Bones of the Past [Mass Market Paperback]

Holly Lisle (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 1, 1993

The City of the First Folk was an Archaeological Find -- and a Lurking Horror

Never dig up the bones of the past -- because the past never dies, and it resents being buried.... A tiny band of outcast children.... A young girl marked for sacrifice.... An ancient scholar.... A head-hunting mage.... An insane historian.... And the discovery of a lost city that brings them all together -- only to discover that the deadly bones of the past are alive and stalking them!

Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 336 pages
• Publisher: Baen; First Edition edition (March 1, 1993)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0671721607
• ISBN-13: 978-0671721602
• Product Dimensions: 6.6 x 4.1 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,790,099 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Holly Lisle has been writing fiction professionally since 1991, when she sold FIRE IN THE MIST, the novel that won the Compton Crook Award for best first novel. She has to date published more than thirty novels and several comprehensive writing courses. She is currently working on the second book in her Cadence Drake series.

Holly had an ideal childhood for a writer...which is to say, it was filled with foreign countries and exotic terrains, alien cultures, new languages, the occasional earthquake, flood, or civil war, and one story about a bear, which follows:

"So. Back when I was ten years old, my father and I had finished hunting ducks for our dinner and were walking across the tundra in Alaska toward the spot on the river where we'd tied our boat. We had a couple miles to go by boat to get back to the Moravian Children's Home, where we lived.

"My father was carrying the big bag of decoys and the shotgun; I was carrying the small bag of ducks.

"It was getting dark, we could hear the thud, thud, thud of the generator across the tundra, and suddenly he stopped, pointed down to a pie-pan sized indentation in the tundra that was rapidly filling with water, and said, in a calm and steady voice, "That's a bear footprint. From the size of it, it's a grizzly. The fact that the track is filling with water right now means the bear's still around."

"Which got my attention, but not as much as what he said next.


" 'I don't have the gun with me that will kill a bear,' he told me. 'I just have the one that will make him angry. So if we see the bear, I'm going to shoot him so he'll attack me. I want you to run to the river, follow it to the boat, get the boat back home, and tell everyone what happened.'

"The rest of our walk was very quiet. He was, I'm sure, listening for the bear. I was doing my damnedest to make sure that I remembered where the boat was, how to get to it, how to start the pull-cord engine, and how to drive it back home, because I did not want to let him down.

"We were not eaten by a bear that night...but neither is that walk back from our hunt for supper a part of my life I'll ever forget.

"I keep that story in mind as I write. If what I'm putting on paper isn't at least as memorable as having a grizzly stalking my father and me across the tundra while I was carrying a bag of delicious-smelling ducks, it doesn't make my cut."

Cheerfully,
Holly Lisle

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars An author with an original style., March 25, 2000

By 

AlleyWriter.com - See all my reviews

This review is from: Bones of the Past (Mass Market Paperback)

This story is wonderful. The plotting and characterization unfold with freshness and originality, no opportunity to create tension is wasted, and emotional content never seems contrived. Seven Fingered Fat Girl is a marvelous character. In the early going she often carries the book, keeping the reader compelled to read on, just to see what will happen to her and Four Winds Band. Choufa and the tale of the sharsha frequently serve the same role. If not for these characters and plot lines holding my interest so keenly, those involving Medwind and Roba would have had me setting the book aside soon after opening it. Until the characters come together as a group, about halfway through, these last two character's and their tales are just plain boring. Holly Lisle does a fantastic job of limiting descriptive passages and time spent on scene setting. But these otherwise wonderful traits have a drawback. Readers unfamiliar with this world may feel lost early on. This sense of `where am I, and where am I being lead' is compounded by two things. First, there is no obvious story question. Nothing that lets the reader say, "I wonder if .........." and points the way to the story's end goal. Second, Lisle's odd mix of an `ancient' world coupled with modern thinking and terminology (like "nested subroutines") takes time to get used to. Her ability to maintain a driving level of tension is wonderful, and she isn't shy about including compelling and unusual subject matter (for a work of Fantasy) like; mass child abuse, abandonment and neglect; and adolescent sex. She does an excellent job of showing us what's happening in these cases, and throughout the story, without ever resorting to boring passages of exposition. Her knack for drawing emotions from her readers is good, but inconsistent.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Once again, a triumph!, April 11, 2000

By 

Jennifer Mottram - See all my reviews

This review is from: Bones of the Past (Mass Market Paperback)

For those who fell in love with the characters from the first book, enjoy this sequel which follows into a strange and mystical world that's both fun and spooky. Holly Lisle creates these places like they're just over the next hill... you could get there if you just tried hard enough. Certainly they're real enough to be on a map! Highly recommended reading.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars yet another great book by a fantastic author!, December 15, 2000

By 

"gamemeister3" (Seattle, WA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Bones of the Past (Mass Market Paperback)

I have pretty much all of the books in this particular series and I have to say,it's a well-written book.The characters seem to all steal the book in their own rights.From Faia and Kirtha to Medwind,to the somewhat infamous kiddie tribe bunch,the Tagnu. It also has enough villians(or are they??)to shake a stick at.Lessons and morals are found throughout a well thought out book.Kudos!!