The Tears of the Sun (Emberverse Series #8)

by S. M. Stirling

Overview

Rudi Mackenzie has traveled from the land where the sun sets to the land where it rises and back. He has found his weapon—the Sword crafted for him before he was born. He has made friends from among his enemies and found enemies where he expected friends. He has won the heart and hand of the woman he has loved his entire life.

Now Rudi is Artos, the High King of Montival, and his final destiny awaits him. He must face and defeat the forces of the Church Universal and Triumphant. Everything in the present, everything in the future, depends on the outcome of the conflict.

And like his father before him, Rudi knows that in winning the war he might well lose his life...

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781101543856
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	09/06/2011
Series:	A Novel of the Change , #8
Sold by:	Penguin Group
Format:	eBook
Pages:	688
Sales rank:	285,330
File size:	2 MB
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

S. M. Stirling is the author of numerous novels, both on his own and in collaboration. A former lawyer and an amateur historian, he lives in the Southwest with his wife, Jan.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"Longtime series reader Todd McLaren is comfortable with the setting and characters. . . . He handles the many action scenes with gusto, shouting, and emphasis in all the right places." —-AudioFile

Editorial Reviews

The emerging kingdom of Montival is a damn cool place to hang out. In this postapocalyptic North America, Stirling has cherry-picked everything a fan might wish for in a high fantasy/apocalypse/alternate history mashup. You’ve got heroes, horses, swordplay, kings, siege engines, and mystics. And all with (somewhat) less patriarchy, because the postmodern world that spawned Montival—our world—has left a big stamp of twentieth-century social progress on the society rising from its ashes.”—Tor.com
“[The] Tears of the Sun engages fans of the saga, who will anxiously await the next Change.”—Genre Go Round Reviews

From the Publisher

The eighth in the futuristic fantasy series Emberverse mainly ties up loose ends from the previous books. Years after the Change that ended the Industrial Age on Earth, the children of the original survivors are carving out new traditions and lifestyles, with danger lurking on all sides and important revelations in store. Longtime series reader Todd McLaren is comfortable with the setting and characters. He slips between Scots brogue and crisp British with seemingly little effort and even handles the occasional poetry with flair. McLaren's accents sound authentic, feeding the sharp dialogue, but his basic narration becomes somewhat monotone as the book continues. However, he handles the many action scenes with gusto, shouting, and emphasis in all the right places. A.Z.W. 2012 Audies Finalist © AudioFile 2012, Portland, Maine

MAY 2012 - AudioFile

The eighth book in Stirling's post-apocalyptic Novels of the Change series is a mostly tedious wheel-spinning installment, with repetitive plotting and labored prose.

Stirling (The High King of Montival, 2010, etc.) began the Change series with 2004'sDies the Fire, in which all technology on Earth suddenly stops working, and people have to adapt. Now the world has been reconstituted under a feudalistic system, complete with lords, castles, knights, squires and the like, and magic and prophecies play increasingly important roles in the story. After questing for several novels, nominal protagonist Rudi Mackenzie has finally retrieved the mythical Sword of the Lady and is working to unite disparate factions as part of his new kingdom of Montival. Rudi, also known as Artos now that he has ascended to the role of High King, needs as many allies as he can get in order to face down the forces of the Church Universal and Triumphant, an evil organization that uses mind control to keep its subjects in line and is bent on conquering all of what was once North America. The novel follows dozens of characters as they maneuver things into place for the big showdown, but it's almost all set-up for a climax that never arrives. Stirling spends paragraphs describing the clothing and weaponry of his characters in agonizing detail, while moving the plot along at a glacial pace. Although there are some fun nods to fantasy fandom (among them a faction of warriors who base their entire worldview on the Lord of the Rings novels), the writing is mostly deadly serious and dull. Stirling whips up a couple of lively set pieces, including the aforementioned Tolkien acolytes liberating the captive family of one of the opposition leaders, but the plodding boredom far outweighs the intermittent excitement.

Dedicated followers of the series will likely want to see it through, but this installment doesn't bode well for the books still to come.

Kirkus Reviews