Book Description
On 11 July 1302, below the town walls of Courtrai, the most splendid army of knights in Christendom, the flower of the French nobility, was utterly defeated by Flemish rebels, common workers and peasants. The French knights, products of a lifetime's training, were ably led; but so too were the Courtrai townspeople, in addition to being well-armed, and their victory, despite their lack of military skills (and golden spurs), put an end to the enduring myth of the invincibility of the knight. A French explanation of the terrible defeat was immediately given, intended to save the honour and pride of the French nobility; in Flanders the victory was glorified as a just reward for the bravery of the townsmen and the competence of their commanders. Unfortunately there were no impartial witnesses. Any account of the battle must therefore pay careful attention to the personalities of the chroniclers, their nationality, and their political and social leanings, as well as their personal sympathies. Verbruggen's study is prefaced by discussion of the problems of reconstruction and extensive consideration of the sources, showing the difficulties faced by medieval military historians in attempts to interpret them. He then offers his own account of the events of that dramatic day, a case study in the reconstruction of events in one of the greatest battles of the middle ages.J.F. VERBRUGGEN lectured at the Royal Military School in Brussels, and then taught in Africa, retiring as Professor of History, University of Congo, and University of Bujumbura (Burundi). He is also the author of The Art of Warfare in Western Europe. Originally published in Dutch in 1954, translated and updated.
Customer Reviews:
A Best of the Best Anthology. Great Introduction to Western Short Stories.......2006-08-03
Since 1953 the Western Writers of America have granted the Golden Spur award each year to the very best western writers. The 15 short stories in this collection, titled The Golden Spurs, were selected from the years 1953 to 1988. Like many readers, I am not especially familiar with this genre, but I do occasionally read westerns. The subtitle, The Best of Western Short Fiction, is a fair assessment. These are good stories.
The titles include Gun Job (Thomas Thompson), Bad Company (S. Omar Barker), Lost Sister (Dorothy M. Johnson), Thief in Camp (Bill Gulick), Isley's Stranger (Will Henry), Comanche Woman (Fred Grove), A Season for Heroes (Carla Kelly), Jason Glendauer's Watch (James Bellah), One Man's Code (Wayne Barton), Horseman (Oakley Hall), The Ten Sleep Mail (William F. Bragg, Jr.), Sale of One Small Ranch (Paul St. Pierre), The Way It Was Told to Me (Bill Brett), The Bandit (Loren D. Estleman), and Yellow Bird: An Imaginary Autobiography (Robert J. Conley).
Gun Job, the story of a town sheriff drawn back from retirement, and One Man's Code, the tale of a man's resolve not to take sides in a dispute between others, address a common theme that resonates even today.
Lost Sister and Comanche Woman examine the poignant stories of women taken captive as children, now married to warriors and faced with returning to a nearly forgotten, civilized society.
Bad Company and Thief in Camp, both stories from the perspective of boys becoming young men, explore the tradition of honor in the west.
Isley's Stranger has supernatural overtones and is in a class by itself. Yellow Bird is the disturbing, perhaps not so imaginary, account of the Cherokee tribe. The Ten Sleep Mail was among my favorites; a wolf plays an unexpected role in the survival of a mail carrier stranded by an early winter blizzard.
A Season for Heroes is a low key, highly effective story of a hero, one Ezra Freeman, a black sergeant in the US Calvary at Ft. Bowie, Arizona Territory.
Horseman by Oakley Hall, The Way It Was Told to Me, and Jason Glendauer's Watch are examples that the Western genre, like all good fiction, sometimes reaches out beyond its traditional limits, perhaps in the process redefining the western itself. These were not my favorites; I may be too much of a traditionalist.
I had read only two stories previously: The Bandit by Loren Estleman and Sale of a Small Ranch by Paul St. Pierre. Both are quite fascinating and warrant multiple readings. I first encountered Sale of a Small Ranch in a remarkable collection of St. Pierre's short stories titled Smith and Other Events (1984).
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- Meet artists, writers, and low-lifes - and guess which is which
- Hmm..........
- A Peek Behind The Pipe Dreams, Darkly
- A Rediscovered American Writer
- worth a "light" read
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Golden Spur
Dawn Powell
Manufacturer: Vintage
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The Wicked Pavilion
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Come Back to Sorrento
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The Happy Island
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Angels on Toast
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The Locusts Have No King
ASIN: 067972687X
Release Date: 1990-02-19 |
Customer Reviews:
Meet artists, writers, and low-lifes - and guess which is which.......2005-10-25
Powell's last novel takes a delightfully satiric look at the artistic life in Greenwich Village during the mid-twentieth century. Jonathan Jamison makes a lot of new friends when he comes to New York hoping to determine the identity of his biological father. Will he make as big a splash as his mother did during her brief sojourn? It certainly looks like it, seeing how quick everyone is to help him out. But do they really care about this handsome, but rather clueless young mid-Westerner, or are they only using him for their own purposes? Either way, you can be sure that everything will work out all right in the end.
The plot has a wispy, meandering quality to it, perhaps to reflect how Jamison doesn't seem to have any clear-cut plan of what he's doing when he comes to the big city, and so few of the other characters are ever sober enough to do more than react as situations arise. But the marvelous portraits of the various personalities found in that time and place make this book more than worthwhile all by themselves. Not surprisingly, the women are particularly well-drawn. And while there's not a lot character development, we do get to meet wonderfully comic examples of the various types who frequent the artsy/dive bar that gives this volume its name. Between the has-beens, the woulda-beens, the success stories, and the hangers-on (and how thin the lines between these categories really are) Powell makes this little subculture come alive with artistic verve. Tame enough for young people (but not children) this is a must for those who are considering making a career of the artistic life.
Hmm.................2002-08-22
I've edited a number of Powell's books -- and this is one of her best (although not quite on a level with "Turn, Magic Wheel," "A Time To Be Born," or "Come Back To Sorrento.")
I did find it a little amusing to read the review of my supposed "introduction" to this edition, and to find it called "vague" and "anemic." It's actually much worse than that -- as I wrote no introduction to "The Golden Spur" whatsoever!
Note to budding critics -- it's always a good idea to read a book before printing a review.
A Peek Behind The Pipe Dreams, Darkly.......2002-07-10
Fine, funny literary satire of "bohemian" New York centered around Greenwich Village. This is Dawn Powell's last novel, published in 1962. Like The Fool in "King Lear," Dawn Powell punctures the absurd self-deceptions of numerous tinpot Lears (to the reader's vast delight). I found the writing wonderful, the wit fantastic and relentless; there are great lines on every page.
Here is a vast canvas of eagre "real" New Yorkers, fresh from the provinces (small town, or boring suburb), people who want to to shed their past, to hide their ignorance and laugh at the squares (not them! of course): people who "want to be what everyone else wanted them to be" in Manhattan.
Powell is excellent at looking behind peoples' pipe dreams. You'll recognize people and types you've encountered in real life as you read this book. You'll see their dreams, and you'll see the reality they hide from. Here's the person, "with her refined Carolina accent, which she kept up like her grandfather's shotgun;" here's the young lady dimpled with pride at "the generous picnic of her decolletage." And here are the "old has-beens, needling me for making it when they never could with their genius." The tone is perfect throughout; I was not surprised to read that Powell's favourite writers included Aristophanes and Petronius, two of the greatest satirists in history. She fits write into that tradition. The only negative thing to say about this book is that the types it describes will not appreciate it. But the detached reader, of even mild self-confidence, and a love of the Roman greats, Shakespeare, Oscar Wilde, Bellow and Vidal - a love of Truth over Cant - will enjoy Dawn Powell enormously.
In the end the book is a vast panorama of the New York of the 60's (and today), wonderfully evocative of the pull that city can have on all types of people, and beautifully descriptive of the reality of a decision to move there, for so many.
This Steerforth edition of *The Golden Spur* was brought out by Tim Page, who has seen many Powell books back into print. Good of him; but his introductions to her work (*The Happy Isle*, her *Diaries*, and in his biography of her) I found anemic and vague; he seems to have difficulty coming to grips with Powell's great powers as a satirist , is shy of its implications and tries to turn Powell into a much more sentimental writer than, as a clear-eyed realist, she is. I recommend Gore Vidal's 1987 essay (its in his collection "United States") which has a lot of information about Powell and gets (I think) the experience of reading Powell exactly right.
Try Powell's "Happy Island," The Wicked Pavillion," and, indeed, all her New York novels if you like this one.
A Rediscovered American Writer.......2002-06-01
One of the joys of reading is the opportunity of finding for oneself authors that have long been obscure or overlooked. I came to Dawn Powell's work with expectations of such a reward. I knew that the Library of America had saw fit to publish two volumes of her work and that Tim Page, Washington Post classical music critic, had edited the volumes and written a biography. I was eager to learn more.
Dawn Powell grew up in rural Ohio and moved to Greenwich Village as a young woman and lived a bohemian life. She wrote 15 novels between the 1930s and the early 1960s mostly set in rurual Ohio and Greenwich Village, which were little noted during her life. She has been "rediscovered" and praised highly by some.
Dawn Powell's "The Golden Spur" was her last novel and the first book of hers I read. The book tells the story of Jonathan Jamison who, at the age of 26 leaves his Ohio home in search of his father in Greenwich Village. Jonathan's mother had worked as a typist briefly in the Village before she returned home and married what she found a rather conventional man. She delivered prematurely and told Jonathan that his true father was in New York. And Jonathan goes to search for his father --- and himself.
The book centers around The Golden Spur, a bar in Greenwich Village frequented by artists and literary types. (It had been frequented by Jonathan's mother in her New York days). We meet a cast of characters who become involved with Jonathan, including Hugow, the bohemian modern painter of questionable talent, a succession of Hugow's former lovers, some of whom are bedded by Johnathan, failed literary critics, academics, has-beens and never wases. We also meet an elderly woman named Claire Van Orphen, the writer for whom Johnathan's mother worked briefly. She befriends Johnathan and is instrumental in his search.
I couldn't recommend reading this book for the story-line. It is muddled and hard to follow at times. Nevertheless, I came away from the book thinking that my search to discover a new author had been rewarded.
This book is written in a beautiful clear prose. Each line tells and each word is in place. It is a joy to read. The satire in the book is uncompromising and biting. Because the book is a satire, the characters are somewhat one-sided. In addition, I get the impression that Dawn Powell put some part of herself (but not her whole character) in each of the people in her book-- the young person (Jonathan Jamison) leaving rural Ohio for a new life in New York City, the young sexually active women in the Village, the struggling artists, the aging unsucessful writer to take some examples. Thus I found the characterization effective.
The book works better as a series of minature episodes than as a connected novel. Each scene is tightly written and convincing written, as I indicated, in a lively and supple style. I got absorbed in the book page by page and incident by incident. Possibly as a result of this, there were times when I lost the thread of the story and the interrelationship of the characters.
The best part of the book, besides the writing style, is the picture drawn of Greenwich Village. The picture of life in the bars and of artists, some good some not-so-good, struggling in flats with their women, their friends and their agents is precious. Dawn Powell knew the life she described. Again, most of the characters, from the young man, Jonathan Jamison, through the women, through the ageing Ms. Van Orphen, were aspects of Dawn Powell herself, transmitted into one character or the other.
This is a frothy, light book not without its flaws. But I came away with the sense of discovery for which I had hoped. Dawn Powell deserves to be read.
worth a "light" read.......1999-05-05
Read this after reading Gore Vidal's essay about her & finished a little disappointed. She writes first-rate prose (a perfect sentence-writing clinic, I found myself re-reading passages & marveling at her craft) & is very funny, but every character seems mades of cardboard. The constant cynical wit can be tiring & stubborn & (as the reviewer below notes) everything is thrown together at the end, seemingly because she just felt like stopping the story. I guess I wanted to know more... I'll probably try another one of her books though.
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Angels on toast ;: The wicked pavilion ; The golden spur
Dawn Powell
Manufacturer: Quality Paperback Book Club
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ASIN: B00071QHZ4 |
Book Description
From the cradle, Lizzy Kemble had the powerful sense that she didn't belong in her family's notorious Texas empire. Her desire for no-good Cole Knight, embittered son of the neighboring rancher, proved her right. Her daddy had done everything possible to turn her into a proper Kemble--all the way to leaving his vast Golden Spurs Ranch in her hands when he fell victim to a stroke.
But when her father's death turns out to be murder, Lizzy knows someone is willing to kill to claim the Kemble wealth. . .and she's next on the hit list . With the Golden Spurs at risk, she's fighting back. . .but who is the enemy? The enigmatic Cole? Her cutthroat family? Caught in a high-stakes game of win, lose or die, Lizzy is forced to gamble her ranch, her heart, her very life for the truth behind the Golden Spurs.
Customer Reviews:
What in the world did I pick up at the library?.......2005-12-29
This book is horrible and a waste of time. The prologue begins with promise but after page 29, you're in for pages of outlandish dialogue (If Cole said "Lizzy, Oh. Lizzy" one more time...); a chronologically challenged story line (I felt like I was reading the second book in the series rather than the first); and overall poor writing. Toward the middle of the book, I started skimming and even that was a waste of time. Now I see why All About Romance gave 3 of Ms. Major's previous books Fs. That's definitely what The Girl with the Golden Spurs deserves.
Absolutely fantastic book!.......2005-01-22
Thanks again to Ann Major for bringing to life another fantastic story! This one was a "can't put it down" type of book with an unbelieveable ending! Awesome reading!
Romantic Suspense.......2004-10-20
For longer than anyone alive can recall - the Knights and Kembles have been at odds. As far as the Knights are concerned, the Kembles are thieves, having stolen their land. Yet, Cole Knight is the thief, stealing young Lizzie Kemble's heart at an early age, then breaking it by marrying her sister, Mia. Now that Mia is dead and Lizzie back home to run the family business after her father's unexpected death, Cole is a major figure in her life, but is he protector or killer? Both will have to face their long buried emotions and secrets that have haunted their families to get to the truth and to have a future.
*** Like Joan Johnston's books, the plot draws readers in using classic family feuds crossed by romance and murder. Much is familiar, but nonetheless, classics are called that because they are always welcome and good. If a book can be called both sweet and racy, then this fits the bill. ***
Reviewed by Amanda Killgore.
enjoyable contemporary romance .......2004-09-29
For one-hundred and forty years the Knights and Kembles have feuded. However, now there is no doubt that the Kembles have won as they cheated the Knights out their last acres and formed the Golden Spurs International Agra business. Cole Knight lives for revenge especially since his brother Shanghai found proof of the illegal actions of the Texas royal family (the Bush crowd are spread out), but vanished before he could use his evidence.
Eleven years later widower Cole had married Mia Kemble, but she died in a plane crash. His marriage failed to satiate his thirst for revenge. Mia's sister leaves New York to care for her infant niece. There she runs into Cole, who she loved as a teen, but he chose her older sister. As they begin to fall in love, someone uses blackmail and murder, threatening to expose Lizzy's matriarchy to one and all. Only Cole can keep her and his daughter safe, but does he really want to protect a Kemble even if he loves her while she wonders if she should trust a Knight with her heart and her life?
This enjoyable contemporary romance is filled with characters who have doubts about the direction their lives are going. Lizzy is an intriguing lead who happens to be her daddy's favorite although she is the one who seems more in place in New York than on a Texas ranch. However, the tale evolves around Cole, who must choose between the woman he loves and his need for vengeance. Though the suspense adds salsa, THE GIRL WITH THE GOLDEN SPUR belongs to the dynamic duo.
Harriet Klausner
Product Description
2 Medium Size Paperbacks
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Beardance (Sequel to Bearstone)
Manufacturer: Recorded Books LLC
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Binding: Audio Cassette
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ASIN: 0788707302 |
Product Description
Exploring the Weminuche Wilderness, Cloyd Atcitty finds a pair of orphaned grizzly cubs. He must draw on his courage, determination, and Ute Indian heritage to teach them how to live in the wild. With winter approaching and food growing scarce, Cloyd must not only ensure the survival of the bears, but return to civilization before starvation and cold kill him.
Product Description
3 Novels together, introduced by Gore Vidal, and published by Quality Paperback Bookclub, New York (1989).
Customer Reviews:
2nd, 3rd and 4th in the Romantic/Westerns series "Hawk's Way" 3 Novellas In One Book... Save On Shipping.......2006-11-21
The Rancher and the Runaway Bride" by Romance novelist Joan Johnston is the second in her 'Hawks Way' series. It follows "Honey and the Hired Hand", in which we met the first of the Whitelaw siblings, the second oldest brother, Jessie. Now we meet the rest of the clan. Two more brothers, Garth and Faron, both handsome, big and brawny, and over protective of younger sister, and still virgin at 23 years old(no one could get near her with her brothers around), pretty Tate.
The Whitelaw clan lost their parents when Tate was just a baby. The older brothers have taken it upon themselves to play mother and father to Tate. They just over do it. Tate is suffocating under their guardianship and wants to spread her wings. She's ready for love, but is never going to find it with Garth and Faron, scaring off anybody that comes near her. She hops in the old pick-up truck and heads out.The brothers are frantic to find her. When the old pickup breaks down, Tate accepts some help from a Rancher who happened by. Right off the bat, you can feel the sparks flying between the two.
The Rancher it turns out is Adam Philips, who we weren't all to fond of in "Honey and The Hired Hand", as he loved Honey, and was bitter that Jessie stole her away. He also seemed like quite an unsavory character in the first book, but now in bits and pieces, we get more of his story. Adam could not leave young Tate on the road to nowhere. He gives her work on his ranch, and the more these two try to deny their feelings, the more they want each other. And as always in a good Johnston romance, things heat up and only get hotter. But uh-oh, the Brothers(all three) are on the trail, and it looks like a shot gun wedding is in Adam's future.
I enjoyed the style of this story. It reminded me very much of those wonderful screwball comedies from the 40's, as through as series of miscommunication and conclusion jumping, the two lovers kept each other at bay, until their passion gets the best of them. And of course, when it did, it was quite a bit steamier then those 40's films.
"The Cowboy and the Princess" is the 3rd in the Hawk's Way series. It is Faron's story the youngest of the brother and quite the ladies man. Faron's story unfolds into a love like a fairy tale(but not for kids!).
Faron gets the news. A letter from a woman claiming to be his step-mother. Seems Mom Whitelaw had herself a little affair, and Faron was the result. This was the first he heard that he was not a full blooded Whitelaw. He is quite upset by the news, and takes off for Wyoming to confront his horrid stepmother who says he is in the will. He's not a happy camper. While scouting across the land he is to inherit, he runs into the most gorgeous creature he has ever seen. A beautiful blonde who looks like a princess.And By the way, Faron is no slouch in the looks department as well. Johnston doesn't make us wait too long for the first scene of passion. As these two find something in each other's arms they both needed. He calls her his Princess, she calls him "Cowboy". And of course, neither knew at the time, that he was the stepson of this young and beautiful princess(Belinda Prescott), but when they do find out, the friction between them only adds more heat to their passion. They try(really hard) to stay away from each other, but Faron is there to help his father's wife fix up the ranch for sale, and it's awfully hard to keep them apart.Other new and wonderful characters are introduced that we hope to see in some future stories. Faron's new grandmother, is some fun and feisty old lady!
The story of Belinda Prescott's marriage to Faron's father, and the description of the Wyoming Ranch,"King's Castle" and it surroundings adds greatly, but the romance is one of the best. These two were made for each other, and you know it. The passion heats up. There is even a ride on horseback(with both on the same horse), that is like no other ride. The book kept me turning the pages all the way through.
The Wrangler and The Rich Girl" is 4th in the Series(there are many more to follow). Oldest brother Garth finally finds love in this sizzling romance. Garth's story is the last of the core family, before the series moves on to more branches of this passionate family tree.
Garth has been raising up his brothers and sister, since the death of his parents. They are a close knit and raucous bunch, and their wildness only adds to their passionate and steamy relationships. Garth is very different than his younger siblings. He was old enough at the time it happened, to witness the demise of his parent's marriage due to his mother's infidelity, resulting in the birth of Faron, youngest of the brothers. Any woman would love to fall into the arms(and bed) of this rugged and gorgeous wrangler. But Garth has a problem with trust and commitment.He cannot get passed what his mother did, and the women he sees and beds are just there for his pleasure. And they are the type who don't ask for more then that. Enter Candy Baylor. A girl he had known through his business dealings with her very wealthy father. She was young,and spoiled when they first met, and practically threw herself at this hunk of a man, only to be violently kisses, then tossed aside by Garth. Three years later, she is a woman, but only in age. Her desire now is to breed and train cutting horses, that specialize in separating cows from the herd for the ranchers. She's always gotten her way with her rich father, and now she won't have less then the number one guy in the field, Garth, teach her.
Garth remembers(as does she), their little encounter, and plans to have his way with her now that she is a woman. But that's all he wants from this beautiful rich girl. As the lessons progress,he has his way often, something Candy enjoys for the first time in her life. But their feelings for each other are growing as well. They can hardly be in the same room without the sparks flying. Candy knows that Garth cannot express his feeling, in any other way then to make love to her quite demonstratively. The storyline parallells the lessons Garth is giving her on taming a stubborn, wild stallion to stud. Candy takes each step slowly, knowing that Garth has issues from his past, that prevent him from trusting a woman enough to marry her.
In the meantime, their passion sizzles in nearly every chapter(sometimes even a couple of times per chapter), and if you are thinking that it's a story where the man just has his way whenever he wants...think about how Rhett Butler forcefully carried Scarlett up to the bedroom one night, and how she was happily singing the next morning! The story will have you turning the pages, as there is much more substance to this romance then just the hot love scenes.
The story runs parallell to Faron's story, as this romance takes place, during the same timespan while Faron is in Wyoming having his own complications. There are a couple of scenes, near the end, that are the exact scenes from "The Cowboy and the Princess", but this time it is played out from Candy's view point.
It's probably a good idea but not necessary to read them in order.Each stands on it's own and Ms. Johnston gives a pretty good background of the other siblings and their stories, in each book. it's a really good deal to buy this 3 in one book. Think of all you will save by only paying shipping once. And you know you can't stop at just one, you gotta know what happens to all the siblings, so you'll have them ready when you are.
If your looking for a little adventure, and some great romance, Joan Johnston won't let you down.
Other series are "Sisters of the Lone Star" and "The Bittercreek Series". And if you are not ready for an entire series, try some of her Historical Romance Westerns. A good one to start with is "No Longer a Stranger"
Enjoy the read...Laurie
SIMPLY WONDERFUL.......2002-01-16
Joan Johnston has shot these bachelors with cupids arrown straight through the heart. Nobody can do western romance like Joan Johnston.
Book Description
L.E. Modesitt, Jr.s first major work was a trilogy of SF adventure novels published as paperback originals in the 1980s: Dawn for a Distant Earth, The Silent Warrior, and In Endless Twilight. Together they form The Forever Hero. Thousands of years in the future, Earth is a desolate ruin. The first human ship to return in millennia discovers primitive remnants of humanity. And among them is a boy of immense native intelligence and determination who grows up to become the force behind a plan to make Earth flower again.
Customer Reviews:
Modesitt writ large.......2006-11-03
Modesitt has a style of writing and a type of character that he has successuly spun and respun into many different books. This series follows the mode of the others. Everything one loves about Modesitt's writing is there- good sci-fi cowboy adventures in space. Everything one hates about Modesitt's writing is there- formulaic writing, longer sentences that this one, and hammering on current populist themes (how mankind ruined the earth and, unless controlled closely, will despoil the universe in it uncaring lust for more materialism.. blah blah blah). Unbelievely long and tedious, but then again, I knew that going in, and I still read Modesitt!
Restoring the Green Hills of Earth.......2004-06-12
The Forever Hero (1988) is an omnibus edition of this trilogy. It includes Dawn for a Distant Earth, The Silent Warrior, and In Endless Twilight.
Sometime in the distant future, Earth has achieved the stars and colonized many planets. However, the home world continued to suffer from ecological problems caused by wars and pollution. When the ecollapse finally occurred, Earth became a hellhole of poisoned land and sea, savage weather, and toxic ground fogs. The population dropped from billions to a few thousands.
The Earth colonies formed a Federation and later an Empire and somehow lost contact with Earth. After countless years, an Imperial scout rediscovered the planet and the ISS Torquina was sent to survey the world. They found a wasteland of scattered ruins, mostly uninhabited and almost uninhabitable. The remaining animals were generally inedible due to toxin levels, as were many plants.
In Dawn for a Distant Earth (1987), the Torquina finds two populations on the planet: shambletowners and devilkids. The Torquina crew captures an injured devilkid and tests his abilities. He is extremely strong with a high intelligence and a blinding fast reaction time. The boy takes the name MacGregor Corson Gershwin and is educated as an Imperial, becoming an ISS officer and pilot. He returns to Old Earth as a flitter pilot supporting the scientists studying the ravaged world.
In The Silent Warrior (1987), Gershwin turns down the opportunity to become Commandant of the new Recorps and instead leaves Old Earth to take command of an underpowered and overtasked cruiser, the Fleurdilis, to make initial contact with a previously unknown alien species. Later, he is assigned as the Commander of an underutilized and obsolescent refitting center and salvage yard. He marries Allison and they have a son, Corson. Gershwin also becomes active as the trustee of the OER Foundation founded by Caroljoy, his first lover.
In the third novel, In Endless Twilight (1988), Gershwin contributes to a revolution on Byzania to protect his house trees project. The success of that mission leads him to concentrate on psywar, preparing the populace for a radical change of viewpoint. The Empire finally decides to eliminate Gershwin, but they can't find him. However, they do move against the OER Foundation.
This trilogy may be prequels to the Ecolitan Matter series. Many of the planet names are the same, the governmental institutions are similar, and the technology is comparable. However, the connection, if any, is never made clear.
One of the inconsistancies is the Imperial capital. In this trilogy, New Augusta is a planet, whereas in the Ecolitan series New Augusta is a city on Terra. Since this trilogy ends with the planet New Augusta left unprotected from outsystem raiders, maybe the Imperial refugees fled to the newly reclaimed Old Earth and established a new capital city named for the old capital planet.
Another puzzlement is the succession of political hegemonies. After the ecollapse of Old Earth, the colonies formed a Federation and later an Empire. Moreover, there was apparently a Directorate on Old Earth in the interregnum after the collapse caused by Gershwin's disruptions. There are some indications that the Empire of the Ecolitan series, also based on Terra, was formed after the fall of the Directorate.
The colonists who settled Accord were from the Noram region of Old Earth. Possibly these colonists were descendents of the shambletowners and devilkids, maybe mixed with an influx of refugees from the Old Empire. Moreover, the New Empire may have been established by the spiritual (and genetic) heirs of the Captain on Terra, later incorporating survivors on the former planets of the Old Empire.
One final note: if this novel reminded you of Battlefield Earth, it may not be a coincidence. Hubbard's novel was published only five years prior to the first novel in this series. Possibly Modesitt felt that he could write a more realistic version of that classic scenario.
Highly recommended for Modesitt fans and for anyone else who enjoys tales of individual daring, dedicated perseverance, political and commercial intrigue, and personal combat with a touch of romance.
-Arthur W. Jordin
Worldly Hero.......2004-05-15
In this book, Modesitt uses an earthling as his hero. What is unique about this hero is his flaws. Too often, in my opinion, I read of a 'perfect' hero; however, I rather enjoyed reading of the mistakes this hero made and how he dealt with them.
As in most science fiction books, a leap of imagination is required, but with the leap made, this book is well worth a read by any reader willing to see it through to the end.
Outstanding.......2003-02-18
Very well thought out and I couldn't put the book down.
Machiavellian comes to mind..........2001-11-16
The book is worth reading.... It will make you think. It will make you angry. It will bore you at times. I know I'm being vague, but this is a LONG book. Flawed hero is an understatement. If you like to be challenged; pushed to think; then you'll probably like this book. It's certainly NOT for everyone.
A final note: as another reviewer indicated, "It is not appropriate for most children".
Customer Reviews:
Biblical principles for prosperity consciousness.......2003-10-08
This book by Catherine Ponder is part of a series on Biblical characters and what they can teach us about prosperity consciousness and positive thinking. Parts of this are not at all the way we Jews think of Moses, but, if you approach it as a sort of modern midrash (commentary), it makes for some interesting reading. Although my guess is that Ponder is a Christian (there's a "Millionaire from Nazareth" in her series), there is no attempt to convert anybody to anything in this book. Rather, she goes step-by-step through a series of basic prosperity principles, which she derives from the story of the Exodus. She also shares a lot of inspiring rags-to-riches anecdotes. The basic message is to trust in God, think positively, and take the "manna" (opportunities) that God gives you. Not exactly original advice, to be sure, but I enjoyed the way that she presented it here.
One complaint: I HATE the all-yellow cover. This was probably meant to evoke "gold" in the minds of Ponder's readers but, for most Jewish people, yellow immediately reminds us of the yellow stars in the Holocaust, as well many other yellow-badge stigmas that Jews were forced to wear in Medieval Europe. If the publisher wants a color that reminds the reader of money, then green would work much better and be far more positive for Jewish readers to have sitting on the coffee table.
Product Description
Catherine Ponder is considered America's foremost prosperity author. This set includes 8 of her books.
Books:
- The Beastly Beatitudes of Balthazar B
- The Best of Myles
- The Bohemians Of The Latin Quarter: Scenes De La Vie De Boheme
- The Clairvoyant Countess
- The Goat Bridge: A Novel (Sweetwater Fiction: Originals)
- The ITCH : A Novel
- The Lecturer's Tale: A Novel
- The Pleasure's All Mine: Memoir of a Professional Submissive
- The Real Minerva
- The Scent of Betrayal (The Privateersman Mysteries)
Books Index
Books Home
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