The Witch Goddess (Horseclans #9)

Rating:
Summary: The Female of the Species - More Deadly than the Male
Review: The Horseclans novels are like olives -- you either acquire a taste for them or you don't. They're not great literature, but if you get caught up in the saga, it won't matter. You'll want more, and there are a lot of them! The Coming of the Horseclans is a good place to start. As Adams continued writing, he started revisiting the same adventures from the point of view of different characters, which results in some redundancy. That's why I gve this book a rating of only 2. It's more valuable for filling in details of the apocalyptic world and its characters than as a great story.

The tale is set in precataclysmic North America, approximately 600 years after nuclear war, man-induced plagues, and worldwide seismic disturbances have thrown humanity into a brutal pre-industrial age. Much of California and the East Coast have sunk into the sea. What remains of the eastern states, from Canada to Georgia, has been settled by waves of dark-skinned and dark-haired adventurers from Europe (Spaniards, Greeks, Armenians, etc.) called the Ehleenee. While these early settlers were initially rugged fighters in the mold of Athenians and Spartans, over the centuries they became little more than decadent dictators ruling over downtrodden peasant farmers.

As background (see The Coming of the Horseclans), Milo of Morai, a mutant immortal from the 20th century, has led the nomadic horseclan tribes from the high plains of North America to the Atlantic Ocean. Since, unbeknownst to the clanspeople, earthquakes long ago sent their original home, Ehlai (Los Angeles), to the bottom of the ocean, he has convinced them that an ancient prophecy commands them to travel east, rather than west. After a migration that consumes nearly 20 years and many fierce battles with Ehleenee, they have formed a loose confederation and settled near the sea.

This ninth book in the series details the adventures of Erica Arenstein and her small party of pre-Holocaust scientists, who are trying to retrieve a 20th century technological treasure trove. They are part of a group of humans who have survived the centuries by repeatedly stealing new bodies to house their minds and who have their own designs for ruling existing civilization. Erica is pitted agains another key character in the series, Bili of Morguhn, one of the stalwart leaders of the horseclans' light cavalry. To complicate the hostilities, Erica has become unwillingly allied with a degenerate group of cannibals, the Ganics, actually the remnants of 20th century organic farmers. (Think ecologist mixed with interbred hillbilly.)

These books are primarily military science fiction and not for the faint of heart. There are lots of vivid descriptions of battles, torture and ghastly wounds. The prose is spare and very action-oriented. While not a fan of military fiction in general, I was sucked in by the animal component of the series. The clanspeople have the ability to communicate telepathically with their specially bred war horses and with a mutant wild cat, the "prairie cat," which sounds like a blend of puma, sabertooth, and cheetah. I'm also obssessed with translating the terminology of the time -- it becomes a kind of game -- figuring out what words like Ehlai (LA), Pitzburk (Pittsburg), Karaleenos (Carolinas), Neekohl (Nicole), Kuk (Cook), Hwallis (Wallace) all mean. If you like Larry Niven's Man-Kzinn Wars series, you might enjoy the horseclans saga.