Lion's Blood

Rating:
Summary: Is ths Science Fiction?
Review: I thoroughly enjoyed this book! Although the gendre is sci fi, I found it more along the lines of an epic/saga type. The characters were colorful and realistic. The irony of slaves and slavemaster's racial mix being reversed, is something that will have you wondering who is good and who is evil.

The begining of the book is tedious, but if you can get past the first couple of chapters and the strange vocabulary, it 's well worth the time and energy. Steve Barnes is a masterful storyteller. He did his homework in order to make this story as credible as possible.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent!
Review: I was first exposed to Steven Barnes when I inherited my uncle's book collection in 1987 and, in that collection, I found "Streetlethal" and "The Kundalini Equation." Since then I have read many of his books ... and been impressed with each and every one. I had the chance to meet and talk with Steven and his wife in 2000 and it was a pleasure.

On to the specifics about "Lion's Blood." It was excellent. Well written and enthralling. I couldn't put it down. It was the kind of book where there really were no "bad guys" ... all of the characters were richly developed with amirable and detestable qualities. Each character's (or group's) perspective was brought out in such a way that it was understandable. Even if I didn't morally agree with the actions that those perspectives led to. The book sucks you into the world and gives you enough of a look into the various mindsets that you're hard-pressed to pigeonhole any character or group of characters. At times you like (or at least respect) each and at other times you loathe them. Makes for a great intellectual roller coaster.

Mike

Rating:
Summary: Spectacular
Review: I've been a fan of Steven Barnes for years. However in "Lion's Blood", Barnes has created his masterpiece. The story centers around two young men, Aidin and Kai, each about the same age and each from different cultures. In this Alternate history Whites are slaves, and Blacks are the masters. One of the themes that you will see when reading Barnes solo novels (and also in some of his joint efforts) is the development of trust between people of different races. They learn to find the commonalities between them instead of focusing on the differences.
Barnes manages to decry slavery and point out the inherent evil of it without condemning those on either side as completely evil, or completely good.
Bravo Mr. Barnes.
It's been a long time since Steven has published a solo novel. This extremely well written and well researched novel is well worth the wait.

Rating:
Summary: The book he was meant to write
Review: I've followed Steve Barnes' writing for many years. He always dealt with interesting subjects in a very readable way. But with Lion's Blood he has finally hit his stride. A lot of the themes he's dealt with over his career - conflict, combat, race, and identity are still there. If anything they are more prominent.

But there's a difference this time. The writing is better. The pages keep turn themselves a little more eagerly. The themes are dealt with in a more mature and sophisticated fashion. In short, he's arrived.

When I first heard this book was going to be written I had fears that it would be a simple inversion of today's world. These fears were groundless. Barnes has done his homework. He's made a plausible, well-researched world in which to explore his ideas. It's someplace else that really is someplace else. But somewhere that we could have ended up.
I look forward eagerly to the next book

Rating:
Summary: "Lion's Blood": written from the heart
Review: I've read almost everything Steve Barnes has written, and he has always been a source of provocative and well-thought out ideas. Lately his writing skills have caught up to his thinking skills. The characters in "Lion's Blood" are the most compelling and convincing I have ever seen him write. But perhaps more important for an alternate-history novel, the world of "Lion's Blood" is equally well-developed. The amount of detail packed into these pages will create vivid sounds, sights, smells and textures in all but the most crippled of imaginations.

Clearly the subject is one that has engaged Steve Barnes' passion. We can only hope for more to come.

Rating:
Summary: A new classic
Review: If there's any justice at all in the world of publishing, Steven Barnes' Lion's Blood is destined to become a classic in the field. It's a superbly written book that sweeps you up, and carries you into a believeable alternate America, ruled by Africans, where white Europeans wound up as slaves. It rings all the familiar changes of a traditional slave narrative, the capture, the middle passage, sale, separation of families, and the endless striving for freedom, without being predictable, clichéed, or boring.

Most importantly, Barnes writes with an incredible generosity of spirit. Given the lasting scars that slavery has left both black and white races, it would be easy to be petty, and slanted in the telling, but Barnes never yields to that temptation.

This is an important book, a vibrant and alive book, but also a book that challenges many assumptions. There's real pain here, but also real joy. If you're looking for a lightweight read, go somewhere else. If you're looking for deeper human truth, read Lion's Blood.

Rating:
Summary: an epic novel of Human Courage
Review: In his latest novel, Lion's Blood, Mr. Barnes explores humanity and the human condition in the exceptionally thoughtful way he has become known for. This book has something for everyone, with exciting battles, romantic interludes and extreme personal challenges.

Through the depth of his characters, Mr. Barnes really gets at a working definition of HUMAN COURAGE, and what it means to take personal responsibility, while existing in a world that does not seem to ALLOW personal responsibility. Men and women will both enjoy the strength of the characters.

He creates a rich and plausible society, where black masters barter with the lives of white slaves. This fictional history allows us to grapple with questions like, "How could we let this happen?", "What can one person do to change the way things are?" and "How do we go forward from here?"

A must-read for anyone, with a strong message about race relations & diversity that is a pleasure to get!

Rating:
Summary: Wonderful Epic -- Bilalistan or Bust!
Review: LION'S BLOOD by Steven Barnes is an epic tale of the colonization of America comparable to John Jake's sagas of the 1970s, except its alternate history. Barnes gives us well-rounded characters that are human and not just characters. The story is enveloping and intriguing. The extrapolation of alternate history is amazing and often times amusing. He puts in tidbits of history that parallel our history, but not quite. Really great how he works them in to the story, but the history and the characters work together to form a real and true world. Barnes is a wonderful stylists and he is able to bring his world to life. I am so happy that there are still writers out there that can tell a story. I loved everything about this novel from its dealing with Sufism, Islam, cultures and slavery in a very unique way.
Read LION'S BLOOD; go to the New World that is very, very new. You won't regret it.

Rating:
Summary: A Close Mirror
Review: Lion's Blood is a satire of race relations in this country in the latter half of the 19th century. On one hand, it is an exercise in polemics and rhetoric, but on the other, it tells an engrossing story of two boys who have a complex master-slave relationship. In many ways, it resembles an inverted Roots.

In ancient times, many Greeks, including Socrates, were attracted to Egypt, especially after a wounded Alexander claimed the throne of the Pharaoh. Alexandrian Egypt, allied with Kush, established trade routes up the Nile and into southern Africa. When Rome became a commercial and military threat, Egypt and Kush allied with Carthage and defeated Rome, which sank in obscurity. When Islam arose, Bilal, a former Abyssinian slave, saved Muhammad's daughter, Fatima, from the Prophet's enemies, carried her to Abyssinia, and married her. Fatima become an impassioned leader, second only to the Prophet himself, leading her followers on the jihad that established Islam throughout Africa.

When a plague swept through the Egyptian royalty, an Abyssinian gained the throne, giving both empires a black royalty. The plague also swept Europe, killing the bulk of the population, and leaving only small villages and scattered barbarian tribes. In 1863, the Egyptian and Abyssinian empires are the two superpowers. Egypt has colonies in Bilalistan, corresponding to the Gulf states from Alabama to southeastern Texas, but most colonists are Abyssinian or Zulu. It's just a matter of time before the colonists declare their own independence.

Aiden is an Irish boy who, along with his mother and sister, has been captured by Norse raiders. They are sold in Andalus and shipped across the Atlantic to Bilalistan. Some die, the survivors are sick, and all feel they are in hell. In Bilalistan, Aiden and his mother are sold to Dar Kush, but his sister Nessa is not. When they reach Dar Kush, the estate of the Wakil Abu Ali Jallaleddin ibn Rashid al Kush, Aiden meets the second son, Kai, and aids him in a prank that gets him switched. Kai saves him from most of the punishment and selects him as his footboy. Despite their difference in status, the boys develop a strong friendship. However, situations keep happening that bring the friendship in conflict with the master-slave relation.

This story does not pull many punches in describing the effects of chattel slavery on both master and slave. However, it dwells on the worst aspects of that institution only in passing. Barnes points out the almost universal occurrence of slavery in ancient Europe and Asia. In fact, the Norse are only slightly more energetic in slave taking in this story than their historical counterparts; the Norse role in this book parallels the role of the Zulu and other warrior tribes in Africa. Barnes is particularly harsh in his portrayal of the major Zulu character, Shaka, whom Barnes probably modeled on the historical Shaka, but the other Zulus are only slightly less fierce.

Of course, Barnes had to make choices in creating his mirror image of our timeline. He choose Islam as the major religion, probably because we know more about it, but the chances of Muhammed becoming the Prophet of Allah would seem to be rather slim. After all, Muhammed drew from Christian as well as Judaic and Zoroastrian sources for his Holy Book. In this timeline, there would be no Constantine to sanction Christianity and to establish Constantinople, there would be no Byzantine Empire to influence the Arabs, hold down the Persians, and stop the tide of Islam into Eastern Europe, and thus Christianity would be a minor religion in the Near East.

The worship of Baal, however, would likely be even more pervasive with the growth of a Carthage unhampered by Rome. Slavery in Phoenicia and her colonies was much worse than that portrayed in Lion's Blood; it involved human sacrifice, among other horrors, and was more like that practiced by the Aztecs. The slavery in this book is more a matter of economics and greed like that of the latifundia of Rome and the plantations of the American South, large commercial farms which had few mechanized tools and thus needed large numbers of human laborers. Slavery was a opportunistic solution practiced in many places and times; for example, the Nazis practiced such slavery and rumors of slavers persist around Indonesia.

This is Barnes first effort at inventing a whole new world -- well, timeline -- and it is great. The scope is larger, although the cast is still kept comfortably small. The plot is predictable, but intentionally so. He succeeded in making me see slavery from the eyes of a master and a slave and I didn't like it either way. He has the best siege sequence since the Alamo, but with survivors to tell the story; his equivalent to the "cross the line" speech was a corker! At the end, the finale was a foregone conclusion, yet still an uplifting experience.

Barnes has been growing as a writer and this novel shows his versatility. While this book may bring wider fame, I hope he also keeps writing stories with less scope but more innovative plots. Recommended to all Barnes fans and anyone who has thought seriously of the effects of slavery on this country and it's peoples.

Rating:
Summary: Richly realized alternate history
Review: Lion's Blood is an alternate history novel taking place in (what would be) the 1800's in America. Except this is an America colonized by Africans who, after Hannibal's defeat of Rome, went on to become the major economic force in the West instead of Europe. Specifically, the novel is about a young Irish boy, Aidan, and the son of the man who owns him, Kai.

Barnes obviously did a lot of work when he created this world--the history, cultures, even music. It all shows. The world is richly textured and well-realized. And that's just the backdrop. I appreciated the depth in which he thought this all out, and found myself feel proud of the alternate history he conceived for Africans. But I also appreciated that the concept was well thought out and didn't fall into making the argument that if black people ran the world it would somehow be a better, happy place. It's different, of course, but it isn't an un-thought out bash of European culture.

This background adds to an excellently crafted story. We see the world through the eyes of the slaves and the slavers. And each character is well realized and multifaceted. No one ever falls into clichéd categories of 'purely evil' or 'purely good'. The emotional bond between Aidan and Kai holds the story together with ease. At each turn I felt deeply for both of them and identified with their struggles and conflicts. It wasn't hard for me to slip into the world of the story or into the heads of the people who inhabited it.

This is a must read for people who enjoy speculative fiction and alternate history in particular. But I am also going to recommend it to anyone who enjoys fiction dealing with African-American issues, SF fans or not. I think this book could end up being as important as Octavia Butler's Kindred.

If you plan on reading Lion's Blood, I also recommend Heather Alexander's CD Insh'Allah, The Music of "Lion's Blood." The music is beautiful on its own, but in combination with the book it will have deeper meaning.