Customer Reviews

Coming of the Storm (Contact: the Battle for America)

5 star:		(21)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

Black Shell comes from the Chickasaw tribe. He is a trader. While out walking Black Shell comes upon a beautiful woman by the name of Pearl Hand. Pearl Hand is promised to another but Black Shell convinces Pearl Hand to leave him and become his mate.

Black Shell has never known anything but peace. When the white men or "Kristianos" arrive, Black Shell becomes intrigued by them. He figures that they can learn a lot from each other. Unfortunately, Black Shell quickly discovers that the Kristianos want nothing more than to rid the land of the Indians.

Coming of the Storm is the first book I have read in a long time by this husband and wife duo of W. Michael Gear and Kathleen O'Neal Gear. After reading this book, I am now wondering why I took so long to read another book by either of these authors. Mr. and Mrs. Gear are some prolific writers. They really brought to life the story of Black Shell and Pearl Hand and the struggles they faced to bring the different tribes together. I used to have only one favorite author who I really enjoyed reading her books about Indians and that was Madeline Baker. I now have a few author favorite authors to add to the list. Thanks to Coming of the Storm. Clear some time out of your busy life and be prepared to get lost in a really good book.

For anyone interested in the orginal people, their lives and and their conflicts with the Spanish---especially in Florida--this book is excellent. It gives you day-to-day details, and brings the characters alive.
The only thing I found jarring is the utterly contemporary dialogue. Of course the authors can't write as the Native Americans spoke, and trying to make it sound like the original speech would have probably been unreadable.
But surely there's a happy medium. Many times the conversations between the two lead male and female characters sounds sort of like modern-day slang, but more stilted. It's hard to picture these two exchanging comments about their "cute" dogs, and how they find each other so "fascinating." Without taking time to find more examples, it's hard to describe.
There's nothing really wrong with it; it's certainly easy to follow. It just jolts you out of the setting.
Still, the authors' bona fides and expertise on the subject are obvious, and they write a compelling story. Hopefully more people will read it.
I certainly plan to buy the next in the series.

Coming of the Storm by W. Michael Gear and Kathleen O'Neal Gear

Black Shell and Pearl Hand, Native Americans, discover that the "Kristanos" are not quite what they seem. This story addresses the clash between the disparate cultures of Europe and America. The violence and storm is seen through the eyes of the Native Americans as opposed to the often typical portrayal seen thorough the eyes of the "heroic" invaders.

Black Shell isn't just a stereotyped noble savage but a living breathing, empathetic human being who has been raised in a culture that is certainly different that both my own and that of the now recognized barbaric invaders. The Gears are hard to categorize. I couldn't put down The Warriors of Spider series or The Forbidden Series. Both books were die in the wool, hard core, how much do I love it, SciFi. This book is good, it is a dramatically different genre but the essence of all their books is the distilled essence of humanity. The Gears depict humanity as well or better than anyone else regardless of the time or planet.

I highly recommend the book.

This is the story of Black Shell, a Chicaza (Chickasaw) trader and his love, Pearl Hand; but it is also the story of the duplicitous scum Hernando DeSoto and his travels thru southeastern North America. The story of Black Shell and Pearl Hand is a well-written page-turner, as we have come to expect from the Gears. DeSoto is, of course, the villain, and a most despicable villain he was. It is perhaps unfortunate that there is no comparable Christian term to "Muslim," which denotes one who 'walks the walk', i.e. lives according to the rules stated in the Qu'ran. One may profess Islam without being a Muslim, and one may be a Muslim without professing Islam. We might coin the term "Christianaster" for one such as DeSoto: he may have talked the talk of a follower of Jesus, but he most certainly didn't walk the walk. Granted, many other "Christian" adventurers were just as bad as DeSoto; perhaps some were even worse and some were only nearly as bad, but two wrongs, or three, or three thousand don't make a right.

The Gears have performed a valuable service to historical truth in this book, making history come alive and telling the story of DeSoto like it was, (HISTORY TEACHERS TAKE NOTE) and future volumes of this series may be expected to do likewise with other European miscreants. I am looking forward to them.

watziznayme@gmail.com

I'm a very big fan of conquest-era historical fiction. Gary Jennings' "Aztec" series is as strong as it gets. There are a smattering of other Aztec, Maya and Inca-based stories, but I've never read anything by the Gear husband and wife team who've written numerous books on early American cultures. "Coming of the Storm" is the first in a series of books focused on Hernando de Soto's exploration and conquest of the American southeast.

"Coming of the Storm" is an okay story. It's not great, but I'm not giving up hope that the series will live up to its potential. There's little enough conquest-based historical fiction and since the Gears are also trained archaeologists, I'd like to believe they'll continue doing a nice job on the "historical" part of historical fiction.

The story centers around Black Shell, a Chicaza trader who's roaming around what's now central Florida with his pack dogs. He meets the beautifully enigmatic free spirit of Pearl Hand, and after a couple of early adventures fall in love and vow to chase the Spaniards until they leave their land.

The Gears incorporate a good amount of Native American spirituality, but it borders on supernatural and, at times, takes the story from the realm of historical fiction into something more alternative-fiction or even historical science fiction.

The Spanish characters are extremely one-dimensional, and de Soto himself is in very little of the actual story. The Native American characters are drawn more boldly and with deeper characterizations, however there's very little nuance to their relationships and core characteristics. Much time is spent on the characters describing their feelings and motivations.

The Gears have written a dialogue that utilizes both an expected use of certain terminology like "thundersticks", but also an odd mix of modern terminology that would too often leave me shaking my head wondering why A-Team vernacular was making an appearance in early 16th Century Florida.

There are enough action sequences to drive the plot along at a good pace. And while 530+ pages feels long, I read the book in only a few days, in no small part because I'm not very familiar with de Soto's story and I was interested to see where the Gears would take things.

There were times when I felt the book could rate 4-stars, and times when I felt I was going to have it give it 2-stars. I'm giving "Coming of the Storm" the benefit of the doubt that these two authors know their history, and using the actual archaeological record to form the basis of their story. I definitely plan on reading the rest of the series, but I'm not feeling the urgency to buy in hardcover.

I have read many book by the Gears, and have been delighted by most of them. When this book come onto my radar I was looking forward to the same brand of realism touched by mysticism that I've come to enjoy in their writing. The subject matter of the book is quite different in that it does not follow the trials and tribulations of one particular Native American tribe or clan, but instead crosses many different groups. This in and of itself is not confusing as the authors thought it might be, but instead has the effect of leaving the story a bit groundless.

The main character is a trader who has long been away from his own nation, and he's picked up other customs and languages along the way. He is touched by power when the people living in what we now know as Florida are set upon by the Spanish who have come looking for gold. There's no gold to be had, but the Spanish are so ruthless that many of the native people simply tell them that it is north or south or somewhere else -- just to get the merciless invaders out of the picture.

The trader is touched by power and tasked with finding a solution to the problem of the Spanish, who are of course difficult to defeat given they have armor, firearms, horses, and are trained in warfare.

The book is far gorier than I remember their previous stories, which isn't a problem for me, but I found it a bit unexpected. That's not to say that the carnage isn't accurately described as what probably did happen, but that makes it all the more shocking. The Spanish, of course, are portrayed to be pitiless monsters, for the most part, and maybe that's truthful. That the native peoples of the area fought amongst themselves is discussed briefly, but somehow it is made to sound as if their brand of warfare were more honorable.

I liked the main character -- he's an everyman thrust into a difficult spot, and we as readers can identify with him. To a point, that is. I actually did not care as much about this character as I have with other characters in previous books by the Gears. Perhaps it is because he himself does not lose as much to the Spaniards as other characters in the book do; he is without a nation. Were it not for the fact that the spirit world asks him to fight, he could just take his dogs and leave the area for easier trade somewhere else.

The book makes use of flash forwards, which is fine, but it does let us know which characters survive, and that is something that I feel is best left to be played out in the course of the story. In this hardcover version of the book, there are several chapters which are all in italics, and I found it difficult to read. Perhaps a minor point when discussing a book, but it does make the story less enjoyable when I need to stop because of eye fatigue.

Overall, the story was not the page-turner I had expected, and I found the book took me a long time to read. In the end, I finished it so that I could review it. I don't think I will continue on to read the next books in the series.

Many reviewers take umbrage with the "modern" dialogue in the book. Having read many of the Gears' previous stories, I know from their introductions that the languages people spoke in at that time were just as nuanced as our modern-day English. Even people living in pre-history would have slang and many words to describe the same thing or concept. Besides that, there is the practical reason that it would be quite tedious to read a story where the characters had a vocabulary of only a few hundred words. The fact that the main characters use colorful terms to describe Spanish ships and items that are vastly different from their own didn't seem to be a problem to me. If terrible spaceships with frightening aliens landed here tomorrow, we, who think of ourselves as sophisticated, would probably not have the words to describe them with any kind of accuracy.

Although I was a bit wary about reading this book, it just didn't fit the typical Gear novel, I was pleasantly surprised. The book takes off with the typical young stud and the curvy damsel in distress. Let's say that I was hooked, as I always am.

I've read every book the Gears have written, and this is one of the best. Hope there's another one that takes up where this one left off.

I've only read a handful of books by the Gears, but I continue to be more impressed with each new one I pick up. This one does not disappoint.

The two protagonists are engaging, the story is tight and relentless, and the descriptions made me believe I was living with these people 500 years ago.

Some might be offended by the descriptions of Christianity or of the early "explorers" from Europe, especially with the way in which it is all tied to violent, brutal actions, but everything about those descriptions rings true to the characters' perceptions. This is the story of first contact told from the perspective of the people being conquered. That we know how it all turns out in the 21st century only makes this story that much harder to read.

Like so many excellent novels I've read before, I had to stay up until the middle of the night to finish this one - I could not put it down, and I cannot wait for the next book in the series.

This book was FANTASTIC. I first saw the cover (and it's a gorgeous one) on a GoodReads ad and, after looking it up, decided I needed to add some Native American stories to the books I read. I don't think I could have picked a better book to start off with.

At first I was a bit intimidated by its size and wasn't sure if I was going to really be in the mood for it, as I've had it checked out for a few weeks from the library. Now I'm kicking myself for not reading it more quickly (and hating that it ended so fast despite its 480 pages). I am eagerly awaiting the sequel and in the meantime fully plan on checking out the Gears other series named The First North American.

These authors are a husband and wife team, both of them archaeologists and it's very easily apparent that their love is the Native American culture. This story dealt with what it would have been like to have the "Kristianos" invading our country. The story follows that of an outcast, "Black Shell" who is a Trader and a man of strong faith and a woman he meets, "Pearl Hand", who, in her own rights, is as strong and full of faith as he is.

The story is brutal, frank and doesn't mince words. Faults and strengths are laid bare and the atrocities committed were eye-opening. My sole experience has been history novels and nothing I've read compared to the story told in this book.