Id
stringlengths 3
44
| Code
stringlengths 7
10
⌀ | Title
stringlengths 1
220
⌀ | Author
stringlengths 4
59
⌀ | Data
stringlengths 3
10
⌀ | Genres
stringlengths 20
352
⌀ | Summary
stringlengths 11
32.8k
⌀ |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
8468722 | /m/0274k80 | The Elusive Pimpernel | Baroness Emma Orczy | 1908 | {"/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"} | It is September 1793 and French Agent and chief spy-catcher Chauvelin is determined to get his revenge for the previous humiliations dished out to him at the hands of the Scarlet Pimpernel. Chauvelin travels to England as an official representative of the French government tasked with looking after the interests of French citizens, but this is only a cover and his real purpose is to trick Sir Percy Blakeney into returning to France, where he can be captured and put to the guillotine. The plot is hatched at a gala on Richmond Green, with the help of a young French actress, Désirée Candielle, whom Chauvelin has enlisted with promises of money, pardon and fame if she succeeds. Désirée is manning a tent with a model guillotine under the premise of raising money for the poor of Paris. Marguerite Blakeney enters her stall and starts talking to Désirée. On discovering her to be a fellow French actress, she is soon taken in by the young woman's sob story and before long had invited her to perform at her house in Richmond in front of the Prince of Wales. Once the offer has been made and accepted, Désirée's official chaperone is revealed as Chauvelin. Marguerite realises she's been set up, but the offer has been made and Sir Percy insists that both of them should come to his house as arranged. Juliette de Marny (whose rescue by the Scarlet Pimpernel is told in the novel I Will Repay), is staying with them at Blakeney Manor. Chauvelin has managed to get his hands on her family jewels (which were being looked after by the local priest) and has given a diamond necklace, which belonged to Juliette's mother, to Désirée Candielle. When Désirée turns up at the Blakeney's Richmond mansion wearing the jewels there is a bitter argument between the women. Désirée manages to engineer the situation so that Sir Percy must fight Chauvelin in a duel to avenge the insults levied against her—for which they must go to France, as duelling is outlawed in England. The following morning Percy leaves Marguerite behind in Richmond and heads for Boulogne. Chauvelin has no intentions of actually fighting the Englishman, but to ensure the Pimpernel cannot escape before he can be captured, Chauvelin sets a further trap for Marguerite who falls for it completely. Before long she has been arrested for attempting to enter France on a false passport, given to her by an apparently apologetic Désirée Candielle, as part of Chauvelin's plot. With Marguerite in prison and the citizens of Boulogne threatened with death if she escapes, Chauvelin appears to have an air-tight plan to secure and discredit Sir Percy that will end the meddling of the Scarlet Pimpernel for good... but as always Percy is more than a match for his arch-enemy. de:The Scarlet Pimpernel fr:Le Mouron rouge |
8469632 | /m/0274ldw | Ann Vickers | Sinclair Lewis | 1933 | null | A Bildungsroman, the novel follows the heroine, Ann Vickers, from tomboy school girl in the late 19th Century American Midwest, through college, and into her forties. It charts her post-graduate suffragist phase in the early 20th century. As a suffragist, she is imprisoned, and her experiences there lead her to become interested in social work and prison reform. As a social worker in a settlement house in the First World War she has her first sexual love affair, becomes pregnant and has an abortion. Later, having become successful running a modern and progressive prison for women, she marries a dull man, more out of loneliness than love. Mired in a rather loveless marriage, she falls in love with a controversial (and perhaps corrupt) judge. Flouting both usual middleclass convention as well as that of her progressive social circle in New York, she becomes pregnant by the judge, and has a son. |
8471986 | /m/0274q01 | First Love: A Gothic Tale | Joyce Carol Oates | 1996 | {"/m/039vk": "Gothic fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"} | 11-year-old Josie arrives in upstate New York to live with her great-aunt after her mother abandons her father for no apparent reason. There, she meets her 25-year-old cousin, Jared, who is studying to be a minister. Her stay is very unpleasant; she is physically and psychologically abused by both her mother and great-aunt. She is also bullied without mercy at her new school. Her mother turns her away for love and comfort. Feeling abandoned and unloved, she turns to Jared for the affection she longs for. However, Jared's intents are anything but to love and care for her. He uses false affection to get her to self-mutilate herself, drink her own blood, look at pornographic material, and endure verbal abuse from him. He soon begins sexually abusing her, which Josie mistakes to be him expressing true love to her, although she knows that what they are doing is wrong. Josie eventually discovers that her mother is incapable of love because she was always felt unimpressed by Josie's father and several other men. After staying there for an extended period of time, Josie starts to have a psychological breakdown within herself, probably from her taboo relationship with Jared. At one point in the novellette, she and Jared, after initiating sexual intercourse by a creek, sit together. Then, Jared cuts his chest with a stone, and Josie licks the blood off before he dies from blood loss. This is the climax of the novella. After, she leaves the mansion, breaking free of Jared's prison. |
8472197 | /m/0274q78 | Prince Prigio | null | null | null | The plot of Prince Prigio begins with the introduction of a queen who does not believe in fairies. After many childless years, she and the king finally had a boy, Prigio. When the queen refused to invite the fairies to the christening, none of the nobles would attend, and so the king and queen were alone when the fairies arrived and presented the child with gifts. Among the gifts were a never-empty purse (the purse of Fortunatus), seven-league boots, a cap of darkness which would make him invisible, a wishing cap, a magic carpet, and also beauty, courage, and luck, but the last fairy decreed, "My child, you shall be too clever!" This would have pleased the queen, but she did not believe it. She had all the items swept into a lumber room. The prince grew up to be too clever. He would argue with everyone and knew better than everyone. He had two younger brothers, neither of whom was clever, and both of whom were liked; they fell in love with their cousins. The king particularly disliked Prigio, fearing he would claim the throne, and wanted to be rid of him. One day, a firedrake appeared in the country; the king was sorry that it would kill his second son as well as his first before the youngest son killed it, but he would sacrifice him to be rid of Prigio. Prigio, like his mother, refused to believe in its existence and reminded him that it was the youngest son who triumphed, so they should send him at once. Alphonse, his youngest brother, went and was eaten; Prigio, still not believing in firedrakes, thought he had gone off to travel. The king sent Enrico, the second, as well, and he also died. The king tried to send Prigio, who refused because he still disbelieved in the firedrake and also he was the last surviving heir. The king decided to take the rest of the court and abandon Prigio alone in the castle. When they did, Prigio found they also stole every piece of clothing except what he wore. He searched the castle and found the lumber room with the fairies' gifts. The seven-league boots bore him to an inn to eat, and he thought he dreamed it. No one paid any attention to him; he did not know that he was wearing an invisibility cap. He stole food, and when his cap was knocked off, paid from it from the purse -- which he found still full later. Whenever his cap came on or off, he appeared or vanished, but did not realize it. Still invisible, he went to a ball where everyone spoke badly of him except for one lady, who praised his aiding a poor student, and Prigio fell madly in love with her. At once, he believed in fairies and magic and realized everything that had happened to them. He used the things to make himself suitable for the ball and went and met the lady, the daughter of the English Ambassador, Lady Rosalind. When she spoke of the firedrake, he said he would kill it. He went back and found a magical spyglass, which he knew from Arabian Nights and spied out the dragon. He realized that even with his magical gifts, he had no chance, and his brothers had had none. He went to library to find a book by Cyrano de Bergerac about his trip to the moon. In it, he read of the Remora, which was as cold as the firedrake was hot; he resolved to find one and make the creatures fight. He found it using the spyglass, and went both creatures, taunting them in the other's name. The monsters met, fought, and killed each other. He went back to the ambassador's house, and found that his father had issued a proclamation offering a reward for him, and another promising to make the Crown Prince, and marry to his niece, whoever brought the king the firedrake's horns and tail. He also found that his carpet had vanished, a servant having accidentally wished himself to the royal castle, with the firedrake's horns and tail. Then the carpet reappeared, with the servant, the king, and the queen, who refused to believe it. The king refused to be reconciled with Prigio. He tells how the servant claimed the reward, and when they disbelieved him, show them the carpet. During the night, the prince went back and cut off the firedrake's hooves. At court, the servant claimed that the proclamation had promised the reward to whoever brought the horns and tail, not the dragon-slayer. Prigio pointed out that if this was allowed, the king could not claim to say one thing and have meant another, which was a royal prerogative. The niece refused to choose between them. The king finally said that whoever brought its hooves would receive the reward. Prigio produced them at once. The king insisted that he must marry his cousin, the promised niece, at once, or hang. Prigio prefers to hang, but suggested that if he recovered his brothers, the king could remit his sentence. The king agreed. Prigio went back to the castle where he had been abandoned, killed an old cat he found there, burned it, and restored it to life with the water from the Fountain of Lions -- being certain that the fairies would not have neglected it. Having thus tested it, he went to the firedrake's lair and restored his brothers; he then went to the remora's and restored the knights it had frozen. The king was pleased to see his sons but would not restore Prigio to the Crown Princeship. Prigio pointed out he had the water and the firedrake's head, and the king agreed. After a triple wedding, Rosalind suggested to Prigio that he could use the wishing cap and make himself no cleverer than anyone else. Prigio agreed but thought better of it: he wished himself to appear no more cleverer than anyone else. |
8475367 | /m/0274twy | Tiger Tale | null | null | {"/m/016475": "Picture book", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"} | The story starts with the Tiger, all golden, without his stripes, singing. The Tiger walks through the forest down to the river, singing all the way. He passes the platypus and meets the Bunyip who tells him to go away and stop singing. Leaving the river he meets Kanga, who also tells him to stop singing. Finally Great Bird tells him to stop singing. As tiger goes on his way he notices a bushfire approaching and goes back to the river to summon the other animals, however all three, Bunyip, Kanga and Great Bird all desert him. Tiger runs back and forth from the river to the fire until the fire is extinguished but the Tiger has lost his voice and the soot leaves stripes on his back. |
8484788 | /m/02752vt | Nunsense | Dan Goggin | null | null | Five of the 19 surviving Little Sisters of Hoboken, a one-time missionary order that ran a leper colony on an island south of France, discover that their cook, Sister Julia, Child of God, accidentally killed the other fifty-two residents of the convent with her tainted vichyssoise while they were off playing bingo with a group of Maryknolls. Upon discovering the disaster, Mother Superior had a vision in which she was told to start a greeting card company to raise funds for the burials. The greeting cards were an enormous success and, thinking there was plenty of money, the Reverend Mother bought a VCR and camcorder for the convent, leaving her with no money in the kitty to pay for the last four burials. With the deceased nuns on ice in the deep freeze, they decide to stage a variety show in the Mount Saint Helen's School auditorium to raise the necessary amount. Participating in the project are Mother Superior Mary Regina, a former circus performer who can not resist the spotlight; her competitive but dignified rival, second-in-command Sister Mary Hubert; Sister Robert Anne, a streetwise nun from Brooklyn; Sister Mary Leo, a novice who is determined to be the world's first ballerina nun; and wacky, childlike Sister Mary Amnesia, who lost her memory when a crucifix fell on her head. The entertainment that they present includes solo star turns, madcap dance routines, and an audience quiz. Naturally, VCRs and camcorders are now no longer such current or expensive devices, so modern presentations of the show tend to substitute newer or more generic terms such as "home entertainment system" or a "plasma TV". |
8485067 | /m/0275364 | The Secret of Shambhala: In Search of the Eleventh Insight | James Redfield | null | {"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/06bvp": "Religion"} | The story is set in the mountains of Tibet in search of the mythical place called Shambhala (also known as Shangri-La), accessible only by raising one's spiritual attunement to a high enough level. Among other things, the book touches on the concept of prayer energy and heaven and earth coming together. |
8488932 | /m/02758xv | Frost at Christmas | R. D. Wingfield | 1987 | {"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"} | As Christmas approaches Detective Inspector Jack Frost is on the trail of a sensitive case with limited time to solve it. Tracy Uphill, an eight year old child, goes missing after attending Sunday school. It turns out her mother is a prostitute who couldn’t meet her because she was with a client. There are many suspects and characters to trouble DI Frost’s mind including; the mother’s client with a false alibi, the vicar with a penchant for pornography and a local psychic who claims she knows where to find the body of the young girl. At the same time other cases also need to be solved as Frost has to investigate attempted break-ins at a local bank and a 30-year-old skeleton with a severed arm. Detective Constable Clive Barnard, the nephew of the Chief Constable, is another problem Frost faces. While many believe that DC Barnard has only got into CID through his family connections and his all-knowing attitude does not help to improve his image, Frost seems to be the only person understanding the young cop and becomes his mentor. |
8490323 | /m/0275bbz | The Insidious Dr Fu Manchu | Sax Rohmer | 1913 | {"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"} | We meet first Dr Petrie who is immediately surprised by a late night visitor, “a tall, lean ... square cut ... sun baked” man who turns out to be his good friend (Commissioner Sir Denis) Nayland Smith of Burma, formerly of Scotland Yard, who has come directly from Burma. We then learn that various men associated with India are the target of assassination by the Chinese Dr Fu Manchu, who seems to have been active in Burma (as distinct from India), in places such as Rangoon, Prome, Moulmein and the “Upper Irrawaddy”, and who comes to England with dacoits and thuggees. Fu Manchu is pursued from the opium dens of Limehouse in the East End of London to various country estates. We learn that Dr Fu Manchu is a leading member not of “old China”, the Mandarin class of the Manchu dynasty, or “young China”, a new generation of “youthful and unbalanced reformers” with “western polish” - but a “Third Party”. Nayland Smith is outwitted several times by Fu Manchu, and thus he reflects more the narrow escapes of the later Bulldog Drummond rather than the “logical” superior approach of the earlier Sherlock Holmes. Fu Manchu is a master poisoner and chemist, a cunning member of the Yellow Peril, “the greatest genius which the powers of evil have put on the earth for centuries”, though his mission is not exactly clear at this stage. He appears to be trying to capture and take back to China the best engineers of Europe, for some larger criminal purpose. By the end of the book, Fu Manchu’s slave Karamaneh, a beautiful Arab woman, apparently now in love with Dr Petrie, and her brother Aziz, are freed, and Inspector Weymouth, driven mad by an injection of serum from Fu Manchu, is restored to sanity by Fu Manchu, who appears to have escaped from a fire which destroys the house he had previously entered. |
8494102 | /m/0275gmh | Enderby's Dark Lady, or No End of Enderby | Anthony Burgess | null | {"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"} | The aging poet has been hired to write the libretto for a musical about William Shakespeare and relocates to the fictional Indiana town of Terrebasse. He must work with collaborators who seem more interested in crude show-biz entertainment than Enderby's intricately rhymed Elizabethan-style verses, and the show's backer - the ostentatious local matron, Mrs. Schoenbaum. The co-star, in the Dark Lady role, is the lusciously black pop-diva April Elgar--and Enderby, consumed with lust, is soon tailoring the show to her non-Elizabethan talents. April is a well-educated daughter of a Carolinian family and is not unresponsive to Enderby's infatuation. She invites Enderby to her home for Christmas, where he must pose as a clergyman, preaching an incoherent sermon to a Baptist congregation. Eventually, the opening night of 'Actor on his Ass' - as the show is now titled - arrives and Enderby is forced to take over the role of Shakespeare. Although Anatole Broyard of The New York Times considered the book funny and clever, he concluded that it was "not as good as the previous three books." |
8494432 | /m/0275gxf | Dead and Alive | Dean Koontz | 2009 | {"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"} | Deucalion, the legendary monster, is a heroic figure dedicated to battling the evil that gave him life. The megalomaniacal Victor Helios has unleashed his engineered killers on modern-day New Orleans. Detectives Carson O'Connor and Michael Maddison are Deucalion's all-too-human partners trying to end the reign of terror of Helios's killers. |
8494835 | /m/0275h6d | The Tritonian Ring | L. Sprague de Camp | null | {"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"} | When the gods resolve to destroy Lorsk, principal kingdom of the sinking continent of Pusad, because Prince Vakar, heir to its throne, is thought to be a threat to them, the king sends the prince on a quest to save the realm from destruction. Vakar is tasked with traveling the known world in search of what the gods most fear, accompanied only by his servant, Fual. He finds himself hampered by ignorance of just what that might be and continual attempts to murder him by parties unknown; meanwhile, his treasonous brother Kuros is plotting with the pirates of the Gorgon Isles, Lorsk's enemies, to overthrow their father. On his quest Vakar encounters Amazons, a seductive queen who is under a spell, an amorous centauress, sorcerers who command legions of headless warriors, and the dangerous Gorgonians themselves, masters of the medusas with their paralyzing glares. |
8495309 | /m/0275hn4 | The House by the Churchyard | Sheridan Le Fanu | 1863 | null | The novel begins with a prologue in the voice of an old man, Charles de Cresseron, that is set in Chapelizod, Ireland, roughly a century after the events of the novel proper. This prologue details how, during an interment at the churchyard of the title, a skull is accidentally unearthed, which bears the marks of two crushing blows to the head and – even more disconcertingly – a small hole from a trepanning. The novel itself is Cresseron's reconstruction of the history related to this grisly item (though by and large his narratorial voice drops out and the novel is told from a conventional omniscient narrator's point of view). The first chapter of the novel proper moves back to 1767, the period of the novel, and begins with another mysterious occurrence in the churchyard: the secretive burial of a coffin, with the occupant simply identified on the brass plaque as "R.D." But after this ominous opening the book turns (in its first half) to the careful and largely light-hearted elaboration of the social life and intrigues among the denizens of Chapelizod, from the powerful Lord Castlemallard to the soldiers in the local barracks under General Chattesworth, to the good Doctor Walsingham and his daughter Lily, to the gluttonous local Catholic priest Father Roach. The opening section of the novel is largely taken up by a farcical duel between two soldiers, Puddock and O'Flaherty, which arises from drunken misunderstanding and eventually is defused without any harm done. Le Fanu introduces hints of unease, though, with the advent of the mysterious Mr Mervyn, who takes up residence in the Tiled House, a building widely rumoured to be haunted. (At this point, Le Fanu interpolates a ghost story, "An Authentic Narrative of the Ghost of a Hand", which has often been separately anthologized.) Mervyn courts the daughter of the General, Gertrude Chattesworth, but has a rival in the scheming Mr Dangerfield, the trusted manager of the English estates of Lord Castlemallard who is visiting Chapelizod and who also has his eye on Gertrude. Dangerfield destroys the romance between Mervyn and Gertrude by setting into circulation vicious rumours about him and his family. Mervyn is in fact the son and heir of the late Lord Dunoran, who was found guilty of murdering a man named Beauclerc to whom he had lost a considerable sum at cards; Dunoran then committed suicide in his prison cell. (It was his coffin that was buried at the beginning of the book – the secrecy required because of the dubiousness of burying a suicide on consecrated ground.) The centre of the novel is the dark web of intrigue surrounding Doctor Sturk, the military doctor (who is on the brink of bankruptcy) and Charles Nutter, the local agent for Lord Castlemallard, whom Sturk both hates and envies. Sturk is troubled by vague recollections about Dangerfield, and gradually realizes that he is in fact the wily and dangerous Charles Archer, who actually committed the murder of Beauclerc. (The only other person who knows about the identity of Charles Archer is Mr Irons, the church clerk, who was originally his accomplice.) Foolishly, Sturk tries to blackmail Dangerfield, and is later discovered in Phoenix Park with his head clubbed in. Sturk survives the attack but is left in a coma. Confusing matters, however, is the simultaneous disappearance under a cloud of Nutter, who is being tormented by Mary Matchwell/Mary Duncan, a professional con artist and schemer who infiltrates the Nutter household by offering to tell Mrs Nutter's fortune. Mrs Matchwell accuses Nutter of bigamy, having married her long ago; he sets off to attempt to prove that she herself was already married at the time and that her husband is still living. Unfortunately, he ends up in the Park just at the time of Sturk's meeting with Dangerfield, and when he hears the sounds of the attack he runs to the scene; his footprints are thus later found at the scene of the crime and he becomes a suspect. Nutter disappears (after anonymously reporting the crime) and for a long time is assumed to have committed suicide, especially after a body is pulled from the river; but he is eventually discovered and put in jail, pending trial for the attack on Sturk. At this point Dangerfield, who has befriended Mrs Sturk, decides to try to ensure Sturk's death (and perpetual silence) by having him trepanned, which he has been assured by medical experts is guaranteed to kill him. However, he is unfortunate enough to secure the services of "Black Dillon", a debt-ridden, alcoholic doctor from Dublin who is, however, an unusually capable surgeon. When Dillon is several hours late for the appointment at Sturk's house, Dangerfield gives up and leaves, but Dillon arrives and (in the absence of Dangerfield, and much to everybody's surprise) manages to succeed in the operation. Sturk dictates a deathbed account of Dangerfield's attack on him and the murder of Beauclerc; Irons, discovering that the game is up, adds his own story to the record. Shortly thereafter Sturk dies at last. Dangerfield is apprehended after a violent scuffle with the authorities, and in the subsequent trial is found guilty. He contrives to avoid hanging by a strange strategem: he seals off the ventilation in his cell and uses the charcoal brazier that is his bed-warmer to suffocate himself. Before his death he gives a full confession of his deeds to Mervyn (now acknowledged as Lord Dunoran). Aside from the main outline of the suspense plot, there are countless other characters and subplots. Most of these are comical, such as Captain Cluffe's attempt to woo the elderly (and rich) Rebecca Chattesworth. There is one serious subplot: the ill-starred romance between the alcoholic but romantic rake Captain Devereux and the virtuous Lily Walsingham. Their romance is scuppered when he is accused of "ruining" a young girl and having promised to marry her (he denies the latter, at least). Lily turns down Devereux's offer of marriage, and eventually pines away and dies. Devereux makes attempts to reform himself, but it is too late. |
8497022 | /m/0275kw0 | Eclipse | Stephenie Meyer | 8/7/2007 | {"/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} | The story opens with the revelation that Seattle, Washington is being plagued by a string of murders, which Edward suspects is caused by a new vampire that is unable to control its thirst for human blood. As Edward and Bella apply to colleges, Bella explains to Edward her desire to see her friend, Jacob Black, a werewolf. Although Edward fears for her safety, Bella insists that neither Jacob nor his wolf pack would ever harm her, and she begins visiting him occasionally. On one of these visits, Jacob tells Bella that he is in love with her, and wants her to choose him instead of Edward, but Bella says she just sees him as a friend. Meanwhile, Alice Cullen has a vision that Victoria, a vampire who is hunting Bella for revenge, has returned to Forks. A few days later, Edward proposes to Bella and, despite harboring an aversion to marriage, she accepts. Bella and the Cullens soon realize that the Seattle murders are being committed by an "army" of newborn vampires, controlled by Victoria. The Cullens join forces with the wolf pack to combat this threat. As everyone else prepares for battle, Edward, Bella and Jacob camp in the mountains, hidden during the battle, where they are later joined by Seth Clearwater, a young wolf pack member, to wait out the fight. In the morning, Jacob becomes upset when he overhears Edward and Bella discussing their engagement and threatens to join the fight and get himself killed. Bella stops Jacob by kissing him, and she comes to realize that she is in love with him as well. During the battle, Victoria tracks Edward's scent to Bella's forest hiding place, and Edward is forced to fight. Edward manages to kill Victoria and her vampire army is destroyed. Afterwards, Bella explains to Jacob that while she loves him, her love for Edward is greater. |
8497170 | /m/0275l4_ | Remnant Population | Elizabeth Moon | 1996 | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"} | The narrative starts when Sims Bancorp has lost the franchise to run a colony on the unnamed planet after 40 years, and the colonists are informed of this.. The colonists are informed that Sims Bancorp has lost the franchise, and that they are to be forcibly relocated to another colony. The colonists are given no say as to the time table for the evacuation, nor their destination, and are told to pack, and get ready to leave, and that is it. Ofelia realises that at her age she is effectively non-productive, and is also told this by one of the "company reps." The cost of her relocation will be charged to her family, with whom she does not get on that well. She also knows that her chance of surviving the extended (30 years +) journey in "cold sleep" are poor, at best. She also has spent the best years (and most of her years) on the planet, burying her husband, and a number of children. Basically she does not wish to leave, and knows that if she does she will never arrive at the destination. When the time comes for her to be evacuated she runs off and hides. Due to her age, and the deadline the evacuation ship and crew have to meet, the crew of the evacuation ship fake the record and show her as evacuated, knowing that they can record her as "deceased in transit." Due to her age this will be believed, and not investigated. (Again, this is not explicitly stated, but later on no one knows how she got there, as everyone was evacuated according to "official records," yet we know she was left behind.) Ofelia now finds herself in a position she has never been in before. She can do as she wishes, when she wishes, without censure. She re-activates the bio-power plant that serves the village. With electricity, and the small kitchen gardens next to her cottage and others, she knows she will be able to meet her needs for many years to come. She is also helped as the departing colonists left behind large quantities of preserved food which she collects up and stores in the central administration building. She takes care of maintenance of the colony, as best she can, happy with the idea she will live out the rest of her life undisturbed, with all her needs met. Some time (perhaps years?? Again not stated) later her peace is disturbed. While in the communications centre of the colony perusing the colony logs she picks up a radio transmission. She quickly realises this transmission is from a ship or ships in orbit preparing to land new colonists who will set up a new colony. Knowing her peace will soon be interrupted she listens in to the transmissions as the ships prepare, and then launch, landing craft. Initially the landing of the new colony goes according to plan, automated machinery/robots clear the ground and create a landing grid (runway) for the rest of the craft carrying the colonists. The following day the new colonists start to arrive and build the new colony. Then things take an unexpected turn. The arriving colonists are attacked by a local life-form. One landing craft on the ground is hit by an explosive device, and the landing grid on which it is sitting is damaged. The colony ship in orbit is unable to assist. The landing grid is damaged, so rescue attempts can not be made after night fall, and in any event the colony ship has no military personnel or weapons to fight back with. By the following morning all the colonists have been killed. The orbiting ship is unwilling to send more landing craft in the face of resistance from potentially intelligent natives, even if they could. Further landing attempts cannot be made as the only craft left to them require a landing grid, and the machinery/robots needed to build one have already made planet fall and been destroyed. They have no choice but to return to base, and inform the relevant authorities and let these authorities sort out the situation. Ofelia knows that FTL (Faster-than-light) ships will soon arrive to investigate, as the authorities can afford such technology. For colonising planets the companies prefer a cheaper, if slower, sub-light transit. As she is as much in the dark about what happened as the colony ships she returns home, and continues in her peaceful life, knowing that she can do nothing. At the aborted landing site the aboriginal inhabitants of the planet discuss the events, the arrival of the ships, and the fight to repel the invaders. It is remembered by some of the natives that about 40 years ago similar signs in the sky were seen (contrails of shuttle) but as the area the signs originated from were many days (Weeks?) travel to the south, about 1,000 kilometres, in an area not inhabited by the natives, and nothing came of it to affect "the people" it was soon put out of mind. Now, however, the events of 40 years ago are relevant. A number of the indigenous population decide to go and investigate the area the last landing took place. This group travel to the site of the original colony, and investigate the village found, and start to observe Ofelia. By this time Ofelia has made for herself a cloak that, quite by chance, draws on the folk lore and instincts of the natives. They see her as what she is, a Grandmother. Or in their own terms a "Nest Guardian". I.E. one who is too old to breed, and so devotes her time to caring for the young of others, both guarding them and seeing to their education . In the society of the natives Nest Guardians are sacred, and so Ofelia is safe from attack, and if anything is revered by the natives. They learn from her, as she learns from them, and it soon becomes apparent to her that they are fully sapient, and very, very, intelligent, from a very young age. One of the natives gives birth, and Ofelia takes up the position expected of her as "Nest Guardian" to the 3 newborns. Then the FTL ships arrive (an unspecified length of time later) carrying Specialists in Xeno contact. They scan the planet surface, and see what the previous assay of the planet missed- Cities along several coastlines & large groups of nomadic hunters on the plains. They then land and start to study the natives. The specialists are highly sceptical of Ofelia's claims as to the natives intelligence and self-awareness, and dismissive of her in general as they see her as a poorly educated senile old lady. They admit without realising it that their training is all theory, as no non-human intelligent life has ever been discovered. Some time later the natives disclose to Ofelia the reason for their attack on the new colony. The landing ships picked a breeding site to land on (in Human terms, they landed on a combination of maternity ward and crèche), many nests were destroyed, Nest Guardians and young were killed. All the tribes of 'the people' (the natives name for themselves) in that area united against the attack on their nests, as nests and Nest Guardians are sacred. They viewed the attackers (the colony landing ships) as nothing more than mindless animals to be exterminated without quarter. After all, any intelligent creature would have seen and recognised the markers that designated the area as a breeding site, safe from attack. The natives are not interested in dealing with the specialists. Ofelia is their Nest Guardian, and only Nest Guardians can negotiate and make treaties with the Nest Guardians of other tribes. The new-comers, the specialists, are of a differing tribe, and as a result the people cannot deal with them. Ofelia, being a Nest Guardian for both the people and the Humans, is able to negotiate on behalf of both sides. The specialists have a hard time believing this, let alone coming to terms with it and working with it. As a result an altercation between the natives and a member of the investigating team takes place. One member of the team attacks one of the young natives, and attempts to strangle it, and is killed by the hunters in the group, an act that is seen by the rest of the group, both human and native, as "justified lethal force". As the deceased member of the human team was the one who most strongly resisted granting the natives rights, the remaining team members recognise the intelligence of the natives of the planet, and decide that conflict is best avoided. They note that the pace at which the natives are progressing technologically far exceeds that of the human society. One team member even notes that while it may take thousands of years to arrive at working space flight from scratch, it might be considerably quicker if you know it's possible from the start, and estimates the natives will have space travel in under 100 years, given the fact they have now electricity (from the power plant), and have working, if damaged, space ships to copy. It is realised that the only way to avoid conflict with the natives is either to make friends with them or to exterminate them totally. A program is set up to recruit nest Guardians from within the OAP human population on all human planets, so that the natives and humans grow together as partners. The narrative closes with the death of Ofelia, who "did not die alone, as she expected, but did die with a smile on her face." . fr:La Résistante |
8499860 | /m/0275p58 | The Moomins and the Great Flood | Tove Jansson | 1945 | {"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"} | Moominmamma and Moomintroll are travelling through a dark and scary forest looking for Moominpappa, who has gone off adventuring with the Hattifatteners. They meet a little creature, who joins them (in later books he is named Sniff). They use a tulip to light their way, and are attacked by a giant snake. They are saved when a beautiful young girl with shining blue hair called Tullipa comes out of the tulip and scares the snake away. They later find the home of an old man, who invites them to live in his garden, which is made entirely of sweets. However when they find out that the sun is made of shiny paper, they leave and continue their journey. Moominmamma is attacked by an ant-lion, but is rescued by the others. They then find the hattifatteners and get onto one of their boats with them. The boat does not appear to be going in any particular direction, so the group invite a sea-troll to come aboard and steer the ship. They reach land, and the hattifatteners and sea troll depart. The group goes in search for Moominpappa and find a lighthouse lived in by a red haired boy. He says that he saw Moominpappa. Moominmamma, Moomintroll and the small creature rush off to search, while Tulippa stays to live with the red haired boy. They soon find that a flood has begun, and they rescue a cat and her kittens before using a chair as a boat to search for Moominpappa. They find a message of help in a bottle from Moominpappa, and with the help of a stork, find Moominpappa stuck up a tree. They rescue him and go to dry land, however, Moominpappa is very upset that he has lost Moominhouse, which he just built for the family, as it has drifted away in the flood. They go for a walk, and in a beautiful valley, find that the blue Moominhouse has been washed up by the flood and landed there. |
8499947 | /m/0275p9r | The Exploits of Moominpappa | Tove Jansson | 1950 | {"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"} | Moominpappa has written his autobiography of his amazing life, and he tells it to his son Moomintroll, and to Moomintroll's friends, Sniff and Snufkin. In his tale, he at first was left at an orphanage, but after finding it boring and disliking the strict headmistress Hemulen, he leaves and meets a new friend, Hodgkin. Hodgkin and Moominpappa meet the Joxter (Snufkin's father) and the Muddler (Sniff's father). Together they build a boat, in which to live. They fool the enormous Edward the Booble into helping to set the ship off. After realising their trickery he becomes very angry, but they sail away. They rescue a Hemulen from being eaten by a Groke, however the Hemulen is very bossy, and soon they abandon her with the Niblings. One young Nibling stows aboard their ship, and travels with them. They eventually reach a far away land, where they meet the Mymble family. The Mymble's daughter befriends them and together they go to Daddy Jones (the King's) 100th birthday party where they all win prizes. They then set up new homes on an island, however are spooked by the island ghost. They manage to make a deal with the ghost, and they befriend him. Meanwhile, Hodgkins has designed the Amphibian - a sort of land/sea ship for Daddy Jones. On its maiden voyage, it is attacked by a giant fish, but they are saved when Edward the Booble steps on the fish. The Muddler then marries the Fuzzy, and Moominpappa rescues another Moomin and her handbag from the sea. She turns out to be Moominmamma. The story ends, and links chronologically with The Moomins and the Great Flood. |
8505036 | /m/02pf423 | The Last of the Jedi: Secret Weapon | Judy Blundell | null | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"} | It begins on the planet Bellassa, where parts of a secret weapon is being built by the Galactic Empire, with Darth Vader and Grand Moff Tarkin overlooking the process to make sure that it remains secret. They are also joined by Ferus Olin, a former Jedi apprentice and rebel leader. Ferus joins the dark side in the same way Anakin was seduced by the dark side, and Palpatine promises to give him the power over life and death. es:Secret Weapon |
8509988 | /m/0275_t9 | The Godwulf Manuscript | Robert B. Parker | 1973 | {"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"} | Set in the early 1970s, this novel serves as the introduction to Spenser, a private investigator in Boston. Spenser is hired by Bradford W. Forbes, the president of the fictional Taft university (heavily implied to be Northeastern) to recover a stolen illuminated manuscript, a medieval document of great historical and literary importance. It is being held ransom by an unknown organization that demands $100,000 be donated to a free school for the manuscript's return. It has no inherent monetary value and cannot be fenced. Head of campus security Carl Tower recommends investigating a radical student group called 'SCACE' (Student Committee Against Capitalist Exploitation) and their secretary, Terry Orchard. After talking to her and boyfriend Dennis Powell, Spenser receives a call from Terry in the middle of the night requesting help. Spenser arrives at her apartment to find Dennis murdered, the killer having used Terry's gun, and Terry under the influence of an unknown drug. He determines that the murder is an attempt to frame Terry and from that point is determined to clear her name, believing the missing manuscript and Dennis's murder are related. Spenser's investigation leads him to Lowell Hayden, an English professor at the university who is reputedly an anonymous member of SCACE. Spenser asks permission of the English Department head to interview the members of the faculty but is rebuffed. Ignoring the department head's warning Spenser sneaks up to Hayden's office and interviews him anyway. Hayden denies knowing either Dennis Powell or Terry Orchard, although Spenser believes Hayden does in fact know them. Spenser leaves the English Department offices and is met by campus security: he has been summarily 'fired' from finding the manuscript. Spenser is summoned to meet Joe Broz, a local crime lord, shortly after talking to Hayden. Broz warns Spenser to stop his investigation and hints that the manuscript will be returned if he does. The very next day the manuscript is anonymously returned to the university, just as Broz said it would be. Undeterred by this series of events Spenser continues his investigation to prove Terry's innocence in the murder of Powell and tie it to the theft of the manuscript. Spenser tries to contact Cathy Connelly, Terry Orchard's former roommate and the only other person who knew Terry owned a gun. Connelly doesn't answer her door so Spenser breaks in. He finds Connelly's body floating in the bathtub, in his estimation murdered. Boston Police Captain Yates believes the death was accidental but his subordinates, Lieutenant Martin Quirk and Sergeant Frank Belson, believe otherwise. Nor do they believe Terry Orchard murdered Dennis Powell. Spenser begins working unofficially with Quirk and Belson to find the truth behind the Powell and Connelly murders. This is the first of many such collaborations that continue throughout the Spenser series. It is a mutually beneficial relationship: the police are able to use Spenser to gather information that they could not obtain through strictly legal channels and Spenser is able to use police resources to which he would not normally have access. After a gun battle with some of Broz's gun thugs near Jamaica Pond in Boston and a life and death struggle with Broz's top hit man in a Boston hotel, Spenser ties Joe Broz to Lowell Hayden, leading to Hayden's arrest and possibly Broz's arrest. Dennis Powell was in fact dealing heroin on the university campus, heroin supplied by Broz to Hayden, and Hayden to Powell. Hayden believed the heroin would allow people to realize the truth behind SCACE's anarchist ideals; Powell dealt it for the sake of the money to be made from it. Believing Powell had betrayed SCACE Hayden had Broz put a hit on Powell, orchestrated the framing of Terry Orchard for the crime, and murdered Cathy Connelly himself to cover it up. The manuscript was stolen by Powell at Hayden's behest to help fund SCACE's cause. Broz had Hayden return it in the hopes that Spenser would drop the case before discovering the heroin distribution scheme. |
8514713 | /m/02765h7 | Dearly Devoted Dexter | Jeff Lindsay | null | {"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} | Sergeant Doakes, a detective in Homicide, has grown suspicious of Dexter and begun tailing him in his free time, making it impossible for Dexter to investigate (and perhaps kill) someone he suspects of complicity in the abduction, pornographic molestation and murder of a series of young boys. When an unknown man is found bizarrely mutilated, Doakes recognizes the work of a torturer nicknamed "Doctor Danco" (after a brand of knives), who served with Doakes during the Salvadoran Civil War and has come to Miami to take revenge on his former comrades. Danco drugs his victims with painkillers and psychotropics and, over a period of several days, surgically removes their limbs, genitalia, lips, tongue and eyelids, before leaving them to contemplate themselves in a carefully placed mirror. Dexter is drawn into the case when Danco abducts his sister Deborah's new boyfriend, detective Kyle Chutsky. Amidst all the chaos, Dexter finds himself accidentally engaged to his girlfriend Rita. He perceives a "dark passenger" similar to his own in Rita's children Astor and Cody, and looks forward to teaching them as his foster-father had taught him. At the climax of the story, Dexter learns that Danco's murder ritual includes a word game resembling hangman. Each victim is asked to guess a word chosen for them by Danco, each wrong answer – or unintelligible answer, after removal of the tongue – resulting in the amputation of a body part. cs:Drasticky dojemný Dexter es:Querido Dexter fr:Le Passager noir it:Il nostro caro Dexter lt:Dearly Devoted Dexter pl:Dekalog dobrego Dextera pt:Dearly Devoted Dexter ru:Добрый друг Декстер simple:Dearly Devoted Dexter fi:Dexterin kolkko kutsumus |
8517053 | /m/027687_ | The Big Bad Wolf | James Patterson | 2003 | {"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"} | Dr. Alex Cross is in the middle of his training at the FBI when he is assigned to work on a kidnapping case. A federal judge's wife has been kidnapped, and Dr. Cross discovers that her kidnapping fits the pattern of other recent kidnappings. A Russian mobster known as "The Wolf" has been kidnapping people and selling them into sexual slavery. In addition to the judge's wife, his subordinates also kidnap a housewife, and several male college students for clients. Though Cross is able to identify The Wolf as a key player in the human trafficking ring, his true identity and whereabouts remain a mystery. The only method of contacting him is through a high-tech, secure website, and any person the FBI manages to take into custody ends up dead at the hands of a mole. Eventually, with the assistance of the New York City Police Department, Central Intelligence Agency, Secret Service, and the Russian government, the FBI is able to arrest a man by the name of Andrei Prokopev. Though the FBI believes him to be The Wolf, it is revealed at the very end of the novel that The Wolf is, in fact, still at large. |
8518130 | /m/02769mn | Knights of Forty Islands | Sergey Lukyanenko | 1990 | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"} | Dima, a 14-years boy who used to fight on streets of his native city Alma-ata, now has to fight in a place where swords are used instead of fists. The new environment consists of forty islands, each connected to three others via high and narrow bridges. There is a castle on each island; and about 15-18 kids ("knights") live in each one. The islands are distinct: dictatorship or democracy, a brutal rude leader or a kind one. The population is made up of approximately 70% boys and 30% girls in homogenous or heterogeneous national groups, no one older than 18. Everyone wants to return home, but to do so they are told they must conquer all 40 islands - then, the aliens promised, they would return the winners to their homes. There are also several rules of engagement, also set down by aliens. Swords are wooden at first, but a sword turns steel when the wielder feels hatred and desire to kill towards the opponent. Although retaining the world of feelings of usual children, these "knights" change: they learn to fight to the death, not to pay much attention to wounds; they cover friends and take revenge for fallen ones. Dima sees his new friends being killed, and he kills, too. The way of life at the islands is very stable, since the aliens take into account human psychology and sociology, even though they don't understand human feelings, relationships and motivation. Also, as it turns out, they had a long time, decades, of trial and error. Dima and Inga, a girl he knew on Earth, propose the establishment of a Confederation of islands as the way to stop the Game, and get support among their peers. Some knights refuse to join the Confederation and are killed when they do not surrender to the conquerors. However, the Confederation, even realized, proves to be unstable and is doomed from the beginning: though most want to return home, some only want power for themselves... Also, this attempt was not the first: Dima and his friends discover a hidden room with remains of children who got on islands during the Second World War and locked themselves in, when their attempt of Union of Islands collapsed because of betrayal. But the heroes also find old weapons in this room, including dynamite. Now the action rushes... |
8518457 | /m/0276b2f | Nuclear Dream | Sergey Lukyanenko | 1990 | {"/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"} | On the post-nuclear landscape of the United States, it is hard to survive. The most ruthless individuals are dragons, who reject their own humanity, as well as the notion of kindness. Those who survived in underground bunkers don't like to visit the surface because life there is so brutal. However, the protagonist knows of an automated missile base that is programmed to perform a delayed nuclear strike — delayed to twenty years after the War, a time that is quickly approaching. Mike, a man from "Reserv-6", meets Drago, a "dragon" who can communicate telepathically with his dog, Prince. As the three journey to stop the missile — aimed at Russia — from launching, Drago learns much about himself that he didn't know, and, by the end, questions his status as a dragon altogether. |
8520267 | /m/0276dc9 | Crank | Ellen Hopkins | 2004 | {"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"} | Crank takes place the summer before and during the protagonist Kristina's junior year of high school. She is a straight-A honor roll student and decides to visit her father for three weeks. Kristina meets the character Adam in Albuquerque, where she is staying with her father. Adam convinces Kristina to try Crank (Methamphetamine), or "the monster", but Kristina runs away the first time she tries it. She is attacked by three men, but before anything can happen to her she is saved by Adam. An antagonist, Lince, Adam’s girlfriend, sees him comforting Kristina and jumps off of a balcony in a suicide attempt. Kristina starts a relationship with Adam, but feels guilty about Lince. When the three weeks are over, Kristina goes back to Reno, Nevada, where her mother’s house is. Kristina is now addicted to Crank. In Reno, Kristina, now calling herself Bree, meets the characters Brendan and Chase at a water-park, and they exchange numbers. They both promise her Crank. Chase and Kristina begin to get closer to one another, and they begin dating, though not exclusively. Kristina goes to see the antagonist Brendan, asking for more Crank. Brendan drives them both out into the woods, where they get high together, and he starts to take off her clothes. When she says no, he becomes violent, claiming that he has “waited weeks,” so she should “put up and shut up”. He then starts ripping her clothes off and takes her virginity. Afterwards, Brendan takes her home and makes her pay for the drugs, even though he had just raped her. At home Kristina, still high and shaken up from the rape, writes a letter to the character Adam telling him she was raped. Soon though she abandons her letter and calls Chase to come over while her parents are out. Chase comes over and she tells him about Brendan before trying to persuade him to have sex with her. Chase says no, wanting to wait until she had healed from her rape. However, she does end up having sex with him later in the novel. Kristina gets caught hitchhiking by a cop and goes to Juvenile hall, where she gets a direct connection to a Meth lab in Mexico through an inmate. Once she is released from Juvenile hall, Kristina uses her mom’s Visa card to pay for the illegal narcotic, and she takes her new supply to her druggie friends on “The Avenue.” At this part of the novel, Kristina has become a drug dealer, which she describes as making her instantly more “popular.” Kristina now has a very large amount of Crank on her hands, so she is getting high even more often. This leads to her becoming more irritable, causing her relationship with her mom to become even more strained. Kristina is also not showing up to classes, because she is spending all of her time getting high and dealing drugs on “The Avenue”. The story continues with Kristina discovering she is pregnant, soon after Brendan had raped her. Kristina spends the following days going through the symptoms of drug withdrawal. During this time in the novel, she believes that Chase is the father, having had sex with Chase a couple of weeks after being raped. Although after going to Planned Parenthood, she realizes Brendan is actually the father. At this point in the novel, Kristina begins to struggle with deciding if she should go through with the pregnancy because she “Feared the uncertainty of choosing parenthood” and “Doubted [she] could give [her] baby away”. Kristina decides to have an abortion, but after feeling “A flutter in [her] belly,” the child moving, she decides to keep her baby. After making this decision, Kristina tells her mother and stepfather about her addiction to Crank and her pregnancy, although she does not reveal who the father is. The novel continues with Kristina giving birth to a baby boy described as healthy. The narrative ends with Kristina implying that she is still using drugs, but is trying to stop. |
8522978 | /m/0276hgq | The Custom of the Country | Edith Wharton | 1913 | {"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"} | The Spraggs, a family of midwesterners from the fictional city of Apex who have made money through somewhat shady financial dealings, arrive in New York City at the prompting of their beautiful, ambitious, but socially naive daughter, Undine. She marries Ralph Marvell, a member of an old New York family that no longer enjoys significant wealth. Before her wedding, Undine encounters an acquaintance from Apex named Elmer Moffatt, a character with “a genuine disdain for religious piety and social cant,” as the scholar Elaine Showalter observes. Undine begs him not to do anything that will endanger her wedding to Ralph. Elmer agrees. Although Ralph dotes on Undine, his finances do not permit the extravagant lifestyle Undine desires, and she feels that her in-laws scorn her. When she becomes pregnant, she is disconsolate; and she neglects her son, Paul, after he is born. Alone in Europe, Undine begins an affair with the nouveau riche Peter Van Degen, who is married to Ralph's cousin, Clare. She then divorces Ralph in the hope of marrying Peter, but this does not work out: Peter seems to want nothing more to do with Undine, and Clare will not grant him a divorce anyway. As a divorcee, Undine loses her high position in society, and spends a few years living in North Dakota, New York, and Paris, scheming to scramble up the social ladder again. In Paris, a French count, Raymond de Chelles, falls in love with Undine. They desire to get married, but, as a Catholic, Raymond cannot marry a divorcée. To procure enough money to bribe the Pope to annul Undine's previous marriage, Undine blackmails Ralph. Having been awarded custody of their son but allowed him to live with Ralph while it was inconvenient for her to raise him in Europe, she demands that the boy be sent to her. It is clear that she will let him remain with Ralph only if he sends her a large sum of money. Ralph does not have sufficient funds of his own, so he borrows money from friends and family and invests it in one of Elmer Moffatt's business deals. The deal does not go through in time to meet Undine's deadline, and Moffat also informs Ralph that he had once eloped with Undine and then was divorced from her—the secret she feared that New York society would discover. Shocked, and also distraught at the thought of losing his son, Ralph commits suicide. Undine is able to marry Raymond as a widow, though this would not be possible if Raymond knew of her first marriage to Moffat. Undine is soon dissatisfied with Raymond, too. The de Chelles are hidebound aristocrats, their wealth tied up in land and art and antiques that they will not consider selling, and Undine cannot adjust to the staid customs of upper-class French society. She also resents having to spend most of her time in the country because her husband cannot pay for expensive stays, entertainment, and shopping trips in Paris. Ultimately, she divorces Raymond in order to remarry Elmer Moffatt, who by now has made a fortune. Now, married to the crass midwestern businessman who was best suited to her in the first place, Undine finally has everything she ever desired. Still, it is clear that she wants even more: in the last paragraph of the novel, she imagines what it would be like to be an Ambassador's wife — a position closed to her owing to her divorces. |
8524087 | /m/0276k6d | The Rhinemann Exchange | Robert Ludlum | 1974 | {"/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction"} | On the eve of the Second World War, David Spaulding, a radio voice actor, is recruited by Colonel Ed Pace to run a secret network in Lisbon. The plot advances to 1943. Both the Allies and the Axis find themselves facing key shortages that impede their ability to win the war. The Allies lack gyroscopes capable of operating at high altitudes; thus they are losing an unacceptably high number of bombers. If they do not procure gyroscopes soon, the D-Day invasion of Normandy will need to be postponed. The Germans find themselves without high quality diamonds, which are necessary for the rocket development program at Peenemünde. Ironically, each side has what the other needs: the Allies control access to high quality diamonds from the Belgian Congo; the Germans have a design for a gyroscope able to operate at high altitudes. The German intelligence agency, the Nachrichtendienst, discovers that the Allies are in need of gyroscopes, and proposes an exchange, to take place in neutral territory: Buenos Aires, Argentina. David Spaulding has, in the meantime, become an invaluable spy for the Allies. His Lisbon network ferries agents and defectors back and forth from German occupied territory. He is selected, however, to oversee the receipt of the gyroscopes - critically, he does not know that diamonds are being exchanged for the gyroscopes. The Germans select the exiled industrialist Erich Rhinemann to supervise the exchange at their end. He is a clever choice because, although he is Jewish, he is committed to German victory and believes that he will be welcomed back after a German victory. Rhinemann is immensely influential and powerful in Buenos Aires. Although puzzled at his assignment away from Lisbon, Spaulding accepts his new assignment. However, there are several attempts made on his life: one occurring at an airfield in the Azores, another in New York City. While he is in New York, awaiting details on his assignment, he encounters an old flame, Leslie Jenner Hawkwood who, having drawn him away from his apartment, seemingly vanishes into thin air. Spaulding's mentor, Ed Pace, is meanwhile murdered. Upon arrival in Buenos Aires, Spaulding meets and falls in love with Jean Cameron, a woman employed by the embassy. Attacks on him continue, and he suspects he is being trailed by the Gestapo. He meets with Rhinemann to acquire the gyroscopes, but tries to draw out his mysterious assailants - Rhinemann and the other Germans are adamant that the Gestapo is not active in Buenos Aires. To his profound shock, Spaulding discovers that the people trying to stop him work for the Haganah, a Jewish terrorist group set on stopping the exchange. When he captures Asher Feld, the Haganah leader, Feld informs him that he is a party to an exchange of diamonds for gyroscopes. From then on, Spaulding decides that the exchange must be stopped. He pretends to carry out his end, all the while facilitating a Haganah attack on Rhinemann's estate. Spaulding succeeds in killing Rhinemann (who had planned to kill him after the exchange) and Rhinemann's Nazi controller. Having acquired incriminating evidence about the exchange, Spaulding blackmails the Americans who had arranged it and arranges to retire with his beloved Jean. |
8527395 | /m/0276nlt | Only the Heart | Brian Caswell | null | {"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"} | The main character for this story is a boy named Toan. The book jumps from the past, when Toan is only six years old, to the present, when he is in his teens. The book is mainly written in first person, Toan's and his older cousin's, Linh's point of view. This book is about the Vietnam war, and the problems and hardships the Vietnamese people faced while trying to escape their war stricken country. During the book, Toan and his family escape Vietnam, on a boat. They become part of the first wave of boat people. During the boat trip, Phuong (Toan's cousin) is almost captured by sea pirates, but her mother saves her from sex with them, by offering herself, in fair exchange and sacrifice for the safety of Phuong. She is taken away and never seen by her family again. This was not her fault however, this was forced upon her through the Vietnam gangs. When the family makes it to Malaysia, the Malaysian people try to send them back, but they destroy the ship, forcing everyone to go overboard. Toan almost drowns. When they make it to Malaysia, they are on a list waiting to be transferred to another country so they can be safe from the war in Vietnam. After being late for their time to leave, Toan's father takes matters into his own hands. They escape from their "home" and chase after the dream for a better life for their family. They end up in Australia. This novel is filled with hope. It shows the inside of Vietnam, the way people feel about the war and the experiences that were experienced, that caused the Vietnamese people to become stronger. Only the heart is filled with hope, desolation and a dream. A dream for a better future... of freedom. |
8529914 | /m/0276sk_ | The Guns of Navarone | Alistair MacLean | 1957 | {"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"} | The story concerns the efforts of an Allied commando team to destroy a seemingly impregnable German fortress that threatens Allied naval ships in the Aegean Sea, and prevents over 2,000 isolated British soldiers from being rescued. The story is based on the real events surrounding the Battle of Leros in World War II. The Guns of Navarone brings together elements that would characterise much of MacLean's subsequent works: tough, competent, worldly men as main characters; frequent but non-graphic violence; betrayal of the hero(es) by a trusted associate; and extensive use of the sea and other dangerous environments as settings. Its three principal characters — New Zealand mountaineer-turned-commando Keith Mallory, American demolitions expert "Dusty" Miller, and Greek resistance fighter Andrea — are among the most fully drawn in all of MacLean's work. |
8533332 | /m/0276xw_ | The Triple Hoax | Carolyn Keene | null | {"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} | In The Triple Hoax, Nancy, her Aunt Eloise, Bess, and George begin by going to New York to help a friend. There they see a performance done by the Hoaxters, a group of magicians. These magicians take handbags and wallets from people in the audience- they do return them, but Nancy feels suspicious. Nancy and her friends follow leads to Mexico City, where Nancy is asked to find a child that has gone missing, and then to Los Angeles, where Nancy and her friends are threatened by the Hoaxters to try to scare them off the case. |
8534387 | /m/0276z97 | The Changing Room | David Storey | null | null | At the play's core is a semi-pro Northern England rugby league team. During the week, its members are peaceable men toiling away at mindless, working class jobs. On Saturday, they prepare for gory combat on the playing field. The changing room is where they perform their pre-game initiation rites, strip down, loosen muscles, and get into their uniforms. After the match they return, often broken, muddy, and bloody, regretting their loss or giddy with victory in the communal shower. There is little in the way of plot, but Storey engages his audience with his ability to dissect his characters' hurts, hopes, desires, and fighting instincts. |
8536433 | /m/02770tc | Dragonseye | Anne McCaffrey | 1/28/1997 | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} | After the events of All the Weyrs of Pern, The Dolphins of Pern, and The Skies of Pern, Thread is less of a threat to the planet. Returning to an earlier time in Pernese history, the author brings the earlier conflict of Thread reappearing in the Second Pass. Following in the footsteps of the novels that established the background of the colony, the book exposes the incremental loss of technology due to the hardships of thread, and inevitable progress towards the more feudal society shown later in the series timeline. It answers such questions as: * What happened to the computers? * What happened to the technology? * Who created the Star Stones? It also shows more about the process of caring for a newborn dragon than is shown in any of the other Pern books, and explores the ramifications of male riders of green dragons. The main characters are Clisser (college head, Fort Hold), Chalkin (Lord Holder, Bitra), K'vin (weyrleader, Telgar), Zulaya (weyrwoman, Telgar), Iantine (journeyman artist) and Debera (green rider, Telgar) |
8542864 | /m/02777ns | Leven Thumps and the Gateway to Foo | Obert Skye | 2005 | {"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"} | The book begins by telling what happened to the town of Tin Culvert, Oklahoma (now Burnt Culvert, Oklahoma.) The nit, Antsel, races through the burning town to safely plant Geth, who has been turned into a seed by Sabine. When he does, the shadows of Sabine find him and kill him while looking over his body for the seed. The book continues to tell about the birth of Leven Thumps, whose mother died birthing him, and his father died before the unfortunate child is born in a motorcycle crash. His mother's half sister, Addy Graph, takes him in, but does not take care of him correctly. Leven is stuck for nearly 14 years with Addy, and her husband, Terry, who is no better than Addy is. Then the book introduces Winter Frore, who was switched with another woman's child, and grows up with Janet Frore, who treats Winter poorly. She only receives a stale bread crust, a teaspoonful of jam, and half a dozen peas for each meal, with no deserts, while she watches her mother stuff herself as though there is no tomorrow. Orphaned, mistreated Leven is contacted by a tiny creature named Clover Earnest, a sycophant, who informs him that he has a destiny to save two worlds: his own, and the world of dreams, called Foo. Meanwhile, Winter realizes her power to freeze things, by freezing her class, her teacher, her principal, and her entire room. She then runs away from home, where she meets Leven and Clover, with a voice repeating in her head, "Don't touch him." Later, when the kids are chased by avalands, giant creatures that are made of the earth itself, Winter passes out and Leven is forced to drag her to safety, and their contact causes Sabine's shadows to find Leven in his dreams. Together with Clover and Geth a toothpick —literally, a toothpick — who was once the king of Foo, they set out to Germany, the location of the gateway. They are chased by the police, so Winter freezes a path across the entire Atlantic ocean. The path melts and they are picked up by a fishing trawler, which is later revealed to be an illegal treasure hunter's boat. After being separated from Clover, they arrive at the mainland. After another encounter with Sabine's shadows, they take a train to Germany, and then to Berchtesgaden, a small German village. The gateway is located in nearby Lake Königsee, and they attempt to go through it. They are stopped by Sabine, who freezes Leven and Winter. Winter thaws and occupies Sabine by demonstrations of power. Winter eventually freezes Sabine long enough for Clover, who has found them, to shatter him into many pieces. Leven tries again to dive for the gateway, but is stopped again by Sabine, who is now an amorphous black blob. He uses his gift to disperse the pieces and get him to the gateway. After stepping through, Amelia Thumps, his grandmother gives him a pot of explosives to destroy the gateway. He steps through, but is grabbed by Sabine. the explosives are activated, and the gateway is destroyed right as Leven goes back through to Foo. |
8543126 | /m/02777_2 | The Briar King | Gregory Keyes | 2003 | {"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} | The first book in the Kingdoms of Thorn and Bone series. The Born Queen, Virgenya Dare, defeats the evil Skasloi with magic and frees humanity from slavery. The Skasloi king tells Virgenya humanity is cursed. About 2300 years later, Dare's grave is found by her descendant, rebellious Princess Anne. The forester Aspar White rescues a novice monk, Stephen Darige, from a kidnapping. Aspar is warned about the mythical Briar King by the strange Sefry travellers. Evil Prince Robert murders his sister and tricks his brother into war with nearby Hansa. Queen Muriele secretly sends Anne and her friend Austra to a convent to be trained as an assassin. Muriele and her two other daughters evacuate to the country, aided by loyal knight Neil MeqVren who is in love with Princess Fastia. At the monastery, Stephen finds corruption within the church, and prophecies concerning the terrifying Briar King. Beneath the castle, the captive last Skasloi (known as "the Kept") makes evil predictions. Anne's training takes a strange turn as she finds herself in a magical realm. On her return, Anne is warned she must be Queen to save the world. The other princesses are murdered as Neil and Muriele watch helplessly - themselves saved only by the appearance of the Briar King. As the assassins aim for their final target, Anne and Austra escape the mass slaughter at the convent, aided by swordsman Cazio and his mentor z'Acatto. Prince Robert murders the king who deals a fatal wound as he dies. Muriele, back in Eslen, consults the Kept from whom she gets the most terrible curse imaginable to cast on the murderer of her husband. She does not know that it was Robert and that he is also dead. The curse, however, is more powerful even than death and by casting this on Robert, Muriele inadvertently and unintentionally breaks the Law of Death. The Briar King ends with the awakening of Robert, now a form of undead, which also explains the title of the next volume, The Charnel Prince. |
8543436 | /m/02778hl | Dragon Wing | Margaret Weis | 1990 | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} | Arianus, the World of Air, is composed entirely of porous floating islands, aligned in three basic altitudes. In the Low Realm, the dwarves (called "Gegs", an elven word for "insects") live on the continent Drevlin and cheerfully serve the giant Kicksey-winsey, a city-sized machine that is the source of all water in Arianus. In the Mid Realm, elves and humans have warred for centuries with each other and amongst themselves for water, status, and advantage. Above them all in the High Realm live the Mysteriarchs, isolationist human wizards of the Seventh House rank. They were some of the most powerful wizards of their kind, leaving fellow humans behind in their disgust for the constant warfare, but they never equalled the likes of the missing Sartan and Patryn races. As the novel opens, the Lord of the Nexus instructs a follower on his task in Arianus. The follower will go to Arianus and discreetly spy against the Sartan, the race that has long imprisoned their people before mysteriously disappearing. There, the follower will spread chaos in preparation for the Lord's arrival, never revealing that he is actually one of the powerful Patryn race. When the time comes, the Lord will conquer all of the worlds and reunite them as one under his rule. The Patryns will have their revenge against their Sartan enemies. On Arianus, an assassin named Hugh the Hand is hired by King Stephen, nominally the ruler of all humanity, to kill Crown Prince Bane. Bane is not actually Stephen's child, nor that of Stephen's wife, Queen Anne; he was switched at birth for the child of the mysteriarch Sinistrad, and speaks to his real father through a feather talisman magically charmed to make others dote on him despite their disapproval of the changeling. Bane is a devious child—charming, but ambitious, and totally self-possessed. Hugh takes Bane away from Stephen's fortress, and the two are followed by Bane's manservant, the gangly, balding Alfred Montbank, whose greatest talents seem to be fainting at the first sign of danger and tripping over anything in his path (and several things that aren't). At this time on Drevlin, a Geg is on trial for the crime of thinking too much. Limbeck Bolttightner seems obsessed with the question of why, but his most heretical belief is that the god-like Welves, who land in their giant flying dragonships for tributes of water every month or so, are not actually gods at all. He once found a (W)elf dead in a crashed dragonship, and even his girlfriend, Jarre, won't believe that a god could actually die. Sentenced to death by being thrown off the continent on a hang-glider, Limbeck manages to crash-land on a smaller island some distance down, where he encounters an injured man whose damaged ship is covered with brilliantly shining runes. The Kicksey-winsey inadvertently destroys the ship, but Limbeck manages to rescue the man in time. He believes the injured man is also a god, one he can pit against the Welves, so he brings the unconscious man along as he rides back up to Drevlin in one of the Kicksey-winsey's help-hands. Joining them is a dog who refuses to leave the "god"'s side despite its own injuries. Haplo—Limbeck's god and the follower from the prologue—awakens in Drevlin not long before Hugh, Bane and Alfred crash-land there as well. It becomes clear that Haplo's dog is more than the average canine; he is very intelligent, and Haplo can hear through his ears. Limbeck, hearing about the "other gods", takes Haplo to investigate, but chaos erupts, with the entire group split up and reassembling. All but Alfred and Jarre are quickly arrested; those two take a trip into the tunnels under the Kicksey-winsey, where they come across a room filled with glass coffins containing sad, beautiful people. This, Alfred says, is where he came from. Alfred is quickly arrested as well, though Jarre escapes. In prison, Alfred creeps over to the sleeping Haplo and confirms, to his horror, his suspicion of Patryn runes that were hidden by Haplo's bandages. The rulers of the Gegs present the prisoners to the Welves as false gods, with Limbeck thrown in for free in the hopes that the Welves will execute the lot. Various circumstances (a mutiny against the tyrannical elven captain, a dwarven rebellion against their overlords) leads to Bane hiring the ship to take him up into the High Realm, where his father will supposedly reward them all. The new captain of the ship agrees to the terms. In the High Realm, Haplo makes his decision: he will take Prince Bane back to the Nexus with him, as the Lord of the Nexus will almost certainly be able to make use of him. Hugh becomes smitten with Sinistrad's wife, Iridal, once a good and noble woman who thought her husband-to-be was joking when he told her, flat out, that he was an evil man. Limbeck agonizes over his revelations concerning the oppressive (W)elves and eventually decides to lead his peace-loving, optimistic people to war. Haplo is prepared to make his move when he hears, through the dog, Bane confront Alfred about being a Sartan. Bane has seen Alfred work Sartan rune-magic, something no one else on Arianus—not even the powerful Mysteriarchs—could do. In fact, Alfred's rune-magic brought Bane back from near-death. Haplo prepares to confront Alfred, but they both realize a magical battle would draw too much attention, something Haplo's Lord ordered him to avoid at all costs. Haplo instead satisfies himself by abducting Bane as planned. Hugh, in the meantime, attacks and kills Sinistrad to free Iridal and her son from Sinistrad's evil influence, but Hugh dies in the process. Sinistrad's pet quicksilver dragon, freed of his master's mind-control, begins to destroy the castle, but Alfred subdues it with his magic. Alfred and Iridal give chase to Haplo, but they are too late to recover Bane. Haplo returns to the Nexus to prepare for his next journey: to Pryan, the World of Fire. |
8543441 | /m/02778jm | Elven Star | Tracy Hickman | 1990 | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} | Pryan, the World of Fire, does not orbit a sun— at least, not in the normal manner. It is a giant stone sphere containing four suns (similar to a Dyson Sphere), and it is always daytime. The "ground" is not the ground at all, but rather moss and the leaves of huge, mile-high trees; most people don't know where the real ground is, or if there even is a real ground. And, although there is no night, there are "stars": little pinpoints of light that appear sporadically in the sky, some apparently burning out while others remain longer. Paithan Quindiniar, an elven magical weapons merchant, makes a deal with a pair of human smugglers, half-siblings Roland and Rega Redleaf, who pretend to be married as a cover story. The two accompany Paithan to the dwarven buyer of the magical weapons in an attempt to swindle him. During the trip, Rega is supposed to seduce him; much to her surprise, however, she finds they are falling in love with each other, a romance tainted by distinct prejudice and interracial tensions. It all falls apart, however, when the convoy is attacked by the tytans, giant lumbering humanoids with no eyes and crude defensive rune-magic. These tytans ask only a single question— Where is the citadel?— and if they don't like the answer, they destroy everything in sight. They haven't yet found an answer they like. They are rescued by the dwarven buyer, Drugar, and the four set out for Paithan's home. Drugar has an ulterior motive, however; the tytans wiped out his people since they had no adequate means to defend themselves, thanks to the Redleafs' failure to sell him Quindiniar weapons in time. Conditions have deteriorated in the Quindiniar household. Paithan's father Lenthan is obsessed with the idea of rocketry, as he is sure his late wife now lives in the stars - a heretical belief among the elves of Pryan. Lenthan's eldest daughter, Calandra, is a tight-fisted spinster under the best of conditions, and is incensed that Paithan has brought humans into the household. His younger sister, Aleatha, is just as she has always been: an extremely lovely young woman, but shallow, vain and lazy. Lenthan has sent away for a human expert on rocketry but has instead gotten Zifnab, a bizarre long-bearded fellow who seems utterly senile, especially since he seems to think he's some person named "James Bond" one moment, and "Dorothy Gale" the next; his "dog Toto" (actually one of Pryan's native "dragons") spends a lot of time reining him in. Finally, the newest member of the household is Haplo. His dragonship proves extremely useful when the tytans show up; even Haplo's rune-magic cannot defeat them, and Calandra stubbornly chooses to stay behind during the evacuation. Haplo sets course, on Zifnab's suggestions, for one of the winking stars in the sky. This period of empty travel is devoted mostly to romance: Paithan and Rega struggle to handle their relationship, Aleatha and Roland resist each other with all their might and almost succeed, and Haplo himself has flashbacks to his time in the Labyrinth, and the woman he met there; they became lovers and travelled together for a time, and she was suspected by Haplo to be carrying his child when they separated. It doesn't bother him that he hasn't seen her in years. Or so he tells himself. Arriving at the white star, Haplo travels up a mountain to a glowing, abandoned city that is nearly identical to the Nexus. He leaves the mensch to fend for themselves and enters the central stronghold, where he discovers a great deal of data on the nature of the worlds, although all the Sartan here have disappeared. He then leaves for Death's Gate and his next mission. Meanwhile, Zifnab apparently sacrifices himself to save the Redleafs, Quindiniars and Drugar from his dragon; it chases the remaining mensch to the gates of the citadel, which Drugar is able to open with an amulet inscribed with Sartan runes. The mensch are now safe— a fact that Zifnab, hale and hearty, celebrates with his dragon companion. |
8543444 | /m/02778k9 | Fire Sea | Tracy Hickman | 1991 | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} | Abarrach, the World of Stone is just that: lava, stone, poisonous fumes, and precious little food that can be grown. The peoples of Abarrach rely on giant rune-inscribed stone pillars called colossi to provide warmth and breathable atmosphere, but the colossi have been failing slowly for many years. The mensch have all died out, and the only remaining people — all of them Sartan — are far reduced in power; most of their innate magic is consumed with simply keeping them alive. To bolster their numbers, they have taken to the forbidden art of necromancy: the raising of the dead. These reanimated corpses are not very smart, but they're better than nothing. Haplo is sent to this world and discovers, much to his alarm, that Alfred has somehow infiltrated the Nexus and stowed away on his ship. Before he can do anything, however, the vessel passes through Death's Gate, and their consciousnesses switch; the two are forced to relive each other's most painful memories: Haplo, as a boy of seven, seeing the slaughtered bodies of his parents and being taught that it is all the fault of the Sartan; and Alfred, waking up to find that he is the only Sartan left alive on Arianus... for all he knows, the only one in all the worlds. They have been forced to walk in each other's shoes, and the two are never able to look at each other with quite the same hatred (in Haplo's case) or fear (in Alfred's) as before. On Abarrach, Alfred is initially overjoyed to meet living Sartan, even bastardized ones, but is appalled at the state of things; the Sartan rune-language, highly evocative, is laden with images of death when spoken by Abarrach natives. He is even more horrified that they practice necromancy. It was taught that, when one is revived untimely, another dies untimely, and (though the series never spells it out) it is implied that Abarrach's necromancy is the reason most Sartan died during stasis. And the Sartan here regard Alfred with hungry eyes: he has powers, magics, abilities that they had long forgotten existed, and they want what he has. Even his simplest magic is beyond them. Haplo and Alfred make the acquaintance of Prince Edmund, who is leading his ragged band of people to the "greener" pastures around Abarrach's capital city (Necropolis), and his chief necromancer, Baltazar. In the realm of Kairn Necros, they meet minor nobles and necromancers Jonathan and Jera, just married and very clearly in love with each other. Haplo and Edmund meet with the Dynast Kleitus XIV, who is not a pleasant man; he orders Edmund executed on a whim, and imprisons Haplo when it becomes clear that he, too, still knows the secrets of rune-magic. Kleitus poisons Haplo so that the corpse will be left undamaged, the runes free to be studied at Kleitus's leisure. Alfred, Jonathan, and Jera manage to free Haplo, but Jera is killed, and Jonathan revives her immediately without waiting the customary three days to let her soul depart entirely. Jera now becomes a lazar (a reference to Lazarus of the Bible), a revived dead who still retains her intelligence and personality because her soul is so closely bound to the body... and whose existence is endless torment, caught between life and death. Haplo, Alfred, and Jonathan flee with the dead Edmund and Jera from Kleitus and his dead soldiers, and end up in a curious chamber: heavily warded, full of the skeletal remains of people who apparently killed each other or even themselves, with seven sealed doors spaced evenly around its perimeter and a white wooden table in the middle. It is called the Chamber of the Damned. Once rebels gathered here, and were ambushed and killed here by an ancestor of Kleitus, but he and all his forces were struck down by an unseen hand on the very spot. The chamber is entirely peaceful and seems to resist violence, and Alfred (and Haplo too, though he will not admit it) feels for a moment as if in the presence of a Higher Power. While Alfred and Haplo view this ancient scene, Jera is calling to the dead soldiers that Kleitus brings with him. He arrives at the chamber, only to be killed and resurrected as a lazar by Jera. She begins to reanimate many new lazar, culminating in a slaughter of nearly the entire population of the city. The living (and Edmund) are forced to run again, trying to reach Haplo's ship to flee Abarrach, as well as stop the dead from breaking through its runes to enter the other worlds and kill all the living. Jonathan sacrifices himself to aid their escape, and is murdered and turned into a lazar at his wife's hands; Prince Edmund, on the other hand, demonstrates how a lazar can surrender his/her anger and find true death by doing so. Baltazar gathers his remaining people on the outskirts of the city, in for the long haul, though the new army of lazar will make life difficult. Haplo and Alfred escape in Haplo's ship, and Haplo, driven by odd impulses, gives Alfred a chance to jump ship before he returns to the Nexus and his lord. |
8543448 | /m/02778kn | Serpent Mage | Tracy Hickman | 1992 | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} | The novel picks up just where Fire Sea left off. Alfred jumps into Death's Gate as Haplo's ship passes through it, and finds himself in a stasis room like the one he woke up in; in fact, he believes he's on Arianus. Tired, he decides to put himself back to sleep... Only to find someone in "his" stasis chamber. And then to find a bunch of strangers in all the stasis chambers. And then to see them wake up. Alfred has stumbled across a cache of actually-living Sartan, and not just any Sartan; he is on Chelestra, the World of Water, and the chamber he has dropped into contains Samah, the ruler of the Council of Seven— nominally, the leader of all remaining Sartan. Meanwhile, Haplo is attempting to ready his ship as quickly as possible so he can avoid speaking to Xar. He sent ahead a letter that lied about the state of Abarrach, claiming he found an entirely dead world; he covered up the truth about the necromancy out of fear of what Xar would do with it. Xar catches up with Haplo, and Haplo confesses nearly everything about the world. He accepts harsh punishment for betraying and doubting his lord. Xar sends Haplo's ship on through Death's Gate. The arrival on Chelestra isn't a very glorious one; for some reason, Chelestra's seawater has the effect of totally nullifying all rune-magic, even erasing Haplo's tattoos and the carvings on his steering stone. His ship disintegrates in minutes, whereupon he discovers another odd fact: Chelestran seawater is breathable, just like air. Cold and wet, though not particularly thirsty, he clings to a spot of wreckage and tries to figure out what to do next. The narrative is also interwoven with the personal diary of Grundle, daughter and heir to the leaders of Chelestra's dwarven population. Unlike most worlds, here the mensch have made peace and live (mostly) in harmony. Grundle's two best friends are the daughters of the elven and human peoples (Sabia and Alake, respectively). The mensch, at the moment, are planning a migration. Chelestra has landmasses they call seamoons ("durnai" to the Sartan) scattered liberally throughout its watery interior, but its seasun is migratory, and this particular seamoon is about to freeze over. They have assembled a series of giant submarines, the sun-chasers, but just as Grundle is about to christen them (with a lock of her hair instead of a champagne bottle), something destroys them: foul, oozing black serpents with red glowing eyes. These serpents demand that the daughters of each royal family be surrendered to them. The parents plan to refuse, but Grundle, Alake, and Sabia choose to leave on their own. Grundle and Alake meet up with "Sabia" and leave in a submersible; it is quickly revealed that Sabia's fiance, Devon, has actually replaced her. It is this submarine, sailing into almost certain death, that stumbles across Haplo. Once they arrive at Draknor, however, the serpents (which Haplo calls dragon-snakes) make a total about-face: they claim that they are here only to help the mensch, and ply the three with mountains of gifts generated from thin air. When they find out about Haplo, however, they are ecstatic; their leader, the Royal One, assures him that they would love to help him conquer this world, or all four worlds, or anything he desires. Haplo finds himself distinctly nervous; the runes on his body, which glow in times of danger, are at full force, and every danger sense he has urges him to flee from their presence. When Haplo asks them who they are and who created them, the Royal One whispers, "You did, Patryn." But the dragons swear fealty, and that is all that matters. Haplo, with his new allies, returns to the mensch. The news that Sabia has killed herself in despair does not stop the dragon-snakes from instantly reassembling the sun-chasers, and the migration continues as planned, though with a new target: the Chalice, Chelestra's only landmass permanently inhabited... by the Sartan. Alfred is having a hard time adjusting to life with his people for several reasons. For one, for some reason Haplo's dog is there with him. Second, Samah manages to find out that the Patryn threat has reawakened, and is already beginning to plan a counter-offensive. Third, there are many secrets the Sartan are hiding: such as how the Chamber of the Damned, with which Alfred is so intimately acquainted, is actually the Seventh Gate, from which the Sartans performed the Sundering. Samah and his followers knew about the Higher Power, but deliberately ignored it, something Alfred finds unconscionable. Furthermore, those few Sartans who objected to the plan were actually cast into the Labyrinth with the Patryns, where they were almost certainly fallen upon and slaughtered. And, finally, Alfred himself has changed— partially due to his time with the mensch on Arianus, but mostly because of his time with Haplo. He can no longer see the Patryns as a vicious, hated enemy. It is customary for Sartan to reveal their private Sartan names to each other, but Alfred continues to go by his human pseudonym, a fact that partially exasperates and partially amuses Samah's wife, Orla, whom Alfred is slowly falling in love with. The mensch arrive at the Chalice and attempt to negotiate for living space, but Samah is having none of it; he deals with them as if with willful children refusing to go to bed, and is astonished when they treat him as an equal: with dignity and respect, but refusing to be bullied. He is also distressed at their allies: Haplo, the evil dangerous Patryn, and the dragon-snakes, who attacked the Sartan thousands of years ago and forced them into hibernation. When asked who had created them, the dragon-snakes responded: "You did, Sartan." Samah refuses to compromise, and the mensch, reluctantly, turn to military force. They will use the dragon-snakes to burrow through the Chalice's landmass, bringing seawater in to temporarily neutralize the Sartans' magic, allowing the mensch to invade peacefully. Haplo returns to Draknor to explain the plan, with Devon, Grundle, and Alake following him in a second submersible. He explains the plan, but refuses the dragon-snakes' alterations, which would lead to increased casualties on both sides— even though those casualties would be to mensch and Sartan, populations whose well-being he doesn't care about and, to some extent, is required by Xar's orders to disregard. The mensch overhear the conversation (conveniently, it has been carried out in the human language) but do not overhear the Royal One's orders to have them killed and their bodies returned to their parents, making the coming conquest anything but bloodless. To Haplo's surprise, Alfred appears with the dog. In the presence of this Sartan enemy, Haplo admits what he dares not say to anyone else: the dragon-snakes are not his servants. They grow fat on chaos, fear, hatred, confusion, despair; they are using him, using everyone, in an attempt to destroy all the four worlds. Even when Samah teleports in, spewing hatred and vitriol, Haplo holds to his course. He and Samah fight, each attempting to take each other prisoner, and Samah wins with the help of Chelestra's seawater, but all events are halted when the dragon-snakes begin to attack the mensch. Haplo rushes to their rescue, magicless though he is, while Alfred counters Samah. Haplo is unable to save Alake's life and looks to be doomed himself when a huge, majestic green and golden dragon appears; it slays the Royal One and fends off the other dragon-snakes. Haplo, staggering back to the beach in search of this incredible magic, finds only Alfred unconscious on the beach. Grundle, who saw him transform, insists that Alfred was the dragon, but no one believes it— least of all Alfred himself. Samah has won. Haplo is imprisoned, though with the seawater rising, he won't be for long. Alfred is sentenced by the Council to be exiled into the Labyrinth for his crimes, and Orla chooses to go with him rather than remain with her people; either way, she will be stripped of her magic as her punishment. Devon and Grundle, no longer the children he first met, wish him luck and Grundle gives him her journal before they are returned to their parents. Haplo settles back in his cell; he knows, now, what he must do. The dragon-snakes— deceptive, cunning, whispering only what the listener wants to hear, growing fat on fear— are who he must defeat. |
8543450 | /m/02778k_ | The Hand of Chaos | Margaret Weis | 1993 | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} | Haplo takes a submersible back to Draknor to retrieve his ship. He finds Samah there— wet, haggard, and lost. The leader of the Council has opened Death's Gate, allowing the dragon-snakes free access to all the four worlds. Haplo decides he is too tired to physically capture Samah and uses his ship to return to the Nexus through the now more easily-travelled Death's Gate, where he makes his report on what he has found. Haplo explains the entire tale: the mensch, the Sartan, and the dragon-snakes, who inspired fear in him greater than even the Labyrinth ... because he at least knew the Labyrinth could be defeated. Xar is much less sanguine about the serpents' supposed invincibility. He assigns Haplo to take Bane back to Arianus, where he will activate the Kicksey-winsey and continue to foment chaos as he did before; he will then wait there for Xar's orders, as Xar will be going to Abarrach to learn necromancy. This is Haplo's last chance to prove himself loyal. Haplo leaves angrily and takes a walk. Standing before the Final Gate, he contemplates going back into the Labyrinth— something no living Patryn other than Lord Xar has ever accomplished. He wants to look for Alfred so they can return to the Chamber of the Damned to get some answers— and to bring his lord to give him proof, as well. Haplo is derailed by Zifnab, however, who admits to actually being a Sartan and, with his dragon (one of the true "dragons" of Pryan, as opposed to a dragon-snake,) is on his way to Chelestra, answering a race-wide summons put out by Samah. Samah, Zifnab says, intends to go to Abarrach and learn the secret of necromancy. He also reveals that the woman left Haplo because she was pregnant, and that their child is now somewhere in the Labyrinth. But Zifnab advises him (in between bouts of gibberish, non sequiturs and reminiscences on Debbie Does Dallas) not to go in until he has activated the Kicksey-winsey. Bane has spied on this and tells Xar, lying that Haplo said he intended to "prove you wrong," but revealing that Haplo warned Zifnab to leave so that Xar wouldn't find the Sartan. Xar considers this treachery past the time for punishment and orders the child to kill Haplo once his job is done. On Drevlin, the mood is somber; the Kicksey-winsey has stopped, totally stopped, for the first time in history, and no one knows why. Limbeck, now High Froman and the leader of a race-wide dwarven revolt against the "Welf" occupation of Drevlin, is sure that it is Welf treachery. He has become a hard, cruel leader, much to Jarre's dismay. (A recurring symbol is his glasses: he has new ones that correct for his massive myopia but hurt his head abysmally; Jarre liked him better when he was blind and idealistic.) When Haplo lands, Limbeck is quick to enlist his assistance, and between the two of them and Jarre's memory of Alfred's mausoleum, they puzzle out where the control center for the entire Kicksey-winsey must be. To reach it, however, they must sneak through the Factree, which the elves have taken as their home base. At the control center, they find an automaton who asks for instructions, but Haplo's runes have started to warn him. Not understanding why, he nevertheless trusts his instincts and the group flees the room without Limbeck. Bane, Haplo, and Jarre are quickly captured by pursuing elven forces, led by a strange, red-eyed captain named Sang-drax— a serpent whose name is elven for "dragon-snake" and possibly the one who met with Xar before Haplo arrived home. Limbeck remains unfound by the elves, and wanders for a while before stumbling on a room in which he sees an incredible, hopeful sight: humans, elves and dwarves, sitting and conversing in peace and harmony. (He overlooks their distinctive red eyes and the terror they make him feel.) Inflamed by optimistic vision, he immediately forgets it when he overhears (from the serpent-elves carrying Haplo away) that Jarre has been captured, and goes to plan the war. Haplo, Bane, and Jarre are taken to the Imperanon, the elven emperor's castle, where Emperor Agah'ran hatches a plan to do away with King Stephen and Queen Anne, using Bane as his willing co-conspirator. Agah'ran wants to finish the hostilities quickly, as he is fighting three wars: against the humans, against the "Gegs," and against his own son, Prince Rees'ahn, who has been leading a rebellion for several years. Stephen and Anne (who have since had a daughter,) and the Lady Iridal (invited there by the wizard Trian,) receive the news that Bane is alive from a human slave who has been allowed to escape the elven capital. The elves presumably will want a human surrender in exchange for Bane's life— very few people know of his true nature— but his three parents know Bane must be the one pulling the strings (and the royal family certainly doesn't want him back.) They also realize that it would look very bad if they failed to attempt a rescue, considering the rumors that he is illegitimate, but King Stephen understandably doesn't actually want Bane back; he only wants to protect their work at making peace with Rees'ahn. Iridal decides to go on and rescue her son herself, and King Stephen grants her a fortnight to do so; after that, he moves on to meeting with Rees'ahn and leaves Bane to his fate. On the way, she drops by a Kir monastery and picks up her sole helper: Hugh the Hand, whom Alfred revived with necromancy without remembering he did it. Hugh is slumming, a dirty drunk, unable to return to his former line of work: since being revived (and as himself, not the shambling dead of Abarrach,) he finds it impossible to kill, especially since everyone loses their nerve before hiring him. Hugh agrees on the condition that Iridal helps him find Alfred once they're finished. Before they leave, Trian privately reminds Hugh of his honor— Hugh accepted a contract to kill Bane, and his honor should compel him to carry it out. The royal family wants to use Iridal's rescue to see that Bane is killed to protect their daughter, and their world, from what he would do. Hugh and Iridal go to Skurvash, the island where the Brotherhood of the Hand, a guild of assassins, makes its base. As "the Hand," Hugh is of the second-highest rank possible to attain, with only Ciang the Arm as his superior (and possibly none his equal.) It is Ciang he asks for help, and she secures him passage to the elvish capitol. There he seeks the aid of the Kenkari, an elven religious clan whose Cathedral of the Albedo is used as a repository of elven souls, which supposedly strengthens elven magic, particularly their own powerful strain. From there Hugh and Iridal slip into the Imperanon, but Iridal, blinded by love, doesn't see the trap Bane has laid for her. For Iridal's life, Hugh agrees to kill King Stephen and Queen Anne; Bane (with Haplo's dog) will go along to ensure success and take the human throne. Haplo, in the meantime, chases Sang-drax, who is "rescuing" Jarre, but he is taken by the dragon-snakes and mentally tortured. The Keepers from the Cathedral, however, have been compelled by the dead spirits to rescue Haplo, and they do so. The Keeper of the Soul is able to drive off the dragon-snakes because he is no longer afraid of what they represent. The Keepers give Haplo a book written in Sartan, Dwarven, Elvish and Human— instructions to give the automaton under Drevlin— and send him down to Drevlin on a phantom dragon that they summon. They also ask him where his soul is— he has one, clearly, but evidently it is not with him. He has no idea what they're talking about. Iridal goes with him to stop Hugh and her son. They find Sang-drax's dragonship (he is no longer on it) and the phantom dragon breaks one of its wings; Haplo jumps onto the crippled vessel and rescues Jarre, but finds himself in the middle of a human-galley-slave rebellion fomented by Sang-drax. Haplo uses his magic to paralyze everyone mid-fight and tells them how foolish this battle is: the human and elven crewers will need to work together if they want to save their ship. He carries Jarre's badly injured form and teleports them both to the Factree, where Jarre is unfortunately seen by a dwarf who doesn't believe that she isn't dead. The dwarf rushes to inform Limbeck, and Limbeck promptly decides to lead the dwarves to kill elves as vengeance for Jarre's apparent death. Haplo heals Jarre and they fail to prevent the dwarves from launching at the elves, but both sides come to a halt when the statue opens and Sang-drax and the other dragon-snakes rise out from the tunnels, disguised as fellow dwarves who shout bloodthirsty encouragement to the others. Jarre recognizes them by their eyes and tears off Limbeck's glasses; Haplo attacks one of the "dwarves" to force out the serpent's true form. However, the serpents all shed their bodies and begin attacking the dwarves, starting a chaotic battle of dwarf versus serpent and elf versus dwarf, with both mensch sides blaming the other for the serpents' presence. Haplo and Sang-drax fight also, and though neither succeeds in slaying the other, both sustain injuries (Sang-drax's eye, and Haplo's heart-rune, the center of his personal and magical identity) that will never quite heal. Thankfully, Limbeck finally sees where this is leading— blood, death, terror— and forces his dwarves to surrender. In response, the dragon-snakes begin to attack the Kicksey-winsey itself ... And, realizing that this machine is their mutual lifesblood, the elves and dwarves immediately ally in its defense. A crippled dragonship also manages to land there— the ship that Haplo left to work together— and both the elves and humans join in. This marks the first time in Arianus's recorded history that humans, dwarves, and elves have fought side-by-side. Meanwhile, Hugh and Bane are on their way to the Seven Fields, where Prince Rees'ahn's rebellion began; he is returning to sign a historic alliance with King Stephen and Queen Anne against the elven emperor. Bane demands that Hugh take a final contract— to kill Haplo, and tell him that Xar was the one who wanted him dead. Hugh has no intention of surviving long enough to take on another job but agrees anyway, just to shut him up. Hugh deliberately botches the assassination of Stephen in an attempt to get himself killed, but the dog saves him by leaping onto him and causing confusion. Bane takes advantage of this and sinks a sword into Stephen's back, determined to have the throne for himself. Then he turns on Queen Anne— only to find himself slowly asphyxiating from a spell cast by his mother. Iridal has finally arrived to see her son's true nature. As Stephen and Anne's own child died— strangled, unable to breathe the air of the High Realm— so does Prince Bane meet his end. Stephen's life, however, is saved by Trian, and Iridal leaves for the High Realm with Bane's body. Hugh returns to the Cathedral of the Albedo, where he has promised to give his soul (which, after all, has gone on and then returned and thus is of great value to the Keepers.) But he is forbidden because his soul still has the mortal bonds of a contract, so must agree the Keeper of the Soul's new terms; the dead commanded the Keeper to accept the contracted life in place of Hugh's— Hugh must kill Haplo. |
8543464 | /m/02778mc | Into the Labyrinth | Tracy Hickman | 1993 | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} | On Abarrach, Xar is attempting to learn the secret of necromancy, but he needs a corpse to test it on. He interrogates the lazar Kleitus about the location of any living Sartan, and Kleitus reveals that Haplo lied to Xar about all the Sartan dying at the hands of the dead; Balthazar and his group remain living. Kleitus drops a hint about the Seventh Gate, and reveals that it's where the Sundering took place and that Haplo's corpse would know its location. Xar dismisses this idea, as well as the lazar, and is quickly becoming obsessed with the Seventh Gate when receives word that two Sartan have been captured: Zifnab, for one, whose pleas on Haplo's behalf go unheeded; and, as quite a prize, Samah, ruler of the Council of Seven. Xar is initially excited since Samah is the very person who would know the Seventh Gate's location, and he interrogates Samah for it to no avail. Sang-drax— the one who actually captured Samah and Zifnab— is summoned by Xar to mentally torture Samah to death; even before he dies, Samah does not reveal anything useful. Xar succeeds in turning him into a far-more-complacent lazar, but too much of Samah's will remains, and he still won't talk. Even worse, when Xar turns his back to investigate Zifnab's disappearance, Jonathan walks in and teaches Samah how to let go; the leader of the Council of Seven is now well and truly dead. Xar is soon told by Sang-drax of Haplo's "treachery"; he has helped the mensch start the Kicksey-winsey and given control of Arianus over to the mensch, instead of reserving it for Xar himself. Party to this conversation is the loyal servant who informed Xar of the capture and has already been ordered to investigate the Arianus situation: Marit, the woman Haplo loved, the mother of his child. Xar marries her in traditional Patryn fashion of rune-joining, both to ensure her loyalty and because it gives them an unblockable way to communicate, and then orders her to kill Haplo. Haplo rests on Arianus and tries to heal his heart-rune, a job that truly needs two people (most rune-healing is accomplished by "circling" and allowing strength from one person to flow to the other.) Prince Rees'ahn and King Stephen's deputy, the wizard Trian, have come to Drevlin to talk with High Froman Limbeck Bolttightener in the hopes of hammering out some sort of true alliance between all three races of mensch (the mysteriarchs having folded into the human race after their leader Sinistrad's death.) Haplo gives the Kenkari book to Limbeck, and the three races together reactivate the Kicksey-winsey, which realigns the scattered islands of Arianus and starts a constant flow of water through the sky. Then Haplo enters his dragonship and prepares to leave for the last time. Hugh, under contract to kill Haplo, retraces his own steps. He goes from the Cathedral of the Albedo back to the Fortress of the Brotherhood, where Ciang gives him a cursed knife: ugly, badly made, capable of self-movement... and covered in Sartan runes. It is the only weapon the Brotherhood has that might even possibly be capable of killing Haplo. As payment for it, Ciang orders him to never return or further payment will be taken in his blood. Hugh, in the end, doesn't even use his new Cursed Blade— its main advantage, suppressing Haplo's warning runes and a good amount of his magic, allows Hugh to sneak up on him in his ship and capture him, but the tables turn and Hugh accidentally ends up with Haplo's knife in his gut... only to lurch back from the grave, Alfred's necromancy rune having evidently condemned him to eternal life. Haplo circles with Hugh to calm the human's distress at returning from the dead yet again, and the two begin to plan how to find Alfred when they are interrupted. Marit appears and fights both Haplo and Hugh. The first time they engage their Patryn rune-magic, however, the Cursed Blade reacts, transmuting itself into various threats, and the three break off their conflict periodically to quiet it down (they can't really make it stop;) they also struggle over the ship's steering-stone. Eventually Haplo takes the ship to Chelestra, hoping to douse the Cursed Blade in seawater, but the knife, instead of transforming into another weapon or creature, summons a dragon-snake that destroys the ship. As Haplo drifts in the sea, he hears a voice and looks up to see... Alfred. At Sang-drax's misleading suggestion, Xar has gone to Pryan with the pretext of taming the tytans, and he is frustrated with his inability to reach Marit. His real reason for being there is his hope of finding the Seventh Gate in the citadel that Haplo visited, but he finds little to encourage him. The five mensch— Paithan, Rega, Aleatha, Roland, and Drugar— aren't much help, nor is Zifnab, who has somehow gotten here after escaping from Abarrach. Shortly after Xar and Zifnab have arrived, Sang-drax says he knows now that Zifnab is "one of them;" after a battle with Zifnab's dragon, he takes on Xar's form and steals the ship, claiming that he will search for Haplo while Xar is on Pryan. It is revealed during Xar's stay that Zifnab is actually one of the dissenting Sartan who refused to go along with Samah's plan; he was among the mensch on Earth during the Sundering, and was the first of either race to escape the Labyrinth. It was he who penned many of the books Xar educated himself with. (With all that Zifnab has seen, his total dementia seems a bit more understandable.) Xar decides to leave Pryan in a ship he spotted outside the citadel, covered in Sartan runes, but to do that he needs to get past the tytans. He decides to need to kill off the mensch and revive them with necromancy to serve as distractions. The mensch are having their own problems. Paithan is obsessed with a room in the center of the citadel that he calls the Star Chamber, a room with seven huge seats and an apparatus that generates blinding light. Roland and Aleatha are mostly not on speaking terms; the elf maiden finds herself spending more time with Drugar, who may be the last of his race. But Drugar has discovered a delightful illusion: at a certain clearing in the garden maze, at certain times of the day, he can see ghostly shadows of people from all the mensch races, walking around and talking to each other. Aleatha is there when he uses his amulet to activate the platform, teleporting him instantly to a different citadel— where, as it turns out, there are other survivors. Marit finds herself in a Sartan prison. On a bench in the middle of the room, Haplo recovers from injuries caused by the Cursed Blade. Across from it, Hugh the Hand and the dog watch her with unblinking eyes. Their "jailer": none other than Alfred, who rescued them from Chelestra. After some discussion, Haplo realizes that they are in the Vortex, the one-way gate at the very center of the Labyrinth. It was here that the Patryns were initially imprisoned and chose to live for generations, until people calling themselves Nexus runners started trying to escape. (It's unknown when they abandoned the Vortex and all moved out into the Labyrinth.) Haplo decides to enter the Labyrinth in search of his daughter, whom Marit named Rue. Hugh agrees to go with him, as does Marit at Xar's command; he has told Marit to hold off on killing Haplo to report back any conversations Alfred and Haplo have about the other worlds. It is only Alfred who balks. He has nothing left— Orla "saw" Samah's death and chose a peaceful death to be with him— but fear of the unknown. The Labyrinth itself, however, refuses to let him return to the Vortex by unceremoniously dropping a mountain on top of the exit back into it. To Haplo, the Labyrinth seems afraid of Alfred, though he can't for the life of him figure out why; what is Alfred, besides a bumbling, useless Sartan? ...who can turn into a dragon and bring people back from the dead? The group is about to be overrun by tiger-men when, surprisingly, a Patryn raiding party comes to save them. This party comes from Abri, the one and only city inside the Labyrinth (anathema to the lone-wolf Patryns). While camping overnight, Alfred admits his true name to Haplo: Coren, a Sartan word that can mean "to choose" or perhaps "chosen." Many Sartan children were named that, in hopes of a self-fulfilling prophecy, but (as Haplo points out) Alfred did not feel particularly amused when he awoke, the last living Sartan on Arianus. Clearly Alfred was Coren, was chosen—but for what? Marit, however, betrays them by revealing that Alfred is a Sartan. Haplo, Hugh, and Alfred are jailed by the city's leader, Headman Vasu, to await Lord Xar— Marit accused Haplo of being a traitor and plotting against their people— but are freed again just as quickly after Marit overhears the disguised Sang-drax plotting to kill them. Sang-drax and his cronies are also gathering a huge army of the Labyrinth's native monsters, with which to destroy the city of Abri and seal the Final Gate; they allowed Marit to overhear them to feed off the emotions that would come from it. Abri's occupants prepare for its defense, while Haplo and Marit, prodded by the dog, finally find their love for each other. Alfred feels out of place; though few seem to begrudge him his Sartan heritage, he is still out-of-place here, a clumsy pacifist in a city preparing for war. Talking with Headman Vasu, however, he eventually discovers that the city was not made by Patryns (who do not build cities,) or at least not by Patryns alone— the Sartan "heretics" who were expelled into the Labyrinth were accepted by the Patryns, eventually integrating completely into the society; Vasu himself is half-and-half, supplementing his Patryn tattoos with Sartan magic. The Patryns taught them the value of family; the Sartan, in return, taught the Patryns the value of banding together. Here, at the heart of the Labyrinth, rises Abri, the city that symbolizes the best in both cultures. Alfred also finds out why he is called the Serpent Mage: it is a title from a Sartan hierarchy of strength in magic, whose levels are named after animals. Serpent is very near the top. Alfred has found the meaning of his name: to choose his power, and all the responsibility it comes with... or to choose Alfred, who would rather faint than have to use his magic. Back on Pryan, Drugar returns from the other citadel with knowledge: he knows how to stop the tytans. Aleatha has fled the maze, though; pushed into hysterics by his sudden (and literal) disappearance, she ran back to her brother, and the four are now at a "party" of Xar's, at which he hopes to kill them with poisoned wine so that their bodies will be undamaged. Zifnab, however, saves them by drinking all of it himself and saying that it was poisoned, faking his death once again. The mensch are horrified at the revelation that Xar means to kill them. Aleatha escapes the room, while the other three are sealed inside by Xar... until Zifnab's dragon discovers Zifnab's "death" and tears the room apart. Aleatha has fled once again into the maze, where Xar can't pursue her because of protective Sartan runes covering its path. She runs into Drugar and he tells her they have to let the tytans inside to help them; he shares with her how to stop them. They run for the gates, but before they can reach it, Xar attacks; Drugar sacrifices himself to save Aleatha. Xar is about to kill Aleatha when the dragon strikes, distracting Xar with battling it instead of killing mensch. The other mensch have escaped from the destroyed room and find her, and they think she's mad when she tells them what she's going to do. She uses the amulet to open the gate and invites the tytans inside; they peacefully enter and ask, —Where is the citadel? to which Aleatha answers, "Here is the Citadel. You are home." Xar recovers from his battle with the dragon, and prepares to leave for the Labyrinth after Marit reports back to him— apparently corrupted by Haplo's influence into thinking Xar has made a mistake in allying with the dragon-snakes, as she says they are planning an attack. He is surprised when the tytans don't kill the mensch, and actually act to protect the mensch from him, but he avoids a fight by snatching Drugar's amulet from Aleatha and running away with it. The amulet will gain him entry into the Sartan ship, which he can then use to return to the Labyrinth. At Abri, the battle between Patryns and Labyrinth creatures rages fiercely, but the real threat comes from the dragon-snakes. Haplo, Marit, and Hugh lead a sortie to deal with them, and the three battle Sang-drax in his serpent form. Sang-drax is apparently killed by Haplo, but Haplo has been badly injured and almost crushed beneath the massive body. Marit is attacked by a wolfen when a green and golden dragon carries it away: Alfred, having made his choice to accept his power. He lifts the serpent's body off of Haplo, leaving Marit to hold his blood-soaked form, his heart-rune's wound having reopened. But while Alfred is distracted in battle with the dragon-snakes, Xar appears. He wants Haplo's knowledge of the Chamber of the Damned, and will stop at nothing to get it. The battle ends with the Labyrinth's armies driven off, but Marit dazed and wounded, Haplo abducted by Xar, and Alfred missing in action. |
8543472 | /m/02778nd | The Seventh Gate | Tracy Hickman | 1994 | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} | In the Labyrinth, Marit and Hugh venture out to try and find Alfred. He turns out to be the prisoner of a Labyrinth dragon, which are almost the equal of the dragon-snakes in cruelty and savagery. With the help of the Cursed Blade, they drive it off and rescue Alfred. On Abarrach, Haplo is dying. He will never willingly give up his knowledge of the Chamber of the Damned, and Xar knows it. What Xar must do is allow Haplo to die, and then revive him with necromancy. The fact that they both know it and accept it does not make it easier on either of them. Haplo dies peacefully, as Xar, Lord of the Nexus, the most powerful human being in the universe, weeps silently over his surrogate son, whom, despite everything, he still loves. But when the time for necromancy comes, it doesn't work. Xar realizes suddenly: the dog! Haplo never owned a dog until his last few moments in the Labyrinth—he had fought well and bravely, but just a few steps from the Final Gate, his injuries overtook him. Because he longed to rest and let death claim him, Haplo instilled all his instincts of loyalty, love and optimism into an external form: the dog. In doing so, though, he gave it his soul. The dog is still very much alive, and escapes into the catacombs under the capital city, bringing Xar's plans to a screeching halt. Marit, Hugh and Alfred, though alive, are at start of the Labyrinth; they must somehow reach the Final Gate, way at the other end. Providence arrives in the form of Zifnab and the "dragons" of Pryan—the good, true side of the Wave, polar opposites to the dragon-snakes. Marit, Alfred and Hugh travel to Abarrach, where they hope to somehow rescue Haplo. In the meanwhile, Zifnab is sent on an important mission: he tells Ramu, son of Samah and leader of the remaining Sartan on Chelestra, to travel to Abarrach as well. When Xar hears about this, he redesigns his plans, sending his few Patryn bodyguards back to the Nexus, where they might make a difference in the defense of the Final Gate, and then begins to make his own preparations... On Abarrach, Alfred and Marit leave Hugh on their ship (without magic, the air is too poisonous for him) and find the dog, through which Alfred can communicate with Haplo, but are unable to leave: for some reason, the dog can't pass through Death's Gate. Marit sustains wounds from a lazar, and the two retreat to Balthazar's encampment to rest and heal. Balthazar, of course, is very eager to leave this world if he can, but a problem arises when Kleitus, the leader of the lazar, attempts to seize Marit's ship himself. Alfred attempts to defeat him, but it takes Balthazar to really do the job. In the middle of this, Ramu arrives and peremptorily takes control of the situation. He decides to take everyone, including Marit, Balthazar and Balthazar's people, to the Labyrinth, to deal with the Patryn threat once and for all. This is exactly where Haplo wants him: with all the Sartan and all the Patryns in the Labyrinth, not to mention the good dragons of Pryan and the dragon-snakes of Chelestra, this would be the perfect time to seal shut Death's Gate, leaving the mensch to their own devices. Though both Patryns and Sartan think of themselves as gods among men, it is clear they have caused nothing but trouble. What Haplo proposes is to end it all in one final stroke. He asks Alfred to help him and Alfred, honored, agrees. In the company of Jonathan the lazar and Hugh the Hand, the two descend to the Chamber of the Damned, actually the Seventh Gate. Alfred opens the door to Death's Gate, entering a hallway and preparing to shut the doors at both ends. Hugh the Hand takes a great deal of interest in it, and, when pressed by Haplo, he reverts to his normal appearance: Xar, Lord of the Nexus, come to finish what he has started: the collapse of the four realms back into one world, one he will rule. "Do no violence," intones the lazar Jonathan, but no one is listening. Alfred, at the far end of the hallway, opens the door into the Nexus, where he sees Ramu being approached by dragon-snakes, who promise allegiance in destroying the Patryns. Both Marit and Balthazar see through it, and the Sartan man aids the Patryn woman in escaping to warn her people, but Ramu is totally taken in. He and his forces prepare for war. As this happens, Xar casts a spell on Alfred that nearly kills him, and allows Death's Gate to swing wide open; in through the door rushes Sang-drax, who attempts to urge Xar into reversing the Sundering, while surreptitiously killing Haplo. But seeds of doubt have finally taken hold, and Xar sees the dragon-snake for what it really is. He sacrifices himself to undo the reverse-Sundering spell — his life's work — and is slain by Sang-drax. Sang-drax urges Haplo to finish what Xar started, but Haplo shakes his head and begins to shut the doors—all the doors—into the Seventh Gate, saying a final good-bye to his mensch friends as he does so. When he is done, Sang-drax has abandoned his elven form and towers above him, threatening death... But Alfred lurches in, wounded but coherent. "Do no violence! It wants us to fight!" Haplo throws down his sword, and Sang-drax rears up for the kill... Only to smash himself into the ceiling of the Seventh Gate, destroying himself and bringing the entire structure down on all of them. Haplo and Alfred have only one door to jump through: Death's Gate itself, which is slowly collapsing and taking all of creation with it. Haplo and Alfred have to combine forces, forcing their magics to work together—Patryn and Sartan rune-structures, diametric opposites... That fit together so obviously, Haplo wonders why it has never been seen before. Their spell works, and with a dull thud, Death's Gate closes for the final time. In the Labyrinth, the dragon-snakes still loom, but there is a modicum of peace. Haplo is reunited with Marit, clearly intending never to leave her side again. Alfred is alive as well—at peace with himself, having finally chosen what he truly wants. Zifnab is here as well, doddering about causing trouble for his faithful dragon. Hugh the Hand is dead, found surrounded by the corpses of Labyrinth monsters. Lord Xar, as well, lies in state, the greatest of the Patryns, flawed though he—though they all—might be. And the war between Patryn and Sartan has been called to a halt: Ramu has been removed from command, replaced by Balthazar, who was quick to form an alliance with Vasu. The war, for now, is over, and perhaps, in time, there can be peace. |
8549526 | /m/0277jhc | Crystal Mask | Katherine Roberts | 8/1/2001 | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} | Renn, a gifted but often bullied Eight Year novice in the Echorium who can speak to Half-Creatures, is asked to assist the Singers by translating for Shaiala Two-Hoof, a wild girl brought to the Island for treatment, who claims to have been raised by centaurs. Although initially the pair argue, meeting Rialle helps to calm Shaiala and she begins to remember, enough to reveal that her memories were wiped using a mask made of khiz. Second Singer Kherron takes this excuse to insist that Shaiala and Renn leave with him to search for Frazhin, the escaped khizpriest whose body was never found. After this revelation, Rialle takes Shaiala, who was very disturbed by her recolllections, and Renn to come to the cave where she lives and meet the merlee. While Shaiala swims with the merlee, Renn rejects their friendly offers and is horrified to learn that "crazy" Rialle is his mother. The next day, Renn and Shaiala leave with Kherron on the Wavesong, heading to Southport. On the journey, Renn is irritable and offends Shaiala by refusing to believe her tales of centaurs. Kherron also gives Shaiala a bluestone necklace. Upon arrival, the group begin to explore Southport and Shaiala, despite being closelyguarded by a pentad of orderlies including Frenn and Lazim, escapes, only to become lost in the rough part of the city. She is kidnapped and thrown in a cellar with several street children, and Erihan, the son of Lord Nahar, the leader of the Kalerei tribe of Horselords. The children are taken away by barge towards the Plains. While Kherron attempts to trace Shaiala through her bluestone necklace, they rapidly loose track of the barge. Meanwhile, the children meet "Aunt Yashra", a seemingly kindly pregnant woman who asks to hear each child sing, and then chooses some to return to her "Singing Palace" while others are to be "gotten rid of". This disturbs Shaiala, who recognises Yashra, and causes friction between the children, with many of those chosen wanting to stay. However, after three days of cramped conditions, they hatch a plan to escape. Shaiala kicks a hole in the side of the boat for the children to escape through, but several are left behind as the boat begins to sink, attracting the crew's attention. Shaiala and the other remaining children are taken to Aunt Yashra's camp, where Yashra uses the khiz mask to make them passive. Shaiala remembers the mask and, with Erihan's help, escapes. Shaiala and Erihan steal Yashra's horses and head onto the Plains together to search for tracks - Erihan for Horselord's, Shaiala for centaur's. Meanwhile, Renn is asked to track Shaiala's bluestone, as novices are more sensitive than Singers. Although they follow the barge for a few days, Renn is shocked when the bluestone is suddenly underwater, and he fears Shaiala has drowned. However, the bluestone is soon retrieved by a Half-Creature similar to a merlee, known as a naga. The Singers follow the naga upriver, and eventually arrange a meeting. The naga shows them its collection of 'sparklies' - consisting of Shaiala's bluestone, a piece of khiz and Erihan's dagger. Seeing Erihan's dagger, the Singers are attacked by Lord Nahar and the Kaleri, who have been following the Singers in their search for Erihan. After a brief confrontation, the two groups agree to work together, and the Horselords tell the Singers about the Sunless Valley, reachable only though the Pass of Silence, where they suspect the children have been taken. Renn contacts the naga again and, in exchange for the return of a 'sparkly', it tells them where it found the dagger - with Shaiala's bluestone - and where it found the khiz, in the mountains. However, it leaves before Renn can ask if it knows another way into the Sunless Valley. Meanwhile, Shaiala and Erihan eventually track down Shaiala's herd of centaurs by the Dancing Canyons. Seeing them, Shaiala remembers why no-one else had spotted them - the adults use herdstones to bend light around the herd, rendering it invisible. Shaiala offers to take herdstones to the centaur foals enslaved in the Sunless Valley, and she and Erihan travel there through underwater caves, guided by naga, within which they see khiz crystal poisoning the naga eggs. Meanwhile, the Singers attempt to get through the Pass of Silence, a pass so precarious that the slightest noise can start an avalanche. However, when they are attacked, Renn accidentally cries out, setting off an avalanche. Frenn and another orderly are killed, Kherron is captured, a crystal forced into his throat, and is taken away, and only Renn's quick thinking saves himself and the other orderlies from the second avalanche set off by the Harai guarding the Pass. Grateful, Lazim finally explains how Frazhin disappeared after the Battle of the Merlee twenty years ago, and, although those sent to find his body disappeared, he was not considered a threat after the khiz was destroyed. While the orderlies attempt to disable to gong used to set off avalanches in the Pass of Silence - thereby allowing Lord Nahar and the Kaleri to pass through safely - Renn hides, only to be caught by Yashra as she brings in the captured street children, and be taken to the Khizalace - Yashra's stronghold. However, there is trouble in the Valley - Shaiala and Erihan have arrived to find the captured centaurs working as slaves to mine khiz, and have freed them with herdstones, leading a revolution. The angry foals storm the palace, leaving Shaiala and Erihan no choice but to follow. They get inside the Khizalace, but are soon separated from the centaurs. Instead, they find a group of street children, apparently hypnotised, and follow them to their dormitory, which is dominated by the presence of a giant khiz crystal. Although the pair quickly disable the guards, they are unable to break the crystal's hold on the children, and only just keep from sucumbing themselves. Renn is taken to see Singer Kherron in the dungeons, who is clearly badly injured by the khiz crystal in his throat. Frazhin arrives, and attempts to force Kherron to teach the children in the Khizalace the Songs of Power, scorning the Singer's attempts to break free. Frazhin threatens that if Kherron does not help him, he will harm Renn - whom Frazhin believes to be Kherron's son. It is made clear in the conversation that Yashra's unborn child is Frazhin's. Renn is taken away, but escapes from his guards when he hears of a "wild centaur girl" causing havoc in the dormitories. He hurries to find Shaiala attempting to crack the khiz with her kicks, and helps her to crack the crystal and free the children. With the Khizalace shattering around them from the blow, the Harai flee, and Shaiala and Renn hurry to free Kherron, whose voice is badly damaged from the crystal, then join the battle outside. With the arrival of the Kaleri, the battle has turned in the Singer's favour, at least until Yashra appears and seals the gates against them with khiz power, trapping them inside. Although she seems victorious, capturing Erihan as a hostage and controlling the khiz against the Kaleri, she is distracted when Singer Kherron warns her to keep an eye on Frazhin, who is trying to escape without her. She hurries after him, and between Renn's singing and the centaur's kicks, the gates are destroyed. When the group catches up to Yashra, she is watching from the lakeshore as Frazhin on a boat in the centaur calls to the naga. Although they help him initially, they suddenly turn on him and pull him under the water. Yashra, trapped by the Singers, is offered a choice: immediate execution or life on the Echorium until her child is born followed by a course of Yehn. She chooses the Echorium, for the sake of her child, and protests before she is taken away that Frazhin's crimes are the Singer's fault, for destroying his hopes of joining them when he was a child. After leaving the valley, Shaiala and Renn forget their earlier disagreements, and with Renn's singing to assist her, Shaiala successfully cracks rock to find her own herdstone. A songless Kherron, after reporting to the Echorium with Renn's help, admits that, while he would be glad to call himself Renn's father, Rialle had a close relationship with Frenn - who Renn was named for - and Renn's parentage is uncertain. Shaiala joins the Kaleri to learn to be a tribeswoman from Erihan's mother, and Renn returns to the Echorium, where he reconciles with Rialle and the merlee. |
8558331 | /m/0277v7x | The Forgotten | K. A. Applegate | 1997-09 | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"} | Jake spends a day having strange flashbacks of himself in a rainforest, which leaves him disturbed. That evening, after watching a boxing match with his brother and father, he leaves for a grocery store, where Tobias has discovered something has crashed and the high-ranking yeerks are trying to hide something. The other Animorphs join them, and together they infiltrate the store in fly morph. Cassie overhears Chapman saying that it was a Yeerk bug fighter. After Ax manages to reconfigure the ship's controls, the Animorphs escape, pursued by Chapman and the other Yeerks. They plan to fly the spacecraft to Washington, in order to convince the American government that Earth is under attack by extraterrestrials. When Ax discovers that the fighter's technology to keep human radar from seeing it is broken, they are intercepted by two U.S. Air Force F-16 fighter jets, however, Cassie notices that they are over the Red Sea in the Middle East - far from their intended destination. Flying above the atmosphere, they are picked up by Visser Three's Blade ship sensors. The Animorphs, knowing they can't escape, try to fire on the Visser's vessel. Both Jake and the Blade ship fire their Dracon beams at the same time, and, coincidentally, their projectiles intersect, and both ships crash. The kids wake up in their wrecked Bug fighter. They look around, noticing that they've crash-landed in a rainforest. They assume they're in the Amazon rainforest, but are also disturbed by the fact that it is the middle of the day (whereas it was nighttime in the United States, which is in roughly the same time zone as South America). After Jake reveals the strange flashbacks he was having, Ax speculates they may have caused a "Sario Rip" and traveled twelve hours backwards through time, which would explain why Jake was having strange flashbacks: he was in two places at once, and the two Jakes---the "past" and "future" versions---experience each other's thoughts at random moments. However, Cassie later notices that only Jake has the flashes so Ax says that Jake is the only "real" person-the rest are just a memory. They soon find that the Yeerks have traveled backwards through time as well, and will need both ships to create another Sario Rip and return to the right time. Ax takes the Bug fighter's computer to prevent them from doing so, and the group ventures out into the hostile wilderness, constantly plagued by insects, fire ants, snakes and piranhas. They're pursued by the Yeerks, who ruthlessly destroy the animals and trees around them in a bid to kill the Animorphs, desperate to retrieve the precious computer. The children acquire jaguar and monkey morphs in order to traverse the rainforest more easily. They eventually stumble across a group of Amazon Indians, led by Polo, their tribal chief. Marco, who knows some Spanish, manages to roughly translate the natives' Portuguese, and Jake and Polo agree to assist one another in eliminating the Yeerks. Polo and his men kill the Hork-Bajir guarding the Blade ship with poison-tipped spears, leaving the Animorphs with Visser Three, who morphs an amphibian-like Lerdethak and picks the Animorphs off one by one. Jake morphs into a monkey to use the Ledethak's vine like arms to move himself to Visser Three's body. He then throws a poison-tipped spear into Visser Three: while never revealed, this may have been fatal. Regardless, Visser Three is still able to use an arm to break Jake's neck. However, Jake wakes up back at the grocery store, just as they are about to infiltrate it. He calls off the operation, and the Animorphs all go home. The next day Jake asks Ax what had happened. Ax postulates that the travel through time created two separate versions of Jake. The reason Jake simply "woke up" back at the grocery store was that the Jake in the rainforest died at the hands of Visser Three; since it is impossible for one consciousness to exist in two separate locations, when one was eliminated the two snapped back together. Ax also speculates that Jake had to die, or else both Jakes and both their universes would collide and cease to exist. The events in the rainforest never actually happened (including the acquisition of jaguar and monkey morphs), and only remain in Jake's memory. He is left with a feeling of chilling relief. *Sario Rips are introduced and explained. |
8558612 | /m/0277vhg | The Reaction | K. A. Applegate | 1997-10 | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"} | At the zoo, Rachel and Cassie witness a boy fall into the crocodile pit. Rachel jumps into the pit to rescue him. Out of sight, she acquires and morphs a crocodile, carrying the boy to safety. At a meeting later in the barn, the Animorphs focus on their latest news: Jeremy McCole, a teen heart-throb, has become a new spokesman for The Sharing. The Animorphs fear this could make many join The Sharing, and decide to stop it from happening. That night, Rachel suddenly finds herself morphing involuntarily a crocodile, directly into a fly without returning to human form, a violation of morphing 'rules', and then an elephant. She meets up with her father and has him get her on the Barry and Cindy Sue Show, which McCole will be on. Rachel tells Cassie what really happened, but tells her not to tell Jake, and Cassie agrees. The next day the Animorphs spy on McCole's yacht to find Visser Three there. McCole tells the Visser he wants to become a Controller. Rachel suddenly finds herself involuntarily morphing into various animals, the last being a crocodile. Visser Three is alerted and morphs. The Visser is thwarted when Rachel bites him. Back at the barn, Ax diagnoses Rachel's condition. She is allergic to crocodile DNA, explaining her involuntary morphing, happening when emotionally stressed or excited. Ax tells her she needs to expel a live crocodile, a process known as hereth illint. Jake pulls Rachel off the mission until she undergoes the process. She lies to him the next day, pretending that it occurred overnight. The next day Rachel is scheduled to be on the show. At the show, the hereth illint begins. Cassie rushes her to the bathroom, and Rachel 'burps' the crocodile. As it attacks her, she morphs a bear and Cassie morphs a squirrel. The crocodile runs onto the stage with Rachel and Cassie, causing commotion. Ax kills the crocodile and Rachel steps on McCole's Yeerk. The mission to stop McCole is a success, as he had retreated to Uzbekistan. |
8558931 | /m/0277vs1 | Celsius 7/7 | Michael Gove | null | null | In the book he discusses both the emergence of Islamism and the West's response. It distinguishes between 'the great historical faith' of Islam which he claims has 'brought spiritual nourishment to millions', and Islamism, a 'totalitarian ideolog[y]' which turns to 'hellish violence and oppression' in a similar way to the 20th century ideologies of National Socialism and Communism. He discusses the factors that led to the development of large-scale Muslim terrorism and how the West has failed to stand up for its liberal values in the face of this pressure, including his analysis of the alliance between Muslim fundamentalists and the Western left. |
8561156 | /m/0277ydn | The Night Walker | John Fletcher | null | null | The plot of the play focuses on an arranged marriage. The heroine, Maria, is in love with a suitable potential mate, Frank Heartlove; but her mother (known only as the Lady) coerces Maria into a marriage with a rich old miser, Justice Algrip. Maria's Nurse describes him as "this old stinking dog's flesh," among other choice epithets. At the marriage feast, Maria's cousin, the prankster Jack Wildbrain, urges the heartbroken and rejected Heartlove to attempt to cuckold the Justice on his wedding night, and arranges Heartlove's opportunity to be with Maria alone. But Maria, a virtuous young woman, resists Heartlove's advances, even drawing a dagger and threatening to harm herself if he persists. Unfortunately, they are caught together by the Justice and other members of the wedding party; Maria, her reputation ruined, falls into a swoon, and is perceived to be dead. Meanwhile, Wildbrain's friend Tom Lurcher, a down-and-out gentleman turned thief, is recruiting a new apprentice in thievery, a boy who calls himself Snap (he is the "little thief"). Lurcher's modus operandi involves disguise and trickery: it's easier to burgle a house when the inhabitants are terrified of devils. Lurcher and the boy break into the Lady's house, to make off with the chest that holds the wedding gifts; instead they steal the coffin containing Maria's body. When they discover their error, they take the coffin out to bury it; but they encounter Justice Algrip, on his way home from the Lady's house. The boy pretends to be Maria's ghost to frighten him off. In so doing, the boy mentions a woman the Justice abandoned in order to marry Maria — a broad hint that Snap is more than he appears to be. No sooner is he gone, though, that Maria wakes from her swoon, and the thieves flee the scene. The Lady drives Jack Wildbrain from her doors, blaming him for the wedding disaster and even for the disappearance of the coffin. Wandering in the night, Wildbrain meets a dejected Heartlove, who now blames Wildbrain for getting him drunk and manipulating him into his disgraceful conduct earlier. Heartlove challenges Wildbrain to a duel. As they fight, a disoriented Maria stumbles upon them; she pretends to be her own ghost to frighten and shock them out of the duel. Afterward her Nurse takes her in, under the disguise of a Welsh cousin; the Lady soon penetrates the guise, but agrees to maintain it till Maria's reputation can be restored. Lurcher and the boy, under various disguises, fool and rob the Justice, and then waylay and drug him; when the Justice wakes, he is confronted with "furies" and "hellhounds" ready to drag him to Hell for his sins. His soul is saved, however, when an angel (the boy in costume) intervenes; Justice Algrip repents his past misdeeds and promises to make amends. The Justice keeps his word: he returns Maria's dowry and admits that his precontract with another woman makes his marriage to Maria null and void. He also yields up the mortgage he holds on Lurcher's property, thus restoring Lurcher's fortunes. Maria is revealed and restored to Heartlove; and the boy thief turns out to be Lurcher's sister, and the woman to whom the Justice was previously committed. She has manipulated Lurcher to keep his bad deeds under control; it was her doing that they stole the coffin instead of the wedding treasure. And she accepts the Justice as her intended husband once again..."old dry ham of horse flesh" though he may be. Even Wildbrain is restored to the Lady's good graces. |
8561256 | /m/02pf61v | The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable | Nassim Nicholas Taleb | 4/17/2007 | {"/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"} | Nassim Nicholas Taleb refers to the book variously as an essay or a narrative with one single idea: "our blindness with respect to randomness, particularly large deviations." It is Taleb's questioning of why this occurs and his explanations of it that drive the book forward. The book's layout follows "a simple logic" moving from literary subjects in the beginning to scientific and mathematical subjects in the later portions. Part One and the beginning of Part Two delve into Psychology. Taleb addresses science and business in the latter half of Part Two and Part Three. Part Four contains advice on how to approach the world in the face of uncertainty and still enjoy life. Taleb acknowledges a contradiction in the book. He uses an exact metaphor, Black Swan Idea to argue against the "unknown, the abstract, and imprecise uncertain—white ravens, pink elephants, or evaporating denizens of a remote planet orbiting Tau Ceti." In the first chapter, the black swan theory first is discussed in relation to Taleb's coming of age in the Levant. The author then elucidates his approach to historical analysis. He describes history as opaque, essentially a black box of cause and effect. One sees events go in and events go out, but one has no way of determining which produced what effect. Taleb argues this is due to The Triplet of Opacity. In the second chapter, Taleb tells a fictional story of a character named Yevgenia Nikolayevna Krasnova and her book A Story of Recursion. She published her book on the web and was discovered by a small publishing company; they published her unedited work and the book became an international bestseller. The small publishing firm became a big corporation, and Yevgenia became famous. This incident is described as a Black Swan Event. Taleb seems to be using "recursion" as a hint that he is predicting the story of his own book The Black Swan—Yevgenia's rejection of fiction and nonfiction as categories is reminiscent of Taleb's idea, and her character seems autobiographical as Taleb may be poking fun at his own intolerant temperament. In the third chapter, Taleb introduces the concepts of Extremistan and Mediocristan. He uses them as guides to define how predictable is the environment one's studying. Mediocristan environments safely can use Gaussian distribution. In Extremistan environments, a Gaussian distribution is used at one's peril. Chapter four brings together the topics discussed earlier in the narrative, about a turkey. Taleb uses it to illustrate the philosophical problem of induction and how past performance is no indicator of future performance. He then takes the reader into the history of Skepticism. In Chapter nine, Taleb outlines the multiple topics he previously has described and connects them as a single basic idea. |
8563808 | /m/0278116 | Le Rêve | Émile Zola | 1888 | {"/m/05hgj": "Novel"} | Le rêve is a simple tale of the orphan Angélique Marie (b. 1851), adopted by a couple of embroiderers, the Huberts, whose marriage is blighted by a childlessness which they attribute to a curse uttered by Mme Hubert's mother on her deathbed. Angélique is enthralled by the tales of the saints and martyrs — particularly Saint Agnes and Saint George — as told in the Golden Legend of Jacobus de Voragine. Her dream is to be saved by a handsome prince and to live happily ever after, in the same way the virgin martyrs have their faiths tested on earth before being rescued and married to Jesus in heaven. Her dream is realized when she falls in love with Félicien d'Hautecœur, the last in an old family of knights, heroes, and nobles in the service of Christ and of France. His father, the present Monseigneur, objects to their marrying for reasons of his own. (Before entering the Church he had married for love a woman much younger than himself; when she died giving birth to Félicien, he sent the child away and took holy orders.) Angélique falls ill and pines away. Won over by her virtue and innocence, the Monseigneur finally relents and the lovers are married; but Angélique dies on the steps of the cathedral as she kisses her husband for the first time. Her death, however, is a happy one: her innocence has freed the Huberts and the Monseigneur from their curses. |
8564876 | /m/02782jn | Beyond the Wall of Sleep | H. P. Lovecraft | null | null | An intern in a mental hospital relates his experience with Joe Slater, an inmate who died at the facility a few weeks after being confined as a criminally insane murderer. He describes Slater as a "typical denizen of the Catskill Mountain region, who corresponds exactly with the 'white trash' of the South", for whom "laws and morals are nonexistent" and whose "general mental status is probably below that of any other native American people". Although Slater's crime was exceedingly brutal and unprovoked he had an "absurd appearance of harmless stupidity" and the doctors guessed his age at about forty. During the third night of his confinement, Slater had the first of his "attacks". He burst from an uneasy sleep into a frenzy so violent it took four orderlies to strait-jacket him. For nearly fifteen minutes he gave vent to an incredible rant. The words were in the voice and couched in the paltry vocabulary of Joe Slater but the onlookers could construe from the inadequate language a vision of: :green edifices of light, oceans of space, strange music, and shadowy mountains and valleys. But most of all did he dwell upon some mysterious blazing entity that shook and laughed and mocked at him. This vast, vague personality seemed to have done him a terrible wrong and to kill it in triumphant revenge was his paramount desire. In order to reach it...he would soar through abysses of emptiness 'burning' every obstacle that stood in his way. The ranting stopped as suddenly as it had started. This was the first of what would become nightly "attacks" of a similar nature. The peripheral otherworldly images of Slater's visions were different and more fantastic with each successive night, but always there was the central theme of the blazing entity and its revenge. The doctors were perplexed with the Slater case. Where did a backward man like Slater get such visions, when surely an illiterate rustic like him would have had little if any exposure to fairy tales or fantasy stories? Not that there were stories similar to Slater's. Why, too, was Slater dying? As an undergraduate, the intern had built but never tested a device for two-way telepathic communication. The device was designed around his principle that thought was ultimately a form of radiant energy. Heedless of any ethics, he attached himself with Slater to the device as Slater lay near death. With the device switched on, he received a message from a being of light whose experiences had been what were transmitted through the medium of Joe Slater. This being explained that, when not shackled to their physical bodies, all men are light beings. The thought-message went on to explain that, as light beings within the realm of sleep, humans can experience the vistas of many planes and universes which remain unknown to waking awareness. The intern understood that the light being would now become completely incorporeal, and undertake at last a final battle with its nemesis near Algol. Joe Slater died then, and there were no further transmissions. That night an enormously bright star was discovered in the sky near Algol. Within a week it had dimmed to the luminosity of an ordinary star and in a few months it had vanished completely. |
8565283 | /m/0278303 | Couples | John Updike | null | null | The novel focuses on a promiscuous circle of ten couples in the small Massachusetts town of Tarbox. (The author was living in Ipswich, Massachusetts when he composed the book.) |
8566524 | /m/02784bd | Shadow Moon | Chris Claremont | null | {"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"} | Willow Ufgood is worrying over planting his crops for the harvest, once again in the life of a farmer. He falls asleep, distraught over not being able to attend a party for Elora Danan, of whom he served as protector about a year ago. He dreams that night of riding on the back of a great dragon, who drops him off at Tir Asleen. After bantering with Madmartigan and Sorsha, during which Sorsha bestows upon him a new name, "Thorn Drumheller," he continues on to see Elora and give her a gift that he has created: a teddy bear with crystal eyes that Willow says will protect her when he is not there to do so. Leaving the sleeping child with her gift, he converses with the two brownies, Rool and Franjean, and leaves. He wakes up the next morning to find two Brownies sitting at the end of his bed and that a horrific cataclysm has wiped out 12 areas in the world, including Tir Asleen. |
8568251 | /m/02786p5 | A Luneta Mágica | null | null | null | The book tells the story of Simplício, a naïve and near-sighted man who lives alongside his brother Américo, an ascending politician, his cousin Anica and extremely religious aunt Domingas, and wishes to be able of seeing again one day. A friend of his, old man Nunes, takes him to Reis, an optometrist who is able to make very powerful lenses; however, none of them are able to make Simplício see again. Reis then suggests Simplício to go see a friend of his, an unnamed Armenian wizard who makes magical lenses. Simplício is finally able to see again, but the Armenian tells him that if he looks to someone or something for more than three minutes, he would see the evil enclosed on them. However, Simplício does not pay attention to the Armenian's warning, and starts seeing the evil parts of all things, and considered to be crazy, becomes a recluse. Simplício accidentally destroys the "evil" lenses one day, and returns to see the Armenian — this time he gives to Simplício new lenses that makes him see the good parts of all things. Being seduced and ludibriated, after many mishaps Simplício finally obtains the "sanity" lenses, and is able to live happily again. gv:A Luneta Mágica pt:A Luneta Mágica |
8568732 | /m/02787kd | Blart II: The Boy Who was Wanted Dead or Alive - Or Both | Dominic Barker | 2007 | {"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"} | Blart, after the imprisonment of Zoltab, is living the good life on his own pig farm. But a wily merchant named Uther has conned him out of everything he owns and his freedom by a game of cards called "Muggins". To play Muggins, the dealer simply picks two cards from the deck, hands one to the non-dealer and keeps one himself. Each player turns over their cards. If the cards were the same, say, a king and a king, then the dealer wins. If the cards are different, say, a three and a five, then the non-dealer wins. Even Blart has grasped it that the chances of the non-dealer winning is drastically in his favour and resolves to play the game with Uther to make money. However, no sooner than Blart bets stakes in the game of Muggins than Uther begins to win every round. But then quite out of the blue, Capablanca arrives to tell him that Blart and the other questors are wanted, dead or alive - or both. They are wanted because it is believed that they are minions of Zoltab, even though it was them that imprisoned him. So Blart, Capablanca and Uther (who must help them as he is wanted for associating with Blart) must find and warn the other questors. After gathering the original company (with the exception of the deceased dwarf Tungsten) they must travel to where Capablanca has imprisoned Zoltab, so as to prove their innocence. However, Capablanca has difficulty remembering where he has imprisoned the last lord. As soon ddakjfdioasdjfoasdfjs it:Blart 2 |
8570900 | /m/0278bcw | A sucessora | null | null | null | A Sucessora follows the character of Mariana, a young woman that has married the widower Roberto Steen. As Mariana attempts to acclimate to her new marriage and responsibilities, she discovers that his dead wife Alice still seems to have a hold over the household. |
8570979 | /m/0278bh9 | From an Abandoned Work | Samuel Beckett | 1957 | null | The first person narrative revolves around three days in the early life of a neurotic old man. “None of the days is described clearly or coherently and few details are given for the second and third days.” It is unlikely that the days are actually chronologically contiguous although the general framework does tend to be, digressions aside. The story begins with the old man remembering back to when he was young, probably a young man rather than a child per se (based on the assumption that the man is modelled on Beckett himself who only came to appreciate Milton in his early twenties whilst at Trinity College). He begins arbitrarily; at least he maintains, “any other [day] would have done”. Despite feeling unwell he rises early and leaves the house but not so early that his mother isn’t able to catch his eye from her window. He appears unclear in his own head if she is even waving at him – he’s already at a fair distance when he notices her – and puts forth the notion, calculated to reduce any significance that could be attributed to her actions, that she may simply have been exercising, her latest fad, and not really trying to communicate anything at all. The young man is prone to sudden rages. As he is walking away he feels “really awful, very violent [and starts to] look out for a snail, slug or worm” to squash. Despite his propensity towards violence – or perhaps to find excuse for it – he makes a point of never avoiding things that might exacerbate it whether these be small birds or animals or simply difficult terrain. He becomes aware of a white horse at such a distance that despite the excellent sight he boasts of he cannot tell if a man, woman or child is following it. White is a colour that has a strong effect on him and he flies into a rage simply at the thought of it (See Classical conditioning). In the past he had tried “beating his head against something” but has discovered that short bursts of energy, “running five or ten yards”, works best. After this he walks on for a bit and then heads home. On the second day, despite having had another bad night, he leaves the house in the morning and doesn’t return until nightfall. He describes being “set on and pursued by … stoats” which – perhaps significantly – he refers to as “a family or tribe” rather than using the more common collective noun, pack. This is noteworthy because he specifically mentions he has a good head for facts having “picked up a lot of hard knowledge”. He survives the attack but regrets that he did not let them finish him off. The events of the third day are distilled into the look he gets from an old road worker named Balfe of whom he had been terrified of as a child. Once he has finished with these recollections we learn a little about where he is now. It appears he is still going for his daily perambulations, “out, on, round, back, in” as he puts it. And he is still in poor health. His throat, which has bothered him for as long as he can remember, still troubles him and he has developed earache. He regards himself now as a “mild” person and yet for some reason the violence of old erupts and he begins lashing about with his stick and cursing. His final thoughts are of vanishing from view in the tall ferns. The man’s constant sore throat may well be a psychosomatic condition; he suffers from fidgeting and cites one instance where he collapses in some kind of fit. He is clearly a disturbed individual with a great deal of pent up hostility particularly toward his parents. He refers to himself as “mad” but then acknowledges that he is probably merely “a little strange”. His behaviour is obsessive, he has a propensity towards self-harm (“beating [his] head against [things])” – Waiting for Godot). His relationship with his parents is not good; he says he would rather go to hell than join them in paradise in fact. He is glad that his father died early in his life so that he wouldn’t have to be disappointed with the directionlessness of his son’s life (“I have never in my life been on my way anywhere”). The mother’s own somewhat eccentric behaviour meant that the two of them never became close; neither had spoken to the other in years following a dispute over money (perhaps his inheritance). The man talks of love but a love of the local flora (he is not far travelled) and imaginary fauna (creatures he has dreamt of), certainly not people. He wonders if he killed his parents and suspects that in a way, probably due to years of having to cope with his aberrant behaviour, he at least brought them a little closer to death. He has never married and so the family line – assuming he has no brother – will end with him, effectively killing off the family name. |
8575021 | /m/0278ht1 | Dawn Undercover | Anna Dale | 2005 | {"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"} | Rustygate Primary School does not teach espionage and sleuthing, so when Dawn Buckle is asked by S.H.H. (Strictly Hush Hush) to become a highly trained spy with P.S.S.T (Pursuit of Scheming Spies and Traitors) she feels rather at a disadvantage. But showing an incredible ability and very quick thinking she soon finds herself caught up in an incredible adventure to unearth the wicked 'spy-gone-bad' Murdo Meek. Can Dawn piece together all the parts of the incredible riddle before Murdo does away with his hostage? Can she outwit this master criminal while at the same time keeping herself safe? |
8575069 | /m/0278hwt | A Golden Age | Tahmima Anam | 2007-03 | {"/m/098tmk": "War novel", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"} | The plot of the novel describes the true story of the writer's grandmother during the Bangladesh Liberation War. During the war her grandma helped the Freedom Fighters by protecting their ammunitions. Once when the army came to her house and threatened that they would take the youngest son of the family if she did not give them the information about the fighters, she somehow successfully tackled them. The person who portrays the character is named Rehana Haque. The story also covers the inner conflict of Rehana as she loses the custody of her children after her husband's death. Along with her desperate attempt to win the minds of her children, she tries to protect them as they get involved in the war. |
8575602 | /m/0278jcn | Hunted | James Alan Gardner | 2000 | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"} | At the opening of the story, Explorer Edward York (son of one of the High Council's most ruthless Admirals) is freshly arrived on board an Outward Fleet spaceship, the Willow, which is leaving the Troyen solar system where he has been stationed for the past twenty years. The atmosphere aboard ship is febrile; the shy and retiring York is roped into attending a party, a masquerade-cum-orgy, by a woman in an Admiral's uniform with a large port-wine birthmark on her cheek. (Readers of the previous novels will recognize the recurring character of Festina Ramos.) The reason for the crew's semi-hysterical state quickly becomes clear: the crew has violated the League's single basic rule, and suddenly everyone aboard ship, except for York, drops dead, cryptically executed by the high authorities of the League of Peoples. Alone aboard the ship, York, who by his own testimony suffers from at least mild mental retardation (he's not a genuine Explorer, but merely an Admiral's black-sheep son who's been shunted into the Corps), begins to unravel an increasing complex plot. In the ship's hold, he discovers, dead like everyone else, a queen of the Mandasar species that has spent the past two decades consumed in a violent civil war. The Mandasars are the key alien species and society in the novel: they resemble giant lobsters, with eight legs, pairs of claws and arms, with whiskered faces and brain humps on their backs. Their species comes in four castes or orders, varying in size and color, from small brown females called "gentles," through workers and warriors, up to the hive-queens, who are four meters long, saffron yellow, with four claws instead of two and bright green venom sacs. Their social order is something of a cross between an ant farm or beehive, and feudal Japan. What is a dead hive queen doing on a ship of the Outward Fleet? And what did the crew do to earn themselves an infallibly just death sentence from the League of Peoples? As York tries to plumb deep waters of conspiracy and corruption, he meets the real Admiral Festina Ramos, and realizes that the woman aboard the Willow was costumed as the Admiral for the masquerade party. He also falls in with genuine Explorers, and ends up on a desperate expedition back to Troyen, the Mandasars' home world, in an attempt to unravel an Admiral's corrupt scheme and stop a civil war. In the process, York learns the real meaning of his status as his father's genetically-engineered clone; he learns too that his beloved twin-sister-clone, whom he saw dead twenty years before, is still alive, but not the person he thought he knew; and he discovers the nature of the double within himself that sometimes takes over his mind and body. The story expands to include a formidable nanotechnology, a sentient and telepathic moss that can overwhelm a human being, and members of a mysterious species who are never seen outside their personal robot craft. The ending manages to tie up all the loose ends, as well as provide anticipations of further stories to come. |
8581105 | /m/0278rjq | The Flesh Mask | Jack Vance | null | null | Taunted by four of the school's prettiest girls at a high school party, a star athlete with a severely disfigured face lashes out at one of them in his drunken frustration. Sent to reform school for assault, the boy undergoes extensive facial reconstructive surgery at state expense. Years later, the girls are in college when one of them is murdered, her face mutilated, and the others receive threats. The young man's whereabouts are unknown and it is learned there is no photographic record of his new face. Then, several years later a bizarre mutilated dog lands in a suburban garden. The animal, still alive has had its legs surgically removed, and the stubs 'smoothed' down. |
8581174 | /m/0278rpk | The Change | K. A. Applegate | 1997-11 | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"} | Tobias takes Rachel on a tour, to show her the Yeerk pool entrance that he had discovered. Soon, though, he finds he is not where he was heading; they suddenly are flying over the forest, without warning. He turns and turns but cannot get to the spot he wants to go to. They try to fly away but discover that they are still in the same spot. A pair of Hork-Bajir come up from a secret hatch in the woods. The two aliens are promptly pursued by human-Controllers on dirtbikes and jeeps, bristling with shotguns and automatic rifles. Tobias and Rachel decide to help the supposed fugitives. They lead the male one to safety, but the other female trips over and falls into a ditch. The first Hork-Bajir screams for his wife yelling it in his language, but the Animorphs do not understand. He tells them then that she is his wife. The Animorphs tell him to run or he might die, and the Hork-Bajir runs for his life. Tobias then leads him to a cave for the time being, leaving the female Hork-Bajir behind. The other Animorphs suspect a Yeerk trap to lure the freedom fighters, but they return to the cave the Hork-Bajir is hiding in. He calls himself Jara Hamee. But Ax isn't convinced he's not a Controller, so Jara pulls his head open. Horrified, but seeing no Yeerk, the Animorphs have some peace of mind. But just then controllers had found out where they were. The team concocts a plan. In order to help Jara Hamee escape, Rachel morphs him (Jara Hamee turns around in order not to see Rachel demorphing). Tobias is worried about the one he loves, and so he hitches a ride on one of her forehead blades. However, the human-hawk slaps into a branch, is knocked off, and finds himself in a Swainson's hawk's clearing, where the other Hork-Bajir is cornered by a group of human-Controllers and Visser Three himself. The Visser calls this Hork-Bajir Ket Halpak. Tobias provides a distraction by drawing out an aggressive Swainson's hawk, the "owner" of this clearing, and rakes the Visser's stalk eyes, allowing Ket Halpak to escape. With Jara Hamee and Ket Halpak reunited, the Animorphs now need to decide where to hide them. Tobias suggests a hidden valley with fresh streams, a meadow and tall trees. But he'd never seen the place in his life, even though the images are clear in his mind. Tobias now suspects foul play - and that someone or something is manipulating him. During the night while he is guarding the Hork-Bajir along with Ax, Tobais suddenly has visions of tracker Taxxons hunting. He doesn't know exactly but he has a feeling that they are tracking him. To avoid the Taxxons picking up the Hork-Bajir scent, Tobias and Ax take the Hork-Bajir and retreat further toward the mountains. While riding on the Hork-Bajir, Jara Hamee tells Tobias that a voice in his head just told him to escape with his wife from the Yeerk Pool and that "it" would send a guide while he was trapped in the Yeerk Pool. Frustrated about being used, Tobias stops everyone and demands to find out what is happening. He yells in his head and asks who is manipulating him, threatening not to go on unless these voice gives him some answers. Tobias then finds himself in another plane, and sees himself as both human and hawk. And then he encounters the Ellimist, who explains that while his species does not interfere with other people's lives, he wishes to save the Hork-Bajir, and The Ellimist justifies himself by saying that the Animorphs owe him their lives. Tobias also learns that when he could not get anywhere earlier and the images in his head were all the Ellimist's doing. Frustrated, Tobias wants to be made human in return for his efforts. The Ellimist says that he knows what Tobias wants but asks Tobias if he himself really knows what he wants. Tobias and the Animorphs take the Hork-Bajir to the mountains, pursued by Yeerks in Dracon beam-wielding helicopters, Hork-Bajir and Taxxons. Tobias, out hunting breakfast (while the others Animorphs, Ax and the Hork-Bajirs are still trying to climb up a mountain), is caught in the helicopter's rotor vacuum, and breaks his wing against a tree. He is immediately discovered by a raccoon, who prepares to eat him. At that moment, the Ellimist asks Tobias if he wants the reward for his services now and makes him able to morph again, but does not return him his human form. Tobias is enraged, accusing the omniscient being for not keeping his promise. Tobias escapes by morphing the raccoon. Once more, he rejoins the others in his hawk form already healed. The Animorphs realize that the Yeerks will not give up until the Hork-Bajir are dead because if two escaped safely, others would try. Tobias comes up with a plan. Ax, Cassie, and the Hork-Bajir go to the safe clearing while the others execute the plan. Tobias morphs Ket Halpak and, together with Rachel in Jara Hammee morph, go over to the ravine. Rachel is made to jump over the ravine, where she is caught by Marco, in gorilla morph, in a small cave right below the top of the ravine that is not visible from the top. However, Tobias is intercepted by Visser Three. He yells "Ket Halpak free!!!!", convincing Visser Three that he is the Hork-Bajir, and runs toward the ravine, Visser Three being forced to allow him to fall as otherwise. Even if he killed Tobias, the Hork-Bajir's momentum would carry Visser Three over the edge of the cliff as well. At the bottom, the real Ket Halpak and Jara Hamee are pretending to be dead, while Cassie and Jake are in wolf morph pretending to eat them. Visser Three is convinced that they are dead and the Yeerks give up searching. They take the Hork-Bajir to the valley which is mysteriously difficult to locate from a distance unless you knew it was there. Ket and Jara tell the Animorphs that they are expecting a baby. The human-hawk Tobias has his morphing power back. He thinks about what the Ellimist had said, and laments that maybe he didn't want to be a human again. Tobias falls asleep, and wakes up in his old bedroom---the Ellimist apparently had sent him back in time to the night before he first met Elfangor. The "past" Tobias (human) wakes up, and the "present" Tobias (hawk) acquires his DNA before the past version falls back asleep. He also tells him to go to the construction site with Jake. As a result, he can morph his own human body for up to two hours at a time (or, as later books will point out, stay in human form forever---the Ellimist, in this way, was giving him a choice.) The next day (Monday), he shows up at school for Rachel's Packard Foundation Outstanding Student award ceremony, as a human, to Rachel's amazement. *Tobias once again receives the ability to morph, although nothlits traditionally can't. *Jara Hamee and Ket Halpak are introduced *The Free Hork-Bajir colony is established. |
8581358 | /m/0278ryg | The Unknown | K. A. Applegate | 1998-01 | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"} | Cassie and Rachel drive with the former's father, Walter, to the Dry Lands outside of town. 'Crazy Helen', a client of Walter's, has informed him of a sick horse stumbling about the plains. Helen rants on about Martians while Walter and the girls search for the horse in the dark. Rachel spots it trying to make a call at a pay phone. The horse then tries to escape, but is too weak to walk, and falls over. Cassie and Rachel notice a Yeerk falling out of the dying horse's ear. Cassie, getting a bad feeling, tells Rachel to run. A second later, they're knocked over by an explosion. Cassie wakes up in Crazy Helen's caravan, who insists 'it was the Martians!'. Cassie and Rachel decide she is half right - and assume that the Yeerks were trying to keep them away from the horse. The other Animorphs are skeptical, though. Rachel and Cassie are frustrated, but Jake allows the group to go back to the site and investigate. Cassie, Rachel, Marco and Tobias travel in bird morph, and land in a rocky outcrop. They're promptly arrested by soldiers, and taken to the Air Force base - Zone Ninety-One. There, they meet Captain Torelli, the chief of base security, who is suspicious of the kid's lack of shoes. Cassie, Rachel and Marco, fearing being grounded, or charged with trespassing, give the captain fake names and phone numbers. The captain leaves, and the kids escape via cockroach morph. They escape outside, but Cassie is nearly crushed by a tank. Tobias picks her up, and airlifts the trio to safety. Cassie decides on a new plan. They need horse morphs from the racetrack. They're nearly caught by the staff, and Cassie morphs Minneapolis Max - a champion stallion. The animal's jockey, assuming Cassie is the real horse, causing Cassie to be caught up in a race, which she wins. The Animorphs are now ready to infiltrate Zone Ninety-One. Back in the Dry Lands, the teens morph their respective horse morphs. They join the alleged Yeerk herd, and trot directly into the base. They hear the horse-Controllers speak Galard - the interstellar lingua franca. Ax translates for them, telling them that the Yeerks are planning to complete their mission tonight. The Yeerks promptly break into a run, and rush into a hangar. There, the Animorphs see what the government's been hiding. They know it's not human, but they don't know what it is. Neither do the Yeerks. The Yeerks are depressed and afraid, aware of the consequences for failure. They rendezvous with Visser Three, who decapitates the Yeerk 'responsible' for the failure. The Visser then orders his Hork-Bajir to eliminate the suspicious-looking horses standing close by. Cassie knocks over a Hork-Bajir, and the rest make a break for it. It is then that an embarrassed Ax tells them what the humans have been guarding: a disposable waste module from an Andalite Dome ship; an alien toilet. The disgusted Animorphs decide they've been wasting their time, and head home. At home, Cassie berates herself for wasting her team's time, but then realizes the significance of the Andalite toilet; it's proof that sentient life exists beyond Earth, and that Visser Three needed humanity to know as little as possible in order for the invasion to continue to run smoothly. Cassie then remembers a pin-up board for 'Gondor Industries'; a dummy corporation employee's day out. ('Gondor Industries' is likely a reference to the third age kingdom of Gondor from The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King. Applegate frequently used similar names from the LOTR series in Animorphs series.) Cassie takes the Animorphs to The Gardens amusement park. Cassie figured that Visser Three planned to kidnap captain Torelli and other Air Force staff at Zone Ninety-One. The Animorphs, chased by Captain Torelli, end up in the horror house, where the Hork-Bajir waited. The children morph, and a battle ensues. They wound the Hork-Bajir and rescue the captain from Visser Three. The Yeerks escape in their vessels, in front of totally oblivious humans at a night parade. This marks the first occasion where Ax has gone into battle in a morph- with the obvious exception of occasions when they have been forced to engage in battle underwater-, when he morphs a rattlesnake to attack the Controllers in the House of Horrors to take them by surprise. Actually Ax's battle morph is usually himself, he does not use rattlesnake morph in a battle in anymore of the animorph series. |
8581416 | /m/0278s17 | The Escape | K. A. Applegate | 1998-01 | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"} | The book starts off with the four human Animorphs helping four parrots in a new mall cafe by telling the customers disgusting things about the cafe's food. After this, Marco's old acquaintance, Erek King, who was watching at the room's back, has some disturbing news about his mother, Eva (Visser One). She has returned to Earth, overseeing a Yeerk bioweapons program to allow them to venture into deep waters; this is a requirement made by the Yeerk command for the invasion of Leera, a planet covered almost entirely by oceans. The research is conducted in the waters around Royan Island. The Animorphs infiltrate the facility, and discover that the Yeerks are trying to create super-intelligent sharks which can be infested and controlled, because in their natural state, the sharks' brains are not big enough. They decide to acquire hammerhead morphs. Marco accidentally reveals to the other Animorphs his fear of sharks. While scouting the waters off Royan Island the Animorphs are captured by a computer, still morphed as sharks. They have devices installed in them designed to bestow sentience on animals. The Animorphs then try to morph flies but find they can no longer morph into small creatures because the devices are too large for small creatures' brains. They realize the only way to remove them is to destroy the facility. They attempt to do this. During the ensuing battle, Marco reveals to Rachel and Ax that Visser One's host body is his mother, just as they were about to kill her. Visser Three storms in, angry that Visser One would do these experiments without his knowledge or consent, and they have an argument. Visser Three is about to eat Ax in a snake morph, but Rachel intervenes and grabs him by his wrist in bear morph, threatening to cut him in half. Because of this, Marco sees an opportunity and morphs into a gorilla, knocking out the Visser. The Yeerks have just captured some new specimens of aquatic species - known as Leerans. The Leerans are capable of telepathy and unlimited mind-reading capacity (hence the Yeerks' attempts to endow the sharks with sentience- a secret invasion is impractical due to the Leeran mind-reading abilities). A possibly infested Leeran states to Visser One that Marco (still in gorilla morph) is human. Visser One, however, misunderstands and thinks it's saying that the morph is a human. Marco knocks the Leeran unconscious before it can explain what it meant. The Animorphs know that the Yeerks must be stopped before they can utilize two new powerful living weapons. They destroy the factory and escape unscathed. Marco's mother may or may not be dead. She was unconscious when the flooding started, but a Leeran was seen swimming toward her and the Animorphs heard a torpedo being expulsed, which may have carried her to safety. |
8581493 | /m/0278s6d | The Warning | K. A. Applegate | 1998-03 | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"} | Jake discovers a Yeerk website, but is it what it seems? It looks like a crazy mix of fact and fiction. He's not sure if it's a Yeerk trap, or a place for potential Yeerk-fighters to meet. Jake and the Animorphs decide to travel to the Web Access America headquarters, a two-hour flight from their own city. The kids can't afford plane tickets, so they morph flies with Tobias acquiring a fly morph. After Marco dabbles in a first-class passenger's Salisbury steak, the occupants on the plane are alerted. A flight attendant swats Jake, nearly killing him. A shaken Jake survives and tries to hide his fear, but Cassie takes notice. At Web Access America, Marco and Ax hack into the WAA records and discover the identities of some of the screen names on the Yeerk website. They need a distraction, so the children morph and create a spectacle for anyone working in the offices. One of them is the founder of WAA himself, Joe Bob Fenestre - the second richest man in the country. Marco also discovers that his online girlfriend is in fact a seventy-three year-old retired postal worker. On the way back to the airport, Cassie objects to Jake morphing the fly again. Jake tries to tell every one he is fine with morphing a fly even though he is scared to death. Their relationship is strained for the time being. Back home, Jake needs to form a new plan to infiltrate Joe Bob Fenestre's multi-million dollar compound. Cassie objects, wanting to save Gump, a Yeerk forum regular, from confessing to his Controller father what he knows. Jake and the others, though, decide Fenestre's the center of the issue. Jake, without any prior intelligence or preparation, sends the Animorphs to the billionaire's property. They are immediately attacked by gun-toting humans, pack hounds, and Rachel is shocked unconscious by a bug zapper. Ax is captured by the dogs. Jake and the others, shaken, need to find another way to break in. Jake travels to The Gardens zoo complex, and acquires a rhinoceros morph. He morphs and breaks through the entrance to the Fenestre mansion, impervious to human shotguns. The others follow, and morph their standard battle morphs. They find Fenestre, along with Rachel and Ax in a suspended time state known as 'biostasis'. Fenestre explains to Jake, Cassie, Marco and Tobias that he is Visser Three's twin brother - Esplin 9466 Lesser. Visser Three, unwilling to share his power with his sibling, banished him to Earth as a lowly telephone operator. Esplin, combining his Yeerk technical knowledge with his host's human knowledge, created a web service that would serve as a vast pool of information for the Yeerk invasion. The Visser was enraged, and has been plotting to kill him. Jake asks Esplin how he survived without a Yeerk pool. Esplin, his host's eyes void of emotion, tells him that he finds human-Controllers on the Yeerk forum. He has them kidnapped, splits the hosts' heads open, and feeds on the Yeerk inside. "One every three days. Ten a month." Fenestre admits that he is a cannibal serial killer. A horrified Cassie tries to attack him, but Jake stops her. He'd rather allow Esplin to kill as many Yeerks as he could - even it means sacrificing the host. Cassie is enraged. Jake threatens Esplin, and they leave with Rachel and Ax. Jake later meets with Cassie, who'd been talking to Gump, from the Yeerk web site chat, at his elementary school. The saddened Cassie tells Gump never to trust his father. Jake tries to comfort her, but to no avail. Later on, Jake watches a news report that Fenestre's house had been burned down. He hints that he may have burned down the house out of disgust for the cannibal killer. |
8581607 | /m/0278sf_ | The Decision | K. A. Applegate | 1998-05 | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"} | The Animorphs discover that Hewlett Aldershot the Third has been run over by Controllers and is being kept secretly in a hospital where he is heavily guarded. He has a very high job in the government. Since he cannot be infested while in a coma, Visser Three acquires his DNA in hopes of impersonating him to eventually acquire an even more senior official. They decide to morph mosquitoes with the theory that they can acquire him by sucking his blood without being in their natural forms where the Yeerk guards might notice them. While they are doing it, they are transported to Z-Space when their extra mass is caught in the slipstream of an Andalite ship heading for the Leera where there is a Yeerk invasion underway. Right before they suffocate, they are rescued and taken aboard. Once in the ship, Ax "betrays" the Animorphs by following the captain's orders. The group is told to stay calmly in a room while the Andalites do all the work. Unfortunately, the commander of the ship is a traitor. He attacks all the tripulation in the bridge but Ax. However he can do nothing to defeat him. That's when Ax alerts the Animorphs but they reveal to Ax that they are already in the room. Cassie distracts the captain and Ax defeats him. As the ship is about to be taken by the Yeerks, the second in command tells them to leave the ship and he blows it up. The Animorphs head across the major landmass of Leera to try to find friendly Andalites. Tobias mysteriously disappears and the rest go over to the ocean following Ax's idea- who promised that now on he will only take Jake's orders-. Rachel disappears and the rest meet some Leerans whom they acquire. Then they get told that the Andalites have planted a bomb to explode the continent- as Ax had suspected- but that they need to go to activate it and Cassie disappears. Marco disappears and they meet a Leeran-Controller who reads their minds and discovers their plans, alerting the Yeerks. When they get to the bomb, Jake disappears leaving Ax alone. He activates the bomb but a bunch of armed Hork-Bajir appear to disarm it. The Hork-Bajir fires at him but he disappears right before the beam hits him. The bomb goes off right after he disappears. Somehow all the Animorphs arrived back to the hospital where they were before they got sucked into Z-Space. in that precise moment the person in coma awakes and tries to kill Ax-mosquito. So the Animorphs no longer need to morph him. Once in the mall Ax explains that as they were sucked to the Z-Space all together, they obviously had to return all together. |
8581674 | /m/0278skf | The Departure | K. A. Applegate | 1998-07 | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"} | The Animorphs attack the Hork-Bajir bodyguards at a Sharing meeting. The very second Jake ordered his team to break off, Cassie tore the throat out of a Hork-Bajir. Cassie, ridden with guilt, runs away. She senses someone watching her, but doesn't pay much attention. She demorphs, and has a nightmare (a scene from Megamorphs #2). She wakes up, and begins scrubbing her teeth and gums until they bleed as she had found a piece of Hork-Bajir flesh stuck in her teeth. The next day, Cassie meets the others at her barn. She explicitly declares that she's fed up with all the violence, and quits being an Animorph. The others are disgusted with her scrupulous behaviour, and brand her a hypocrite; Rachel in particular declares their friendship over, informing Cassie that she basically said the world can die so long as Cassie doesn't end up becoming as ruthless as Rachel. Marco makes a sarcastic remark about Cassie "going back to playing with her animals". Cassie then tells them that her father lost the much-needed funding to keep the Rehabilitation Clinic open. A distraught Cassie goes on a horse ride to calm her nerves. Cassie suddenly spots a girl being chased by an angry bear. Cassie pursues them, but is knocked off her horse, and falls into the icy river. When she wakes up, she realizes she'd been saved by the little girl. The girl introduces herself, calling herself Karen. Karen tries to force Cassie to reveal her true identity. Cassie laughs and pretends the girl is mistaken. Soon it is apparent that the girl is a Controller, Aftran 942, watching her own father, the president of UniBank. It also becomes apparent that Cassie had killed Aftran's brother Estril 731. They're both lost in the forest, and Cassie knows that a leopard that escaped from a private zoo is lurking about. During their time together, Cassie reveals her identity when she fends off an attack by the leopard. Cassie begins to discuss the morality of enslaving another creature, while Aftran defends the Yeerk's right to experience life as a human or an Andalite does. Cassie tries to turn Aftran against her own people. Aftran tells Cassie that to preserve the freedom of one species, she must surrender her own. Karen presents Cassie with the following scenario: if she were Karen, would she stay in the Yeerk Pool forever? Cassie is uncertain. She allows Aftran to enter her brain, thus freeing Karen - and putting the life of the planet at stake. Cassie convinces Afran that what the Yeerks are doing is wrong. In return, however, Aftran compels Cassie to morph to a caterpillar, and to live life as a helpless worm like she is essentially asking Aftran to do. Cassie reluctantly agrees, and morphs, staying beyond the two-hour limit. Jake and the others soon find Aftran back in Karen's body, and Cassie now a caterpillar. The Animorphs are enraged, and are more than willing to kill the Controller in revenge for Cassie, and to keep their identities a secret. After stopping the escaped leopard - Marco throwing it to the side in gorilla morph, Jake hears her out, though, and lets her live. Cassie spins a cocoon, and stays dormant for a couple of days. Cassie emerges as a butterfly, and the Animorphs are overjoyed, but saddened, as well, certain that Cassie would spend the rest of her brief life as an insect. Ax is puzzled at how Cassie could turn into a butterfly. One of the Animorphs explains the process of metamorphosis. Ax then theorizes that the morphing clock has essentially been reset by this and she would be able to demorph, which she eventually does after the other team members chase her down. Again human, Cassie is willing to be an Animorph once more. Aftran keeps her promise, freeing Karen, and the Yeerk establishes the Yeerk Peace Movement; Karen compels her father to fund Cassie's father's Wildlife Clinic. |
8581795 | /m/0278sql | The Discovery | K. A. Applegate | 1998-08 | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"} | After failing miserably to pick up a girl at his locker, Marco is stymied to find a boy carrying the morphing cube, known as the Escafil Device. Marco introduces himself to the new boy, David, and lamely tries to buy the Box off him, but David ignores him. Marco tells Jake about it, and both agree that the situation needs to be taken care of immediately. But that's not the only surprise in store for them. Erek the Chee tells them that a group of G8 leaders (including those from Britain, France, Russia, Japan, Germany, and the U.S.) are gathering at the Marriott Hotel resort on the city coast to discuss the problems in the Middle East. Erek also tells them that the Yeerks are plotting to infest each leader, and soon the most powerful nations in the world would be under Yeerk influence. The biggest problem is that one of these heads of state is already a Controller. Now the Animorphs need two plans: one to retrieve the Blue Box, and another to stop the Yeerks from taking over the world. Marco, Tobias and Rachel try to raid David's house in bird of prey morphs. Unfortunately, it fails miserably. Tobias is knocked unconscious, Marco is attacked by David's cat, and Rachel gets shot at by David and his BB gun. The next day at school, David tells Marco his seemingly ridiculous story about trained robber birds, and discusses his plan to sell the Blue Box online. Marco immediately skips the rest of the school day in order to stop the automatic E-mail David has set up from going out. During school, Marco takes Ax with him to stop David's E-mail from being sent. Unfortunately, they're too late, due to David's computer's clock being an hour fast. Marco acquires Spawn, David's contraband, defanged cobra. Visser Three storms into David's house with a team of Hork-Bajir. A fight ensues between the Yeerks and the Animorphs, destroying David's house. Rachel, in bear morph, rams David out the window, and the Animorphs retreat. The Yeerks withdraw with David's mother and father. The Animorphs are unsure of what to do with David; although Ax draws attention to the fact that they can use the box to give him the power to morph, the Animorphs vote on whether or not to do it. Marco and Ax decide that they cannot risk recruiting David, given his strange behaviour and their lack of knowledge of him. Tobias votes to take him in out of moral concern, while Rachel and Cassie decide that David might be their ticket to recruiting more Animorphs. With Marco and Ax outvoted, they reveal to David the Yeerk invasion and give him the morphing power. From the very beginning of the debacle, David displays his eagerness to kill, and disobeys Jake's orders. David also does not seem concerned enough about his parents being Controllers. On the way to the Marriott resort, David indiscriminately kills a crow, although he passes it off as his morph's instincts taking control. As they near the resort, they spot the Blade Ship taking the Marine One helicopter hostage. The Animorphs, fearing that the Yeerks have captured the President of the United States, enter the Visser's ship. The Animorphs are then discovered in cockroach morph, and end up falling out of the Blade Ship, and down into the ocean... *David is introduced. *David receives the ability to morph and becomes an official member of the Animorphs team. *This book begins to hint at David's reckless behavior. Scholastic will re-release this book with a lenticular cover in October 2014. |
8583989 | /m/0278whr | The Conspiracy and Tragedy of Charles, Duke of Byron | George Chapman | null | null | Chapman's Byron, a formidable soldier and commander, is marred by one major fault, his overweening pride. He loves to compare himself to the heroes of antiquity—Hercules, Alexander the Great, Curtius, even Orpheus. His vanity leaves him deeply vulnerable to manipulation by enemies of the King of France, who want to exploit Byron for their own schemes; and Byron allows himself to be drawn in. The King becomes aware of Byron's treason; yet valuing his past service and his great potential, the King attempts to reform Byron, even sending him to England so that the Marshall can witness firsthand a properly functioning monarchical state. At the end of The Conspiracy, Byron manages to curb his pride and submit to the King. Yet his ego is too great to remain restrained indefinitely; Byron returns to plotting, and in the conclusion of The Tragedy he is apprehended, tried, convicted, and executed. As is usual with Chapman, the two parts of Byron are rich with allusions to classic literature. In addition to those noted above, the French courtier and plotter Picoté uses the rebellion of Catiline as a precedent for Byron's planned uprising against his king. References to Augustus, Nero, and other ancient figures abound. Later scenes in The Tragedy twice compare Byron's plotting with the rebellion of the Earl of Essex against Elizabeth in 1601. It has been suggested that the face-slapping scene that caused so much trouble was inspired not by anything in French monarchical history, but by a rumored incident in which Elizabeth struck Essex. |
8584807 | /m/0278xmh | The Phoenix Guards | Steven Brust | 1991 | {"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"} | Khaavren of Castlerock is a young Dragaeran gentleman from the House of the Tiassa whose family has fallen onto hard times. Though lacking an inheritance, Khaavren has a long sword and is "tolerably well-acquainted with its use." On his way to the capital city of the Empire, Khaavren befriends Aerich and Tazendra, nobles from the Houses of the Lyorn and Dzur who also lack income. Khaavren tells them of his plan to join the Phoenix Guards, the new Emperor's elite personal troops, and his new friends decide to accompany him. The trio arrive in Dragaera City and meet Pel, a Yendi who joined a few days previous. Pel helps the trio sign up and buy their equipment, and quickly befriends them. The four are unusual for Phoenix Guards because most guardsmen come from the militaristic House of the Dragon. The recruits are each paired with a haughty Dragon veteran for their first patrol, but each recruit kills his or her Dragon partner by the end of the night. The group is thereafter only partnered together on patrols and soon becomes inseparable. The group learns of the standing feud between the White Sash Battalion of the Phoenix Guards and their own Red Boot Battalion. They fight a duel and several brawls with members of the enemy battalion. After learning of the White Sash's failure to apprehend a murderer, Kathana, the group decides to earn glory for their own troop by tracking her down themselves. Unbeknownst to the group, a number of powerful figures in the Imperial Court have a vested interest in the fate of Kathana. Seodra, the Court Wizard, and Lytra, the Warlord, want to manipulate Kathana's arrest to gain favor from the Emperor. The Imperial Consort, however, is a friend of Kathana's and wants her protected, as do those who wish her favor. Before setting out, Khaavren's would-be lover Illista, a Phoenix courtier seeking favor, wrings a promise from Khaavren to prevent Kathana from being arrested. Kathana, a remarkable painter, is charged with killing the Marquis of Pepperfield, who insulted her painting. The Marquis's son Uttrik, a soldier, desires revenge for his father's death. Wanting to be rid of both Uttrik and Khaavren, Seodra manipulates Uttrik into challenging Khaavren to a duel, hoping that one would kill the other. Khaavren wins the duel, but spares Uttrik's life and allows him to join them. Seodra sends an ever-increasing number of thugs to stop the group, but the group manages to reach Kathana's hiding place: the manor of Adron e'Kieron, a prominent Dragonlord. Uttrik challenges Kathana to a duel. The rest of the group is unsure what to do, unwilling to obstruct the honor of a duel or to abandon their original purpose. They convince the pair to hold their duel in the Marquisate of Pepperfield, hoping to buy time from the journey. The group encounters more thugs and works together, despite its differences, to bypass them. By the time they reach Pepperfield, Uttrik and Kathana have become friends and regret the events that have led them to their duel. Before the duel can commence, however, an invading army of Easterners arrives. The group manages to negotiate a peace agreement with the general of the army, Fenarr, to prevent an invasion. After the Easterners leave, Adron arrives with his army and two of Seodra's minions, Shaltre and the Duke of Garland, under orders to kill the group. Aerich reveals that Shaltre had wronged his father, the Duke of Arylle, and challenges him to a duel. Aerich kills Shaltre and Garland flees. Adron allows the group to go in peace. Uttrik swears off his duel with Kathana, who vows to turn herself in and accept her fate. The group returns to Dragaera City, but before they can tell anyone of the peace treaty with the Easterners, they are imprisoned. Illista comes to speak to Khaavren, but he finally realizes that she is simply using him for her own ends. Eventually the group is summoned before the Emperor and Khaavren volunteers to be questioned under the Orb, which can detect falsehood. Lytra acts as the inquisitor, however, and tries to manipulate the interrogation to incriminate Khaavren and his friends. Eventually Khaavren is able to get the truth across to the Emperor, who is pleased by the group's service. He punishes many of those responsible for the intrigues, gives Kathana a very light sentence of service in the Phoenix Guard, and promotes Khaavren to Ensign. Only Khaavren stays in the Phoenix Guard for very much longer, however. Aerich returns to his duchy now that his shame has been removed. Tazendra learns from Aerich that her own family shame was simply a misunderstanding, and she returns to her family estates, making her Aerich's vassal. Pel enters training to learn the Art of Discretion and become an influential court advisor. Khaavren continues to live in the house they all shared and keeps rooms ready for each of them should they ever return. |
8584899 | /m/0278xsn | Five Hundred Years After | Steven Brust | 1994-04 | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} | After five hundred years, an older and wiser Khaavren has become the de facto commander of the Phoenix Guards. Pel continues to scheme and study the Art of Discretion, while Aerich and Tazendra live quietly on their estates. Khaavren learns that the now-decadent Emperor Tortaalik has allowed his Empire to hover on the brink of financial collapse. After Khaavren survives an attempt on his life, he learns that several key members of the court have been killed and deduces that a conspiracy is underway to damage the fragile Empire. A shadowy figure called Greycat has planned the murders as part of a scheme to cause chaos in the Empire and then come to its rescue, so that he may gain a place at court. Aerich, Pel, and Tazendra learn of their friend's danger and come to his aide. They are also helped by the powerful enchantress Sethra Lavode. Adron e'Kieron, the Dragon Heir, and his daughter Aliera arrive at the city as well, but the growing tension between the Emperor and Adron threatens to break into full-scale sedition. Greycat continues to send minions in failed attempts to kill Khaavren, while his conspirator Grita works to start a riot in the city. Grita successfully sparks a riot that is only barely contained by Khaavren's men. The city lies in shambles and resentment toward the Emperor runs high. Meanwhile, Greycat hires a naive but highly skilled Jhereg assassin named Mario to kill the Emperor and gives him a fake magic weapon for the task. Greycat plans on Mario failing, but will use the fake assassination to further unnerve the Emperor. Mario does fail, but manages to escape with the help of Aliera, who now truly hates the Emperor. Tortaalik has her arrested for her complicity. Adron has become so disgusted by the actions of the Emperor that he decides to start a revolt and seize the Orb for himself. He does not have the military might to do the deed, so he plans to use outlawed Elder Sorcery to steal the Orb directly. While Adron begins his spell, Tortaalik's forces engage his troops. Meanwhile, Khaavren and his friends are met by Greycat, Grita, and their thugs. Khaavren and company recognize Greycat as the former Duke of Garland, who had been disgraced by the group's actions during the events of The Phoenix Guards. During the fight, Khaavren kills Greycat, and a horrified Grita reveals that he had been her father. During the fighting, Mario returns to the Imperial Palace to free Aliera. Together, they return to the throne room and kill Tortaalik. As the Dragon Heir, Adron is now the Emperor in truth, but his spell cannot be stopped. Caught in a logical loop, the spell continues to grow until it will eventually explode. Adron knows that he has doomed himself and the city with his pride. He uses his fleeting moments of immense power to teleport Khaavren and his friends to safety. Back in the castle, Sethra Lavode comprehends what is about to happen. She teleports Aliera and Mario away, and sends the Orb to the Paths of the Dead. Adron's spell explodes into a sea of chaos that destroys Dragaera City, a cataclysm later called Adron's Disaster. Khaavren, Pel, Tazendra, and Aerich arrive safely in the duchy of Arylle. Without the Orb, there is no Empire. A lawless time of plague and strife called the Interregnum has begun. |
8585019 | /m/0278xy3 | The Viscount of Adrilankha | Steven Brust | null | {"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"} | A young witch enters the Eastern town of Blackchapel on a quest to find his name. After a conversation with Miska, a strange coachman, the witch receives the name Morrolan, meaning "Dark Star". He meets a fellow witch named Arra, who counsels him to pledge his soul to Verra, the Demon Goddess. He does so, and together they summon other witches to the town and build a temple. While Morrolan is in a trance, some bandits from a neighboring village sack Blackchapel. Morrolan is consumed with the desire for revenge, but he is interrupted when Miska brings Lady Teldra, an Issola, who informs Morrolan that he is both a Dragaeran and a Count of House Dragon. Morrolan vows to journey to Dragaera, receive his birthright, and then return to take vengeance. Meanwhile, in Dragaera, three hundred years without sorcery or the authority of the Empire has ruined the land. Banditry, plague, and petty warlords reign. One warlord, Kâna, has conquered roughly a quarter of the old Empire's territory, and holds influence over another quarter. His loyal cousin and strategist Habil advises him to start a new Empire with himself as Emperor, and he summons the Princes of the sixteen noble Houses to make the proposal. The reception is generally dubious. Pel, who has become Kâna's agent, goes to speak with Sethra Lavode, and she expresses her total opposition to the plan. In the County of Whitecrest, which has been largely untouched by the ravages of the Interregnum, Khaavren has become a broken man, weighed down by guilt over his failure to protect the Emperor and prevent Adron's Disaster. His son Piro, the Viscount of Adrilankha, has matured into a bright, bold young man. One of Piro's friends, Zivra, is summoned away on a mysterious task. Shortly thereafter, Piro himself is summoned to Dzur Mountain, the home of Sethra Lavode, on a quest. He and his companions have uneventful encounters with a bandit company and a mysterious sorceress named Orlaan. At Dzur Mountain, he learns that Zivra is really Zerika, the last Phoenix and the true Empress. He must accompany her to the Paths of the Dead to recover the Imperial Orb and restore the Empire. Their party will also include Tazendra, who has been studying under Sethra. Pel meets with Khaavren and discovers his sorry state. Pel later contacts Aerich and together they scheme to snap their friend from his funk. They send a certain pyrologist to Adrilankha to inspect the city for signs of plague. During dinner with Khaavren and his wife, the pyrologist relates how a past failure drives him to achieve his fullest potential. Khaavren decides that he must get back into shape and help his son. He sets out with two young female houseguests, Ibronka and Röaana. The Lords of Judgment, chief among the gods, convene and decide what to do. They note that the Empire's chief function is to help keep the Jenoine from returning. It must be restored for the good of the world. While the Orb is in their possession, they modify and improve it, and Verra decides to send a demon under her sway to help Sethra Lavode. Zerika's band sets out and reaches the cliffs that border the Paths of the Dead. Orlaan arrives with the bandit band she commands, determined to stop them. Tazendra recognizes Orlaan as Grita, the daughter of Greycat, who was killed by Khaavren's company during the events of Five Hundred Years After. As the bandits attack, Zerika throws herself from the cliffs. Believing Zerika dead, Piro and company bitterly fight off the bandits while Tazendra drives away Grita with her superior Elder Sorcery. Zerika lands safely in the Paths and navigates her way to the Lords of Judgment. After a hard-fought debate, she convinces the gods to give her the Orb. She emerges from the Paths as Zerika the Fourth, Empress of the restored Empire. |
8585732 | /m/0278yn4 | An Open Swimmer | Tim Winton | null | {"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} | Set in three distinct parts, An Open Swimmer is a 'coming of age' novel; it details the late-teen life of a young man named Jerra Nilsam. A considerable part of the novel describes the camping trip taken by Jerra and his childhood friend, Sean. On this camping trip, Jerra and Sean meet an old man living in a shack on the beach near their camp site. As the story progresses, it becomes apparent that the old man had murdered his wife in a similar shack on a nearby beach by burning it down with her inside. Many sub-plots are scattered throughout this book in the form of spontaneous paragraphs and dialogues between unnamed characters (but presumably one of them is Jerra). In the end, after having returned home and parted ways with Sean, Jerra returns to the camping site alone. While Jerra is sleeping in his van, there is a violent storm which results in a large tree falling on the Kombi. Jerra awakes in the old mans hut, the storm having passed and having been saved by the old man. In the final paragraph, Jerra returns to his Kombi, opens the fuel tank and drops a match into it before running. |
8586449 | /m/0278zhp | The Threat | K. A. Applegate | 1998-08 | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"} | After falling from the Blade ship, the Animorphs are snagged from mid-air by Rachel and Tobias, in their respective eagle and hawk morphs. They land on the beach, needing a plan to infiltrate the Marriott resort. Jake becomes aware of the tensions between David and Marco, and is disturbed by David's unnecessary excesses. The team morphs into seagulls, and spy out the area, crawling with security agents armed to the teeth and accompanied by dogs. They're zapped by a security man wearing sunglasses with weak Dracon beam emitters built into them. Jake tells them to leave. Upon his return home, his parents tell Jake and his brother Tom that their obnoxious cousin, Saddler, was gravely injured in a car accident, and that they were leaving town to spend time with his parents. Jake is presented with the opportunity to advance his plans. Unfortunately, that night, David disappears from Cassie's barn. Jake morphs into his dog, Homer, and tracks David's scent to an inn. David had morphed into a golden eagle, smashed the window with a rock and entered a room without paying. Jake warns him of the consequences of this action, while also saying he won't have time to help David with his living problems until after the mission. David doesn't hide his contempt, but leaves with Jake anyway. Cassie formulates a plan to infiltrate the resort. Jake morphs into a dragonfly, while the other Animorphs, with the exception of Tobias, morph into fleas and latch onto Jake's body. Tobias guides them to the hotel. Inside, Jake tries to find the banquet hall where the speeches and infestations will take place. Inside an air vent, he gets caught in a spider web. Terrified, Jake demorphs, and the others follow. Cassie is badly wounded when Jake's demorphing creates a human artery that forces more blood into her flea body than it is prepared to hold. He releases them, and they begin demorphing. Marco is stuck mid-morph, as a giant flea. They begin to despair, but Cassie guides Marco and enables him to demorph. Marco then becomes emotional, something very unlike him. Jake inspects the banquet room, and notices the number of holograms in place. Here they discover how the Yeerks plan to infest each world leader, having infiltrated the facility by Visser Three acquiring and morphing Tony, the White House Chief of Staff (Although there are two schools of thought about why he would do this; Ax theorises that it was because there would be no way for the man to have access to a Kandrona if he is infested and something goes wrong with the mission, while Cassie thinks that it is simply Visser Three's ego wanting him to take the key role in a plan that could result in the Yeerks winning the war for Earth at last). Now the Animorphs need a plan to thwart it. They return to the resort, knock out the guards, morph into them, and reenter the banquet. Soon they realise they have been deceived, and have fallen into Visser Three's trap. David is frightened and turns against the Animorphs in order to preserve his own life, Cassie having to attack him to stop him revealing who they are. It isn't long, though, before they discover that the Hork-Bajir surrounding them are only holograms. They took the Visser hostage, and withdrew. The Animorphs, now disgusted and angry with David, try to plan their next move before it's too late. But during the night, David returns to his old home in eagle morph. Jake and Ax pursue him, only to find that David had apparently killed Tobias. David explains that the Animorphs weren't treating him as an equal, and that he'd have to take matters into his own hands. Enraged, Jake engages David, only to be ambushed by Hork-Bajir. Ax rescues Jake, and they escape. David then leads Jake to the mall, and they each morph their battle morphs, lion and tiger respectively. After a brief duel, David severs Jake's carotid artery, leaving him to bleed to death. *David becomes an enemy of the Animorphs. |
8586492 | /m/0278zl2 | The Solution | K. A. Applegate | 1998-09 | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"} | After having a bizarre dream, Rachel is woken by Ax, who explains Jake's express orders to summon her. That decision bothers her, but her qualms are silenced when Ax breaks her the news of Tobias's probable death. Rachel is willing to do what Jake expected her to do. They fly to Marco's house. Ax tries to fly through his window, but is promptly knocked out by Marco. Or rather, David in Marco's morph. Rachel allows David to morph to golden eagle, and leads him on a chase through town. Rachel plans to lure him into the power lines, electrocuting him. But David outmaneuvers her, and almost kills her. Fortunately, David is attacked by a hawk, which turns out to be Tobias, with David thinking that it is a random red-tailed hawk. Relieved that Tobias is alive, the Animorphs plan how to trap the traitor. At school, they're surprised, though, when David, in Marco's body, demands the Blue Box, threatening to betray their identities to the Yeerks. Cassie tries to reason with him, but to no avail. Making no progress, David leaves, with Rachel in pursuit. In a secluded spot on the school grounds, Rachel tells him that even if David betrays them, she'd still have time to make short work of him and his parents before she would be silenced by the Yeerks. David tries to attack her, but she pins him down. Having made her threat, she releases him. Soon after, Rachel becomes enraged with the way Jake is manipulating her violent tendencies. The Animorphs formulate one final attempt to doom the Yeerks' plan to make controllers of some of the G8 leaders. They morph dolphins and travel to the shore of the Marriott resort. Then they morph elephants and rhinoceroses, and ravage the resort huts the heads of state reside in. They leave a screaming Visser Three in 'Tony's' morph, and retreat into the ocean. The plan is a success, but they encounter David, in orca morph. Here David accuses Rachel of threatening to kill his family, and Rachel is hurt by her teammates' silence. After an exhausting battle, Cassie morphs into a humpback whale and drives David away. Rachel collapses in her bed the next morning, but is almost immediately pestered by her sister Jordan, wanting some comfort regarding Saddler's grave condition. Rachel walks into the bathroom, and is confronted by an invisible David. He challenges her to a personal war, which she accepts. Rachel then accuses Jake of not standing with her against David, and that Jake thinks she is a psycopath. At the hospital, the family visits their dying child. It becomes apparent that he is far from dying; he'd somehow miraculously made a full recovery. Jake immediately suspects David. When the three of them are alone, David mocks Rachel and Jake, demanding the Blue Box. Rachel and Jake reconcile, and then begin concocting a scheme to beat David at his own game. The Animorphs have a mock discussion about a Blue Box that breaks into smaller pieces, and Rachel pretends to have been morally defeated by David, being mocked by Marco the whole time. They meet David at a Taco Bell, and agree to lead him to the Blue Box, allowing him to abuse Rachel some more. Rachel and David fly to the abandoned construction site, with the other Animorphs following close behind. David traps the Animorphs as cockroaches in a Pepsi bottle, and he and Rachel morph rats. They venture into the pipes to retrieve each 'piece'. David soon figures out the Animorphs' elaborate trap, and Rachel tries to escape, barely doing so. The instant she escapes, a cage door is dropped, trapping David. Tobias swoops down and reveals to David that he is in fact, still alive and freed the other Animorphs from the bottle. Rachel and the others decide to let David be trapped forever as a rat. Cassie had plotted out all of David's emotions, gauged his inflating ego, and knew the sociopath would select Rachel as his victim. Rachel and Ax stay behind. Rachel because she says David's anguish won't bother her, and Ax so he can keep track of time and make sure David remains trapped as a rat. Rachel and Ax carry David out to a desolate rocky outcrop a mile offshore (which Rachel had first glimpsed the night they stormed the Marriott resort beach), and leave him, his pleading and cursing trailing behind them. *David is trapped in rat morph. *Saddler dies, likely killed by David. *Rachel realizes that she possesses violent tendencies beyond a simple love of excitement, and that Jake is disturbed and concerned. |
8586644 | /m/0278zs_ | The Pretender | K. A. Applegate | 1998-11 | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"} | Tobias has been having bad luck on his hunts. Every time he'd dive on the rabbit litter to pick off a hapless youngster, he'd suddenly envision himself as the prey with the shadow of death swooping at him. To make his situation worse, another red-tailed hawk is aggressively moving in on his territory. He doesn't have the will to deal with the threat once and for all. So he resorts to picking dead carcasses off the road once, while eating a half-squashed raccoon he was seen by Rachel. He stops by at Rachel's house. She tells him that a lawyer and a long-lost cousin, Aria, has been searching for him. Chapman, too, is interested in his whereabouts. Tobias suspects a trap. Tobias meets his father's lawyer, DeGroot. The lawyer tells him the father he knew may not have been his real father, and his real father's will is meant to be read on his next birthday. Tobias is puzzled. He also tells him that Aria wants to meet him at the Hyatt hotel. Tobias left the practice, and found himself being followed by a Yeerk agent. Rather than meeting with the Animorphs at the barn, he flies to the Hork-Bajir colony. There, Toby Hamee, Jara Hamee and Ket Halpak's seer daughter, tells Tobias that a child Hork-Bajir, Bek, is missing. It is then that a disbelieving Tobias discovers that the Hork-Bajir regularly leave the valley (led by Toby) to free more of their kind. Back at the barn, Tobias must deal with his friends' thinly-veiled pity for him, and the group splits up to both try to find Bek and investigate Aria. While Rachel and Tobias are watching her hotel, Aria leaves in a cab, and stops over at Frank's Safari Land and Putt-Putt Golf, a dodgy roadside zoo-slash-amusement park. It's there that they find Bek, locked in a miserable cage alongside a bunch of very depressed animals. They find Aria talking to the owner, Frank, who wants to make money off his "alien freak". Tobias and the others storm the place and try to take Bek, tearing down the place in the process. But the Controllers were ready for them, and Tobias encounters Visser Three in a hideous Kaftid morph, who thinks Tobias is Ket Halpak. The Visser assails Tobias with an acid attack, forcing him to release Bek in pain. The rescue fails, and the Animorphs and the Yeerks withdraw, with Bek in Yeerk custody now. Tobias constantly wonders if he could ever live life as a human - with Aria. He wonders if she's a Controller. He and Ax return to the Hyatt, and witness her saving a little girl. Tobias assumes this means she's not a Controller, but Ax is doubtful. Tobias swings by Rachel's house that night, and they engage in a hot debate about Tobias's humanity, with Rachel expressing sadness about the fact that she and Tobias can never be close due to his hawk body. The next day, the Animorphs and the Hork-Bajir plan their attack on the new Yeerk Dracon cannon facility out of town. The Animorphs and the free Hork-Bajir allow themselves to be captured. Tobias, in flea morph, jumps out of the cage, demorphs, morphs a Hork-Bajir, and opens the cage. A quick fight between the Hork-Bajir-Controllers and the freedom fighters results in the latter's victory. As they climb up to the Yeerk Dracon cannon, Tobias spots Aria in a helicopter. Only then does he make the connection that Aria is actually Visser Three in a morph. Enraged, horrified, and hating himself, he falls to the ground, unable to will himself to join the fight. He is later rescued by Toby after a terrible fight ensues. The facility is destroyed, and Bek is saved. Aware now that he is walking into a trap, Tobias must engage Aria on his own. He goes to the testament-reading, and discovers that his father was in fact Elfangor, the Andalite prince. Tobias gives nothing away, instead jeering that he was left no money and accusing Aria of merely seeking his inheritance. Only after he returns to his hiding spot does he break down, and decides that he can't give up his morphing powers because he must continue to fight for his people, just like his father did. Later that night, he flies to Rachel's where she lights him a candle on a birthday cake. The next day, Tobias kills and eats the mother rabbit, morphs her, and brings the baby rabbits under his protection from the rival hawk. * Tobias discovers that Elfangor was his biological father. * Chapman is no longer suspicious of the lost boy who lives on the street. * Toby Hamee makes her first speaking appearance (excepting the last page of The Hork-Bajir Chronicles). Goof: In the 13th book, Visser Three believes that Ket Halpak, a Hork-Bajir, is dead. In the 23rd book, he recognizes her and is not at all surprised to see someone who he watched get killed. |
8586693 | /m/0278zwr | The Suspicion | K. A. Applegate | 1998-12 | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"} | While Rachel tries to convince Cassie to go to the beach with her, Cassie notices what looks like a toy spaceship attached to her water pump. Cassie notes that it's where she hid the blue box, and is a bit unsettled by it, but brushes it off and puts the spaceship with a bunch of other things being donated to charity. They head off to the beach, coming back to find Jake. They notice a different "toy" spaceship attached to the water pump and, while they watch, it detaches itself and flies away. The Animorphs immediately hold a meeting and decide to go to Goodwill to try to retrieve the spaceship that Cassie had seen earlier. While there, the spaceship starts shooting at them and demands that they surrender and bring them the "power source". It flies away and they realize that it is headed back to the Wildlife Rehabilitation Clinic to retrieve the blue box. Since it is a spaceship, it can travel much faster than their bird morphs, and when they get back, they discover to their dismay that the waterpump was cut open and the spaceship has stolen the blue box. There are some flashes and Tobias, Cassie, and Marco are significantly smaller (about one sixteenth of an inch). Cassie and Marco decide to pretend to surrender to the Helmacrons which are the aliens that are aboard the spaceships, while Tobias stays with Rachel. It is revealed that the Helmacron females are in charge, while the males are feeble and weak. Cassie and Marco claim that they work for the Yeerks (whom the Helmacrons are familiar with and despise), and that Visser Three can get them the box. Eventually they catch up with the Visser, who is at a Sharing meeting (along with Chapman and other controllers). They morph to flies to escape the ship, now being as small as cells. The Controllers get a lucky shot, and destroy the ship, Cassie and Marco barely getting out in time. They find that they have landed on Chapman's head. The other Helmacron spaceship had lured the rest of the Animorphs there in an attempt to steal the blue box. During the meeting, the Helmacrons attack, indiscriminately shrinking everyone at the meeting. Upon seeing the blue box, along with Visser Three's gentle prodding, all the controllers start trying to grab it and there is lots of chaos. Cassie morphs into a whale in order to crash the ship. She and the other Animorphs eventually end up on Ax who is the only Animorph remaining unshrunken. Visser Three and many Controllers also end up on Ax. Visser Three briefly sides with the Animorphs, saying, "I don't know about you Andalites, but these Helmacrons are really, really, really annoying me." Ax, in harrier morph, flies over to the Gardens where they all acquire and morph anteaters, which unshrinks them while in morph. As anteaters, Jake and Rachel slurp up the Helmacrons, and The Animorphs, Controllers and Helmacrons reach an agreement and everyone is unshrunken. Before the book ends, Marco and Cassie give the Helmacron males a bit of a pep talk, and it ends with the Helmacrons, male and females, squabbling with each other. *The Helmacrons are introduced. |
8586726 | /m/0278zyt | The Extreme | K. A. Applegate | 1999-01 | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"} | Marco fails to get together with a girl named Marian. Later, Erek King tells Marco the Yeerks' plan to manipulate U.S. satellites to beam Kandrona rays into swimming pools, turning each into a Yeerk pool. That way, Controllers won't have to travel to the Yeerk pool, and the Animorphs would lose their advantage over them. The Yeerks are conducting their latest scheme in the Arctic Circle. The Animorphs hitch a ride on Visser Three's Blade Ship as flies. On board, they discover cryogenic tubes with strange creatures inside them. Their presence is discovered by the Yeerks, and they're forced to morph their battle creatures. Jake orders a distraction, and Marco rips open the control panel to open the ship's hatch. Rachel, with all her grizzly bear might, manages to make a single, tiny crack in one of the specimen tubes. A liquid nitrogen-like mist spills out, freezing every living thing it touches. A nasty fight ensues, and the Animorphs bail out. Falling out into the frozen tundra, the Animorphs find themselves freezing to death. They morph wolves, but they need energy to keep going. At night - since none of them can sleep - Ax tells the chilling tale of the new aliens, the Venber, a species from the Andalite moon Venbea, that was wiped out centuries ago by a race known as "The Five", melting them for computer semiconductors. Not only that, but the Yeerks have cloned them by cross-breeding them with humans, giving them their new humanoid shape. Then they find a polar bear had just killed and partially consumed a seal. The Animorphs eat the remains. Much to their surprise, not even Cassie has any scruples. They also find two seal pups - the pups of the seal they'd just eaten. Regretfully, they acquire the pups and leave them to their fate. Soon the Animorphs find themselves pursued by the creatures Marco had observed in the tubes. They morph seals to escape them, but are attacked by orcas in the freezing depths. Later, they come across Derek nội thất ô tô., a young, jocular Inuit, and his "buddy", Nanook the polar bear. Derek tells them about the people with the satellite dish, and how they're even worse than the American and Canadian elite who shoot wildlife from helicopters for the testosterone rush. The Animorphs are presented with an opportunity to acquire the DNA of a native animal, and so they attack Nanook. After pinning him down, they each acquire him, and morph him. The Animorphs, in their new polar bear morphs, advance on the Yeerk base. They encounter the Venber, engaging them in a brutal battle. They lure the remaining Venber into the hangars, where the above-zero conditions cause them to melt. The Animorphs then steal a Yeerk Bug fighter, and Marco immolates the Yeerk base. Soon to be intercepted by the Blade ship, they morph birds and ditch the alien craft over the West Coast, and fly home. This marks the first occasion where the Chee pose as the Animorphs for their families while they are away on a long-term mission. |
8586783 | /m/0278z_6 | The Attack | K. A. Applegate | 1999-02 | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"} | When the Animorphs go to see a sample performance of The Lion King at a school assembly, the Ellimist freezes time and appears (in the form of a girl in their school named Beth) to enlist their aid. He tells them there is another force more powerful than him, the Crayak, who wants to be able to control the entire fabric of time and space. The Ellimist reveals that this creature is the blood-red eye Jake saw when the Yeerk in his head died in the sixth book, The Capture. The Ellimist tells that when Crayak first appeared, they waged a long, brutal war that destroyed a tenth of the galaxy. The war was damaging to both of them, and they realized that they must instead have a much more subtle battle, comparable to a chess game. All the times the Ellimist has helped them (showing them the location of the Kandrona, freeing Jara Hamee and Ket Halpak, restoring Tobias' morphing power, twisting time to enable Elfangor to give the Animorphs the morphing power while Tobias still remained his son) have all been small moves in this game, all helping the Animorphs gain an advantage over the Yeerks. The Crayak is targeting another race, the Iskoort, and this interferes with the Ellimist's concealed agenda. The fate of the Iskoort will be determined through a proxy battle with rules of engagement. The Crayak and the Ellimist will each choose seven combatants to face off on the Iskoort homeworld. Crayak has chosen seven of his shock troops, the Howlers, members of the race that destroyed the Pemalites, and will destroy the Iskoort if the Howlers defeat the Animorphs on Crayak's behalf. Having only six members, the Animorphs choose Erek King as their seventh, and they are taken to the Iskoort world, a huge metropolis miles above the ground. The whole area is basically a huge marketplace, where anything can be bought or sold. While the Iskoort turn out to be bizarre and grating, they are not actually evil. The Animorphs and Erek enlist a young Iskoort trader named Guide to show them around. Eventually, they run into one of the Howlers. Even alone, it proves to be completely superior in battle: it can be hurt, but it is heavily armed and a lethal combatant in its own right. They barely survive the fight, while the Howler quickly recovers from its injuries. Regrouping, they buy copies of Howler memories with Guide's assistance, in exchange of pledging copies of their own memories should they survive. Such exciting memories would make Guide fabulously wealthy while giving the Animorphs the financial assets necessary to move along the Iskoort world at will. (Ax determines that the Iskoort homeworld is sufficiently isolated from Yeerk influence for this transfer of information to be of negligible risk to Animorph secrecy on Earth.) Erek watches the purchased Howler memories, revealing all the massacres the Howlers have committed. They determine that the Howlers were created by Crayak, and that they have collective memories, giving them each thousands of years of battle experience. There are no memories of the Howlers ever being defeated. The Animorphs find a new safehouse as Guide mentions a personal errand: A function of Iskoort physiology requires the Iskoort to separate into two halves, the Isk, the body, and a slug-like entity, the Yoort. Guide continues to explain that every three days, Iskoort must separate so the Yoort can feed. Upon recognition of the similarities to the Yeerks, chaos ensues, interrupting Guide, and violence is narrowly averted. Guide explains early Iskoort history, closely resembling the Yeerks' current existence of conquering and enslaving alien races. The Iskoort ancestors disliked their evolved biology of parasitism, instead employing genetic engineering to create a primary host, the Isk, and additionally altered Yoort physiology to become true symbiotes in order to maintain the established standard of living but removing the necessary violence. At this point, the relevance of the Iskoort to both the Ellimist and the Crayak is revealed. Should the Yeerks ever interact with the Iskoort, the Yeerks would learn of a possibility for nonviolent existence. Since the Yeerks are conquerors, the desired nonviolence of some Yeerks and dissidence within the Yeerk Empire would delay Crayak's goal of dictatorship over the galaxy and ultimately, the universe. Even worse (in Crayak's view), the Yeerks could abandon their current imperialistic nature, forcing Crayak to find new conquerors to unite the galaxy under his rule. After several narrow escapes, Jake and a Howler both fall off a building towards the ground below. Jake acquires the Howler and quickly morphs to peregrine falcon, pulling to safety with a spiteful quip as the Howler plummets to its death. Back atop, Jake reunites with the others. Jake and Cassie run to each other and kiss, prompting Rachel to say that "it's about time". Jake morphs the Howler under guard with the others under strict orders to kill him if he loses control to the instincts of a killer created by Crayak. He finds no such things. Instead, he discovers that Howlers have the personalities of little children: the Howlers consider their battles to be fun and exciting games and have no perception that they are hurting real people and annihilating entire civilizations. The Animorphs make the memory-recordings, along with Erek and Guide. When the Howlers next attack, the Animorphs use Jake in Howler morph to stun one of them and force the entire combined memories of the eight of them (the Animorphs plus Erek and Guide) into the Howlers, along with the knowledge that the non-Howlers are real beings. Crayak is forced to destroy all six Howlers before the memories can contaminate the collective memory. The Animorphs win the standoff on behalf of the Ellimist. The Ellimist transports the Animorphs to n-dimensional space in order to talk with Crayak face-to-face in a way that the Animorphs can see. Crayak concedes defeat and agrees that the Iskoort will live. Jake morphs the Howler in order to determine the effectiveness of the Animorphs' "memory contamination" attack. He finds nothing in the collective Howler memory relating to the Iskroot homeworld. Since all Howlers share a single, collective memory and Jake in Howler morph has no memory of the fallen Howler falling by Jake's hand, Jake determines that Crayak obliterates unsuccessful Howlers before these memories of defeat blemish the collective memory, ensuring that only a streak of flawless Howler victories remain; however, a single incident from the Iskoort homeworld has penetrated the collective memory: that of Jake and Cassie making out at night with the Howler D.N.A. still in his body. Taking his warriors back to Earth, the Ellimist talks with the Animorphs further. He reveals that in a few months' time, on the next Howler raid, the Howlers will attempt to kiss their targets. The contaminated Howlers are no longer useful as Crayak's shock troops. The Ellimist also reveals that in three hundred years' time, the Iskoort will meet the Yeerks. The following night, Jake tries and fails to turn his dreams from the Howler he sent to its doom. |
8586862 | /m/0278_3p | The Exposed | K. A. Applegate | 1999-03 | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"} | During a shopping trip with Cassie, Rachel discovers Erek having problems: his hologram malfunctions. Barely managing to get him away in time, they discover all of the Chee are having problems with certain aspects of their technology, particularly their holograms, owing to interference with the Pemalite ship hidden in the ocean. Of all the Chee, two are currently still in danger, while the rest have successfully hidden themselves. One of the Chee in danger, Lourdes, is hidden in a flophouse where drug fencing occurs, but a SWAT team - with a Controller member - are about to raid the house. After rescuing Lourdes, they have to travel to the bottom of the ocean, to fix the problem of the malfunctioning holograms, but have problems thinking of the morph they could use to go in so deep into the ocean. Cassie found the solution: morphing into a giant squid. But the problem was that none of them had acquired that morph, and they had no idea where to get it, though they know for a fact that sperm whales captured giant squids. They were let down until they find out that a sperm whale has conveniently beached, so Rachel and Tobias acquire it and dive to find a squid. Upon finding and battling one, the group all acquire it and release it, and then dive to the ship. They notice several Yeerk bug fighters en route to the Pemalite ship as well, following the signal. Reaching it first, they use the single-digit access code to infiltrate it and fix the Chee programming, but then a self-destruct sequence is initiated too. The group is confronted by a being called the Drode, an aide of sorts to Crayak, who threatens and insults them all. He shows some bizarre fondness for Rachel and tells her that if she wanted favour with the Crayak, she should kill Jake, telling Rachel that her passport to Crayak's side is Jake. The Yeerks also emerge into the ship, and the group must stand and fight them before allowing them to gain control. But as the battle reaches a climax, Erek appears - to the shock of the Drode - and activates a violence-dispeller. The Yeerks and Animorphs are forced to leave the ship, and the Chee have their holograms restored. *The Drode is introduced. *Tobias and Rachel's relationship is further explored. Rachel is asked out by someone other than Tobias (T. T.), and she is tempted by the prospect of a normal romantic relationship, but rudely tells him no, concluding in the end that, no matter how tempting the prospect of a normal relationship is, no normal guy would go to the lengths that Tobias has gone to in order to keep her safe. *For the first time, Crayak's interest in Rachel is hinted at and explored. |
8586918 | /m/0278_5r | The Experiment | K. A. Applegate | 1999-03 | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"} | The Animorphs find out from Erek that the Yeerks have taken control of a meatpacking plant and a laboratory. They acquire chimpanzees and infiltrate the lab. They don't find very much information so Tobias and Ax morph into bulls (thinking they would morph into steer but not realizing that the DNA does not include surgical procedures) to go to the meatpacking plant. Inside the plant, they discover a room with humans in cages. The computer tells them that it is an experiment designed to destroy the free will of the human population so that the Yeerks can take over easily, but a Yeerk scientist eventually confirms that the experiment was a total failure. |
8586970 | /m/0278_6f | The Sickness | K. A. Applegate | 1999-06 | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"} | Cassie and Jake are dragged along by Rachel and the others to the school dance. They have a few good laughs when Ax's unfamiliarity with human culture scares away some of the crowd. The laughter stops, however, when he demorphs involuntarily. It soon becomes apparent that Ax is suffering from an inflamed Tria gland (as well as a fever) - much like the lymphatic tonsils in the human mouth. Unlike humans, though, this gland is located at the back of Ax's brain. If it bursts, it will cause irreversible and fatal damage to the brain. Cassie hides the sick alien in her barn, and Erek the Chee erects a hologram around them both. At the same time, Mr. Tidwell, one of Cassie's teachers, informs her that Aftran has been captured by Visser Three. She will be tortured, and will thus be forced to divulge all of her secrets; including that of Cassie and the Animorphs. Cassie endures her friends' thinly-veiled blame, but they decide to act. They form a plan to enter the Yeerk pool via the facility's extensive piping system. Tobias brings them eels to morph. The children morph and enter the pipes, but Jake falls ill from Ax's virus (Although it is established that this virus will just make humans sick rather than having the fatal effects that the Andalite version has on Ax). The plan fails, and they return to the surface - through a fire hose and into a burning building! That night, Cassie has a bad dream. In the morning, she discovers that Rachel is ill. Mr. Tidwell reveals he shares control of his body with Illim, a Yeerk, and that he is a member of the Yeerk Peace Movement. He tells her the time and location of Aftran's interrogation. Marco is the next to fall ill. Then, while Cassie is with him, Tobias, too, falls ill to it, flying into one of the barn rafters. To keep Tobias safe, she locks him up next to a golden eagle, much to his dismay. Cassie is all alone, and she needs to infiltrate the Yeerk pool, so Illim allows her to acquire his Yeerk DNA and take control of Mr. Tidwell. Cassie and Mr. Tidwell enter the enemy stronghold, and she is disgorged into the Yeerk pool. She finds Aftran's cage, and manages to take control of a voluntary host. She rams the Visser, who drops Aftran. Cassie leaves the little girl, dives back into the pool, morphs her osprey, and carries Aftran away, pursued by Visser Three, who has morphed an eyeball with tentacles. Back at the barn, Cassie learns that Ax is in crisis. She allows Aftran to enter Ax's head and tell her the location of the Tria gland. Cassie makes her incision, and pulls the gland out, saving Ax's life. A few days later, the other Animorphs have recovered from the illness. Aftran is safe, but in order to keep her alive without access to the Kandrona, the Animorphs allow her to morph a humpback whale - on the condition that she stays in that form as a nothlit. |
8587028 | /m/0278_8h | The Reunion | K. A. Applegate | 1999-06 | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"} | Enjoying a day to skip school, Marco unexpectedly runs into his mother (Visser One), and discovers she is hiding in an office building, planning to find the Hork-Bajir colony. Marco, Tobias and Ax confirm this on a late-night visit, in which they negotiate a deal with Visser One. Marco begins to formulate a plan that will destroy Vissers One and Three, and free his mother, and make the Yeerks believe they have destroyed the Hork-Bajir colony. The plan goes well for the most part, but a few miscalculations reveal to Visser One that at least one of the guerilla fighters is human and there is a misconception that Jake and Cassie have died. When the Animorphs spring the battle between the two Vissers, Visser Three is forced to retreat and Visser One is believed to have perished (over a cliff, butted by Marco in mountain goat morph), though not before realizing that Marco is one of the warriors. *Visser One reveals that she is wanted by Visser Three and the Council of Thirteen for treason (according to Visser Three), and the council has issued a gashad, or warrant, to kill her on sight. This plot element later comes up in Visser. *Visser One realizes that Marco is a member of the 'Andalite bandits', before being knocked off a cliff. |
8587788 | /m/0279052 | The Conspiracy | K. A. Applegate | 1999-07 | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"} | Jake returns from school to discover that his great grandfather has died. His father insists that the family go to his home in a wooded cabin far away and help plan the funeral arrangements. They plan to be gone for three or four days; however, this presents a problem for Tom, who can not stay away from the Yeerk Pool for more than three days at time. Tom fights relentlessly with Jake's father about going and when they leave for a Sharing meeting together Jake fears that Tom may force their dad into involuntary Yeerk infestation, or even kill him. Jake must save his father, but for the first time, his quick thinking tactical mind freezes up. A slight power struggle ensues between Jake and Marco who insists that Jake isn't thinking clearly on this matter. After several close calls protecting Jake's father, the Animorphs decide to make a distraction for the Yeerks so that Tom is no longer their top priority. The Animorphs kidnap Chapman holding him hostage in an abandoned house to distract the Yeerks from taking care of Jake's father. To make the kidnap seem convincing they have Ax interrogate Chapman for hours. Afterward, they allow him to escape, and Ax insists that he will never do such a thing again as it is not the conduct of a warrior. After this Jake insists on handling the situation by himself. With the distraction successful, Tom heads up to the cabin with the rest of the family. In the middle of the night, he tries to kill his father with a dagger, but is stopped by Jake with the help of rest of the Animorphs, who are running a plan devised by Marco. Tom is injured and taken back to the hospital in the city where he has access to a Yeerk pool. |
8589403 | /m/02792bw | Ruslan and Lyudmila | Aleksandr Pushkin | 1820 | null | Pushkin dedicates the poem to unnamed young beauties, the “queens of my soul” (души моей царицы), and states that his reward is the hope that some lovesick girl will read the poem in secret. In a brief prologue, the narrator of the story describes a green oak by the sea, and makes reference to several other elements common in Russian folktales, such as a hut on hen’s legs (избушка на курьих ножках), Baba Yaga (Баба-Яга), and King Koschei (царь Кащей). Bound to the tree by a golden chain is a story-telling cat. The narrator remembers one of the cat’s stories in particular, namely the one that follows. This prologue was not part of the original 1820 edition; it first appeared in the 1828 edition. The story opens with a feast given by Prince Vladimir (Владимир) to celebrate the marriage of his daughter, Ludmila, to the bold warrior Ruslan. Among the guests are Ruslan’s jealous rivals, the bold warrior Rogday (Рогдай), the boastful Farlaf (Фарлаф), and the young khazar Khan Ratmir (Ратмир). On their wedding night, as Ruslan prepares to consummate the marriage, a strange presence fills the bedroom, accompanied by thunder and lightning. Ruslan finds that his bride has mysteriously vanished. On hearing of Ludmila's disappearance, the angered Vladimir annuls the marriage and promises his daughter’s hand to whoever is able to return her safely. Ruslan and his three rivals set off on horseback. Ruslan encounters an old man in a cavern who tells him that Ludmila had been abducted by the sorcerer Chernomor (Черномор), and that Ruslan would find her unharmed. The old man himself is a Finn who tells the story of how he had fallen in love with a beautiful young maiden, Naina (Наина), who spurned his attention. In order to win her love he tried to become a glorious warrior, but when she rejected him, spent years learning the magical arts instead. He finally cast a spell to win Naina’s love, only to find that she herself was actually an old crone, who now was bent on revenge. (This and each of the remaining songs begin with an “editorial comment” by the author. These comments often evoke classical mythology and sometimes contain contemporary references.) Rogday decides to abandon the quest for Ludmila and to find and kill Ruslan instead. Seeing a rider, he attacks, only to find it is Farlaf and not Ruslan, and leaves him shaken but alive. An old woman appears and points Rogday to the direction in which to find Ruslan. She then advises Farlaf to return to Kiev (Киев) to await his trophy. Ruslan is challenged by another rider and the story turns briefly to Ludmila’s fate. She finds herself in a lavish chamber where three maidens are ready to fulfill her every desire. Opening the chamber door, she discovers a marvelous garden to rival Solomon’s. However, she feels empty without Ruslan. She is startled by a hunchbacked dwarf approaching her, carried by ten manservants. She lashes out and he tumbles to the ground, tripping over his long beard. It is the wizard Chernomor, who leaves his hat as he flees. Back to Ruslan, who defeats the challenger and leaves him to drown in the Dnieper (Днепр). It is, of course, Rogday. Chernomor is visited by a flying dragon who turns out to be Naina, pledging her alliance in defeating the Finn. Encouraged, he decides to go to Ludmila and make advances toward her, but she is nowhere to be found. She had tried on the wizard’s hat and found that she could vanish and reappear at will by varying its position on her head. As Ruslan rides on, he finds himself in the midst of a deserted battlefield, strewn with bones, dead horses, and war relics. He momentarily mourns his own fate, then realizes it is an opportunity to arm himself. He leaves with a lance, helmet, coat of armor, and a battle horn. He could not, however, find a suitable sword. Continuing, he finds his path blocked by a huge hill emitting strange sounds. Closer inspection reveals it to be a giant slumbering human head. Ruslan awakens the head, which becomes angered and begins to taunt him. It sticks out its tongue. Ruslan seizes the opportunity and thrusts his lance into the tongue, then into its cheek. As the startled head leaps away, Ruslan finds a bright sword where it had been. As Ruslan prepares to attack with the sword, the head pleads for mercy. The head tells his story: He was once a mighty warrior, the brother of Chernomor, who envied him. Chernomor’s magic power lay in his beard, and he told his brother that they must secure the sword, which had the power to kill the both of them – Chernomor, by cutting his beard, the brother, by severing his head. They set off in quest of the sword, but then disputed to whom it should belong once they found it. Chernomor proposed that they both put their heads to the ground and the sword would go to the one who first heard a sound. Instead, he used the sword to sever his brother’s head, which magically remained alive. The head tells Ruslan that he bears no grudge and will be grateful if Ruslan uses the sword to defeat Chernomor. Ratmir is interrupted in his journey by a young maiden who beckons him into a castle, where he finds himself enveloped in luxury. He soon forgets Ludmila. Ludmila eludes Chernomor’s henchmen by remaining invisible, but then is tricked by the wizard into revealing herself when he takes the form of Ruslan and calls to her in his voice. He is thwarted by the sound of a horn and hurries off, leaving his hat behind. Chernomor confronts Ruslan, who has arrived at the wizard’s lair. They trade blows, and Chernomor flies off, with Ruslan holding on to his beard. For two days they fly, with Ruslan snipping away at the beard, until the bedraggled wizard pleads for mercy and agrees to take Ruslan to Ludmila. Ruslan searches the palace and wanders into the garden, all the time calling for Ludmila, who remains hidden. Finally, a chance thrust of his flailing sword knocks the hat from her head. However, his lover is in a trance and does not hear him calling. He hears the Finn’s voice from a distance telling him to return Ludmila to Kiev where she will awaken. Ruslan sets off, carrying his bride and Chernomor. He encounters the head, who, contented that he has been avenged, dies in peace. Ruslan comes to rest at a stream and is met by a fisherman, who turns out to be the Khan Ratmir. He explains that he has met his true love and no longer yearns for Ludmila. The two part as friends. Naina appears to Farlaf and tells him that his hour has arrived. He saddles up and rides off, finding Ruslan encamped and thrusting his sword into him as he sleeps. As Farlaf rides off with his prey, Ruslan lies unconscious and finally succumbs to his injuries. Chernomor awakens and is joyful to see Ruslan lying dead. Farlaf returns Ludmila to Vladimir, whose initial happiness soon turns to mourning as he finds that she cannot be awakened from her deep slumber. Farlaf hangs his head in remorse. To make matters even worse, the city of Kiev is under siege. The Finn finds Ruslan and resurrects him with magical waters. He gives Ruslan a ring which will break Ludmila’s spell, but tells him that he must first save the city from its attackers. Ruslan returns to Kiev, Chernomor still in tow, and leads the city’s warriors to victory. Ruslan touches Ludmila’s face with the ring and she awakens. Vladimir gives the couple his blessing. Ruslan forgives both Farlaf and Chernomor. Another editorial comment by the author, who bemoans better days gone by. |
8593597 | /m/02796rj | Eulalia | Brian Jacques | 10/4/2007 | {"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"} | In the far, cold Northern Isles, the fox captain, Vizka Longtooth, sights a lonely farmhouse. Wanting plunder, he orders the crew of his ship, the Bludgullet to set ashore. The inhabitants of the farmhouse: the badger Gorath and his grandparents, were from the far south, escaping vermin and war. They had dreamed of going to the legendary havens Redwall Abbey and Salamandastron for peace. However, ill winds destroyed this dream, stranding them on the Northern Isles. Meanwhile, at Salamandastron, the Badger Lord Asheye has a prophecy that an unknown badger(which turns out to be Gorath) will succeed him in autumn. He sends a local troublemaker, Maudie (the Hon.) Mugsberry Thropple to search for the badger. Leading a series of events, Maudie finds herself trapped by sand lizards. At Redwall Abbey, a young hedgehog called Orkwil Prink is expelled from the abbey due to thieving. After a mean watervole tricks him, his luck quickly plummets when he finds himself without supplies and trapped in a swamp. Vizka, his brother Codj and the Sea Raiders have captured Gorath. Codj locked Gorath's grandparents inside the farmhouse and burned it. Gorath swears to kill Codj, and the crew soon realize he's a dangerous beast when he kills a taunting weasel.The ambitious Vizka decides to recruit Gorath into his crew. Maudie, meanwhile, has been rescued from the sand lizards by an owl named Asio Bardwing, who believed Maudie was a magic beast. He agrees to lead her to the Guosim shrews who'll take her to Redwall, where Lord Asheye ordered her to go. They find the Guosim in the midst of celebration. However, soon a baby shrew is kidnapped by an adder. Maudie, Asio and Log-a-Log Luglug find the adder. However, Asio is killed when rescuing the shrew. Vizka soon realizes that Gorath would rather die than join his crew, so he simply starves him. However, before Gorath dies, Codj captures Orkwil, who befriends Gorath. Being a thief, Orkwil soon frees himself and Gorath. During the escape, Gorath kills Codj. Maudie and the Guosim are being tagged by another vermin band: the Brownrats headed by the fat Gruntan Kurdly, who wanted the shrews' logboats. After meeting up with Barbowla the otter, his holt and Rangval the Rogue, a Guosim baby named Yik goes missing. Maudie and Luglug find Yik captured by the Brownrats. They rescue him, but Luglug is killed in the process. Gorath and Orkwil have made it to Redwall and had warned Abbot Daucus and Skipper Rorc of the Sea Vermin. They are then joined by Rangval, the Boulderdogs and the Guosim. Maudie appears later, bringing Yik and the sad news that Luglug was killed. His son Osbil becomes the new Log-a-Log and swears revenge on the Brownrats. Vizka had captured the mean vole and ordered him to disguise himself to gain entrance to Redwall, which he wants to conquer. This scheme fails, and the vole is captured by the Redwallers. He then decides to tunnel his way in. However, his crew encounters the scouts of the Brownrats, who chase them to the north. Gorath has seen Vizka besieging the Abbey and gets restless. He escapes during the middle of a feast and Orkwil, Rangval and Maudie attempt to find him. However, just as they were setting out, the vole kills Sister Atrata, the Healer, and steals the Sword of Martin. The Bronrats capture a Sea Vermin named Magger. When they were thinking of taking him to Kurdly, Gorath sweeps in, killing hordes of Brownrats. In the confusion, Magger escapes. He soon encounters the vole and kills him, stealing the sword and returns to Vizka. Vizka, however, kills him because he wanted the sword. Beforehand, Orkwil, Maudie and Rangval were captured by Vizka. After Vizka leaves 3 vermin to guard them, they easily overpower them and escape, knowing that Vizka has Martin's sword. Gorath, after the attack of Bloodwrath, faints, When he comes round, he finds company with two badgers, Salixa and her mentor: the Tabura. They return to Redwall, where Gorath and Salixa leave the Tabura. They soon are surrounded on top of a plateau with the Guosim, Barbowla and no rations. Maudie, Rangval and Orkwil, disguised as vermin, have a harrowing encounter with the two stoats Bilger and Jungo. They are able to worm out of trouble but Orkwil disappears. Maudie and Rangval join Gorath's army on the plateau. Gruntan Kurdly, meanwhile, has met his demise when he tried to rob a swan's egg. Osbil then kills Stringle, his father's murderer and the Brownrats' only other officer. Vizka takes control of the Brownrats and orders them to besiege the plateau. Just as Gorath's army were about to be annhilalated, Orkwil reappears leading a horde of Redwallers. They kill the Brownrats and the Sea Raiders, but Vizka and five vermin escape. Gorath pursues Vizka through Mossflower Wood. Vizka's vermin desert him because he killed two of them. Furious, Vizka returns to the Bludgullet. However, Gorath is already there and kills Vizka in an amazing fight with his friends watching. The Bludgullet is renamed the Eulalia and Gorath, Salixa, Orkwil, Maudie, Rangval and the Guosim sail down the River Moss to Salamandastron, where Lord Asheye gives the title of Badger Lord to Gorath. In the celebrations that follow, Lord Asheye realizes that it is near autumn and that he must depart Salamandastron. To cheer Asheye up, Salixa sings a song that the Tabura composed. Asheye suddenly recognizes the song, and realizes the Tabura is his long-lost brother Melutar. Asheye and his friend Major Mullein sail to Redwall. |
8595912 | /m/02799w9 | Little Women | Louisa May Alcott | null | {"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} | ;Act I In 1866, Josephine March (Jo) receives a notice of rejection from another author in New York City, making it her twenty-second rejection. Jo asks Professor Bhaer, another boarder at Mrs. Kirk's Boarding House, his opinion on her story ("An Operatic Tragedy"). The Professor is not entranced by her blood and guts saga. He suggests she should write stories that can appeal to authors and of refined writing, and he leaves. Jo asks herself if she would write better at home in Concord, Massachusetts ("Better"). Beginning three years earlier at her attic-studio, Jo assembles her sisters, Meg, Beth and Amy, to tell them that she will be putting up for a show of her own called the "Operatic Tragedy". The sisters beg Jo to not put it up for a show but Jo fantasizes about her blood and guts-filled show ("Our Finest Dreams"). Marmee, their mother, comes in with a letter from Mr. March who is a Union Army chaplain in the American Civil War. As she writes a response, she reflects on how hard is to be the pillar of strength in the March home ("Here Alone"). Aunt March, the wealthy aunt of the March sisters, asks Jo to change from being a tomboy to a model lady of society. She tells Jo of an idle thought to bring her along to Europe. Jo begs to go with her, but Aunt March reasons that she will take her only if she changes. Jo, who has always dreamed of seeing Europe, agrees ("Could You?"). Meanwhile, Meg has one of her own dreams realized: she and Jo are invited to Annie Moffat's Valentine's Day Ball. But on the day of the ball, while the two sisters are rushing around for their finishing touches, Meg announces that she cannot go. She asks Marmee what to say when one of her potential suitors asks her to dance. Marmee tells Meg to just smile and say "I'd be delighted" ("I'd Be Delighted"). Amy, who cares about society and fine things more than Jo, rushes down in Jo's old ball gown to join them in going to the ball, but Jo stops her, as she is not invited. At the ball, Jo accidentally sits on Laurie, who is a neighbor of the Marches' along with his grumpy grandfather, Mr. Lawrence. She apologizes to Laurie and asks him why he is sitting down. Laurie replies that he must have passed out from too much dancing. Laurie's tutor, Mr. John Brooke, then comes in and scolds Laurie for not meeting important people, which would make Mr. Lawrence furious. Mr. Brooke asks Meg to dance and Meg agrees. Meg and Mr. Brooke are smitten at first sight. Laurie confesses to Jo his need for friends and asks Jo to dance with him. Jo replies that she doesn't dance and has a patch on her dress but Laurie keeps on trying to make an impression ("Take A Chance On Me"). Back at the Marches' after the ball, Jo and Amy have a little confrontation, but Marmee sends Amy off to her bed and tells Jo that Amy is just a child. Jo spits back that Amy is a not a child but a demon in a child's body. Jo then rushes up to her attic to rewrite her story. Laurie invites Jo to a skating match, which she at first refuses but eventually agrees to. Amy wants to go with them but she already outgrown her pair of skates. Beth, who intends to stay home, offers Amy her old skates. Beth is sitting at the family's old piano when Mr. Lawrence comes in looking for Laurie, who is out with Jo and Amy. Mr. Lawrence discovers Beth's talent at the piano and they sing a duet ("Off to Massachusetts"). Jo and Laurie comes in from the skating race with Amy in Laurie's arms because she had fallen into the ice while skating. Jo and Amy reconcile, and Jo makes Laurie an honorary member of the March family ("Five Forever"). Mr. Brooke excuses Meg for a while to tell her of his enlistment in the Union Army. He then asks Meg her hand in marriage, and she accepts ("More Than I Am"). But Jo's life goes to crisis when Mr. March's sickness calls Marmee. She has a confrontation with Aunt March after she cuts her hair to bring Marmee to Washington. Aunt March then turns her focus to Amy, molding her to be the society lady that she envisioned for Jo. Laurie, who decides to ask Jo to marry him, then comes in her attic-studio. Laurie tries to kiss her but Jo gently pushes him away. He put out a ring but Jo thinks that it is a joke. Laurie says he loves Jo. Jo does not accept his marriage proposal. He tells her that she will marry, but Jo tells him that she will never marry; Laurie, on the contrary, says she will, but not to him. Jo then ponders her future, which is changing significantly. She vows to find another way to achieve her future ("Astonishing!"). ;Act II At Mrs. Kirk's Boarding House at New York City, she is holding a telegram for Jo from Mrs. March. Jo bounces in, looking for the Professor. She then realizes that the Professor is right in front of her. She tells them her fantastic news: she made her first sale as an author ("The Weekly Volcano Press")! She tells them the story of the sale as well, thanks to Professor Bhaer's advice, the re-edited story. But the news was disturbed when Jo reads the telegram. She is notified of Beth's Scarlet Fever and immediately pack her bags and go home back to Concord. Jo, after a few days, sends a letter to Professor Bhaer, asking him what's new in New York. The Professor struggles to write a decent response ("How I Am"). Back in Concord, at a nearby seashore, Beth says good bye to Jo, telling her that she is not afraid to move on because she is loved by everyone, especially Jo, that she is grateful to have them with her during her lifetime ("Some Things Are Meant To Be"). Amy and Laurie come home from Europe and struggle to tell Jo of their pending marriage because they are trying to be discreet about the matter ("The Most Amazing Thing"). Because of Beth's death, Jo and the family grieve her loss. Marmee, being the strong one, tells Jo of how she copes with her death. She tells Jo that she cannot be defeated by her death and that she must move on ("Days of Plenty"). Jo reminisces while her sisters are still with her. She finds that her family and friends are themselves astonishing and this encourages her to write her novel, Little Women ("The Fire Within Me"). At the day of Laurie and Amy's wedding, Professor Bhaer comes to Concord to attend some matters. He realizes that it is time to tell Jo of his feelings for her. He invites Jo to their garden and tells her about his feelings and proposes. Jo accepts his proposal ("Small Umbrella In The Rain"). The Professor tells Jo that he sent the manuscript of her novel Little Women to the Weekly Volcano Press, the same publisher that accepted Jo's operatic tragedy. He tells Jo that the publisher agreed to publish it, and Jo proclaims her happiness ("Sometimes When You Dream (Reprise)"). |
8597133 | /m/0279cbt | The Counterfeiters | André Gide | 1925 | {"/m/04y41": "Modernism", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"} | The plot revolves around Bernard – a schoolfriend of Olivier's who is preparing for his bac – discovering he is a bastard and taking this as a welcome pretext for running away from home. He spends a night in Olivier's bed (where Olivier describes a recent visit to a prostitute and how he did not find the experience very enjoyable). After Bernard steals the suitcase belonging to Edouard, Olivier's uncle, and the ensuing complications, he is made Edouard's secretary. Olivier is jealous and ends up in the hands of the cynical and downright diabolical Comte de Passavant, who travels with him to the Mediterranean. Eventually, Bernard and Edouard decide they do not fit as well together as anticipated, and Bernard leaves to take a job at a school, then finally decides to return to his father's home. Olivier is now made Edouard's secretary, and after an eventful evening on which he embarrasses himself grossly, Olivier ends up in bed together with Edouard, finally fulfilling the attraction they have felt for each other all along but were unable to express. Other plotlines are woven around these elements, such as Olivier's younger brother Georges and his involvement with a ring of counterfeiters, or his older brother Vincent and his relationship with Laura, a married woman, with whom he has a child. Perhaps the most suspenseful scene in the book revolves around Boris, another illegitimate child and the grandson of La Pérouse, who commits suicide in front of the assembled class when dared by Ghéridanisol, another of Passavant's cohorts. In some regards, such as the way in which the adolescents act and speak in a way beyond their years and the incompetence of the adults (especially the fathers), as well as its motives of developing and confused adolescent sexuality, the novel has common ground with Frank Wedekind's (at the time scandalous) 1891 drama Spring Awakening. The Counterfeiters also shares with that play the vision of homosexual relationships as under certain conditions being "better" than heterosexual ones, with the latter ones leading inevitably to destructive outcomes in both works. |
8597412 | /m/0279csk | Silk | Alessandro Baricco | 1996 | {"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"} | The novel tells the story of a French silkworm merchant-turned-smuggler named Hervé Joncour in 19th century France who travels to Japan for his town's supply of silkworms after a disease wipes out their African supply. During his stay in Japan, he becomes obsessed with the concubine of a local baron. |
8600119 | /m/0279glm | Storm Front | Jim Butcher | 4/1/2000 | {"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} | A woman named Monica makes an appointment with Dresden to discuss a missing persons case later in the day. Dresden also gets a call from Lieutenant Karrin Murphy, director of Special Investigations (SI) Unit of the Chicago Police Department. Murphy's partner shows him the bodies of two gruesomely murdered people with their hearts ripped out. Later that day, he is hired to find the husband of Monica Sells, Victor, a beginning magician who was acting oddly. Eventually, Dresden, despite encounters with vampires, the warlock, and Warden Morgan, learns that the affair centers around the drug "ThirdEye," which allows normal humans to temporarily use The Sight, which can drive them insane. Victor Sells manufactured ThirdEye to hedge out Johnny Marcone. Using the power of thunder storms and the orgies held at his home, he powered the spells to remove his enemies, namely Marcone's men and people threatening his operation, in order to gradually bring down Marcone. Interrupting Victor's last spell, Dresden attacks Victor, eventually burning down Victor's house while Victor is still inside grappling with monster-sized scorpions and a demon he summoned to kill Dresden. Dresden wins, but finds himself trapped on the balcony of the burning house until Morgan steps in to rescue him. Morgan witnessed the fight with Victor and, knowing now that Dresden is innocent, reluctantly testifies on Dresden's behalf to the White Council. |
8600343 | /m/0279gxl | New Day | null | null | null | New Day recounts the story of Jamaica's first outcry against the English Crown rule that cemented a socio-economic and political framework of oppression three decades post-emancipation. New Day is framed as the aged narrator John Campbell's account of the Morant Bay Rebellion of 1865 and the series of uprisings and negotiations that finally culminates in the creation of the New Constitution in 1944. Recognized for its particular approach to the historical novel, the narrative opens with the elderly narrator John Campbell reminiscing of his family and country's longstanding history over the course of seventy-nine years, as he lies awake on the eve of Jamaica's Constitution Day and his memory refuses to elude him. The narrative quality of New Day is evident when the aged narrator transitions from past-tense into present voice as old Campbell struggles to recall the events of the past (“remember I remember”). The protagonist John Campbell, of both African and European descent, is a member of a family that has risen to greater standing with each generation. Since the abolishment of slavery, Campbell explains that the large estates in Jamaica have ceased to function. Many droughts devastate the island and the state of the poor population only worsens. Anger and resentment grow towards the Governor's administration and the wealthy land-owners, in turn sparking the Morant Bay Rebellion. John's older brother Davie Campbell, whom John idolizes, joins forces with the Jamaican radicals of Stoney Gut. The British open fire on and kill forty men from Stoney Gut and Morant Bay. The rebels kill forty militiamen in retaliation. Although John's father, Pa John Campbell, is a peaceful and devoted Christian, he and all of his family, excluding John and Davie, are eventually killed by the time the English stop the reign of terror that Governor Eyre deemed to be the solution to the rebellion. Subsequently, John escapes with Davie and Lucille Dubois, the girl who marries Davie. The three proceed to live on a small cay until the English have stopped hunting them. It is not James Creary, son of Lucille and David, but their grandson Garth Creary who assumes leadership in the struggle. Garth, a wealthy lawyer and businessman, is ultimately responsible for executing the series of propaganda, law-suits, strikes, and negotiations that eventually pave the way for a new Jamaican constitution. The new political day is celebrated on the morning following old John Campbell's long and restless night. Jamaica's partial self-government gives way to the country's "New Day". |
8607482 | /m/0279sd3 | Out of Time’s Abyss | Edgar Rice Burroughs | 1963 | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"} | The book begins with Bradley, who had left Fort Dinosaur on an expedition in the first novel and never returned. Bradley and his party are attempting to return to Fort Dinosaur. Along the way, they encounter a creature which appears to be a flying dead man. Some of the members of the party consider it to be a ghost or banshee. Tippet is convinced that he is soon to die, and the next day he is killed by a Tyrannosaurus. The ghost-like creature is seen again, and James is killed by a saber-toothed cat. Bradley disappears during the night, and the remaining members of the party make it safely to Fort Dinosaur. Bradley had been captured by the ghost-like creature, which is soon revealed to be a naturally winged human being, belonging to a subgroup of humanity known as the Wieroo. The Wieroo takes Bradley to the island of Oo-oh, set in Caspak's inland sea. It attempts to keep Bradley in a prison, but he escapes through a secret passage. He meets Co-Tan, a member of the highest human race of mainland Caspak, the Galu, fully human and of a neolithic cultural level. They enter the chamber of the Wieroo king, a huge member of the race, and Bradley kills the creature with its own sword. Co-Tan and Bradley escape the city of the Wieroo and live for several months on the forested coast of Oo-oh. Finally, though, they are discovered by Wieroo. They succeed in capturing two of the Wieroo and forcing them to fly to the mainland, one bearing each of the humans. On the Caspakian mainland, Co-Tan and Bradley meet the party from the outside world from the previous two books, and they return home to America, where Bradley will marry Co-Tan. |
8607896 | /m/0279s_c | Blaze | Stephen King | 6/12/2007 | {"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror"} | * The story concerns Clayton Blaisdell, Jr. (known as "Blaze" for short, thus the title), a mentally challenged small-time con artist who kidnaps a wealthy gentleman's baby son, in the hopes of fulfilling the dreams of George Thomas Rackley, Blaze's deceased best friend and partner in crime. The chapters alternate between Blaze's past — which covers his childhood (including how he came to be brain damaged) and his entry into a life of crime despite an otherwise sweet demeanor — and his current caper, in which he imagines that he is still constantly advised by his friend George. Despite the helpfulness of (the imaginary) George's advice, Blaze's world begins to crumble during his kidnapping venture, especially as he bonds with baby Joey. In the end, Blaze runs from his inevitable destiny back to the horrors of his old orphanage, the Hetton House. After the cops storm it, he rushes to a cave, where Joey is nearly killed, and Blaze ends up killing two policemen. He is killed by a police officer, and is buried only a few miles away from where his father lived. |
8608159 | /m/0279tbc | Léon Morin, prêtre | null | null | null | In a small French town during the Occupation, Barny is a young, wayward, sexually frustrated widow, living with her little girl. She is also a communist militant who long ago decided that the easiest way was the best. One day she enters a church, randomly chooses a priest and starts criticizing the religion. But the priest is Leon Morin, who is young, handsome, clever and altruistic. He believes that any sin can be expunged by a good dose of faith, and does not offer her the reaction she was expecting. She is disturbed. She starts frequenting Morin, impressed by his moral strength, while he makes it his mission to steer her onto the right path. |
8608985 | /m/0279vcq | The Wreck of the Zephyr | Chris Van Allsburg | null | {"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"} | As he is exploring the sea shore near a small fishing village, the author comes upon the wreck of a small wooden sailboat high on a clifftop. A weather beaten old man is sitting near the wreck, and the author asks him how the boat came to be there, so far from the water. The old man begins to tell the story of a young boy who, years ago, was the most talented sailor in the harbor and who never missed an opportunity to prove it, performing feats that none of the grown men would dare try. One day the boy decided to go out despite the storm brewing just outside the harbor and against the warnings of an old fisherman. As he sails out of the harbor a big gust strikes the boat and he is knocked unconscious by the boom. When he wakes up he and his boat, the Zephyr, are stranded on a strange beach far above the high-water mark. He starts walking to look for help, and after a long time he crests a hill to see the Zephyr being towed high above the waves by two boats he doesn't recognize. The boats are flying! From the hilltop the boy watches the two strange boats deposit the Zephyr in the harbor. When he finally gets down to the harbor he is met by a fisherman who is as surprised to see him as the boy was to see his Zephyr fly. The fisherman tells him that they don't get any visitors because the island is surrounded by a treacherous reef. He offers to take the boy home but the boy refuses, saying he won't leave until he learns how to sail above the waves. The kind fisherman gives the boy a special set of sails for the Zephyr and spends all day trying to teach him, but the boy just cannot get the hang of it. The fisherman gives up and takes the boy back to his house where his wife has their dinner waiting. Once the fisherman and his wife are asleep, the boy sneaks back out to the Zephyr to try again. This time he is successful and slowly the sound of the water gurgling against the hull fades and the Zephyr is flying. By the light of the full moon the boy navigates out of the harbor and sets a course for home. As he nears his village the moonlight strikes the steeple of the church and he has an idea. If he sails the Zephyr over the village and rings her bell, everyone will know that he truly is the greatest sailor there ever was. Just as he is passing over the steeple the wind suddenly dies and the Zephyr starts to fall. The boy tacks and heads back for the safety of the harbor, but the Zephyr is falling too fast and they crash into the cliff. The crash destroyed the Zephyr, leaving only what you see here, says the old man, and the boy broke his leg badly. "What happened to him after that?" asks the traveler. The townspeople never believed him, and the boy spent his life doing odd jobs and searching for the mysterious island, says the old man, ending the story by saying the breeze is looking just right for a sail as he limps back down toward the harbor. |
8609936 | /m/0279wj6 | A Trick to Catch the Old One | Thomas Middleton | 1608 | null | The play's protagonist, Theodorus Witgood, has mortgaged his estates to his uncle Pecunius Lucre, a covetous London merchant. Witgood is in love with Joyce, the daughter of another London merchant, Walkadine Hoard. Lucre and Hoard are rivals; Hoard resents Lucre because Lucre has shown himself to be an even more ruthless swindler than Hoard is himself. Witgood persuades a former mistress to masquerade as a rich country widow and his new fiancée. Lucre, delighted at the prospect of a rich match for his nephew, provides him with £50 and a vague promise to make Witgood his heir. Similarly and for the same reason, Witgood's creditors stop dunning him and offer him more credit. Conversely, rival suitors for the "rich widow" arise, including Walkadine Hoard. Witgood advises his past mistress to accept Hoard's proposal and so fix herself for life. She allows herself to be spirited away by Hoard, with Lucre in hot pursuit. The "widow" agrees with Lucre to resist Hoard if Lucre restores Witgood's estates, and Lucre reluctantly agrees. But Witgood's creditors, angry over his apparent loss of a rich match, have him arrested; Witgood, however, claiming a pre-contract with the "widow," cons Hoard into paying his debts. Witgood marries Joyce in secret; at the banquet celebrating Hoard's marriage, it is revealed that Hoard's new rich wife is Witgood's poor ex-mistress. But the courtesan kneels to her new husband and promises to be a good wife, and Witgood joins her in repentance and rejection of his former sensual and spendthrift ways. |
8610544 | /m/0279x3v | The Serpent's Shadow | Mercedes Lackey | 2002 | {"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"} | Dr. Maya Witherspoon is a young doctor who has just emigrated to England, and intends to practice medicine in London. She had lived most of the first twenty-five years of her life in her native India. The daughter of a British physician and a Brahmin woman of the highest caste who was trained in the medical arts since she was a child. Maya was trained in medicine by her father and graduated from the University of Delhi as a Doctor of Medicine when she was twenty-two. As well as being a doctor, Maya also had a magical heritage. Her mother was a powerful sorceress; a former priestess of the Indian gods. Despite her repeated requests for training, her mother refused, saying only that Maya’s magic was of her father’s blood. However, she never had the chance to explain this enigmatic statement fully, for she was stricken by cholera, and died. Maya suspected that something far more sinister than the disease had killed her mother, and her suspicions were confirmed by her father’s death shortly thereafter. He had been killed by the bite of a krait, a tiny venomous snake, and in the last hours of her mother’s life, Surya had repeatedly warned Maya to beware ‘the serpent’s shadow’. With the loss of her father, Maya knew she must flee the land of her birth or face the same fate as her parents. In her self-imposed exile in London, Maya lives with only the most loyal of her family’s servants, as well as seven pets that originally belonged to her mother and appear to be occasional avatars of Hindu deities. In her new home she fights the prejudices held by those in power against her gender and race and continues to hide from the mysterious and sinister power that murdered her parents. Eventually, with the help of a local Water mage Peter Scott, Maya discovers and trains her own Earth magic, and manages to defeat the malign force that seeks to destroy her. The malign force after her is none other than her mother's twin sister, her aunt Shivani. She devises a plot to kill Maya and steal her power. To do this, she disguises herself as an old mute woman with a basket of apples, who is wandering down Maya's street. She collides with Maya, who is on her way to work, and in the process stabs her in the side with a syringe. The syringe contains a mixture of poison and magic that separate Maya's spirit from her body. Eventually, with the help of Peter Scott and a few friends, Maya's spirit is returned to her body via a kiss from Peter, who is carrying her soul in his heart after Shivani severed the cord that connects it. After he returns her to her body, they both realize how much they love each other and get married. Maya is later found in the novel (also by Lackey) Phoenix and Ashes as Dr. Scott treating a young Air Master named Reggie. Maya is also shown to be in touch with and think highly of Dr. Andrew Pike, a main character in the The Gates of Sleep. |
8611552 | /m/0279yfj | Sand Monkeys | Joanne Horniman | 1992 | {"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"} | Sixteen year old Max arrives in a new household inhabited by several families and individuals. Among them there are a six year old boy named Mango; and a fifteen year old girl, Emma. Emma and her father Ted — an old friend of Max's parents — had arrived in the household some months earlier. Max brings the tree seedlings which he has grown from seeds with him when he moves in. Whilst he develops friendships with the other children, Emma remains distant from him. She does not appear to like Max; struggling to find her place in the household. For all of Emma's life, she and Ted had constantly been moving from city to city. Since arriving in Sydney, Emma had secretly located and found her mother, whom she had never previously met. Max's classmate Olivia finds a photograph of Max at the age of four, building a sandcastle with another child. Olivia asks about this other child, and remarks that she looks like Emma. Max feels sure it couldn't be Emma, whom he has only recently met. Max and Emma begin planting Max's tree seedlings at railway stations and in public parks. Max begins to have a strange feeling that has known Emma for a long time. Meanwhile, a friendship develops between Olivia and Emma. It is through this friendship that Emma starts to find a real sense of belonging in the household. The children offer the remaining trees to local residents, offering to plant them in their gardens. Mango asks what the trees will say to each other when they grow up and see each other over the roofs of the houses. Emma replies, "They’ll say, I’ve been waiting for ages to grow up and meet you. Where have you been all my life?” , this comment making Max sense a spiritual connection between themselves and the trees. Max looks through his photos again, and realises that the other child in the photo is in fact Emma, as one photo also shows Ted. Max's mother explains that Emma had lived with their family for some time when she was young. Eventually, Ted and Emma leave the household to move to Brisbane. Emma leaves something for Max in her room: an old photo of the two of them playing in the sand. It is identical to Max's. |
8612051 | /m/0279z35 | Elämä lyhyt, Rytkönen pitkä | null | null | null | Seppo Sorjonen, a young cab driver/wage slave fed up with his lifestyle. Taavetti Rytkönen, an old retired war veteran, standing in the middle of a road with a thick wad of bills in his pocket, trying to remember who he is and how he got there. The two's meeting sparks off a leisurely, low-drama romp through Finland. it:Lo smemorato di Tapiola |
8616774 | /m/027b5m9 | The Castle in the Forest | Norman Mailer | 2007 | {"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"} | The Castle in the Forest tells the story of the young life of Adolf Hitler, his origins and his immediate family tree, through the eyes of what at first is portrayed as a young SS officer researching Hitler's genealogy at the behest of Heinrich Himmler, who opens the novel speaking to SS officers about the importance of strong traits that result through incest. The SS Officer, who initially instructs the reader to remember him as Dieter, reminds the reader of the penalty he would suffer from the Nazi Party should his writings become public knowledge. He proceeds to describe his search for Hitler's grandparents, to both detect any presence of Jewish ancestry and to ascertain whether Hitler was the product of incest. The story follows Hitler's father, Alois Hitler, his upbringing in a rural area of Austria, and his early marriages and work for the customs department of the Austrian government. Following two marriages and a number of affairs, Alois marries a relative, either his niece or his daughter, Klara, and the couple have three children who survive past childhood, the third of these being Hitler, who is referred to by Mailer as Adi. At this point, Dieter reveals himself to be an employee of Satan, instructed by his superiors to oversee the development of Hitler for possible use by the devil in the future. Dieter states that he had occupied the body of an SS officer when he chose to write his story, maintaining that, should Satan trace the work back to Dieter himself, he would be punished. Dieter follows Hitler through Austria, charting his development and taking a more active role as Hitler discovers wargames around the age of five, and witnesses the beating of the family dog which has a profound effect on him. At this point, Alois retires and the family move to a rural farm. |
8616844 | /m/027b5qd | Man of Nazareth | Anthony Burgess | 1979 | {"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"} | Man of Nazareth is a fictionalized historic account recalling the story of Jesus from his life to his death. |
8620392 | /m/027bbs2 | The Woman's Prize | John Fletcher | null | null | Petruchio's stormy marriage to Katherine ended with her death. Petruchio is now married to Maria, who is even more resistant to domination than Katherine initially had been. Petruchio's tactics and manipulations are no longer effective, and Maria has some resourceful tricks of her own. Maria refuses to consummate their marriage till Petruchio changes his ways; she bands together with other women in abstension from sex with their husbands. The women barricade themselves with provisions in the upper floor of Maria's house, to the displeased surprise of their husbands below. In Act Three Maria settles in to pursue a career of scholarship and horsemanship at Petruchio's country estate, but the peace is again broken when Maria once more refuses to perform her conjugal duties and imposes further demands on her husband. Petruchio resolves to play ill in an attempt to awaken his wife's pity. His ruse fails totally when Maria catches on: in an extremely effective and humorous scene has Petruchio walled up in his house on the pretext that he has caught the plague. Petruchio finally fights his way out, but in Act Four he discovers that his wife has "gone mad"—she has begun to dress like a common whore (in a perfect counterpart to Petruchio's entrance in fantastic attire in the earlier play) and is busy flirting with his friends. When Petruchio announces that he has had enough of marriage and is abandoning Maria for foreign travel, she encourages him to depart on the pretext that his journeys may broaden his vision and turn him into a better human being. Almost totally defeated as Act Five opens, Petruchio tries one final stratagem in an attempt to awaken some spark of compassion in Maria. He decides to play dead, and in one of the Elizabethan theater's celebrated scenes he is borne onstage in a coffin before his wife and friends. Maria is indeed moved to tears, but they are inspired, as she tells us in a famous speech, not by his person but by his "unmanly, wretched, foolish life......how far below a man, how far from reason" Petruchio has remained. This last salvo of abuse brings Petruchio back from the dead: he sits up in his coffin, prompting in Maria a state of final bafflement if not total respect. The two pledge that they will start life anew together amidst the richly comic and ironic mood that ends the play. In the play's subplot, Livia joins in the protest of the married women, though her primary motive is to avoid an arranged marriage with the old and unpleasant Moroso and marry her own choice of husband. Both Maria and Livia succeed in attaining their wishes by the play's end. Finding a proto-feminist play in Fletcher's canon has surprised more than a few readers and commentators. Fletcher's attitudes, as expressed in his oeuvre as a whole, are standard for his era, and show little resembling egalitarianism. Critics have debated whether and to what degree Fletcher's play shows any actual sympathy with women and with greater equality between the genders. The play may have been simply an opportunistic attempt to score a success with the audience on an always-controversial topic. Fletcher's play shows influence from the Lysistrata of Aristophanes. After more than two centuries of absence from the stage, The Woman's Prize was revived by the Royal Shakespeare Company in early 2004; their production ran from 15 January to 6 March that year. |
8621319 | /m/027bd3f | Deliverance | James Dickey | 1970 | {"/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"} | Narrated in the first person by one of the main characters, graphic artist Ed Gentry, the novel begins with four middle-aged men in a large Georgia city planning a weekend canoe trip down the fictional Cahulawassee River in the north Georgia wilderness. The river valley will soon be flooded by a dam to create a reservoir. Besides Ed, the protagonists are insurance salesman Bobby Trippe, soft drink executive Drew Ballinger, and landlord Lewis Medlock, an outdoorsman who is the driving force behind the canoe trip. The men drive into the mountains with two canoes. At a gas station in a mountain hamlet, Drew gets out his guitar and plays a duet with Lonnie, a banjo-playing, mentally deficient, inbred albino boy who is apparently a musical savant. After arranging with some local mechanics, the rough and forbidding Griner brothers, to drive the foursome's cars down to the fictitious town of Aintry, where the canoe voyage will end two days later, the men put into the river and begin their journey. After they shoot some initial rapids and the evening approaches, Ed begins to reflect on the isolation into which the group has now voyaged. The following morning, Ed awakens early and goes hunting with his bow and arrow. Sighting a deer, he shoots but misses, later explaining to Lewis that he broke psychologically at the last moment. Lewis expresses disappointment, and Ed grows a bit irritated at his friend's survivalist mentality. After breaking camp, Ed and Bobby then set out in one of the canoes slightly ahead of Lewis and Drew. After spending a night in the camp, Bobby has changed his mind about the outing and is chafing at Lewis's directions, so Ed takes him on as a canoe partner to keep the two apart. Later in the day, two mountain men, one of them carrying a shotgun, step out of the woods and accost them. The men force him and Bobby into the woods, tying Ed to a tree and cutting him with his own knife; then, in the book's most infamous scene, one of the mountain men sodomizes Bobby. Afterwards, the men untie Ed, and the other mountain man, handing his partner the shotgun, prepares to force Ed to perform oral sex on him. At the moment of the shotgun transfer, Ed hears the twang of a bow as Lewis, hidden in the woods, shoots Ed's assailant. Ed wrestles the gun away from the other man, and watches as the shot hillbilly slowly dies. There follows a heated discussion about what to do. Lewis wants to bury the body, arguing that if they report what has happened they might be put on trial in front of a jury consisting of the dead man's relatives. He is opposed by the law-abiding Drew, who wants to turn the body over to the police in Aintry. Bobby, humiliated and traumatized by his ordeal, physically attacks the corpse, then agrees to Lewis's plan, adding "I don't want this getting around." Drew desperately tries to persuade Ed to "do the right thing", but Ed ignores his pleas and sides with Lewis. The men bury the body and take to their canoes, with Ed and Drew now teamed up again. As evening begins to come on they enter a high gorge with powerful rapids, where Drew falls out of his canoe, both canoes are capsized, and Lewis emerges from the rapids with a badly broken leg. Lewis declares that Drew was shot. Ed is less certain, but he realizes that if the mountain man is indeed at the top of the gorge, he can shoot them all if they take to the river again. Ed decides he must climb the cliff to the top of the gorge and kill the mountain man with his bow. Ed briefs Bobby carefully about taking Lewis downriver in the remaining canoe at first light in order to avoid being shot. Ed then makes the grueling climb to the top of the gorge, climbs a tree, and waits for the rifleman. Early the following morning, a man appears, and as he spots the tree in which Ed is hidden, Ed shoots him. The rifleman fires at almost the same time, missing Ed, but knocking him from the tree. He is gored in the side by one of his own arrows as he hits the ground. He then tracks the rifleman and finds his dead body in a small clearing. He returns the body to the top of the cliff. As he does, he sees the canoe with Lewis and Bobby in it moving out into the river in the full light. Ed then lowers the body down the cliff and descends the rope himself, but it is not long enough to reach to the bottom. As Ed climbs down it breaks; the corpse lands on rocks, but Ed is able to kick against the cliff walls and propel himself into the river. After Ed castigates Bobby for not following his plans and brushes aside his excuses, the pair weight the corpse and sink it into the deepest part of the river. Ed, Bobby, and the badly injured Lewis then continue the journey in the remaining canoe. Below the gorge, they find Drew's body. Lewis, though in a bad way, examines his head and confirms that it had been grazed by a rifle bullet. Ed and Bobby then sink Drew's body, too, into the river, since they cannot allow medical examiners to see the wound. Ed threatens Bobby with death in order to get him to overcome his exhaustion and help. Some time later, the men arrive at Aintry, where they explain that they have suffered a canoeing accident. After a doctor stitches up Ed's wound, he and Bobby eat in a boarding house, but Ed then goes to the basement and takes a long shower in river water. Ed and Bobby believe that they have their story straight—Lewis feigns having few memories of the "accident" and thereby escapes questioning—but then the sheriff locates a piece of the shattered canoe above the point where they claimed to have had the accident and they have to modify their story quickly. Nevertheless, one deputy sheriff grows highly suspicious of them and tells the sheriff that his brother-in-law has been missing since the weekend, believing Ed, Bobby, and Lewis to have something to do with it. Nevertheless, the sheriff lets them go, with a warning not to return to Aintry. Ed returns to his city life, though changed, feeling a continuing connection with the river, which in reality has now ceased to exist with the dam's completion. He occasionally sees Bobby before the latter, his business failing, moves to Hawaii, but has little to do with him--"he would always look like dead weight and like screaming, and that was no good to me." Ed and his wife later buy a cabin on another dammed lake and Lewis, now with a permanent limp, buys a neighboring cottage. The novel ends by relapsing into the conventional patterns of city dwellers, almost as if nothing has changed, except for Ed's connection with the now-drowned river, which has made the rest of his conventional life tolerable. |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.