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The Knife Thrower introduces a series of distinctively Millhauserian worlds: tiny, fabulous, self-enclosed, like Fabergé eggs or like the short-story genre itself. Flying carpets; subterranean amusement parks; a band of teenage girls who meet secretly in the night in order to do "nothing at all"; a store with departments of Moorish courtyards, volcanoes, and Aztec temples: these are Millhauser's stock-in-trade as a storyteller, and he employs them to characteristically magical effect. As in Millhauser's other books, including Edwin Mullhouse and the Pulitzer Prize-winning Martin Dressler, his subject is nothing less than the faculty of imagination itself. Here, however, the flights of fancy are unencumbered by Martin Dressler's wealth of period detail, and the result is fun-house prose whose pleasures and terrors are equally gossamer. Millhauser possesses the unique ability to render the quotidian strange, so that, emerging from his stories, the reader often feels the world itself an unfamiliar place--as do the shoppers at his department store, that marketplace of skillful illusion: "As we hurry along the sidewalk, we have the absurd sensation that we have entered still another department, composed of ingeniously lifelike streets with artful shadows and reflections--that our destinations lie in a far corner of the same department--that we are condemned to hurry forever through these artificial halls, bright with late afternoon light, in search of the way out."
Book Description
Best known for his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, Martin Dressler: The Tale of an American Dreamer, Steven Millhauser has always been most at home with the short story. This new collection of twelve stories puts his rich and varied talents on dazzling display, demonstrating why this singular writer is acclaimed as one of the most subtle, magical, and penetrating explorers of the American imagination.
Whether chronicling the phastasmagoric excesses of an amusement park entrepreneur in "Paradise Park," or the dangerously addictive delights of the largest department store ever conceived in "The Dream of the Consortium," Millhauser's fictions explore not only the magnificent obsessions of the unfettered imagination, but also the darker, subterranean desires that fuel them. From the odd corners of life that persist below the sunlit world in "Beneath the Cellars of Our Town," to views from the heavens in "Flying Carpets" and "Balloon Flight, 1870," he takes us on a tour beyond the everyday, to realms we recognize only in dreams.
In "The Way Out," an illicit affair leads an exhausted lover into a sunrise appointment with death. In "Claire de Lune" and "The Sisterhood of Night," he magically evokes the enigmatic otherness of the adolescent soul. Like the knife thrower in the title story, Millhauser's fictions beguile and beckon us into hitherto unexplored realms, where spectral truths, enchanting vistas, and the mysteries of art await us.
Customer Reviews:
Lucid Dreams.......2007-06-08
The stories that make up "The Knife Thrower" break down into roughly four categories: 1) Stories of enchantment ("A Visit", "Clair de Lune", "Flying Carpets.." , 2) Constructed Worlds ("Paradise Park", "Beneath the Cellars of Our Town", 3)Extreme Mental States ("Kaspar Hauser Speaks", "The Way Out", "Balloon Flight, 1870". and 4)The Nature of Art ("Knife Thrower", "The New Automaton Theatre").
Millhauser's most marked literary influences would appear to be Poe (...don't all of these "dream fantasy" stories stem from Poe's "A Tale of the Ragged Mountains"?), Ray Bradbury, Kafka and Borges.
Criticisms? For the most part, Millhauser avoids getting bogged down in the obscure, but I found "Paradise Park" to be so obtuse as to be barely readable. He also sometimes exhibits a discomfiting habit of ladling on cascades of unnecessary descriptive phrases.
To my mind, the best story of the collection is "Clair de Lune", which has the character of a delicious lucid dream, and fully absorbs the reader, not keeping him at arms length with analysis.
Millhauser is probably the best contemporary practitioner of this genre ("postmodernist fantasy"?), and I will seek out more of his books.
Unbelievable: Millhauser is a genius.......2006-01-23
This is my favorite book of short stories. Millhauser has changed the way I perceive ordinary life. What a pleasure it is to read such an original writer! Millhauser is proof we still have Romantics and great stylists in this day and age. For a moment after reading this collection - I seriously thought I was going to faint.
My favorite contemporary writer at his very best.......2005-12-18
After only Marcel Proust, there is no author whom I more intensely enjoy than Steven Millhauser. I rank him with and even above several more-famous writers whom I also love: Faulkner, Borges, Stevenson, Joyce, and Nabokov among them.
Of the seven Millhauser books that I own, this is, I believe, the best of them. The Barnum Museum, another collection of short stories, would be a close second, with the idiosyncratic novel Edwin Mullhouse being the third contender.
Writing a recommendation for this book is intimidating. Millhauser possesses a distinctive literary genius, and I most certainly do not. It feels something like trying to write a musical tribute to Beethoven or to Miles Davis; a doomed effort to try to describe a great work in the same medium wherein the original artist maneuevers much more expertly.
Perhaps an analogy will help. I'm told that someone once asked of Einstein what was the source of his genius. He said (I'm told) that he never got over being a child, never got over asking all sorts of childish questions. Why does the Earth go around the sun? Why is water wet? What is time? What is light? Except that, as an adult, he was also in possession of the intellectual tools available to adults: higher mathematics, and an abundance of scientific knowledge. He just kept playing with his lifelong fascinations, but with his education, he could go further to find answers.
Millhauser reminds me of that in some ways. He retains the child's fascination with all of the elements of imagination: with carnivals, and fortune-tellers, and fairy tales, and arcades, and cartoons, and urban legends, and comics, and strange museums. But as a brilliant adult writer, he can probe the meaning of it all, and can gain a perspective on such things that a child cannot.
Many of the selections in this book of short stories probe such questions: what excites our imagination? what adds color and mystery to the world? are these things a constructive stimulation or a form of decadence? how can we keep the flame of such fascinations alive? should we?
The first story in this group addresses those questions more straightforwardly than most: in fact, slightly too straightforwardly for my taste, as it's not my favorite of this particular collection. It is the story of a knife thrower who comes to town to amaze with his feats of skill and daring, which both delight and terrify. The story lulls you in with the fairly-whispered excitement of the prospect of such a performance, and wonders when escapism and morbidity have gone too far.
I prefer some of the subtler stories in this collection that probe a similar theme. The final piece, "Beneath the Cellars of Our Town," concerns a labyrinth of subterranean stone passageways, the "meaning" of which is similarly wondered about, but only after their description in realistically vivid detail.
One of my favorite stories in this collection is the magnificent "Clair de lune." This story tells of a moonlight walk of a teenager unable to sleep.
The nocturnal exploration is a common theme in Millhauser. Midnight climbs out windows, into the moonlight-splashed nights, occur in more than one of his tales. The protagonist steps out into a looking-glass mirror world, of which he gets a magic and forbidden glimpse as others sleep.
I have often wondered whether Millhauser was influenced by a similar story by Bruno Schulz in "The Street of Crocodiles." In that story, a schoolboy must leave a theater early to get something from home for his family, and his journey takes him to his school, which he enters to see strangely illuminated and empty. To see his daytime classrooms from "the other side of night," as it were, is an exceptionally vivid experience.
So too for Millhauser's protagonist in "Clair de lune." He says of his experience: "The shadows of telephone wires showed clearly on the moonwashed streets. The wire-shadows looked like curved musical staves. On a brilliant white garage door the slanting, intricate shadow of a basketball net reminded me of the rigging on the wooden ship model I had built with my father, one childhood summer."
Who can read of such imagery without being reminded of some similar formative memory in youth, when one first traveled alone in some time or place that had remained previously hidden and mysterious?
Another more direct form of magic is exhibited in "Flying Carpets," when another young protagonist is given a flying carpet, like those that have begun to appear elsewhere around the neighborhood. Just like a new bicycle, it takes a bit of practice to learn how to use the thing, but soon the narrator is floating out his bedroom window, looking down amazedly at the rippling shadow of his carpet on the grass below.
The story and the emotions that it conveys won't be unfamiliar to most grown-up children; Millhauser paradoxically makes the story more real, more deeply felt by the reader, by injecting literal magic into the story. In your memory, your first bike is more like a magic carpet, and the only way to fully capture that is to remember it that way.
Among my favorites in this collection is "Paradise Park," an underground theme park that was destroyed by fire in 1924. (I wonder whether Millhauser mined old Kennywood Park lore for some of his material here, for such names as Luna Park and the Old Mill have a historical reality to them.) All sorts of attractions and thematic reconstructions fill Paradise Park: a Zulu village, a Ferris wheel, a Chinese temple, a burning skyscraper, a replica of the square in Marrakech, and much else.
As someone who has had more than his own share of daydreams of the theme park he would build if he had unlimited money, time and creative control, I devoured all of this in big, hungry gulps. Many of Millhauser's stories speak to such dreams, although with widely divergent treatments. Sometimes his tales stick close to the realm of the achievable, detailing the marketing of magic by carnivalists, department store owners, cartoonists, or crafters of mechanical toys. Other times they are more literally magical, as in his "flying carpets" story. At other times Millhauser probes only the dreams themselves; one protagonist in a Millhauser story (not in this book) decides that his "art" will simply be the imagining of things, and the construction of nothing.
Sometimes Millhauser writes about the ways that our imaginations impose magic on things that may be more mundane. The "Sisterhood of Night" recalls the hysteria of the Salem witch trials, and reminds us of the enduring power of imagination to take us to dark places.
Millhauser is occasionally described as probing the dark recesses of imagination, and the broken downside of dreams. That element is certainly present, but I will say for my part, that I regard Millhauser as more celebratory of human imagination than he is cautionary. I find in his work a deep and fundamental respect for even the crass hawkers of magic, from the designers of arcade machines to the organizers of freak shows. Millhauser asks us to remember that the imagination is a thing to be treasured, and pleads for its survival against age and modernism.
Beautiful prose.......2005-02-01
The oneiric quality of Millhauser's prose reminds me that of such masters as Neil Gaiman,
Ray Bradbury and Lord Dunsany.His poetic, poignant and disturbing short stories are carefully crafted little gems with a fantastical bent that
frequently exude a sense of otherworldliness and evoke feelings of melancholy and dread.
There's a poetic beauty in Millhauser's prose unmatched by any conteporary writer
This collection is a fine display of Millhauser's talent and shouldn't be missed.
7 * The Knife Thrower ================== *****
25 * A Visit =========================== **1/2
45 * The Sisterhood of Night =========== ******
63 * The Way Out ======================= ****1/2
89 * Flying Carpets ==================== ****
103 * The New Automaton Theater ======== *****
129 * Clair de Lune ==================== ***
143 * The Dream of the Consortium ====== *****
165 * Balloon Flight, 1870 =============
181 * Paradise Park ==================== ***
225 * Kaspar Hauser Speaks ============= ****1/2
237 * Beneath the Cellars of Our Town == *****
Moving, creepy and exhiliarating at the same time.......2004-04-25
You never know where you're going in a Steven Millhauser story, but you are always glad you came along for the ride. (This reader is not a huge fan of the short-story form, but I make an exception for Millhauser and other modern masters like Stuart Dybek.) Millhauser's genius in "Knife Thrower" is his narrator's voice-a spooky, spectral "we" who seems to be both watching the bizarre spectacle below and a part of it. After a few stories, the reader becomes part of the "we," and is transported into a very strange world. It's like mainlining Frank Baum or C.S. Lewis: you start feeling like a visitor on your own planet. The atmosphere of these stories is addictive and entrancing, and it almost hurt to come to the end of this collection. Try Jeffrey Eugenides "Virgin Suicides" for another successful variation on this theme.
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Knife Thrower and Other Stories, The
Steven Millhauser
Manufacturer: Pheonix House
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
 Contemporary
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General
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ASIN: 1861591365 |
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Knife Thrower & Other Stories
Steven Millhauser
Manufacturer: Random House Value Publishing
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
General
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ASIN: 0517433753
Release Date: 1999-06-07 |
Book Description
This digital document is an article from The Review of Contemporary Fiction, published by Review of Contemporary Fiction on September 22, 1998. The length of the article is 1113 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: The Knife Thrower and Other Stories.(Review) (book reviews)
Author: Christopher Paddock
Publication:
The Review of Contemporary Fiction (Refereed)
Date: September 22, 1998
Publisher: Review of Contemporary Fiction
Page: 235(1)
Article Type: Book Review
Distributed by Thomson Gale
Average customer rating:
- Disappointing among the Xanth books
- What were they thinking?
- Very impressive Xanth book
- A grand adventure
- Incredible!
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Crewel Lye (Magic of Xanth)
Piers Anthony
Manufacturer: Del Rey
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Mass Market Paperback
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ASIN: 0345345991
Release Date: 1987-03-12 |
Book Description
Jordan was a ghost in Castle Roogna now. Although once he had been the most valorus of knights--that is, until he was betrayed by two wily magicians and the woman he loves. Now, if he only can remember how he was killed, he'll be able to reassemble his body. And he is getting impatient....
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Jordan was a ghost in Castle Roogna now. Although once he had been the most valorus of knights -- that is, until he was betrayed by two wily magicians and the woman he loves. Now, if he only can remember how he was killed, he'll be able to reassemble his body. And he is getting impatient....
Customer Reviews:
Disappointing among the Xanth books.......2005-03-11
I've been rereading the entire Xanth series, and "Crewel Lye" is not up to par.
Piers Anthony rarely has a "light touch", but this time his laying it on too heavily even gets on my nerves... After about the second allusion, the reader already knows the ending, but Anthony keeps on hinting at it - with a sledgehammer (I won't write a spoiler here, though ;-)
The plot is rambling, and character development is nonexistent - for better books on these counts, go to books 1, 3, 4, 5 or 6 (not so much 2 and 7) in the series. The usual puns, which I as a non-native speaker really like (some new ones again!). The usual sexual under(?)tones, which you get used to. The book's not too bad on these counts.
But: I'm definitely not a prude or overly conservative, but the sheer goryness of the book turns me off. Jordan gets dismembered various times, and the descriptions are given in loving detail. This clashes horribly with the usual carefree and light tone of the Xanth series. In addition, the gory parts are not even well written, and if I want blood splattered, I will not turn to an Anthony book.
Overall: a disappointment. I'll keep it mainly to avoid an empty slot on my Xanth shelf.
What were they thinking?.......2005-01-20
Seriously, I am quite the fantasy reader. However, this piece of dribble should not have ever been published. It is one of the WORST books I have ever read- in any genre. No plot or charecter development, nothing. If you want good fantasy, go read one of the DRAGONLANCE titles.
Very impressive Xanth book.......2003-02-05
"Crewel Lye" is the eighth book in Piers Anthony's "Xanth" series, and in some ways, it is the most impressive of the first nine. Most of the Xanth books take place in a reasonably well-define timeline that we might call the "present." This actually spans quite a long time, since the main character in Xanth-1, Bink, is 25 years in that book, but around 60 in Xanth-9. But "Crewel Lye" takes place **400** years earlier, so it doesn't have the benefit of a lot of the usual Xanthian touches that prop up other books. (By Xanthian touches, I mean things like finding out how to get into Good Magician Humfrey's castle so as to get an Answer.)
Anyway, in the "present" time, Jordan is a ghost, which means that he died with unresolved issues. When little Princess Ivy asks what happened, he tells her the story of his demise. Thus, most of the book is actually narrated in the first-person, which is different from the other Xanth books, and a nice change of pace. First-person narration forces a writer to be disciplined about observations, thoughts, etc., because only those of one person can be related to the reader. This is important for this book, because the "cruel lie" that does Jordan in actually has a different interpretation, one that Jordan doesn't realize, but the reader can figure out. It makes for a very clever ending, even if it becomes somewhat obvious.
Jordan's story -- he is a barbarian who wants an adventure -- is full of action and violence, some intrigue, some romance (or just plain offscreen sex), and even though I was concerned that I wouldn't get to read about the usual Xanth characters, I was engrossed in it.
A grand adventure.......2002-09-27
After devouring Mr. Anthony's Incarnations of Immortality series, this was the first Xanth book I tried and I enjoyed it immensely. Now a diehard Xanth fan, this remains among my favorites of the series. Jonathan, the hapless barbarian lured into an adventure more than he expected, is a great hero, and his outlook is fun and different than other heros. Lots of puns, even in the title, which is good for some, maybe not for others.
Incredible!.......2002-01-18
I first read this book when I was about 8 years old, it was the biggest book I had tackled at that age but I found myself completely engrossed in this epic adventure.
I read the book again when I was 19 and found it even better than I remembered. Anthony weaves comedy, charm, adventure and tradgedy all into one neat package and he does it flawlessly.
If you like fantasy/adventure you need this book.
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Spellbound Xanth: Dragon on a Pedestal, Crewel Lye, Golemin the Gears (Magic of Xanth)
Piers Anthony
Manufacturer: Ballantine Books (P)
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
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ASIN: 0345340523 |
Customer Reviews:
WONDERFUL.......2000-03-25
A wonderful world of puns! Where dragons and wizards can overdose on water from the 'Fountian of Youth'. Where you can take a trip to the past, with a ghost. Where heros come in all sizes; even about a foot tall! I recommend Xanth to EVERYONE!
WONDERFUL.......2000-03-25
A wonderful world of puns! Where dragons and wizards can overdose on water from the 'Fountian of Youth'. Where you can take a trip to the past, with a ghost. Where heros come in all sizes; even about a foot tall! I recommend Xanth to EVERYONE!
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Crewel Lye
Piers Anthony
Manufacturer: Ballantine Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Mass Market Paperback
ASIN: B000GRCF0K |
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Crewel Lye: A Caustic Yarn
Manufacturer: Ballantine/Del Rey
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000GGY3A6 |
Book Description
Collected together for the first time in one volume, the classic novels of the Jade Phoenix Trilogy set the standard for the bestselling, action-packed stories in the BattleTech Universe.
Aidan Pryde is a MechWarrior in training with Clan Jade Falcon who learns that there's more to war than honor and glory...
Customer Reviews:
Excellent glimpse into the Clan warrior lifestyle.......2004-12-03
Wow. I am actually angry at myself for not having read this trilogy when it came out more than ten years ago. The tale of Aidan Pryde is truly one of the best in the Battletech series.
The trilogy edition is a nice product, with a new flashy cover. Interstingly, the separate novels maintain their own page numbers, unlike some other novel compilations I have read, so each one has its old title page and starts on page 1. I liked that.
The first novel takes us through the Warrior training regimen in Clan Jade Falcon. The lifestyle of the trainees and the established warriors is very well done. The competition between the siblings and their relationships is great reading. The eventual result of the training, and the application of non-standard tactics makes this one a page turner, especially with the atypical path events take.
The second novel deals with the warrior life of Aidan, in his assumed guise of a different person. The lower status of this other has led him to low-prestige assignments, but a rare opportunity to show his abilities, despite his differences with higher-ranking officers, affords him a rare opportunity to fight for a Bloodname. But the path to that status is anything but easy. This novel has a great deal more mech combat than Way of the Clans had, but it does not detract from the story.
The third novel takes place at a later point in Aidan's life, after he has served for some time as a Bloodnamed warrior. He has been assigned to command the rebuilt disgraced Jade Falcon unit which was lost in the Clan invasion of the Inner Sphere, primarily because he himself was looked down upon as a disgraced warrior due to his colored past. His unit is to be among those fighting ComStar on Tukayyid. The fate of this battle was detailed in a prior novel, but not from the Clan point of view, and not in the singular detail that this one provides. The exhibition of battlefield acumen staves off certain defeat, but it is a pyrrhic victory at best. Again, the quixotic nature of Clan interpersonal relationships is delved into, but in a different way than the earlier novels. Again, a great read and a real page-turner.
If you liked Ender's Game, you should read this book. .......2004-12-02
Most of the "Battletech" novels were pretty bad; I've sold off most of my collection on ebay, but this trilogy I keep in my collection.
The trilogy chronicles the life of the genetically engineered warrior Aidan from his earliest childhood up until the time of his death. Born into the eugenically engineered elite of his society, Aidan comes to reject many of the precepts his fellows embrace, leading him into a life of constant intellectual, emotional, and military conflict, both with his clan's enemies and with many of his fellows.
Unlike a lot of the trash turned out by the sci-fi serial lines, the Jade Phoenix Trilogy and stands up well as a good piece of literature on it's own merits. The first novel, a story about the training of the child-warrior Aidan, reminded me of "Ender's Game."
The best of Battletech........2004-11-13
These are the essential Clan novels, explaining the clans to a further degree than any other.
It follows the life of Aidan Pryde and also introduces clanners Joanna, Marthe, Diana and Horse who are all involved in their own books later on. Like the others wrote, this is a good foundation to begin the at first confusing battletech universe with.
Enough 'mech combat to make it Mechwarrior but the author uses quality rather than quantity (no entire paragraphs of "And he shot him in the leg. Then the shot him back in the shoulder. Then he shot him with his laser."
Outter space giant robot warriors might not be the best soap opera topic but this story is suprisingly immersive and emotional.
The new Dark Age series is not in the same league as this era of classic Battletech.
... Good way to start reading the Battletech series.......2004-10-28
Having played the computer games based on BattleTech ... I was intrigued enough to want to read some of the books, but with a series as extensive as BattleTech - I had great difficulty finding a good place to start ... Until I found The Legend of Jade Phoenix Trilogy ("TLJP").
TLJP traces the life of Aidan Pryde ... from his early days in training, to his finest hour, when he leads a band of "unwanted" warriors into battle ... and in so doing Aidan redeems honour, heritage ... for himself and those who follow him ...
All in all a wonderful trilogy, filled with Mech battles & strategy ... a well constructed storyline (without the sometimes glaring gaps found in series of this nature) ... satisfying characters sufficiently developed to hold and pull the reader's interest ... I was particularly & pleasantly surprised at how the author developed the character of Aidan's daughter ...
But more than just 3 ripping good yarns ... for anyone wishing to get into the BattleTech world ... this is a good book to start with!!! ...
Without breaking storyline, or getting too pedantic, the reader is gently but surely given a wonderful introduction to a basic but sufficient history ... of MechWarriors trueborn & freeborn, of the importance of Bloodnames, of the Clans (how they came into existence & what they represent) ... of the history & conflicts between the Inner & Outer Sphere ... Descriptions of the BattleMechs & weaponry are nicely done too ...
All in all a price worthy trilogy ... and a great introduction into the world of fighting Clans and their giant war machines ... Good Read!
A thrilling, compelling look at Clan society and warfare.......2004-10-16
The Legend of the Jade Phoenix Trilogy tells the extraordinary story of Jade Clan warrior Aidan Pryde, giving the reader a penetrating glimpse into the ways of the clan warrior from birth to death. It even takes us along for the first invasion of the Inner Sphere by the Clans. You'll find plenty of hard-hitting, Battlemech action served up liberally in these pages, each encounter more exciting than the last.
Clan society is built upon the central importance of warfare, and it is the dream of every child to become a warrior. Some are bred for the task, and the highest honor a warrior can achieve is the acquisition of a Bloodname and inclusion in the genetic warrior pool. The trueborn are artificially created via genetic engineering from the bloodlines of the most accomplished warriors, and these youngsters are all raised and trained together from birth. Only the very best succeed, while the others are killed or assigned to work among the lower castes. Freeborns, those born by natural means, also can earn warrior status, but their lower caste forbids them from fighting on the front lines.
Aidan Pryde is a trueborn who wants desperately to earn warrior status in the Jade Falcon clan to which he was born. In Way of the Clans, we follow him all the way through the warrior training program, which culminates in the Trial that determines whether or not he will earn the right to lead a monstrous Battletech in battle. In training, individual achievement is stressed over any sort of group mentality, and a true warrior is expected to do anything to reach his/her objectives. Alongside the unprecedented story of Aidan's perilous journey into adulthood we get insightful journal entries from the camp commander enlightening us on the theory and practice of Clan warrior society. This coming of age story is bursting at the seams with action and remarkable insights into that society, making it a truly compelling addition to the Battletech Universe.
Bloodname, the second book in the trilogy, boasts battles galore, and the main characters, already well developed in Way of the Clans, continue to grow in the fullest, most intriguing, of ways. Thurston delivers a penetrating study of clan society, human motivation within that society, and a type of heroism that is not limited to action on the battlefield. As a relative newcomer to the Battletech universe, I was delighted to find so many different kinds of Battlemechs involved in the action, as it gave me a most helpful footing in the technology and weapons-related tactics employed in this futuristic world.
Aidan is a remarkable protagonist. He very much wants to earn his Bloodname, but this honor is forbidden him given his new, secretly adopted existence as a freeborn warrior. Now stationed on Glory Point, Aidan finally gets a chance to engage in real combat when a contingent of soldiers from the Wolf Clan seeks to steal the genetic legacy of the base commander there. He is soon reunited with Falconer Joanna, under whom he studied in warrior training. Joanna hates him for many reasons, yet she somehow becomes a strange ally of sorts when Aidan lets the proverbial cat out of the bag. Not only does he announce the fact that he is a trueborn, he demands the right to compete for a Bloodname. The odds are stacked heavily against him, as he must face a Court of Falconers just to maintain his warrior status. Then, just to earn a spot in the Bloodname competition, he must emerge victorious from a massive melee of Bloodname hopefuls - and, even if he wins the spot, he still faces the actual Trial of Bloodright, the actual tournament for the right to the Pryde Bloodname. There is also the added difficulty of his opponents' fiery hatred for him -the only thing the trueborn hate more than a freeborn is a trueborn who earned his warrior status in the guise of a freeborn.
Falcon Guard completes the trilogy. Aidan Pryde, despite his amazing accomplishments up to this point, has never been able to rid himself of the taint surrounding his name. Even now that the long-awaited assault on the Inner Sphere has begun, his command has been relegated to mop-up actions far from the front lines of battle. Until now, that is. He has been given command of the Falcon Guard, a throwaway group of old warriors and insubordinate, troublesome fighters marked by a disgraceful defeat on the planet Twycross, but for Aidan this still represents a chance to fight on the front lines for the glory of the Clans against the Inner Sphere - and to show how effective a commander he can be. With his loyal freeborn friend Horse by his side, he calls upon Joanna to whip the misfits into shape. Among his new charges is his own freeborn daughter - although he does not know he has a daughter or, as a trueborn warrior born of artificial genetic manipulation, really even understand the concept of parenthood.
The battlefield of Tukayyid will determine the outcome of the Inner Sphere invasion; victory opens the way for the invasion of Terra itself, but defeat establishes a 15-year period during which the Clans can do nothing to advance their forces. For Aidan Pryde, it is the chance to achieve the honor he has always sought, to remove forevermore the taint attached to his name, his career, and his genetic heritage. Thurston brings the field of battle to vivid life in these pages, offering readers a thrilling look at a massive engagement of Battlemechs and warriors in a fight for victory, pride, and heritage. It's a thrilling, satisfying conclusion to a classic Battletech storyline.
Book Description
Every human being has both masculine and feminine characteristics, but because our civilization undervalues the Feminine, she hides within each individual and stands in need of healing. In Here All Dwell Free, Gertrud Mueller Nelson shows us how the wisdom of folk mythology offers us both the diagnosis of our ills and the healing prescription we seek for our feminine natures.
Nelson takes two Grimm's fairy tales and demonstrates how they refect the dilemma of modern women, and men, as they struggle to free and heal the feminine within their own personalities and their very culture. In "The Handless Maiden," a miller's daughter sacrifices her flesh-and-blood hands to preserve her father's material, mechanical world. In "Briar Rose," a princess is cursed by a forgotten mother-goddess to sleep, deathlike, until her dormant feminine nature is awakened.
In a mesmerizing interpretation of these two women and their passages to healing, Nelson shows us the difference between passivity and receptivity; the wounded healer and her spirituality; Earth as the wounded feminine; and the inner and outer synthesis of masculine and feminine polarities that must redeem the whole kingdom, so that all can live free. . .
"Superbly wise . . . A wonderful book which brings hope and healing to the urgency of our broken world."
Robert Johnson
Customer Reviews:
A Wonderful Book.......2000-07-24
Here All Dwell Free may be an awkward title but it is right on. Mueller Nelson has an exquisite but powerful and compelling way of presenting complex and important psychological information so that anyone can understand and benefit.This book pulls one into that mythical land with devils and angels entirely compatible with any religious conviction because she is addressing archetypal issues which all humankind must address or avoid. Mueller-Nelson convinces one to take the risk of looking at one's dark side and points the way to the many individual and social benefits of taking one's life seriously. Another benefit is the lovely prose which leads one deeper and deeper into one's own inner world. Anyone interested in their religious and spiritual life will benefit and enjoy this remarkable book.
Books:
- The Last Carousel
- The Last Puritan: A Memoir in the Form of a Novel
- The Lemon Jelly Cake (Prairie State Books)
- The Locusts Have No King
- The Machine Stops and Other Stories (Abinger Editions)
- The Mammoth Book of Sword and Honor (Mammoth Books)
- The Money Dragon
- The Navigation Log: A Novel
- The Nirvana Blues: A Novel
- The Octopus: A Story of California (Twentieth Century Classics)
Books Index
Books Home
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