The glaciers came and covered the world with ice. Now they are in retreat. North of the city of Nidaros, north of the forest, north of the steppes where the nomadic Bizogots hunt, a gap has opened in the ice-wall. And down through that gap come the men who call themselves "Rulers."Their terrifying cavalry rides wooly mammoths. Their bows can shoot arrows farther than those of the southerners. Their wizards wield power that neither the shamans of the Bizogots nor the wizards of Raumsdalian Empire can match-a magic that can melt the stone beneath a man's feet, call down blasting fire from the sky, or decimate a tribe with plagues that have no cure. Scattered survivors of the Bizogot tribes hide from the Rulers. The Empire is shattered. The feckless Emperor Sigvat II is in hiding.Against the Rulers stands Count Hamnet Thyssen and his small band of friends: Jarl Trasamund of the Three Tusk Bizogots; the adventurer Ulric Skakki; and, most important, Marcovefa, the female shaman of a cannibal tribe that lives atop the Glacier itself. Marcovefa has magic that the Rulers cannot counter.But there are many Rulers, and they have many wizards. Marcovefa is but one.Perhaps Hamnet and his allies can save their lands from the Rulers. But first they must seek out the legendary Golden Shrine-and the Golden Shrine has not been seen by human eyes since the time before the glaciers came.
The Golden Shrine (Tor Science Fiction)
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Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Master alternate historian Turtledove stumbles with his third novel set in a parallel Bronze Age. Picking up shortly after the events of 2008's The Breath of God, the book continues the exploits of Count Hamnet Thyssen and his allies as they struggle to defeat the mammoth-mounted Riders, who are aided by powerful wizards. The count's ace in the hole is Marcovefa, a cannibal and shaman whose magic enables his forces to hold their own. The skirmishes with the enemy and the quest for a legendary Golden Shrine that holds promise for repairing their world form the bulk of the plot. Anachronistic word choices (You say the sweetest things, darling) consistently undercut suspension of disbelief, and while the imagined universe is accessible to newcomers, there's little to make readers rush out and read the earlier or future books. (Oct.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Review
"Turtledove has proved he can divert his readers to astonishing places. He's developed a cult following over the years; and if you've already been there, done that with real-history novelists Patrick O'Brian, Dorothy Dunnett, or George MacDonald Fraser, for your Next Big Enthusiasm you might want to try Turtledove. I know I'd follow his imagination almost anywhere."
– San Jose Mercury News
“Vivid!”
– Publishers Weekly on The Breath of God
“Beginning a new alternate history series with this tale of two eras on the brink of catastrophic change, Turtledove brings an era to life.”
– Library Journal on Beyond the Gap
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More About the Author
Harry Turtledove is the award-winning author of the alternate-history works The Man with the Iron Heart; The Guns of the South; How Few Remain (winner of the Sidewise Award for Best Novel); the Worldwar saga: In the Balance, Tilting the Balance, Upsetting the Balance, and Striking the Balance; the Colonization books: Second Contact, Down to Earth, and Aftershocks; the Great War epics: American Front, Walk in Hell, and Breakthroughs; the American Empire novels: Blood & Iron, The Center Cannot Hold, and Victorious Opposition; and the Settling Accounts series: Return Engagement, Drive to the East, The Grapple, and In at the Death. Turtledove is married to fellow novelist Laura Frankos. They have three daughters: Alison, Rachel, and Rebecca.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
17 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Run, Don't Walk, Away From This Book!,
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This review is from: The Golden Shrine (Hardcover)
I've not enjoyed every Turtledove novel I've ever read, but I'd never seen one that was so badly written and falsely advertised that I felt I'd been conned out of the money I spent on it. The Grapple came closest, but I got that for free by winning a contest. (The one time I win a contest, and the prize is The Grapple.) But no, I'd never felt conned out of money by Turtledove.
I can't say that anymore. The Grapple was bad in comparison with other TL-191 and Turtledove novels. The Golden Shrine, however, was so hackneyed that far, far worse authors, like David Hagberg or Robert Conroy, would be ashamed to put their name to it. And unlike The Grapple, TGS is the finale of the series, so the shadow of its failure falls heavily across its two prequels. The book pretty much chucks the established themes of the first two novels and reveals that the story has always been driven by a prophecy that everyone's forgotten to mention till now. Marcovefa appears to be the prophet, but the Rulers know the prophecy too, and it's why they keep sending assassins after Hamnet. (Which they'd been doing since before Marcovefa was introduced.) The prophecy is that Hamnet will prove to be the Rulers' most dangerous enemy. Details are added in, but they're wildly inconsistent, changing as the plot requires them to. I have to think Turtledove used them to foreshadow scenes he'd thought of but hadn't written yet. When he wrote them he realized they didn't work as he'd planned and changed things around, but didn't bother going back to fix the prophecies. This could all be explained as the characters having an imperfect understanding of the prophecy, but instead no one seems to notice it keeps changing. Probably because they too change as the plot requires them to. The most interesting characters from the first two books, who need the least character development, get bogged down with non sequitir new character traits. The flat characters stay static as ever, including Hamnet--except now he's a whiny, juvenile thrower of hissy-fits, too. And all the characters contradict their established actions and personalities, sometimes several times on one page. Back to the prophecy, though. It hints that each of the main characters will play a vital role in defeating the Rulers and finding the Shrine (or rather, finding the Shrine and defeating the Rulers) but in the end most of them were just along for the ride. Only Marcovefa and Hamnet live up to their prophesied roles: Marcovefa by casting the spell that destroys the Rulers and uncovers the Shrine, Hamnet by enabling her to do so by--I can't believe I have to say this--having sex with her while she's in a Ruler-magic-induced coma to wake her up. THAT'S what makes him so special! The Shrine didn't feature in the defeat of the Rulers. (Neither does Hamnet's plan to release a female Ruler prisoner to go back to Rulerland and touch off a feminist rebellion against the misogynistic men; apparently she first decided to research what happened to bit players who led rebellions in Turtledove novels, and died of old age waiting for something to come of the many rebellions in the Settling Accounts novels.) Our heroes do find the Shrine right after--it's too busy being hokey to answer questions--and a high priestess says she's been with them, guiding their fates unnoticed, all along, like the Borg Queen saying she was at Wolf 359 after the fact. She gives Hamnet a message for Sigvat. It leads to his downfall in a way that's supposed to be awe-inspiring but is just confusing. At least he gets his just desserts. Gudrid may or may not get her comeuppance but at least what she gets shuts her up for the last few chapters. The rest of the characters go off on their own and try to forget the whole story ever happened. I'm going to try very hard to do the same.
3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
The Golden Shrine - or whatever,
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Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: The Golden Shrine (Hardcover)
Not one of Harry Turtledove's best ventures. I have read over 20 of his works, and this one, is a disapointment. It starts off well, and seems to be building momentum; but then begins to fall apart, and starts to be very predictable. The manner of finding of the "golden shrine" is a major disapointment, a riddle which is best left unsolved. The reference to the 5th chapter of Daniel makes very little sense, leading to the ending and a potential sequel which would be best unwritten. Mr Turtledove seemed to lose interest in the story, and needed a way out.
2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Lightweight but enjoyable tale,
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This review is from: The Golden Shrine (Hardcover)
The 'Rulers' have broken through a gap in the glaciers that long separated them from the Raumsdalian Empire and pillage and conquer virtually unchecked. Led by its incompetent emperor, Raumsdalia can do little. Indeed, its only hope, and that of the barbarian Bizigot tribes to its north, seems to be a battered band of defeated adventurers led (mostly) by Count Hamnet Thyssen. Hamnet has one key weapon against the Rulers--his lover, shaman Marcovefa. Although the Rulers have magic far more potent than anything the Raumsdalian Empire or the Bizigots can deliver, Marcovefa is more powerful still. Of course, she is just one woman and the Rulers have hundreds of shamans. Hamnet will have to come up with something clever if he doesn't want to be just one more victim to the Ruler hordes.
Although Marcovefa finds it easy to defeat the rulers at first, with each victory, the Rulers learn more about her powers and come up with new ways to defeat her. Although Hamnet's band seems like a trivial threat compared to the huge armies of defeated but not vanquished Raumsdalia, the Rulers are willing to put most of their efforts into his defeat. When they finally manage to put Marcovefa to sleep, defeat seems certain. Hamnet, with his inability to give up his obsession for the other women of his life (his ex-wife and his ex-lover, both of whom eventually connect to his band), makes an interesting, if sometimes frustrating character. I would also have liked to see a better reason to include the ex-wife in the party, and some explanation of exactly why she was so angry at him. I thought Turtledove did a great job setting up the climactic battle and hinting at the resolution without giving the secret away. Author Harry Turtledove doesn't position THE GOLDEN SHRINE as alternate history (his specialty), but the links to history seem obvious. The Raumsdalian Empire is Rome, the Bizigots the Germans (Visigoths?), and the Rulers the Huns who nearly destroyed both Rome and the German tribes. THE GOLDEN SHRINE is the third and final book in a series describing the events that followed from the gradual retreat of huge barrier glaciers that separated the two hemispheres (North America and Europe?). THE GOLDEN SHRINE is an enjoyable, light read.
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