A Dark and Hungry God Arises: The Gap into Power [Hardcover]

Stephen R. Donaldson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 1, 1992

At Billingate--an illegal shipyard where every vice flourishes and every appetite can be sated--two enemies team up to recover a beautiful cop who is being used as a pawn by Warden Dios and the Dragon. 45,000 first printing. $45,000 ad/promo.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Remember how the fairy-tale-ish The Hobbit morphed into a wide-lens The Lord of the Rings? Plots, counterplots, and intrigue galore await readers of the Gap saga, which is still picking up speed. Allusions to Wagner's The Ring Cycle in opening book The Real Story's afterword now become clear as Earth politicians, Holt "Dragon" Fasner, and the rest of the United Mining Company Police bureaucrats enter the fray. Morn and company still teeter between exhilaration and desperation.... even readers who don't care for action or space opera may enjoy a story with this forceful a meld of character, cabal, and adventure. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

From Publishers Weekly

Although this third volume of Donaldson's projected five-volume space epic doesn't answer the questions raised in the first two books ( The Real Story and Forbidden Knowledge ), it brings many new, if unsatisfying, twists to the various plots and counterplots. And the scattered main characters--captured police officer Morn Hyland and rival pirates Angus Thermopyle and Nick Succorso--are assembled by the book's end. Nick, with Morn under guard and the angry alien Amnion on his tail, has fled to the pirate trading post Billingate, where he hopes to wheel and deal his way out of the mess he's in--even if this means trading Morn to the Amnion. Angus, meanwhile, successfully programmed by the police back in human space, has been sent to Billingate as well, ostensibly to sabotage it. But it seems that Nick, who sometimes works for the cops himself, was sent to wreak havoc on Billingate, too . . . and the convolutions don't stop there. By the final pages, readers may well have no idea who is doing what, or why, or at whose bidding. Original purposes are revealed as lies; new motives contradict others; unlikely coincidences spur major plot twists. But through it all runs Donaldson's trademark sadism, betrayal, amorality and purposeless cruelty, so his fans will hardly be disappointed.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 160 pages
• Publisher: Bantam Books (October 1, 1992)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0553071769
• ISBN-13: 978-0553071764
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.6 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (24 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,295,649 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Sunday drive through Hades, December 23, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: A Dark and Hungry God Arises : The Gap into Power (Paperback)

All good myths (or operas, if you will) must have the characters travel into the underworld, for only there lies the key to solving the problems in the mortal realm. Billingate *is* Hades--take special note of the Bill's physical description and his manner of dealing with people. The Devil you say? I read in one review of person complaining regarding Davies' whining. Wouldn't you whine in his place? Milos deserved his fate--he sold his humanity years ago. Angus's walking crib is painful to endure, but his being let go is as wonderful as when Mhoram came into his power. Remember Mhoram from Thomas Covenant? I've always thought he was one of the truly great fictional characters. Notice how similar Mhoram and Vector Shaheed are? Donaldson continues to excel--each book is a masterpiece.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Yes, it does get even better after "Forbidden Knowledge"..., July 4, 2003

By 

"general_geiger" - See all my reviews

This review is from: A Dark and Hungry God Arises : The Gap into Power (Paperback)

"A Dark and Hungry God Arises" is an expansion from the second book as much as the second is an expansion from the first. The structure changes from mostly-Morn-and-occasionally-Angus to swapping between many different characters over the course of the long and dizzyingly complex story. Donaldson's world expands to include politicians and leaders, both power-crazy and honest, all driving at their own aims and all caught in utter deadlock by each other. The theme of all the plots and complex intentions of every character in the book concentrating in one spot and acting like a "critical mass" is a good one, and gives a suitable background for a highly explosive ending. The structuring is brilliant - unfaultable, in my book - and if you try listing all the characters the story swaps between after you've read it, you'll find a couple of interesting "nuggets" for the really attentive reader . . . This is true of the third and fourth books, as well.

In my review on here of the second book in the Gap Series, "Forbidden Knowledge", I stated that my considerations of readers of a more squeamish disposition forced me to mark down. In the third book this is less true - the darkness is still there, but the utter horror of the second (particularly the "force-growing" of Davies Hyland on Enablement Station) isn't so much in evidence. Only one particular scene - where an important conversation is conducted to the background of a woman gutting herself for the pleasure of a crowd - is particularly vile. I think that is the only example of horror in the series which can be considered entirely gratuitous. It is unnecessary, and rather wince-worthy. That it elicits disgust from me is testament to that. But there is none of the intense and ghastly - though never gratuitous - horror of the second book. At any rate, it is a minor complaint.

This book is superb. It is chock-full of characters in situations unbelievable in their horror and tense extremity, but which Donaldson somehow manages to *make* believable. I state categorically that he is a master story-teller - one of the best who has ever lived. All the characters are larger than life. They run the story, rather than the other way round. The opening concept of Norna and the crib inversion with Angus is particularly good, and intriguing; not to mention excellently executed.

This is a superb third book to the series. I have this to close with. You may have read the first two, and been left unsure as to whether the series gets better. Believe me, it does. Once you start reading the third book you will be so gripped you'll forget reading this.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Best novel in Donaldson's 'Gap' Series, August 3, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: A Dark and Hungry God Arises : The Gap into Power (Paperback)

Tension and plotting reach a high point in this third novel (following 'The Real Story' and 'Forbidden Knowledge'). Angus is reunited with the other main characters in a fantastic series of scenes, each outdoing the one before. Political intrigue merges beautifully with the stories of individual strife with a grace Donaldson's contemporaries should take note of.

The continous sequence of characters' schemes outdoing one another left this reader shaking his head in wonder. I may never reread the entire series, but I'll give careful thought to coming back to this one.