Out of Time

Description

From fantasy fan favorite Lynn Abbey, co-creator of Thieves' World(tm), comes a novel of modern witchcraft and one woman's newfound powers.

The novels of Lynn Abbey are..."Brilliantly conceived."-C. J. Cherryh

"All the things that make fantasy worth reading."-Booklist

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Customer Reviews

Persistent Curses
Out of Time (2000) is the first fantasy novel in the Time series. It is set in the near future within the Midwestern town of Bower, Michigan.

Merle Acacia Merrigan is the acquisition librarian at the university. She had never liked her name and now everyone knows her as Emma. She has been married -- and divorced -- twice. She still relates well with her two step-children.

Eleanor Merrigan is Emma's mother. She had disappeared when Emma was five. At first, Emma thought that she had died, but later Emma learned that she had fled to New York city.

Jennifer Hodden is a senior at the university. She has recently moved into the Blue House -- a student co-op -- where she met her boyfriend.

Bran Mongomery is a graduate student at the university. He has recently moved from an Eastern school and in living at the Blue House. He met Jennifer there and is now her boyfriend.

Matt Strabo is the official System Administrator for the university library. He knows Emma because she is the unofficial SA for the library. She has been performing that additional duty since the computer was using punched cards.

In this story, it is the first week of November. Emma is now living alone. Her Dad had passed away the previous February and her two stepchildren -- Lori and Jeff -- are living elsewhere. She arrives at her desk to find that the library director has again locked himself out of his files.

After Emma helps Matt to discover the cause of the problem, she starts working on her current acquisition difficulties. At the end of her day, Emma checks to see if any additional bodies are lying within her assigned area of the stacks (her reasons are too long for this review).

Toward the end of her route, Emma discovers somebody slumped over a table with blood spills on the notebooks and table top. Fortunately, the body is still alive, with only a split lip. Jennifer prefers not to explain how she got the lip and black eye, so Emma takes her out to supper and gets most of the story.

Jennifer and Bran have fallen into love with not only passion, but also inevitability. As Bran later states, Jennifer filled a hole within him. But Jennifer had poked him in the ribs and stated that he would have been dead if she had a knife. So Bran beat her to drive the demons away.

Emma takes Jennifer home and puts her into the spare bedroom. Then she starts having terrors -- panic attacks -- and dreams that seem very real. Emma tries to drive away her anxieties by work and cleans up the boxes in her basement. There she finds a box that she has never seen before that has her full name written on the outside.

Inside the cardboard box are newspapers wrapped around a wooden box with a lock and key. Inside the wooden box is an envelope with a note to Emma from her mother. Below the envelope is a black bound book with onion skin papers. Below that are other objects, including two bowls, a bell, a silver dish, another book, and a tray of bottled potions. Under that are the remains of melted candles and a candle stand.

The note spooks Emma. It speaks of a wyrd and of walking through time. The black book contains passages about persistent curses and potions for effective dreaming. Emma starts to believe that her mother had been deranged.

This tale leads Emma into a place outside time which she calls the Wasteland. It starts to interfere with her sleep, for she wakes up in that place. Emma starts to hear dogs and see red masses. Then she finds that her anger can drive them away.

Emma decides that the things that are harassing her are curses. Or maybe they are just delusions. But they hurt her and she starts to find evidence of their reality.

This novel clears up the problems of Bran and Jennifer, but leaves Emma with other problems. The next volume is Behind Time. Read and enjoy!

Recommended for Abbey fans and for anyone else who enjoys tales of time travel, interdimensional places, and befuddled magic users.

-Arthur W. Jordin

2009-10-10 (Smyrna, GA USA) | Helpful Votes: 1 | Rating: 4

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A glum, middle aged divorcee seeks adventure
"Out of Time" follows the story of E--, a 51 year old librarian, who discovers that her sleep is filled with more than just dreams. E-- uses her newly discovered powers to rescue a young college couple from a mysterious malevolence.

The setting is modern day, with dream-magic and curses. the plot is interesting, the characters well developped, and all quite well described. The cats & computers & setting are well portrayed, and the conversations skillfully written. The point-of-view sticks with E-- like glue.

E--'s life is filled with morose happenings, which she feels obliged to dwell upon constantly. Two messy divorces, no dates or love life, a distant relationship with her dad (now deceased), abandoned by her mother when one year old, said mother when she finally shows up quite callous, two grown stepchildren who never call or write, no siblings, no close friends, a borring career that is going nowhere, and no hobbies. Whew. Emotionally, the mood of "Out of Time" is so very depressing.

Overall, "Out of Time" is suitable for a rainy afternoon read.

2006-03-20 | mhp2027 (Boulder, CO USA) | Helpful Votes: 1 | Rating: 2

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Coming of 'middle age' novel
Emma Merrigan is a 40-something librarian raised by her professor father. She lives in academia: a community that doesn't take a lot of risks and generally doesn't have a lot of adventures.

Emma offers help to Jennifer a young student who's clearly been battered. The girl's presence in her life, in her home, brings back nightmares from a past Emma didn't have. When Jennifer's boyfriend shows up, Emma believes the young man suffers an ancient curse, which she sets out to moot. In doing so, she discovers powers and history she never expected.

2005-02-07 (USA) | Helpful Votes: 1 | Rating: 5

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Excellent Paranormal Story
Emma, a 50 year-old university librarian, has led a fairly normal existence until the day she stumbles upon a strange box in her basement. Her real name, Merle Acalia, is written across the yellowed cardboard. Inside she finds a book of charms and spells and old letters, all left to her by Eleanor, the mother who abandoned her when she was very young. To her distress Emma becomes involved in a world of dimensions she had never imagined, a frightening world where curses take on form and must be hunted through time and destroyed lest they cause terrible suffering for those who live in the here-and-now. With reluctance Emma takes up the mantel of hunter-witch. Out of Time has a brilliant plot and intricate, believable characters. There is a proper ending, but with one part of the plot left unresolved, leaving it obvious that there is a sequel. I searched Amazon.com to discover the title - Behind Time. I can't wait to read it!

2003-02-05 | PVN (Patricia's Vampire Notes) | Helpful Votes: 1 | Rating: 4

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The Second Face of the Goddess
Lynn Abbey has always had the happy knack of writing what I wanted to read at the time I needed it. (I'm excluding her franchise work here.) This book is no exception.

The main characters in fantasy works are often very young. The theme is often coming of age. This is a fantasy for the sandwich generation, the one caught between the demands of children and aging parents. The story opens with the heroine essentially an orphan. Her father, who raised her after her mother's death, has died. Romantic relationships have failed her and all she retains of her last marriage is an attachment to her step children. However, she finds herself reluctantly playing maternal figure to some troubled college kids while her mother reappears.

It turns out her life is a great deal more complicated than she expected. There are going to be great demands placed on her but she is going to have great personal resources to meet these demands.

Watching the heroine discovering who she is and essentially coming into her power is a positive experience. I found myself cheering her on as she copes with the unexpected burdens she finds laid on her, both magical and mundane. Of the three faces of the goddess-- virgin, matron, hag, this is the one that is shown the least and I'm very happy to have Ms. Abbey fill this lack.

2003-01-25 (It's a Toss Up Right Now) | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 5

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Thieves' World: Turning Points

Description

New Stories by Raymond E. Feist, Dennis L. McKiernan, and others

Empires rise and fall, but Sanctuary lives on!

Sanctuary, a lawless city governed by evil forces, powerful magic, and political intrigue.

The Age of the Rankin reign of Kadakithis, the occupation of the Beysib, and indeed the erstwhile Renaissance are all in the past. It is years later and the legendary figures of Jubal, Tempus, Shadowspawn, and the Stormchildren are now just memories, myth, and rumor.

But the city and its people live on. A new pantheon of personalities have moved in and are making their mark on this dark and dangerous city.

Meet these denizens of the city where just surviving is a full-time occupation.

Meet Halott the Necromancer, Latilla-daughter of the legendary artist Lalo the Limmer, Dysan the short and scrappy thief, Jake the rat, and a host of others.

Return to Sanctuary and let the games begin!

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Customer Reviews

Good anthology helping to restart Thieves' World
Disclaimer: If you have not read the original Thieves' World books, this book will not be of much interest to you. You really do need the back story from the other books for this collection of short stories to be of much interest to you.

Review:
The Anthology is fairly well written with a clear story line developing in the background of the short stories. The feel is very much in line with the original Thieves' World books. However, the grittiness and nastiness of Sanctuary is not quite right. It seems a bit on the sanitized side vs. the original books.

It makes sense to try to get a new group of readers interested in the Thieves' World milieu. However, I think you lose a key part of what made Thieves' World so inventive and alive -- not sure of what will happen to any character. The characters are never really in any danger which is my only large knock on the new Thieves' World books. In the old books (aside from Shadowspawn), you never knew what was going to happen to a character from one book to the next book.

After reading this book, it has made me want to go back and reread all of the original Thieves' World books. So, it must be doing something right if it has relite my interest in the milieu.

The lack of magic in Sanctuary limits what the various authors can do which is unfortunate but a natural side-effect of the massive magic escalation in the original books. The hints of Magic returning does bode well for the direction of the new Thieves' World books.

I liked this book enough to read the next book in the series.

2009-01-16 | Varied Interests (Half Moon Bay Ca, USA) | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 4

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Disappointing
I loved the Thieves' World books as a teenager. Unfortunately, the same can not be said now. Shadowspawn was always my favorite character, but Andrew Offutt's new story featuring his character was overwritten to the point of being unreadable and soured the rest of the book for me. There may be better stories by other authors later in the book, but I couldn't force myself to stay interested enough in the goings on of Sanctuary to read them all.

2008-10-19 (Jamaica Plain, MA) | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 2

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First Story Collection for the New Thieves' World
This is the first Thieves' World volume to follow Lynn Abbey's "Sanctuary", the novel that, if it didn't wipe the slate clean for this shared-universe setting, at least erased a whole lot of what had come before. "Sanctuary" was a "and now, many years later" type of reboot to clear the decks of a lot of old characters and punt a whole mess of overly byzantine plotlines to the curb. This collection of short stories therefore deals mostly with brand new characters with a different set of concerns and goals than the "old school" heroes and villains from the original run back in the Eighties. It's a good point to jump aboard because things haven't become too terribly convoluted yet.

I just had the pleasure of meeting Ms. Abbey this past weekend at a convention. In addition to the second new short story collection, "Enemies of Fortune", that has already been released, there is a third volume that is being planned. We are very unlikely to see the return of the big names from the past (such as the loathsome Tempus). In some cases (in particular Marion Zimmer Bradley's Lythande the Blue Adept) this is because the authors in question spun their characters off into stand-alone novels and went beyond the scope of the shared universe and were told that there was no bringing them back into Sanctuary. At any rate, Ms. Abbey will be trying to keep each collection more self-contained, so that plots don't span multiple volumes and the characters won't be pursuing 18 different agendas simultaneously.

In addition to sharing tidbits of how things were done back in the day (the writers from the first run seemed to spend plenty of time plotting against their own editors, when they weren't taking out their frustrations on the characters of fellow authors they were quarreling with), Ms. Abbey and some folks from Green Ronin fielded questions about the new Thieves' World role-playing game. Chaosium had their own version of this 20 years ago, but now the game rights have been transferred and Green Ronin is rolling out four d20-compatible volumes, two of which have already been released. The upcoming guide to the world of Sanctuary (including city maps and details on all of the realms we've heard of, such as the Rankan Empire, Ilsig, and so on) sounds really great. And everything in the RPG material will be considered canonical. Worth a look when it comes out!

2005-08-23 (Austin, TX) | Helpful Votes: 5 | Rating: 4

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sword-sorcery-skullduggery at its best
If you are looking for an excellent sword/scorcery/adventure read then Sanctuary is the place. Old fans of the original 12 books and new ones will be greatly pleased with this effort. Anyone that says there is nothing exciting in the heroic fantasy genre needs to look no further.

2004-08-12 | Helpful Votes: 2 | Rating: 5

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Remember the good old days...
When the Hell-Hounds patrolled the Maze, when Unicorns were Vulgar and when Sanctuary was just a play-thing for the Gods?
Well, the Gods have left and the city has new rulers, but most of the rules are the same - there are none. Keep a sharp eye on your friends, a closer one on your enemies and grow a third eye to watch your back.
Welcome to Thieves' World! Enter one of the darkest cities EVER to be created by ANYBODY. Ten stories by such authors as Raymons E. Feist, Lynn Abbey (of course) and Diana L. Paxson.
Old fans will wish to get this book and new fans will wish to collect the old series (if they can). Meet the most dangerous, most tight-fisted, most foul-mouthed, Heros you may EVER come to love.
Just keep a fourth eye on your purse.

2004-07-24 (Alexandria, VA) | Helpful Votes: 5 | Rating: 5

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Down Time

Description

Emma Merrigan and her mother take a Caribbean cruise to reconcile their differences. But to help a cursed passenger, Emma must travel into the "wasteland."

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Customer Reviews

Cruise blues....
Emma Merrigan woke up in the night terrified the night before her library director, Gene Shonneker, gave his resignation. Now she knows why. The new director appears to be planning to do some major shakeups. She's putting in more hours than she cares to think.

"You look horrible," her mother, Eleanor, who's used the magic of her _wyrd_ to remove her own aging and looks more like a college co-ed than the mother of a 50-year-old daughter states. "You need a vacation. I'll pay for a Carribean cruise."

Things only get worse from there. I imagine the Beach Boys' "Sloop John B" playing....

First verse, I'm sharing a cabin with my mother--who looks and dresses like my daughter--and I'm responsible for her, too!

Second verse, there's food everywhere and I'm getting fatter and fatter!

Third verse, my waitress is cursed and I can't get to _audela_ to help her because of some stupid rule about going to the Netherlands to moot curses when you're moving.

Fourth verse, migraines--bad meds, too much food, sun, and Calypso music.

Fifth verse, can't sleep and manage to be just at the spot to see a crew member effected by the curse take a dive.

And on and on....

There is some hope for Emma and the storyline. Once she finally gets off the ship, her mother Eleanor takes her to the Atlantis curia to get help for her eye. (I think that was Verse 7) I'm really hoping the future storylines will include more about this group.

2005-08-25 (USA) | Helpful Votes: 1 | Rating: 4

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THIS is a VACATION?
I have to agree that I too love these books. I can only conclude that Lynn Abbey wanted to write a cruise off on her income tax as research for a book but didn't have a very good time.

Emma, whose life is not going well mainly because her job as a librarian is under seige with shakeups in management, agrees to go on a cruise with her mother. Then she is talked into driving all the way to Florida. After they are on the ship she drinks both red wine and champagne-- bad idea for a migraineur! At their first port of call, she and her mother get lost. Emma's headache gets worse-- Arrgh, a migraine in the tropics! And I recognized those red pills that the author gave her. They are incredibly ineffective. No wonder it was taking her days to shake it. Come into the 21st Century Em!

Things continue to go downhill. Souvenirs are tacky, there's an employee with a curse on board, Emma witnesses a suicide, there's food 24 hours a day every day. And that headache keeps coming back. Then just when it seems they are going to get to spend a few fun days at the world of the mouse, fate strikes again. Oh yes, fate also has them driving through Atlanta on the interstate.

Abbey seems to be losing her focus on the story arc but for Emma's fans (would can sympathize with the fact that given tremendous power she removes the gray from her hair) this is an interesting few days in her life.

2005-06-19 (It's a Toss Up Right Now) | Helpful Votes: 1 | Rating: 4

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I love these books and I love Lynn Abbey
I just can't get over how realistic Emma is. Her mother is an idiot, her lover is a ghost. She gets talked into doing all kinds of things she knows she shouldn't and really doesn't want to do. But she brings us along.

I'm always waiting for the next one. While you're waiting try some of Abbey's other books. You'll love them.

2005-05-05 | Thais Peterson (Haslet, TX) | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 5

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spectacular urban fantasy
Fifty years ago, Emma Merrigan's mother Eleanor abandoned her newborn baby and her husband and it is only recently that they reconciled. Both Emma and Eleanor are hunters, going into the wasteland to destroy curses and rogues (giant curses). Eleanor was imprisoned by powerful curses and upon returning to the mundane world, she could pass as Emma's daughter. The immortal hunters never age as they possess the power to appear younger even though Emma chooses to look her real age of fifty.

The two women take a Caribbean cruise hoping to bridge the breach that exists between them but Emma has a headache most of the time. She sees a cursed woman on the wait staff, a person who has seen the atrocities committed in Serbia. Emma has the ability to plunge through time and stop a curse before it begins. When she gets off the boat she does exactly that and finds a young boy without an adult to take care of him since Emma took away his primary caretakers in order to end the curse. He is either a hunter or a rouge but either way he sets up a loop that prevents Emma from returning to her own time and she must hope that someone from the mundane world come into the wasteland looking for her to guide her home.

DOWN TIME is an interesting urban fantasy featuring a heroine who is smart enough to know she doesn't have all the answers and is savvy enough to listen to people who have more of them. The wastelands are an interesting place, a barren dimension with a magnetic sky where curses and rogues abound. Emma is obsessed with destroying as many as she can to make the world a better place. Lynn Abbey is a spectacular urban fantasist.

Harriet Klausner

2005-03-30 | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 5

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Sanctuary: An Epic Novel of Thieves' World

Description

From the Bestselling Fantasy Adventure Series, Thieves' World (tm)
Created by Robert Lynn Asprin & Lynn Abbey

Return To The City That Would Not Die!
Return To Thieves' World!
Return To Sanctuary!

Thieves' World was the bestselling and first of the shared world phenomenon, selling well over a million copies of anthologies detailing the exploits and intrigues of the high-born and low-born denizens of Sanctuary, a city that has seen many masters.

The Age of Ranke and the reign of Kadakithis, the occupation of the Beysib, the war of the gods and indeed the erstwhile Renaissance are now all in the past. Memories of heroes and villains, glory and savagery have all been relegated to the shadows of yesteryear as present-day residents once again apply themselves to the task at hand: survival.

Only Molin Torchholder, architect of Sanctuary’s glory and master of her secrets. knows the whole truth, but he is dying . . . He must hold on until he can pass along the city's hidden history of empires come and gone and blood shed for reason and naught. Aiding him are a lowly laborer named Cauvin, himself a survivor of one of the city's darkest moments, and a young boy named Bec.

So many secrets and so little time. And as Molin’s chronicles of the past unfold, even darker forces return, an evil that jeopardizes the very survival of a city that until now has always refused to die.

Sanctuary - An Epic Novel of Thieves' World ushers in a whole new age of tales, a whole new age of Thieves' World.

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The past and future of Sanctuary hang in the balance in this tale of intrigue, politics, magic, and sacrifice from veteran writer Lynn Abbey.

Life in the city of Sanctuary has moved on from the days of Jubal and Tempus, and the epic adventures of gods and men are already degrading into myth and superstition. Molin Torchholder, who carries the only living memories of these times, knows that the future of Sanctuary depends on preserving them. With assassins on his trail, Molin must prepare a successor to hold and protect the secret truths of Sanctuary. And Cauvin, a survivor of the cruel pits of the Bloody Hand, will have a series of difficult choices to make as he is drawn deeper into Molin's desperate struggle.

Readers new to Sanctuary (the core setting of numerous Thieves' World stories) will find enough backstory to make this novel accessible. Fans should be delighted with the wealth of historical references, new and familiar characters, and high adventure that Abbey weaves together. --Roz Genessee

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Customer Reviews

Catching Up with Old Friends
*spoiler alert - if you haven't read any of the previous anthologies, and plan to, some of the information below could be considered spoilers*

Way back in the 1980's, several authors entered into an ongoing collaboration on a fantasy series which eventually came to be called Thieves' World. Long before the gritty, realistic and, perhaps, perverse protagonists written by GRR Martin, Robert Jordan, Greg Keyes and R. Scott Baker written in revolt of so-called "stock characters" so prevalent in fantasy, Robert Asprin and Lynn Abbey's world was populated with heroes but predominantly rogues in the "cess pit of the Empire", the city of Sanctuary. For those overdosed on the stock characters promulgated by, predominantly, the success of Tolkien, the denizens of Sanctuary were all too human (even if not completely human, themselves) in their desires and pursuit of self interest. Several parts the rankest districts of Rome, and a large part main street Sodom and Gomorrah, one always knew when starting a chapter that you would meet only the most interesting of characters in the pages to come, surrounded by their only slightly less fascinating fellows in a city where one had to be smarter and more devious than everyone else just to make it through the day, else end up meat in a gutter or, worse, a pawn in the schemes of the more competent manipulators in the city. Imagine New York, with all the water, sewage, subway and financial services shut down for a day (and the resultant frustration and madness), and you have every day in Sanctuary.

In contrast to the popular and prevalent high-medieval settings of the day, Thieves' World was, at latest, analogous to the late pre-Christian Roman Empire. As one would expect in a series with several authors, each composing a separate chapter in the several thousand pages of the story, the writing could be uneven at times. Regardless, it was never a case of too many cooks spoiling the soup.

While it would be inaccurate to say Thieves' World wasn't filled with stock characters, initially, it was what the various authors turned these main points of view archetypes into that kept readers coming back for more. The heroic, undefeatable soldier became the serial rapist (and closet homosexual), while the wicked witch/necromater became the façade of a coquettish mage with a (very, very) deeply buried heart of gold. The slaver/crime boss became the patriot, the shape-changing mage with immeasurable power a pawn to his anyone who fed his sex addiction, and the benevolent but tough-as-nails mage as belonging to a monastic doomsday cult and a transsexual lesbian.

Sadly, the series stopped rolling out installments in the mid-1990's.

*spoilers for previous anthologies end here*

In Sanctuary, the novel by Abbey from 2005, we return to the mean streets of an even more ravaged city for a much needed update. The cult of the mother goddess, Dyreela, has been expelled and, seemingly, eradicated, allowing the denizens of Sanctuary a tentative breath of relief. Molin Torchholder, former high priest and architect of Vashanka (god of war and storms), discovers a vengeful remnant of the cult, however, and scrambles furiously to complete certain plans and set others into motion in order to protect the city he detests with a passion. Caught up in his plans are Cauvin, formerly a novice of the bloodiest of Dyreela's splinter cults and rescued from death by Molin 15 years before, and Bec, his brother through Cauvin's adoptive family. Cauvin is essentially trained as a thug, and puts his former training to use breaking ruined mansions up for stone to sell through his adoptive father, while Bec is the sheltered child fascinated by his brother's more visceral abilities while remaining confident in his own abilities as a scholar. As Molin, Cauvin and Bec wind their way through the story, we catch up with the stories of those characters prevalent in the previous five anthologies of the series, some of whose ultimate fates proved a bit anticlimactic.

Unlike previous Thieves' World installments, this story is concluded within the pages of one volume, and is written solely by the one author (Abbey). As a result, it's also a frenetic page-turner, my having read all of the approximately 500 pages in a day. The level of action, detail and sheer genius of the writing is akin to the best of that of the previous various anthologies.

If you enjoyed GRR Martin, Greg Keyes or R Scott Baker, and haven't read any of the Thieves' World series, definitely give it a go if you can find an extant copy - the first anthology was entitled, similarly, Sanctuary, published in 1982 and consisting of Thieves' World (1979), Tales from the Vulgar Unicorn (1980) and Shadows of Sanctuary (1981). Sadly, not having read at least 2 of the anthologies (the second being Turning Points, of 1986), you're likely to find the tales in the Abbey novel much ado about folks who mean nothing to you. However, if you have read any of the series, and missed the colorful yet bleak denizens of the Empire's most insignificant city, you'll relish every page, as I did.

2008-11-14 (Prague, Czech Republic) | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 5

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A Good Crossover
Lynn Abbey has resurrected Sanctuary from Thieves World again. She has started a new series based on the old and needed a crossover book to bring the old readers up to date and try and fill in the back ground for the new readers. The only character from the "old" series is Molin Torchholder and he is in trouble. He has enlisted a new character named Cauvin and his younger brother Bec to help him.

The book revolves around a cult of murderers that has returned to Sanctuary from the past and they are out to kill Molin. At this point in the book, Molin is very old and the past is in the distant past with all of the old characters gones with the exception of one that makes a brief period at the end of the book.

"Sanctuary" is a very good crossover from the original series to the new. While the book nevers goes into great detail about the past, the reader is getting a nice thumbnail that covers the general storyline. As all brief descriptions, much is left out for brevity, but the very base is there. Abbey has done a good job of making the new book read like the old series and that could not have been easy.

The old characters are mentioned, but much like all history they are not really remebered right except by those of us that read the original series. I suggest that you read or reread the original series because you will be surprised how much you forget, but if you do not want to return to the past you do not need to either. Highly Recommended.

2006-05-28 (Bayonne, NJ) | Helpful Votes: 1 | Rating: 4

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Thieves' World is back...
and here is not just the first novel but the first book of the new generation of books about the old city. Molin Torchholder, survivor of wars, magic battles and all the dangers of the city itself, has killers on his tail. Good ones. With the help of the cursing Cauvin, the son of a stoneyard owner, and Cauvin's younger bother, Bec, Molin MIGHT be able to protect Sanctuary before he dies. But it'll be a close one.
I took away a few stars for many reasons. Cauvin cusses too frogging much, seems a tad too slow and, in a character driven plot line, it just seemed the author used his slowness to add a few hundred extra pages. The book is 533 pages long and much of it is Cauvin trying to think of what to do when not cussing his bad luck.
Also, there was a lot of information about the past - we learn about the Hand, but also about events that happened in the first books. A lot of names are dropped - Tempus, Jubal, Kadakithis and even Hakiem - which fans, old or new, may enjoy. But all these scenes seemed more like a data dump to me and slowed the action, what little there was, down. The story didn't even really start to move till the last few chapters.
It can't be helped - a story needs a starting point, a foundation. You have to cook the meal before you eat it. After all, this is the first book of the return to the world of 'Thieves' World' and I would suggest reading this one first. But it is still long, slightly boring in some parts and throws a lot of both old history and not-so-old history at you.
For fans it is a must, but once done I doubt you'll wish to re-read.

2004-08-03 (Alexandria, VA) | Helpful Votes: 6 | Rating: 3

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A return to Thieve's World
Time has passed. Molin Torchholder is dying. He picks an heir, or to be precise the Gods seem to pick his heir, a boy named Cauvin who is just growing into a man. It is an interesting tale of the passing of a torch and, as in all the tales of thieves world, there is the usual array of villains. The Vulgar Unicorn has survived, of course, and is still a meeting ground. The Red Light District has fallen on hard times. Trade has declined, but occasional ships still show up in the harbor. Sanctuary is somewhat down at the heels, and the coinage is debased.

This is an interesting tale about the battle against an evil cult, but it has flashbacks to earlier times. For someone who has not read the other novels, the information is fragmentary. For someone who has read the novels, and is fully familiar with the setting, the digressions into the past seem to be overdone and distracting.

The story does not quite reach a full conclusion as one of the evil people escapes. One can guess that the author is planning a sequel. In Thieves World, there are always stories to be told.

2004-07-05 (Vicksburg, MS USA) | Helpful Votes: 2 | Rating: 3

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Welcome to the Relaunch!
This volume is the relaunch to the Thieves World shared universe created by Abbey and Robert Asprin, which, as I recall, fired up around 1979 or so and ran through the '80s before sputtering to a halt. Thieves World was the precursor to such later series as George R.R. Martin's Wild Cards, C.J. Cherryh's Merovingen Nights, and Will Shetterly and Emma Bull's Liavek. The present volume picks up some years after the events of the twelfth installment of the original series. (In addition to the anthologies and mosaic novels, there seem to have been five stand-alone novels by the dreaded Janet and Chris Morris, against whom I continually rail, inasmuch as I hold their vile contributions to be directly responsible for killing both Thieves World and Merovingen Nights. Be that as it may, their five books evidently dealt with the despicable Tempus and his cronies and I believe they largely took place outside of the city of Sanctuary itself.)

Most everyone the longtime fan knew from back in the day is dead, fled, or vanished. Pretty much the only major figure left is an eighty-year-old Molin Torchholder, and due to circumstances he has to more or less dictate his memoirs in a nifty little ploy that allows the old school readers to dredge up memories of the first series while giving new readers a bit of background on the setting. This device makes it pretty apparent how wildly out of control the series had become and how critical it is to have a strong editorial hand (such as Martin) at the helm to reject the stupider ideas. My opinion is that very few of the authors could content themselves with "writing small" and with telling quiet little tales of interesting but limited and flawed characters. Very rapidly, after the first couple of books, every contributer wanted to turn their amps up to 11, and so each new character became deadlier, angrier, and more brutal than the last, and each of them seemed designed specifically as grudge monsters who were meant only to humiliate or eliminate the pre-existing characters. Not to mention that the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, as it were, rode through the city so often that it became ludicrous. Authors began to show off and have gods duking it out in the street, or had the city invaded again and again by awesome new and never-before-suspected threats from all quarters of the globe, or tossed in legions of the undead or bands of invincible and sneering warriors. In hearing Molin relate the whole sorry mess, it just really seems ludicrous in retrospect.

This particular addition to the milieu is a necessary but somewhat awkward bridge between the decades-old material accumulated over the first run of the series and the new tales that follow in the newest collection of short stories (entitled Turning Points) that has just become available. (Another volume, First Blood, will be rolling out soon.) Quite likely, it can be skipped, and it may only really be compelling reading for continuity devotees who need to acquire each Thieves World volume for their collections.

Now that Abbey has cleaned the slate by jumping the series into the future so that everyone has keeled over or wandered off, Thieves World can enjoy a fresh start and avoid the mistakes of the past. In Cauvin and Bec, the Thieves World setting has a couple of interesting characters to serve as a starting point, with the help of some of the supporting cast, such as Soldt. Here's hoping that Abbey can prevent future contributors under control so that Sanctuary will not again implode under the weight of overly ambitious and byzantine plots and the hordes of grandiose heroes and villains.

2003-08-01 (Austin, TX) | Helpful Votes: 13 | Rating: 3

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Wolfsong (Blood of Ten Chiefs)

Description

From the authors of Elfquest and the creators of Thieves' World, this second volume is set in the Elfquest world--a time when the Wolves and the Wolf-Riders were forming their deep emotional bonds and learning how to live on the World of Two Moons.

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Customer Reviews

Entertaining reading
I was fascinated by this book and the others in the Blood of Ten Chiefs series, even though I hadn't (and still haven't) read any of the Elfquest comics. The stories, by various fantasy writers, are mostly complex and absorbing.

I was even inspired to go on a lengthy search for an unavailable title in the series (this was several years ago).

A good read.

1999-10-25 | Helpful Votes: 1 | Rating: 4

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Uggh, I hated this book!
This book is a collection of short stories set in the World of Two Moons. The main characters of the stories are mostly chiefs of an elf tribe. Each chief is a decendant of an earlier chief. This book started out so bad, I almost put it down, but I hate starting a book and not finishing it, so I struggled through to the end. A few of the stories were actually pretty good, but they didn't make up for the ones that weren't.

1998-11-04 | Helpful Votes: 1 | Rating: 2

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The Simbul's Gift (Forgotten Realms: The Nobles, Book 6)

Description

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Customer Reviews

What was this book about??????
I have read this book so many times and every time I shake my head and wonder where it is going and what is it about??? Even the title makes no sense,what was her gift??? Her name to the zulkir at the end??? what was that about??? that horse she wanted to give to Elminster??? Why would a 600+year old sorceress give a 1150+year old wizard a stupid horse for his birthday??? The bottom line is that the book makes no sense whatsoever.Why did she dream up some plot about red wizards when it doesn't go anywhere???

Another Lynn Abbey book that makes no sense,but at least it wasn't as bad as that stupid pitiful attempt to write about Hamanu of Urik

2001-05-02 (Logan, UT United States) | Helpful Votes: 1 | Rating: 2

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An overall good book but with a few problems.
The book was very good. I especially liked the fact that a book finally went inside the personality of the Simbul, one of my favorite characters. Really the only dissapointing part of the book was that the ending wasn't much of an ending. It left a lot of unanswered questions.

1999-04-12 | Helpful Votes: 2 | Rating: 4

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A great book
When I bought this book I assumed it would be terrible, but I found out that I rather liked it. I probably am biased but I thought the book was a very interesting book for a couple of reasons. First it offers the first and only look at the Simbul in a novel. Her personality as depicted certainly was nothing near what I imagined! She was portrayed as much more..human than I had thought her to be. The second factor is the interesting plot involving the Yuir elves and their gods. It is a very excellent book indeed.

1998-10-20 | Helpful Votes: 6 | Rating: 5

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another book that noone needs...
Mmh...I really do not like these all powerful invincible characters like Elminster, the Seven Sisters and the Simbul, being one of them. It is just too easy for them to destroy hordes of powerful "evil" enemies with a mere thought. The story about these half-elves was quite interesting, but not captivating and I somehow felt, there was some kind of solution missing at the end. If you don't collect the FR books, you can skip this one.

1998-09-25 | a-n_onym | Helpful Votes: 2 | Rating: 2

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It was not what I thought
After having read several source books to the Forgotten Realms campaing setting, I must say that I hardly even recognise the Witch- Queen of Aglarond. The book was entertaining but itdid not seem to fit with the campaign. Now I have to decide which Simbul I like the best...

1998-05-19 (Mjölby, Sweden) | Helpful Votes: 1 | Rating: 3

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