takes him and his Valhallan regiment to the planet of Adumbria to defend against an approaching Chaos invasion. It soon becomes apparent that a sinister cult has formed and is summoning something so horrible that the entire universe is in peril.
***** This book is the best of the series thus far! The Adumbria campaign has more going on than the previous two, if that's possible. Readers learn a little more about Jurgen as well (and I am not referring to his overwhelming body odor). There are still footnotes all throughout the book, but unlike the second novel ("Caves of Ice"), there are not too many and I don't believe any of them are pointless this time around. An outstanding story for all! *****
Reviewed by Detra Fitch of Huntress Reviews.
Fun, Flashman-like Romp.......2005-10-15
This third installment in the Ciaphas Cain series by M. Mitchell is every bit as much of an homage to George MacDonald Fraser's Flashman series as the previous novels. The writing is playful and the editorial comments (fictional) alternate between witty and added exposition.
However, our misunderstood hero, Imperial Commissar Cain, isn't quite as despicable as M. Fraser's main character, and it might be argued that in this book, where his only motivation seems to be to preserve his over-inflated reputation, he isn't terribly cowardly at all, since regardless of inspiration he virtually always does the right thing. As one definition of bravery is doing the right thing even in the face of fear, his continual protestations of his own cowardice wear thin by the end of the book.
There are also only so many ways in a first person narrative to express the same sentiment time and time again - in this case fear - and as the reader nears the end, he will recognize repetition in the writer's craft. On a related point, some of the plot elements fit into the developing puzzle just a tad too neatly for suspension of disbelief at times.
This is not to say that the book is bad; it's not, and is still a very enjoyable read. M. Mitchell writes spirited action scenes, and these too are infused with the humor that prevails throughout. The supporting characters add their own contribution to the entertainment, as does the watchful and sardonic editor of the tales. His portrayal of the Imperial Guard and the Commissariat is well thought out and will delight players of the Warhammer 40K game who enjoy good solid "fluff."
In short: a fun read (especially for 40K fans), but not quite equal to the infamous Flashman.
The Traitor's Hand was ...........2005-08-02
Exceptionally great. Loved every minute of it and cannot wait for the next book with Commissar Cain.
More of the same........2005-06-12
There isn't much to say about this third novel following the
exploits of Commissar Ciaphas Cain.
It's basically a different setting, a different situation,
and more of the usual from Sandy Mitchell. Which
is a very good thing in this case.
Any of the reviews for the author's previous novels,
"For the Emperor", and "Caves of Ice" still apply to this novel.
Anything I can say has already been said. If you enjoyed the
previous novels, you'll love this one as well.
A cut above. .......2005-05-28
Much to my chagrin, a lot of the readers of fiction set in the grim, mature, and astoundingly rich universe of Warhammer 40k look for only one thing in their novels, violence and action. While I don't share this nearly dogmatic lust I can't blame them. When you have a setting with a tagline of "In the future there is only War" you can't blame someone for looking for a certain amount of bloodshed and mayhem. Most of the writers for 40k either share this rabidly single-minded obsession or grudgingly close their eyes and give the readers what they want, often at the expense of quality writing, immersion, setting, emotion, and story.
There are a few exceptions, a few diamonds in the rough, these authors and these books are the ones that leave an indelible impression on the reader. The authors who succeed in rising above the mundane Warhammer action-fest fiction do so by putting their own slant on the universe, through their eyes we see the setting in new and unexpected ways. Is there war in these books? Without question, you can't have Warhammer without it but there is also something more.
This feat of "more" is accomplished via a myriad number of techniques: Dan Abnett gives us scope, detail and characterization. William King sweeps us up in passion and hope. Sandy Mitchell author of the books of Commissar Ciaphas Cain does it with sometimes sardonic, occasionally blood-soaked but always sarcastic humor and interesting writing style.
The books of Ciaphas Cain in general and The Traitor's Hand in particular do not read like other Warhammer 40k novels. Rather than reading a simple story told via the traditional first person perspective the reader is immersed in an historical record. The escapades of Cain are told not by the author but by the Commissar himself in the form of his memoirs. Throughout the work we are also treated to the comments, in the form of footnotes, of an Imperial Inquisitor who has taken it upon herself to provide additional detail, sub-text, and explanation of key points. Additionally there are occasionally comments from other characters from Cain's story gleaned from their own memoirs or journals and presumably corralled by the aforementioned Inquisitor. Through the use of this style Sandy Mitchell slickly gives us the perspectives of numerous characters on the events transpiring all the while keeping the focus of the work tightly and seamlessly placed upon the shoulders of Commissar Cain.
My only complaints are that Sandy Mitchell does not give us more depth in the setting and that the other characters in the Traitor's Hand seem muted rather than actual people. I hope he applies the talent for characterization that he proves he has with Ciaphas Cain to the others in the future.
Although he does his best to hide it, particularly in his self-deprecating memoirs, Commissar Ciaphas Cain is believed by the Imperium at large to be a hero, a notion he strongly denies and in his memoirs goes to painstaking detail to refute. He assiduously tells(almost as if he is willing it to be so) the reader that all his great deeds can be attributed to luck, desperation, and the inability to locate a viable place to hide.
Despite this claim, Cain has had his hands in some of the most desperate battles and struggles a regiment of the Imperial Guard doing loyal service to the Emperor of man-kind can face and takes the reader through his experiences in a truly unique fashion. The Traitor's Hand does not disappoint. Its exciting, violent, interestingly presented and best of all you will laugh, I promise.
Book Description
Building on the success of his 1992 collection Foundations of Ministry (over 17,000 sold), Michael Anthony offers Introducing Christian Education to fill the need in the C.E. curriculum for an introductory foundations textbook-one that provides an overview and understanding of the broad range of subjects included in C.E.-for college and seminary use. Thirty-one chapters are offered under the following sections: 1) Foundations of C.E.; 2) Developmental Perspectives of C.E.; 3) Educational Implications of C.E.; 4) Organization, Administration, and Leadership; 5) C.E. Applied to the Family; and 6) Specialized Ministries. Contributors include Robert Pazmio, Jim Wilhoit, Julie Gorman, Klaus Issler, and Ted Ward.
Customer Reviews:
Christian Education.......2006-11-07
Lots of material and insights into the topic at hand. A little difficult to read at times but thorough in its' handling of the material.
Excellent Book on the Subject of Christian Education.......2006-07-04
This book provided a great deal of information about Christian Education. Both historical and applicable to today. Well written. Highly recommended for anyone interested in Christian education.
Good Job!.......2006-03-24
The book was in great condition. It got here quickly like it was supposed to. Am very happy with everything. Thanks:)
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