Customer Reviews

The Breaking of the Northwall

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I have kept this book and its 6 successors in my family library for many years. My daughter recently announced that the series was the most enjoyable she read as a teenager, a comment which caused her younger brother to begin to read the series, and me to reread them. Almost two decades after encountering them the first time, this was again an enjoyable read.

Arriving at this review opportunity was the result of searching for possible successors to the series. Unfortunately, none seem to exist.

The series is well-written, with good character development. The reader immediately identifies with the rugged individualism of the book's central characters, and mourns their eventual passing. An enjoyable diversion is to try to determine, on a current map of the United States, the sites mentioned in the book, and to determine how and why they come to be different in 31st century Urstadge.

I recommend this series for teenage children and adult readers. Although there is violence, it is not graphic, and there is no gratuitous sex. There is an emphasis upon values which are no longer as clearly evident in America as they once were -- a designed irony for these books set in the post-3000 millenium.

You will want to read the books in the order of their printing, and if possible to read them in tandem with your children:

Book 1: The Breaking of Northwall

Book 2: The Ends of the Circle

Book 3: The Dome in the Forest

Book 4: The Fall of the Shell

Book 5: An Ambush of Shadows

Book 6: The Song of the Axe

Book 7: The Sword of Forbearance

Initially, I had a similar experience as the reviewer from Arizona: I tried literally 3 times to read this book but thought it was just too obtuse to figure out. But because Prof. Williams was my wife's English professor and advisor at college, and she held him in such high regard, I took another try. This time I stayed with it long enough and found that though the beginning didn't offer the quick action thrill of the start of the Star Wars movies, it led to a work that was far more substantial and satisfying in the long run than most anything else I've read.

I tend to like book series and rate them among my favorites because of character development, well developed and intriguing story lines or both. The Pelbar Cycle delivers both and is on the short list of books I've read more than once because of the messages and actions they contain. I had an opportunity to tell Prof. Williams how much I enjoyed this series, and why, and he seemed surprised that someone would talk to him about it. Humble man, very good writer.

My oldest son has read the series and liked it, now my youngest son is reading it and I may just read along with him so we can compare notes.

This book the the first in a series name The Pelbar Cycle. There are two reviews here already that talk about William's subject material, and I only wanted to add that he occasionally writes as a poet would. His discriptive, evocative style is one which draws the reader into his creation in both the physical and the emotional. Some of his characters possess an unassuming strength that I have not encountered in other author's work, and I feel very strongly that Williams has been shelved by other readers because of the genre he has chosen. Read The Pelbar Cycle, its seven books avoid repetition but maintain continunity. They are an extremely talented piece of work.

This book does its best to avoid the tired cliches and overused ideas of this otherwise overdone setting.

About a thousand years after a nuclear holocaust, the tiny populations remaining in North America are growing large enough that contact is more and more frequent. All of these societies have their own characteristics based on the region of America they originally came from, and in one case at least, the writings of a visionary leader. All aren't much beyond late medieval levels of technology.

Into this comes one man, Jestak. His odd ability to survive against impossible odds (even when others sometimes die around him), and his ability to make others feel indebted to him, allow him to forge a chain of personal relationships with individuals from societies otherwise hostile to his own. Needless to say, this doesn't sit well with his elders.

The book covers the events of Jestak's life over a number years, and how those events weave together to change the socio-political nature of life in what was the Mississppi River valley.

This book (and the entire series) is excellent. I wish more had been written.

One thing to consider when starting to read is the time during which the series was written and published. The cold war was still in effect and the threat of global nuclear devastation was still prominent in the consciousness of a great many people.

This series explores a possible future several decades (or centuries) following such a cataclysm.

Put aside preconceived notions and enjoy the adventure. If you don't get all of the details at first, keep reading and everything will fall into place as you go.

I believe you'll appreciate the journey.

Originally published over 20 years ago by the Del Ray imprint, this book and its sequels have now been reissued as trade paperbacks by the University of Nebraska Press. Set in the midwest of the Mississippi Valley (the Heart River of the book), millenia in the future after a nuclear war, this book depicts the emergence of new civilizations controlling large swathes of North America. The author develops several different urban and tribal cultures, all with distinctive features, uses a bildungsroman type of plot to expose the readers to the various cultures, and then ties them together with an adventure story - romance involving inter-cultural warfare. Written decently and with a good degree of imagination. This is a stand alone book. I suspect the author wrote this book and after its success developed the rest of the series which are more interdependent. The University of Nebraska Press deserves considerable credit for bringing out relatively obscure but worthy books like this one.

Here's a highly enthusiastic plug for Paul O Williams who wrote only two things:

* the 7 book Pelbar Cycle.
* The Gifts of the Gorboduc Vandal, since republished with a sequel in an omnibus volume called Man from Far Cloud.

Gifts is the only book that I've ever read more than a couple times, and it remains among my favorite novels of all-time. The Pelbar Cycle IMO is a highly underappreciated work, with highly original sequels that explore various aspects of that world. In essence, I think Book 1 can be read as a standalone but the rest of the books form a unified story.

Williams was not just your usual churn 'um out fantasy/sci-fi hack (sorry - I didn't feel this way before in my 20s but as I've gotten older I have far less tolerance for this stuff than I used to). He was an english professor (as the new introduction to the trade paperback Breaking of Northwall reveals) who happened to get an idea for book and submitted it, unsolicited, as a completed work to Del-Rey. They accepted, and the series then followed.

Let me add one little note - these are mature works. Pelbar (and Gorboduc, which essentially has many of the same elements in a new setting) is not only one of my all-time favorite series but also my father's. There is a depth to some of these characters that could have only come from the author's own inner strength, intelligence, and maturity. In essence, though I don't personally know Mr. Williams I wish I did. I think he'd be a terrific friend.

The Pelbar series is upbeat and hopeful while realistically portraying human struggles. The many major characters are complex and well developed.

This is one of the best series of any genre that I have ever read and is definitely on the regular "read again" list.

I'm sure everyone reading this has a certain book, or series of books, that they first read in their youth, and look back on with great fondness. For me, that series is the Pelbar Cycle, and it starts with The Breaking of Northwall.

Originally published in 1981, and written by Paul O. Williams, The Breaking of Northwall is the first of seven books set about 1000 years after a world-wide apocalypse that has reduced the peoples of the mid-western United States into roaming bands of warring tribes, and the people known as the Pelbar, who live in great walled cities on what they call the Heart River.

Book One tells the story of Jestak, a Pelbar who, through various adventures, forms strong friendships with members of the Pelbars' enemies, the Sentani, and the Shumai. Those relationships become the seed on which much broader ties grow between the groups, particularly when confronted with a common enemy.

I don't know what the literary term is, but you'll all recognize the cliche of the seemingly-meek character, thought a coward because they're not overly aggressive and would prefer to avoid a fight if they're able, but who when forced, can more than defend themselves. Well, this book is chock-full of those types of situations, mostly in regard to Jestak, but also the entire Pelbar people as well. If you get off on those kinds of things, like I do, you'll like this book.

On the post-apocalyptic side of things, there aren't a lot of ruins and such, but it is interesting to hear the names of the people and places and try to figure out how they relate to our current time. (If I remember right, there's a glossary at the end of book two that explains a lot of the backstory.) The characters know little about the "time of fire" but through Jestak's travels, they start to assemble clues that show that all of the tribes in the area were originally one people. In this book, gunpowder is rediscovered, and in the later books, there are other advances like the rediscovery of the steam engine.

With the possible exception of The Stand, the books of the Pelbar Cycle probably did more to cultivate my love of post-apocalyptic fiction than any other book. I'll always remember them as one of my favorites, and I'm glad I decided to give them another read. I think that if I read it for the first time now, I'd still think it was a great book, and if you're able to track down a copy, I hope that you'll think so too.

The Pelbar Cycle are books that stick with you for a lifetime. I first read them in college almost twenty years ago and I just recently read the series again for the third time. The books are fun, adventurous, and a great summer read, but they also have an interesting moral center that makes me remember pieces of the narrative years later.