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ISBN: 0-88677-869-7
Read June through August, 2012, at age 34
First reading
This is the omibus version of a trilogy – Kesrith, Shon’jir, and Kutath –
and the trilogy is pretty much a book in three parts anyway, so it works
well. As an omnibus, it stands
alone. Individual books should probably
be read in order, and you should have all of them before you start.
From the back cover:
They were the mri – tall, secretive, bound by honor and the rigid dictates of their striated society. This golden-skindded, golden-eyed race had provided the universe with mercenary soldiers of almost unimaginable ability. For aeons, the kel – the mri’s warrior caste – had fought battles on a myriad of worlds against uncountable foes. Sometimes they had even fought others of their own kind. And even then, the mri had prospered – honing their skills in proper and traditional combat, eliminating the weak and unfit, and giving honor to the strong.
But
for four decades now they had faced an enemy unlike any other. In defending the merchant ships and
protecting the intergalactic commerce of the elephantine regul, the kel have
met the deadliest enemy any mri has ever faced – and enemy who does not honor
single combat, an enemy whose only way of war is widespread destruction. These “humans” are mass fighters, creatures
of the herd, and the mri have been slaughtered like animals.
Now,
in the aftermath of war, the mri face extinction. It will be up to three individuals to save
whatever remains of this devastated race:
a kel – one of the last survivors of his kind; a sen – the priestess and
spiritual leader of this honorable people; and a lone human – a man sworn to
aid this enemy of his own kind. Can they
retrace the galaxy-wide path of this nomadic race back through millennia to
reclaim the ancient world which first gave them life?
Pretty long description for a paperback. Reasonable plot teaser.
Reactions after the break.
Overall:
Done moving, but this house is much more of
a project than I was expecting. I
finished this book about a month ago, and haven’t had a minute to sit at the
computer. Here’s another really brief
review.
I liked the book. It took the Dances with Wolves / Pocahontas / Avatar story, and mixed it up a
bit. I liked where it went. The aliens were well done – consistent,
different, and rounded. There was too
much human-exceptionalism for my liking (-Seriously? There’s never been another race of group
fighters before, in all the thousands of worlds that the mri fought for!?), but
that seems to be one of those things. It
didn’t detract too much. There was a bit
of a steep learning curve as far as vocabulary goes, and there were too many
apostrophes for my liking, but otherwise the writing was decent, and the pacing
was all right – it dragged in places, but was generally pretty good.
Rating: 4
Other opinions:
Excellent, detailed review. I didn’t find the book as slow a read as this
reviewer, though.
Similar thoughts to the first review.
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