The Sword of the Lady (Emberverse Book 6)

Here we are and FINALLY Rudi gets the titular Sword of the Lady. At the end of the book. Jesus, Lord and Lady and all the other fifty million things you are going to hear about this go around. Seriously, Stirling has got a hard on for religions that burst right out of his pants and probably through the 500 page journey that this book is. 500 pages to get the sword right at the end, and even that is just "Rudi now has the sword. Read the next book, that'll be five bucks." GET AN EDITOR.Not to say that the journey isn't fun. There's a lot to this book and I mean a LOT. It's just that towards the end you raise your hands up and realize that he is literally jerking you around.There's a lot of conclusions to various plot lines, resolving Rudi's friends capture in Iowa, Ingolf's reconciliation with his brother, Rudi and Mathilda confirming their budding relationship and marriages/deaths and all the other usual plot elements. Stirling provides us with a feast of plot and character development. Too bad he went HEAVY with the side dishes instead of focusing on the main meal.For example; There's an entire chapter where Mathilda spies on Rudi dancing naked with other Wiccans...in the middle of Wisconsin. There's a chapter where Sandra, Conrad Renfew and Tiphaine sit, eat dinner, hunt and talk about what's going on.The worst transgression is the latter half of the book, which introduces us to (drumroll) Viking in northeast Maine!! Because apparently there are Norse god worshipping leaders just chomping at the bit for some reason to recreate Norway in the Northeast! I'm not even kidding. There are about 100 pages or so where you are just reading and going "Why!?" This is at the tail end of the book where the last thing that needs to happen is for Rudi and Co. to sail across the sea to Nantucket and claim the sword. All the other plot threads had been wrapped up and the book was ripe for a conclusion. Instead we are treated to 100 pages of Norse rituals, names, and feasts. I. Don't. Care! It should've been, Rudi and Co. trek across the northeast, find/build/hire a boat to take them to Nantucket, fight Cutters and people die, claim sword, the end. This would've kept the book at the necessary 100 pages while, you know, moving the plot along. I don't want to have the book come to a grinding halt while we see yet ANOTHER pagan ritual, and ANOTHER feast, and ANOTHER battle for characters/group of people that I just don't give a s*** about. I know the sword is right there, just go ahead and TAKE IT.This is an editors job. The entire last 1/5 of the book is entirely skippable. For those of you with the hardcover copy, here is my suggestion. Stop reading at page 342. Now, here's what you missed. Rudi and Co. meet Vikings in Maine and have a ritual where Odin says "This guy is awesome, do what he says." Then they fight pirates. They win but Odard dies. It's not written badly he's just not particularly mourned past his chapter. Then they hire these pirates to sail them to Nantucket. The Cutters have possessed the pirate's friends to attack them. They land at Nantucket. Now pick up at 467.Now proceed to read to the end. There, I just saved you about 100 pages of nonsense.In summary, this book was great. Until the end where it slowed down before finally finishing.

I loved the first Change series (DTF) books. I was held fast from beginning to end. But in the second series (Sunrise Lands, etc) things have only gone down hill. The content is mind-numbingly hard to swallow- from Wicca to all of the "girl power" it was hard to keep reading these books. I could understand the MacKenzies being some sort of post-Wicca nature cult, but why are there Wiccans literally EVERYWHERE? Give me a break! Secret covens all over the midwest? Has the author ever been to the midwest? I found the Norrheimers paganism a little bit less irritating, as it reflects actual paganism (the violence, drinking, coarseness, etc), but people who could be killed by bandits or a farming accident any second without warning putting their spiritual stock in some decadent reflection or bourgeois America's homage to their pre-Christian ancestors with no modicum of historicity whatsoever makes my eyes roll till I get a headache. If you want to write about pagans, don't forget the animal and human sacrifices, the sexual rituals, the beastiality (which Stirling describes in Island in the Sea of Time), and all those other little non-PC bits that make it all plausible.The girl power doesn't bother me in principle- I married a woman with a career- but in this time and place it seems absurd. We know that female equality cannot exist without the birth control pill. That is what spawned the sexual revolution, women's liberation, etc. If sex meant babies the female characters would put a little more thought into who they slept with than they do in these books. Also, the notion that women could be soldiers equal to men (pre-gun powder) is insane. If Stirling thinks that women are "quicker" than men- or even have the capacity to be so in a general sense- he doesn't know much about human physiology. Speed (or power) are types of muscular strength. If women had to fight men with swords, they wouldn't stand a chance at actually mastering the techniques, let alone being the "best" in the world (Tiphaine and Astrid) save for their lack of brawn. Stirling obviously has never wielded a sword before, which isn't his fault, but it seems that if he asked anyone about sword fighting at all it was probably some silly SCA re-enactor from the local Renaissance Festival. Our contemporary values about gender equality are the result of affluence. They are luxuries. Luxuries that people without electric lights and cars cannot afford.My final critique is his choice of mysticism. This is a spoiler, but ought to be predictable so the reader can make the call about reading this or not. In the end, the metaphor the "goddesses" give Rudi is that there are "forces of order" and "forces of entropy" at play and he and his friends and magical sword are all on the side of order and the CUT is on the side of chaos. This seems like a bizarre metaphor because if anything, the CUT is all about order and Rudi and his pseudo-Irish pals are all about chaos! The CUT wants to unify North America under one authoritarian government with one state religion. While they may not be the nicest guys around, and have done some terrible things, this cannot be called "chaotic". If he wanted to go the "cosmic struggle" route, Stirling should have picked a more apt (and less hackneyed) metaphor.Again, I thoroughly enjoyed his first three Change novels, just as I enjoyed the first two Nantucket novels. I think that no one has better settings or premises than Stirling. He creates really ingenious events and situations to make an adventure story more viable to the modern person. But when everything has to be PC and reflect our values entirely, he ruins the whole beautiful, exciting world that he created.

Every time I finish a book in this series I heave a happy sigh, smile, and reach for the next one. Even though there are times, bless the author, when he does Stuff that makes me go "AAAAUGH NO NO NO!" For instance, "Let the horses gorge!" Dear Mr. Stirling: The word for that is FOUNDER and DEAD HORSES. You *never* let a horse "gorge." Go talk to your horse expert some more. (Also, they need to discover some Morgans along the way. Entirely too many quarter horses and hugebloods in these books. Not that I'm personally biased or anything.) Still: Love the books a lot.This one takes Rudi and his crew further along his journey to Nantucket, with the bad guys in hot pursuit, and he runs into still more splinter cultures, all of which seem to have matured amazingly in only twenty years or so, but who's quibbling? I confess that the first book in the series that I read was The Golden Princess, so I know what's going to happen and when (although it's heavily foreshadowed), but that was enough to send me back to the beginning to read them all... happily. This is a series I'll read and re-read, and I think I'll wind up smiling every time.

Rudi and companions continue their travels across a changed America, a quarter century after electricity and gunpowder stopped working. They travel from Iowa, the richest and most powerful post-American kingdom, but with a dangerously weak and divided government, towards Nantucket, the Island where the change apparantly started. However, in addition to the loss of technology, other things have changed, and there are things out there that are no friend to humanity and hide behind the eyes of evil men.While Rudi's friends and companions are well drawn, the real stars of the book are the strange societies that have grown up since the change. From the Byzantine kingdom of Iowa, to the modern Norse of Maine, they are vividly drawn and often alien.This is a book of heroes and villians, great battles and political skulduggery and high religion. The noble wiccan Rudi and the catholic paladin Ignatius are forced to confront the soul devouring evil of the Church Universal and Triumphant in a battle of swordskill, tactics and sheet faith.

I'll be honest, I didn't really rate the first three books in this series, okay but... However, for me it's the story of the next generation where things have come to life. For me the best part is the religo- mystic element, which I know some people hate, horses for courses I guess! Plus, a strong narrative drive, yes they've spent a long time getting to the east, but it all holds together, makes sense in term of the story

Cheers to SM Stirling

This is part three of a trilogy and it is a gripping, good read. However, it all ends very abruptly at the end. Perhaps it is a lead to a new trilogy but this is not clear. So the trilogy starts well and builds well but ends in an unsatisfactory manner. One can guess at the likely outcomes given the ending but one cannot be certain.

A good installment of a great series. Develops very nicely the characters of the rest of the band and supplies the motives for what will follow.