Saint Leibowitz and the Wild Horse Woman

Rating:
Summary: Love in a crazy future
Review: If you loved the post-apocolyptic world of 'Canticle for Leibowitz', you have to read this. It is too bad Miller did not produce more. I loved 'Canticle' and had to read this sequel. This story takes place about 70 years after the middle section in 'Canticle' (Fiat Lux), and delves deeply into the politics and religion of the fictional future, much more so than its predecessor. Actually, the result reminded me more of 'Dune' than 'Canticle'--the nomadic tribal people rising up against the controlling empire and the religious people moving between the two, stirring up trouble. Where 'Canticle' had the broad view, basically taking us from nuclear devastation to nuclear devastation as history repeats itself, this book focuses very closely on a few compelling characters serving a papacy in exile for a few years during during an era when technology hovered somewhere around that of our 19th century. And Brother Blacktooth is one of the finest characters in literature that I have read in a long time--trying to find love (both God's and woman's) in a crazy and confused time.

I have removed one star for length. I cannot help thinking that if Miller had lived to publish this, it would have been more concise. Still, this book demonstrates what a storyteller Miller was.

Rating:
Summary: A definite Can't Read
Review: Impenetrable. Unconvincing. And Thoroughly misrepresented in the mainstream media by reviewers who have no appreciation for speculative fiction. Nuts.

Rating:
Summary: Saint Miller and the Wild Horse Woman
Review: In a recent demonstration, the professor passed around a print of Van Gogh's "Crows Over a Wheatfield" then asked for our feelings on the work. The responses varied widely. "It's a beautiful painting," someone said. "I wish I could be there."
To which the professor smiled and asked innocently, "would you?"
To all of us who are up on our art history, "Crows Over a Wheatfield" was the last painting Van Gogh made before his untimely death. Knowledge of this casts the painting in a vastly different light. No longer is it a pretty field with pretty crows; no longer is the focus of the painting the contrast between yellow wheat and black crows. The painting comes to symbolize so much more, and one cannot help but shiver as the crows, now cast in a decidedly sinister light, burst out from among the high stalks of wheat.
Though the biographical approach to literature tends to get panned by critics and professors, sometimes, as in the case of "Crows", knowledge of the artist's life is necessary to understanding the full breadth of the artist's vision. Such a manner, I believe, must be adopted when approaching SLATHWHM.
I won't go into biographical detail here; there is some floating around out there, but not nearly enough to do this fascinating man justice. I saw one reader who called this "the closest thing Miller ever wrote to an autobiography" and I would agree. The sufferings of Blacktooth seem to parallel Miller's own anguish a little too closely to be coincidence. Miller, himself is one of the most fascinating characters to haunt the sci-fi scene and SLATWHW is alone worth picking up for the haunting picture it presents of the man who wrote it. SLATWHW is a looong read, but a worthwhile one. Every chapter enhanced my understanding of the fascinating world Miller created first with ACFL while every page had some nifty sentence that made me go "aha!". I can understand while some juvenile and evidently prepubescent, readers could come to dislike the work, but simply put: this is the single most intellectually stimulating work of sci-fi I have ever read.
Besides the strength of Miller's prose, the characters are what really make the work shine. Blacktooth, Brownpony, AEdrea... these characters are infinitely more believable than Legolas, Gimli, or Gandalf. And they stand up to harsh literary examination too.
I could go on for hours about this book, but I fear I'll reach my 1000 word limit. I'll end with this: pick this book up! You'll be glad you did.

Rating:
Summary: Thoughtful and Complex, like Walter Miller Himself
Review: In _A Canticle for Leibowitz_, the Abbey of St. Leibowitz is the hero, standing fast through the ages of darkness as well as the ages of light. It becomes a concretion of human fortitude in the face of a world in which human beings often have no control over their own fates. However, in _St. Leibowitz and the Wild Horse Woman_, Miller give us for a hero Blacktooth, a contradictory man filled with ambiguousness about his place in a world where, once again, people cannot always control their destinies. Blacktooth is all at once rebellious and subservient, worldly and spiritual, passionate and stoic; in short, he is a man much like Walter Miller himself. The turbulent world which the contemplative monk finds himself thrown into, filled with mutually hostile entities, each attempting to rule as they see fit, becomes a metaphor for Blacktooth's struggle to overcome his own dark forces. His aspirations are frustrated by the turmoil to which he unwittingly contributes and, once set in motion cannot be halted. He becomes a pawn in the machinations of Brownpony and others, as well as succumbing to his own weaknesses. In addition to modeling the main character on himself, Miller creates his world in the image of the late Middle Ages, obviously a period that he would have felt at home in, with all of its contradictions. Like Blacktooth's age, it was filled with glorious genius and ignorance, immortality and death, cataclysmic upheaval and the restoration of order to an unruly world. This book is truly the closest Walter Miller ever came to writing an autobiography, but it is more than that. It is his entire world, which may explain why it took him so many years to write it. It is his legacy, his comment that while our technology may be more advanced, we are just as powerless as Blacktooth to control our world, which in Miller's books perishes twice by our own hand. Perhaps then, it is with irony that he refers to our civilization as the _Magna Civitas_.

Rating:
Summary: Disappointed and Frustrated
Review: Like most buyers, I was so enchanted with the original "Canticle for Leibowitz" that I pounced upon this pseudo-sequel. I did not realize that the book had been completed by another writer after Miller's death, though that wouldn't have stopped me...

And I cannot say that the presence of another hand is the actual cause of this book's failure to live up to the standard set by "Canticle." Not only is the current volume one pointless fight scene after another, each character seems to have a minimum of three names.

These monikers are interchanged apparently at random rather than with reference to circumstances. For example, a cardinal might sensibly be called by his Latinate name in New Rome; but on the same page, he might be called by his tribal name AND a nickname AND a Norse-based name. Who can keep up with all this? If a character truly needs four names, can't he use his Latin name in New Rome, his tribal name among the tribe, and so forth? It's not a cast of thousands, really, merely hundreds with at least a trio of names apiece!

I don't know what Miller was trying to accomplish with this volume, and I suspect his collaborater didn't know, either, though I appreciate the labor of love it was for him to take such a difficult manuscript and try to make it saleable. It was a labor of love for me to stick with this one to the last page, too, and I have to tell you -- I feel jilted in a big way. This isn't the St. Leibowitz I knew and loved... <sigh> Anyone who enjoyed the first book will be saddened by this one, I think.

Rating:
Summary: Too quick to judge
Review: Long, complicated, misled, bloated, massive. These all describe Walter M. Miller's long-awaited sequel to the revolutionary novel "A Canticle For Leibowitz." However, it is too easy and too hasty to discredit "Saint Laibowitz and the Wild Horse Woman" simply on these merits alone. The awe that surrounds ACFL comes only in part from the story itself. Most of its sense of wonder comes from what it represented and who wrote it. Miller had converted to catholicsm a few years before the book was published. His hopes for christianity are prevalent throughout the book, particularly since only the righteous survive the second flame deluge at the end of the novel. In SLATWHM, most of his hopefulness is gone. Blacktooth, who is obviously Miller, has seen that the forces that drive his religion are no different than those that drive our tyrants and despots. Unable to reconcile religious politics with his christian spirituality, Blacktooth ultimately abandons the church. Now, it seems that (according to Miller) not only is the secular world cyclical, but the religious as well. Those who would read SLATWHM for the purpose of being merely entertained should expect to be disappointed. It is rather a study of Miller's belief system and its subsequent deconstruction. The novel took seven years to write, but I expect that the development of Blacktooth/Miller's worldview extend back much further than that. SLATWHM should be read in the same frame of mind that one should read Philip K. Dick's "Valis." The reader knows that Dick was insane when he wrote it, Dick knew he was insane when he wrote it, and the central character Horselover Fat (an extension of Dick into the novel like Blacktooth for Miller) knows that he is insane. Nevertheless, he is able to treat the subject with considerable clarity. Sad, and convincing, SLATWHM seems like less of a novel than a documentary of Miller's decline into incurable despair. Bisson's ending is adequate for the nove! l, but not accurate. Miller wrote the final words when he told a 911 operator that there was a dead man in his front yard.

Rating:
Summary: Too quick to judge
Review: Long, complicated, misled, bloated, massive. These all describe Walter M. Miller's long-awaited sequel to the revolutionary novel "A Canticle For Leibowitz." However, it is too easy and too hasty to discredit "Saint Laibowitz and the Wild Horse Woman" simply on these merits alone. The awe that surrounds ACFL comes only in part from the story itself. Most of its sense of wonder comes from what it represented and who wrote it. Miller had converted to catholicsm a few years before the book was published. His hopes for christianity are prevalent throughout the book, particularly since only the righteous survive the second flame deluge at the end of the novel. In SLATWHM, most of his hopefulness is gone. Blacktooth, who is obviously Miller, has seen that the forces that drive his religion are no different than those that drive our tyrants and despots. Unable to reconcile religious politics with his christian spirituality, Blacktooth ultimately abandons the church. Now, it seems that (according to Miller) not only is the secular world cyclical, but the religious as well. Those who would read SLATWHM for the purpose of being merely entertained should expect to be disappointed. It is rather a study of Miller's belief system and its subsequent deconstruction. The novel took seven years to write, but I expect that the development of Blacktooth/Miller's worldview extend back much further than that. SLATWHM should be read in the same frame of mind that one should read Philip K. Dick's "Valis." The reader knows that Dick was insane when he wrote it, Dick knew he was insane when he wrote it, and the central character Horselover Fat (an extension of Dick into the novel like Blacktooth for Miller) knows that he is insane. Nevertheless, he is able to treat the subject with considerable clarity. Sad, and convincing, SLATWHM seems like less of a novel than a documentary of Miller's decline into incurable despair. Bisson's ending is adequate for the nove! l, but not accurate. Miller wrote the final words when he told a 911 operator that there was a dead man in his front yard.

Rating:
Summary: Many readers won't finish it is right
Review: Not anywhere near as good as A Canticle for Lebowitz. (Now THAT was a classic!) And why all the sexual and homosexual references? Any kid could have read Miller's first book, but this one is very much Adults Only. In addition, the 400+ pages amount to a pointlessly confusing future time. I did like the inclusion of a map, however.

Rating:
Summary: A church tapestry of politics and traditions
Review: One author sets murders in a medieval Roman Catholic monastery and it becomes an object of popular acclaim. Another author sets Papal politics in a post-nuclear holocaust society and it's dubbed "Sci-fi", and tossed in the remainders bin. Neither book deserved the fate it received. Miller's second look at post-nuclear North American society reveals a church divided within and still struggling with Caesar after three millennia. Popes tend to church politics with one hand and civil society with another. Somewhere in the middle are the lesser religious tending their adherents or hiding from the conflicts.

One such "lesser religious" is a monk, Blacktooth St George. A resident at the monastery long dedicated to the memory of Isaac Leibowitz, nuclear scientist and martyr, Blacktooth harbours doubts about his calling. His roots are from the Plains people and their pagan heritage conflicts with the Roman Catholic Church's ideal of monotheism and self-sacrifice. Attempting to shed the burdensome vows, Blacktooth is conscripted to the service of a lawyer cardinal. Elia Brownpony, too, is a former Plainsman, but has risen quickly in the Church hierarchy due to diplomatic talents. Diplomacy usually involves conspiracy, and Brownpony must be adept at both for he is struggling to reunite the broken church. Theology isn't the basis of the schism, however. The expanding empire of Texark has challenged the Pope's power. Brownpony, wheeling and dealing, uses Blacktooth as a major instrument.

Politics are a lesser challenge to Blacktooth than the condition of his own spirit. Beset by visions and his glands alike, this mid-thirties adult is known as Nimmy, an appellation applied to young boys. He encounters a genetic mutant, a heritage of the holocaust, whose only flaws are an uncanny insight and a rampant libido. She seduces Nimmy, who doesn't quite break his vows, and supposedly produces two children. Her image haunts him as he goes about his role of personal assistant. He's also haunted by the multi-figured image of a pope of African descent. All these conflicting visions keep Blacktooth on edge and in peril. His reconciliation of all these disparate forces are the theme of Miller's "midquel" of Canticle for Leibowitz [this story commences at the middle of Canticle, not the end].

Swirling roles of church and state and the Church and the individual formed the basis of "Canticle". Expanded and enhanced in this book, they are nicely integrated with convulsions that shook the Roman Catholic Church after the 1960s. Bisson has done Miller's original draft proud in completing a compelling story of the pressures on faith. Through a complex plot, the characters are kept realistic, if somewhat bizarre. Religious institutions, particularly under stress, are never simple, and the complexities are well handled and you never lose the threads, no matter how tightly they seem tangled. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]

Rating:
Summary: A church tapestry of politics and traditions
Review: One author sets murders in a medieval Roman Catholic monastery and it becomes an object of popular acclaim. Another author sets Papal politics in a post-nuclear holocaust society and it's dubbed "Sci-fi", and tossed in the remainders bin. Neither book deserved the fate it received. Miller's second look at post-nuclear North American society reveals a church divided within and still struggling with Caesar after three millennia. Popes tend to church politics with one hand and civil society with another. Somewhere in the middle are the lesser religious tending their adherents or hiding from the conflicts.

One such "lesser religious" is a monk, Blacktooth St George. A resident at the monastery long dedicated to the memory of Isaac Leibowitz, nuclear scientist and martyr, Blacktooth harbours doubts about his calling. His roots are from the Plains people and their pagan heritage conflicts with the Roman Catholic Church's ideal of monotheism and self-sacrifice. Attempting to shed the burdensome vows, Blacktooth is conscripted to the service of a lawyer cardinal. Elia Brownpony, too, is a former Plainsman, but has risen quickly in the Church hierarchy due to diplomatic talents. Diplomacy usually involves conspiracy, and Brownpony must be adept at both for he is struggling to reunite the broken church. Theology isn't the basis of the schism, however. The expanding empire of Texark has challenged the Pope's power. Brownpony, wheeling and dealing, uses Blacktooth as a major instrument.

Politics are a lesser challenge to Blacktooth than the condition of his own spirit. Beset by visions and his glands alike, this mid-thirties adult is known as Nimmy, an appellation applied to young boys. He encounters a genetic mutant, a heritage of the holocaust, whose only flaws are an uncanny insight and a rampant libido. She seduces Nimmy, who doesn't quite break his vows, and supposedly produces two children. Her image haunts him as he goes about his role of personal assistant. He's also haunted by the multi-figured image of a pope of African descent. All these conflicting visions keep Blacktooth on edge and in peril. His reconciliation of all these disparate forces are the theme of Miller's "midquel" of Canticle for Leibowitz [this story commences at the middle of Canticle, not the end].

Swirling roles of church and state and the Church and the individual formed the basis of "Canticle". Expanded and enhanced in this book, they are nicely integrated with convulsions that shook the Roman Catholic Church after the 1960s. Bisson has done Miller's original draft proud in completing a compelling story of the pressures on faith. Through a complex plot, the characters are kept realistic, if somewhat bizarre. Religious institutions, particularly under stress, are never simple, and the complexities are well handled and you never lose the threads, no matter how tightly they seem tangled. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]