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3.0 out of 5 stars
An End to Wandering - A Path to Vengeance, Feb 29 2004
By A Customer
The Horseclans novels are like olives -- you either acquire a taste for them or you don't. They're not great literature, which is why I gave this book a score of only 3, but if you get caught up in the saga, it won't matter. You'll want more, and there are a lot of them! The story is set in precataclysmic North America, approximately 600 years after nuclear war, man-induced plagues, and worldwide seismic disturbances have thrown humanity into a brutal pre-industrial age. Much of California and the East Coast have sunk into the sea. What remains of the eastern states, from Canada to Georgia, has been settled by waves of dark-skinned and dark-haired adventurers from Europe (Spaniards, Greeks, Armenians, etc.) called the Ehleenee. While these early invaders were rugged fighters in the mold of Athenians and Spartans, the current crop are little more than decadent dictators ruling over downtrodden peasant farmers. The first book in the series (see The Coming of the Horseclans) details the odyssey of the War Chief of the horseclans, Milo of Morai, a mutant immortal from the 20th century, as he leads the nomadic horseclans on a great migration from the high plains of North America to the Atlantic Ocean. After 200 years of searching for other immortals, Milo has returned to fulfill an ancient prophecy and lead the nomads to their destined homeland by the sea. Since, unbeknownst to the clanspeople, earthquakes long ago sent their original home, Ehlai (Los Angeles), to the bottom of the ocean, Milo convinces them to travel east rather than west. In their way stands the armed might of the Ehleenee and the treacherous Witchmen -- pre-Holocaust scientists who have survived the centuries by repeatedly stealing new bodies to house their minds and who have their own designs for ruling existing civilization. In the first six Horseclans volumes, the narrative moves forward in time. However, this seventh book of the series (and the next few which follow) all take place before the great migration. The call has gone out and the clans are gathering to hear Milo's words of prophecy which promise and end to their wandering. Yet before they can abandon their hunting grounds, they have one last debt to settle. They must rescue a young girl and her two brothers, who were kidnapped and sold into slavery, and teach their enemies the price of harming people of the clans. But the path to vengeance leads them straight into a sword-swinging battle with two powerful armies. These books are primarily military science fiction and not for the faint of heart. There are lots of vivid descriptions of battles, torture and ghastly wounds. The prose is spare and very action-oriented. While not a fan of military fiction in general, I was sucked in by the animal component of the series. The clanspeople have the ability to communicate telepathically with their specially bred war horses and with a genetically engineered wild feline, the "prairie cat," which ressembles a blend of puma and sabertooth. I'm also obssessed with translating the terminology of the time -- it becomes a kind of game -- figuring out what words like Ehlai (LA), Pitzburk (Pittsburg), Karaleenos (Carolinas), Neekohl (Nicole), Kuk (Cook), Hwallis (Wallace) all mean. If you like Larry Niven's Man-Kzinn Wars series, you might enjoy the horseclans saga.
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