14 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Good, but not Stackpole's Best, May 22, 2000
This review is from: Eyes of Silver (Mass Market Paperback)
First off - I am a really huge fan of Michael Stackpole. I've read all of his long SF/Fantasy, and have even delved into the Battletech (tm) books (though I really don't read gaming-linked books, since I'm not a gamer). However, this is not Stackpole's best effort.
Unlike the typical M-S novel, which has a prodigy-hero and shifts back and forth between the past and the present, ultimately linking up in the final few chapters (e.g., Talion: Revenant, Once a Hero), Eyes of Silver has many different threads going, and it's hard to say which character is the true focus of the story.
In the acknowledgements, M-S refers to Peter Hopkin's "The Great Game" which is a seminal work on the political and military events of the middle of the 19th century in Northern India and more importantly, Afganistan, where England and Russia vied for control of the area around the Kyber Pass. England had extensive colonial and imperial interests in India, and the knew that the Russian Tsar wanted a piece of that. Who ever controlled the Kyber Pass (the only fully usable passage from the Asian steppes through the Himalyas, would hold the key to the entire Indian subcontinent (the Russians wanted in and the British wanted to keep them out). The native Afgans were lead by a man called Dost Mohammed - a rather brilliant military leader who roundly defeated the British is the 1840's, but at the same time, managed to keep the Russians out. The political and military maneuvering of the two greatest empires - Britain and Russia, became known as the "Great Game" - a series of advances and retreats, diplomatic forays and imperial posturing, much like a good game of chess.
Eyes of Silver is clearly indebted to the events of the mid-1800s (even to borrowing place and people names) - but the story fails to fully capture the reader (or at least this one).
I applaud Michael Stackpole for his audacity - not many fantasy/sf writers would endeavour to recreate actual complex political events as the basis for a story. Perhaps, if there were fewer characters, and others were more fully developed, the novel would have worked better.
If you're like me - working your way through Stackpole's booklist - leave this one for last.
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Great world, great characters, July 31, 2000
This review is from: Eyes of Silver (Mass Market Paperback)
Like most of Stackpole's books, this book has characters that leap off the page and a world that really seems real. Stackpole has a way of paying homage to real-world events without it reading as satire or theft. This book was on the slow-side in terms of pace -- not as slow as Jordan or Goodkind, though. The depth of the world more than makes up for it.
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5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Another great story from Stackpole, May 20, 2000
By A Customer
This review is from: Eyes of Silver (Mass Market Paperback)
Yes, it is a bit hard to get familiar with the many characters and countries in this novel. But for those that stick with it for the first 100 pages or so, the pay off is BIG. It is a wonderful tale, with interesting characters and many great truths that we all need to hear.
For the reader who said it was full of typos, it was made very clear to me that Robin and Robert are the same person, Robin is his nickname, much like Mike is to Michael. If you read the whole book and not just the first chapter, I don't see how this mistake could have been made. If you are an intelligent, person who likes a good, well woven story, try this book and you won't be disappointed.
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