Product Description
For half a century, Earth has been on the brink of total war with an implacable alien race. Biologist Anna Perez is the first to discover the truth-the hwarhath have segregated their society strictly along gender lines, to prevent the warlike males from harming women and children. In their eyes, humans are a dishonorable and barbaric race who may require extermination...
... Read more

Customer Reviews (7)

A little too vague
I'm a 'hard sci-fi' fan but this book still had some qualities that I enjoyed. For instance, the alien culture was well thought-out and had real depth.
However, as a man, I have to admit, all of the male bashing was a little over the top. Grnated, even though the alien men were supposed to be so dangerous that they weren't even allowed around women or children, they were never actually depicted raving like lunatics and in fact were extremely well-behaved.It's possible I completely misintrepreted the author's meaning, for all I know, she wanted to show that the aline men were only perceived as dangerous but weren't really any more than males of any other species.
But when the human female is getting grilled by the alien females about how and why she can live in the proximity of males, I was waiting for her to explain that human men don't often go around killing children or women at random.The human female appeared to have had a decent life without much exposure to male violence.And sometimes, in our culture, women are the source of violence as well.
I just hoped that the discussion wouldn't have been so one-sided.

The Hwarath are real, right?
This book became a page turner for me, yes because of the plot, but mostly because of her aliens and her characters. I fell in love with many of the characters in the book. I understood what made them tick. They were real. But the biggest treat was her aliens. First the Psuedosiphorones, a thought provoking sort of jelly fish. But the book isn't about jelly fish. It's about us. Arnason uses her aliens, the Hwarath, as a way of holding up a distorting mirror to our own culture.

But, it is also about the Hwarath, a culture where the women stay home and have babies (oh? Really? Are you sure that's all they do?) and the men are off looking for an enemy. They badly want to find an enemy and when they find humans, yipee!!! Except, humans don't understand the rules of war. I have never read a book where an alien culture is so carefully drawn that you start thinking you are reading something that involved anthropological research, not dry research, but research. Wait a minute, these guys don't exist.

By the time you finish reading Ring of Swords, you will know what the Hwarath consider ethical and honorable, who really calls the shots, what is sexy, what is going on thatHwarath hide from other Hwarath, what they think is exceptable human chow, what their music sounds like (ouch), a touch of their mythology, what they wear when they aren't trying to impress humans and what their theater is like. Especially their theater! I know more about the Hwarath now than I know about Canadians, and I live in Minnesota and have Canadian cousins. And Canadians really do exist.

And by the way, the plot of Ring of Swords is pretty cool too.

Thought-provoking
A fascinating look at an alien culture, and human responses to it. Of course, to the Hwarhath, *we* are the aliens. This book is incredibly suspenseful as human and alien negotiators try to find a way to coexist without their species exterminating each other.

I found the actions of one of the human characters quite puzzling. He ends up working for the aliens (and more than that), after they... let's say they were as nasty as possible. And he is quite sincere about changing sides. Does this really happen? Plus, he seems to "change" in another way, which is even more fundamental (this sounds cryptic, but I don't want to give spoilers). Don't know if that's possible either. I agree with the reaction of Anna (another character) to the idea of getting together with someone who helped... well, read the book and see.

Also, the human negotiators were represented as part of a small minority who wanted to get off the (severely congested) Earth to "explore strange new worlds". Given that, and the future setting with FTL travel, these people seemed far too xeno- and homophobic.

Not yer average space opera -- well worth reading and thinking about. P.S.: There might be *two* non-human intelligent species here...

A zig zag through an alien culture
I must conclude that editing is a dying art; Eleanor Arnason's "Ring of Swords" is yet another SF novel of recent issue that could have benefited from another rewrite, and some judicious cutting. The length of the story is not supported by its weight, and fails utterly in the last hundred pages. The primary story (humans making first contact with an alien race) is far less vivid than the subplots--a marine world with intelligent squid, an alien who translates "MacBeth" magnificently into another culture. The hero is suitably ambiguous and anguished, the heroine is suitably plucky and determined, but it still doesn't add up to a dynamic read. It's yet another SF story where people sit around talking to one another too much.Even Jane Austen sent her heroine out for a walk now and then.

Thoughtful, provocative anthropological science finction
This book is stunningly good. Building on her thoughtful earlier work, _Woman of the Iron People_ Arnason produces a novel which has a truly vivid voice, full of complex, perplexing characters, and a context wherecategories extend beyond some forumulaic good/bad. If you like Russell'swork, _The Sparrow_, I'd expect you to like this. Arnason deals with realissues, but also has a sense of humor. I've now re-read this book upward of10 times (the first two back to back, starting again as soon as Ifinished). Book images-- Arnason's alien re-thinking of Moby Dick,Huckleberry Finn, and MacBeth-- keep popping up in my mind. And I wouldreally like to hear more of Anna and Nicholas's voices, telling about thevarious ways people understand intelligence, language, and the somewhat toextremely alien. This book is not simplistic. But if you are willing tothink--and enjoy wonderfully cutting prose--it's a joy to read. ... Read more

Product Description
Spanning thirty years, this volume collects six stories, one poem, and a WisCon Guest of Honor speech. In the richly ironic ''Warlords of Saturn s Moons,'' first published in 1974, a cigar-puffing woman writes space-opera while the drama of real-life inner-city Detroit goes on around her; ''The Grammarian's Five Daughters'' offers a playful explication of the uses of the parts of speech; ''A Ceremony of Discontent'' takes a humorous approach to a modern-day feminist problem; and Arnason's wise, earthy tales of hwarhath serve up new myths explaining the origins of the world and morality (among other things). The work in this collection entertains with its wit, delights with its precision and imagination, and challenges and provokes with its bluntness. Ordinary People offers a small, potent taste of the oeuvre of an important author of feminist sf.

Eleanor Arnason s award-winning novel, A Woman of the Iron People, has won high praise from some of today's finest writers, including Ursula K. LeGuin, who wrote of it, ''At last, a nonpredictable, thought-through, can t-stop-reading-it story, full of complicated and irresistible people, some of them human. This fascinating novel asks some big, serious questions, and it gives no easy answers.'' And so with the stories in this collection. All of Arnason's characters, however ordinary, are complicated and irresistible, even or especially when they re being stubborn and grumpy. ... Read more

Product Description
Lixia and the members of her human crew are determined not to disturb the life on the planet circling the Star Sigma Draconis which they have begun exploring.But the factions on the mother ship hovering above the planet may create an unintended chaos for both the life on the planet and the humans exploring it. As the anger increases on the ship, the ground crew becomes more and more affected by the conflict and begins to rely on their instincts to keep the project moving forward.Unexpected danger plagues the mission as Lixia is determined to expand her knowledge. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

Culture Treasure Trove
I enjoyed reading Arnason's A Woman of the Iron People for its detailed building of a world with a complex society and multiple languages. We learn about this world mainly from the perspective of Nia, the woman of the Iron People in the title, and Lixia, a woman of Chinese heritage born in Hawaii. The story is set about 200 years in Earth's future, where problems of pollution and economic exploitation have mainly been solved, though Earth is certainly not a paradise. In addition, humans have colonized the Moon and Mars and perhaps some other places (the L-5 colonies). Lixia is part of an interstellar expedition to explore Sigma Draconis II, about 18 light years away, a trip that takes much longer in Earth years. (There's no "faster than light" [FTL] drive or wormhole or stargate to get them there faster.) After they reach SD II, Lixia and seven other humans land and begin to explore the earth-like planet. The rest of the crew remain on the starship.

Arnason's main focus is on social interactions, especially between genders, as well as the cultures that feed those interactions and that grow out of them.This is Arnason's great strength as a writer. The story opens with Nia, her life among the Iron People, and her expulsion from her own community. The main plot of the story then revolves around Lixia's meeting with Nia, their attempts to understand each other, and their journey (with a couple of others) across much of a mainly temperate continent. The story is very clearly written, even when later more humans who land on the planet start speaking about politics and economics (a fault perhaps as much of the author as the characters, but I'll get to that in a moment).

What would it really be like to communicate with an alien humanoid species? In the movies or on television, there's usually some nifty mechanical device or "implant" that translates what everyone is saying. Authors like Arnason show that it's not that easy. Real communication takes time, and there will be misunderstandings. Some of these misunderstandings can get you killed...or almost killed. Both Nia and Lixia together show that good will and an open mind can go a long way toward overcoming the most important misunderstandings; and for any misunderstanding that remains, sometimes it's best to sleep on it or to shelve it for later.

The other day, a friend complained to me that science fiction didn't have well rounded characters. For the most part, Arnason's characters are complex yet understandable. I particularly liked her depictions of Nia and the Voice of the Waterfall and a couple of the other people from the planet. Of the humans, the only one I really liked was Lixia, but mainly because she was the human protagonist and sympathetic to the people she met on the planet. Most of the other humans seemed to be stock figures, perhaps because they had to represent different "nations" on earth. The Russians and the Chinese struck me as caricatures, and the Native Americans, with whom I expected to have lots of empathy, also seemed drab to me. Having "native" names and saying they are part of this tribe or that is not the same as creating a believable Native American character.

Part of the problem is that many of the human characters are mouthpieces for political viewpoints. One of the viewpoints was that of the Soviet Union--which had collapsed by the time this novel was published. But the Soviet Union was in trouble already in the mid 1980s, with people in almost every one of its forcibly attached republics widely unhappy with the regime, as was well known. So the Armenian character Agopian comes off quite improbable to me. Since Arnason appears to have believed that the Soviet Union would survive another 200 years, it seems only fair to assume that she had some sympathy with its economics and politics, especially since the United States no longer exists in this novel. Apparently, only capitalists pollute; she must not have heard about Chernobyl. And the ecological disasters of Soviet Socialist pollution were only widely substantiated after the collapse of the Soviet Union; I guess Arnason didn't credit the reports from people who left the "workers' paradise." (At least one other reviewer makes a similar observation about Arnason's dependence on Soviet ideology.)

Next, there's the problem of the Chinese people on this expedition. All of the them strike me as caricatures, derived in part from the official "image" of the Chinese put out by the mainland regime and which Arnason apparently accepted without much question. Mr. Fang may be the worst. I'm sure there are people like him in China--there are over a billion people in China and many millions of Chinese living outside China--but the chances of such a long-winded buffoon getting on to a spaceship simply because he quotes old Chinese philosophers is silly. (He even gets some Chinese philosopher's names wrong. Yipes!)

Finally, the "pronunciation guide" at the end of the book mentions at the start the use of two Chinese systems of writing Chinese in English. This suggests to me that many of the pronunciations of even alien words should be similar to Chinese. But it's clear that Arnason doesn't speak Chinese or never consulted anyone who does or bothered to look in a standard dictionary. Anyone familiar with these two writing system knows that "ai" does not rhyme with the "ay" of day but rhymes almost exactly with "eye," not counting tones. Of course, if Arnason wants the "ai" in native names to sound like "ay", that's her call. It's just not Chinese. Speaking of which, "zi" in Chinese is never pronounced "zee." The "i" of "zi" sounds more like the "e" of "the", sort of an "uh" sound. Since "zi" is only used in reference to Chinese names in the novel, this mistake suggests inattention or indifference on the part of the author, as do Mr. Fang's mispronunciations of Chinese names, which I mentioned above.

It's a bit of a puzzle, then. Science fiction writers like Arnason devote considerable time and energy to creating wonderfully imagined alien worlds, but when it comes to things Chinese they have only the vaguest notions--and yet all they have to do is hop on a plane, fly to China, and spend some time doing what Lixia did: learning the language and the culture. China and the Chinese languages are as alien to us as another planet! (Arnason's novel is not the only instance of this vagueness about China in sf, but for limits of space I won't go into it further.)

Aside from these disappointments, I think it's a great novel. As I said at the outset, Nia and the Voice of the Waterfall are really well thought out. (I have purposely tried not to "spoil" the story by giving details.) With the exception of the parts of the last quarter of the novel dealing with the humans and their politics, this is a great read.

In the best tradition of first contact novels!
This stunning novel is in the best tradition of first contact novels.The main character, an anthropologist, somehow manages to keep herself alive among challenging circumstances, and finds the right informant to learn about a pre-industrial culture on a wildly beautiful and unspoiled planet.

Arnason's writing is genial and comforting.She has a knack for immediacy--it feels like the protagonist is a close friend imparting an adventure.Dialogue is snappy yet meticulous.The plot is strong and maintains stamina.This is sci-fi with its roots in an eco/feminist perspective similar to Le Guin or Tepper.All of the above and a page turner too!

excellent story telling
Eleanor Arnason is a gifted writer, of whom, I am sure we will
be hearing alot more from. The story is magical. The only
exception I have with the book, is the future written about
by Eleanor of earth.The book is copyrighted 1991 and the story is set at least two centuries in the future and the author
still depicts a historically viable soviet union and a marxist, Engelian
socialist future, which on the face of the story, is absurd.
Also why do they keep putting a picture of a woman holding a
skull of the cover of the hardback and paperback? What does this
have to do with the story?

A+: a wonderful anthropological first-contact novel.
There's always some trepidation when one begins to re-read a fondly-remembered book.Will it hold up?Will it be as good as I remember? Happily, Ms. Arnason's wonderful prose soon caught me once again inher spell....

Lixia, the viewpoint character,is a Hawaiian anthropologist from an
Earth still recovering from the excesses of the 20th century.She's
nerving herself up to enter her first alien village at Sigma Draconis --

'There was no point in sneaking around.If they caught me spying, I'd be
in real trouble.The best thing was to walk right in.

The technique hadn't worked in New Jersey, of course.The people there
had tried to sacrifice me to their god, the Destroyer of Cities...'

Nia, a woman of the Iron People, is a smith and a pervert - she once loved
a man.Her neighbors drove her from their village in disgrace.Now
she has a smithy near a village of the Copper People -- the village Lixia had
come to study.Lixia's first contact doesn't go well -- she is driven out. Nia
takes her in, befriends her, and they become travel companions.The next
village they visit is kinder:

"This person without fur is amazing.She knows nothing about
anything.But she is willing to listen, and she doesn't interrupt."

Lixia and Nia are joined by Dexter Seawarrior, Ph.D., an Angeleno
aborigine.His people prize mellowness and truth;Dexter is devious
and ambitious.He left his tribe, went to school, and is now a tenured
professor at Berkeley....

The book is filled with complicated people, some of them human,muddling through life.

"When a shamaness of an alien village, having handled for the momentthe problem of an alien intruder, walks away complaining aloud, 'Why do these things always happen to me?' the reader knows she's in trustworthy hands.High marks."-- Suzy McKee Charnas

-- plus more nice cover blurbs from P. Sargent, Ch. Platt, MJ Engh, John
Sladek, Gw. Jones & UK Le Guin.They liked it, I liked it, and you will too.

Happy reading!
Pete Tillman

Something to think about.
The world-building in this book was superb.Set on the home planet of the only other sentient species ever found, the characters in this book are anthropologists who are trying to understand this new kind of intelligent life.In the process, they discover more about themselves than the objects of their studies.Listed as a Utopian novel in many reviews, it is not.However, it does include a distinct future Earth (in the human anthropologist's memories, actions, and attitudes) that could be described as a Utopia of sorts.This is a book for those of us who like to think, and it's one of the best books of this kind I have ever read.Do try it. ... Read more

Product Description
In this witty romp of a planetary romance, Arnason's recurring character Lydia Duluth joins a motley crew of intergalactic travelers to explore the long-lost homeworld of the Atch, who have a mysterious history they'd like to keep buried on the planet they left behind. But the expedition goes awry when a rogue AI, determined to keep the planet and its system quarantined, destroys the star-gate, stranding the expedition on the planet. The travelers encounter the native Atch and discover the Tomb of the Fathers--and see firsthand what can happen when childcare becomes the dominant issue for a species.

''Eleanor Arnason is a treasure,'' writes Andrea Hairston, the award-winning author of Mindscape. ''Why? She knows her craft, respects her audience, and has a dazzling imagination. She entertains us with fearless writing. Tomb of the Fathers is an elegant thought experiment on gender, class, and ethics. An interstellar comedy of errors, Tomb of the Fathers is laugh-out-loud funny and also a thought-provoking thriller. Arnason's deft universe-building transported me to the great beyond where I delighted in the company of complex, juicy characters who--whether human, humanoid, machine, or genetic mash-up--bared their souls. Tomb of the Fathers is the space adventure you've been dying to read. At the last page, I wanted more. Indeed, my only complaint is that I want a sequel now!''

And Carolyn Gilman, author of Halfway Human, says ''Fair warning: don't open this book unless you're prepared to spend the next few hours in a world of Marxist aliens, sentient spacesuits, topsy turvy gender relations, and eyes-glued-to-the-page adventure. Eleanor Arnason writes fast-paced space drama riddled with wry humor and social commentary. Heavens, it's tasty.'' ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Read this book and then write your own ....
For me, reading this book has the same frisson as finding a Kilgore Trout novel at the used book store.Aesthetically it has much in common with 1970's era Dr. Who episodes.I read science fiction for ideas rather than plotting.The plot for this book largely takes place on the planet Atch and its moon.The plot is character driven rather than science driven.For instance when talking about faster than light travel Ms. Aranson introduces her deus ex machina - an AI culture that states that other races don't have the hardware to understand how FTL works.The novel's main character, Lydia Duluth, has an AI embedded in her brain.Much of the tension in the story seems to revolve around humanity's rather inept co-existance with the AI race.For instance in one scene the AI that has been acting as the translator between the indigenous people and the characters of the story leaves the group. This results in the following passage:

"Who will translate?" Lydia asking , thinking, oh please, not me.
"I will," the courier said."I have downloaded Mantis's translation program and its data files.An odd language.But all languages created by life forms seem odd to us."

The conversation seems clumsy, but it has an "indie movie" reality that resonates with me.I've read this book four times over the past three weeks, and the characters become more believable and amusing for me even as the plot seems to wear thin.I believe that this would be an excellent book to use as a discussion model for a group of beginning authors.The narration offers plenty of opportunities for writers to explore the story from other points of view.I viewed reading this book as similar to playing a "serious game".The book is an entertaining exercise in space opera, but for me the point of the book was to look beyond its entertainment value, to appreciate Ms. Arnason's craft, and to consider what I might do with the ideas she presents. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

A bit aimless but charming adventure
Belinda Smith is a student on New Hope, vague on future plans but happy with her classes, her roomate and her small well-lit room full of flowers.Her happy existence suddenly changes, as her guardian takes her outof school and into the derelict family mansion.Strange adventures ensue, including her encounter with the native humanoid tribes, an old robot, and a number of quirky phenomena.

The protagonist is not particularly heroic, but very likable.Just as she--or her companions start to slide into a template (like a plucky young heroine)--the author skewers the stereotype, but in a very believable, human way.

The adventures that ensue are frequently unbelivable, yet that is a part of the plot.There is no grand conflict; instead it's a series of adventures with amusing and sometimes touching aspects.There are plenty of light-hearted references, often ironic, to literature, psychology and metaphysics.The lack of a central plot is a weakness, but the characters--they are not heroes--are engaging, and so is the book.

--inotherworlds.com ... Read more

Product Description
Driven by her own curiosity, Lixia, an earthborn anthropologist, follows a female outcast called Nia across a strange and perilous world. Reprint. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

A wonderful anthropological first-contact novel. Highly recommended
[NOTE: this is volume one of the two-volume mmpb reprint, but it's
really just one novel. So be sure you buy both if you get this edition!]

There's always some trepidation when one begins to re-read a
fondly-remembered book. Will it hold up? Will it be as good as I
remember? Happily, Ms. Arnason's wonderful prose soon caught me
once again in her spell....

Lixia, the viewpoint character, is a Hawaiian anthropologist from an
Earth still recovering from the excesses of the 20th century. She's
nerving herself up to enter her first alien village at Sigma Draconis --

'There was no point in sneaking around. If they caught me spying, I'd be
in real trouble. The best thing was to walk right in.

The technique hadn't worked in New Jersey, of course. The people there
had tried to sacrifice me to their god, the Destroyer of Cities...'

Nia, a woman of the Iron People, is a smith and a pervert - she once loved
a man. Her neighbors drove her from their village in disgrace. Now
she has a smithy near a village of the Copper People -- the village Lixia had
come to study. Lixia's first contact doesn't go well -- she is driven out. Nia
takes her in, befriends her, and they become travel companions. The next
village they visit is kinder:

"This person without fur is amazing. She knows nothing about
anything. But she is willing to listen, and she doesn't interrupt."

Lixia and Nia are joined by Dexter Seawarrior, Ph.D., an Angeleno
aborigine. His people prize mellowness and truth; Dexter is devious
and ambitious. He left his tribe, went to school, and is now a tenured
professor at Berkeley....

The book is filled with complicated people, some of them human,muddling
through life.

"When a shamaness of an alien village, having handled for the moment
the problem of an alien intruder, walks away complaining aloud, 'Why
do these things always happen to me?' the reader knows she's in
trustworthy hands. High marks." -- Suzy McKee Charnas

-- plus more nice cover blurbs from P. Sargent, Ch. Platt, MJ Engh,
John Sladek, Gw. Jones & UK Le Guin. They liked it, I liked it,
and you will too.

Happy reading!
Peter D. Tillman
Review first published in 2000 at Infinity-plus ... Read more

Product Description

Customer Reviews (3)

Bear-sired hero
Eleanor Arnason tells of a housewife in Minneapolis, Minnesota, U.S., in a life that never fully holds her attention. She dreams of a strange world and one day finds herself in it. It's a world where magic works and where the people know her and hail her as a long-awaited hero. She is the Bear King's daughter, with great strength and unusual healing powers. And she has been called here to fight a creeping and shadowy evil. She returns to Mineeapolis but is followed by monsters. Being a true bear and a shape-changer, she's not a typical wife and mother. She hassome of the bear's personality: instead of worrying about her grown-up children she returns to the other world, which she can help to save. By doing so, she removes the monsters from our unsuspecting world and returns to the task for which she was born.

Her other books are supposed to be good
Picked this up at a used book store with about 20 others. Finally got around to reading it. Big mistake.

Finally put the book down with about 50 pages left to go. I guess that shows you how much I cared about how it ended. Characters were indifferent and impersonal. Storeyline had some potential...but, if you don't care about anybody in the story, what's the point?

The heroine in this story was totally self absorbed. Couldn't care less about her husband, and just nominally showed some interest in her daughter. Didn't like her one little teensy bit.

I hear her other books are good. Some I've heard are even exceptional. Everyone has a bad day (book) I guess :). Very poor character development. Not a fun read at all.

SF

Her other books are supposed to be good
Picked this up at a used book store with about 20 others. Finally got around to reading it. Big mistake.

Finally put the book down with about 50 pages left to go. I guess that shows you how much I cared about how it ended. Characters were indifferent and impersonal. Storeyline had some potential...but, if you don't care about anybody in the story, what's the point?

I hear her other books are good. Some I've heard are even exceptional. Everyone has a bad day (book) I guess :). Very poor character development. Not a fun read at all.

SF ... Read more

Product Description
Word count: 1440. ... Read more

Product Description
Earthborn Lixia, a vistor from her damaged planet, and Nia, a primitive outcast, exiled for committing a transgression unheard of in her society, unite by circumstance and travel together across a perilous continent. Reprint. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

A wonderful anthropological first-contact novel. Highly recommended,
[NOTE: this is volume TWO of the two-volume mmpb reprint, but it's
really just one novel. So be sure you buy both if you get this edition!]

There's always some trepidation when one begins to re-read a
fondly-remembered book. Will it hold up? Will it be as good as I
remember? Happily, Ms. Arnason's wonderful prose soon caught me
once again in her spell....

Lixia, the viewpoint character, is a Hawaiian anthropologist from an
Earth still recovering from the excesses of the 20th century. She's
nerving herself up to enter her first alien village at Sigma Draconis --

'There was no point in sneaking around. If they caught me spying, I'd be
in real trouble. The best thing was to walk right in.

The technique hadn't worked in New Jersey, of course. The people there
had tried to sacrifice me to their god, the Destroyer of Cities...'

Nia, a woman of the Iron People, is a smith and a pervert - she once loved
a man. Her neighbors drove her from their village in disgrace. Now
she has a smithy near a village of the Copper People -- the village Lixia had
come to study. Lixia's first contact doesn't go well -- she is driven out. Nia
takes her in, befriends her, and they become travel companions. The next
village they visit is kinder:

"This person without fur is amazing. She knows nothing about
anything. But she is willing to listen, and she doesn't interrupt."

Lixia and Nia are joined by Dexter Seawarrior, Ph.D., an Angeleno
aborigine. His people prize mellowness and truth; Dexter is devious
and ambitious. He left his tribe, went to school, and is now a tenured
professor at Berkeley....

The book is filled with complicated people, some of them human,muddling
through life.

"When a shamaness of an alien village, having handled for the moment
the problem of an alien intruder, walks away complaining aloud, 'Why
do these things always happen to me?' the reader knows she's in
trustworthy hands. High marks." -- Suzy McKee Charnas

-- plus more nice cover blurbs from Pamela Sargent, Charles Platt,
MJ Engh,John Sladek, Gwyneth Jones & Ursula K Le Guin. They liked it,
I liked it, and you will too, I bet.

Happy reading!
Peter D. Tillman
Review first published in 2000 at Infinity-plus ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Very light reading
This book consists of a series of encounters along the road as Limper the sword-smith attempts to escape from the king. Limper's traveling companion is a very young dragon (the dragon race in Arnason's book are similiar to dwarves but I guess its easier and cuter to have a young dragon along than a young dwarf). Ends as it begins, still travelling along the road but now out of the king's reach.

I think this is supposed to be classic fantasy
I purchased this book for my Fantasy as Literature class in college, after finding out it was kind of hard to get a hold of a copy.I can't believe there are no reviews on it here, since I swear it was supposed to very important and influential in the history of fantasy, according to my teacher.

This, then, is the story of Limper, who was the finest smith in Eshgorin - until he ran away. Tired of using his skills to make useless trinkets for the King of Eshgorin, Limper is running across the countryside with his faithful, cute dragon companion Nargri.Limper learned everything he knows about smithing from the dragons, who unbeknownst to humans are the true masters of the craft- (that's why humans associate them with fire and hoardes of gold treasures.)
Limper has a variety of adventures, being captured by several different groups of people, most of whom want to turn him to the King of Eshgorin, who has put a price on his head.On the other hand, some of them just want to kill him for the heck of it.He meets an assortment of companions and together they get into and out of some sticky situations.

Apart from the fact that Limper is a rather wry character with a strange philosophy on life, and that Nargri is adorable, and that I love the unique take on dragons, this is a fairly mediocre adult fantasy book.I find it to be a good YA fantasy novel, though.Since I can find little to no info on this book, I can't tell you if it's supposed to be young adult fantasy or not. The writing is very simplistic and straightforward - it's a travel-log of events, things happen, more things happen, then the book ends.There's no conclusion WHATSOEVER to this book.Regardless, it's a good light read. ... Read more