Who cleans up the mess left by centuries of careless time travel? In The Last Protector, the task falls to a Ranger from the future, a bodyguard from the past, and a serving wench who doesn't believe she has the power to save the world--but will pretend she does, if the price is right. With two weeks before the streams of time cross and destroy the world, the three must overcome fire-breathing dragons, assassination plots, a cult that worships a comic-strip character, and the demons of their own pasts. In their journey across a theme-park world whose Cast has waited a century for its Guests to arrive, they encounter microbots, pyroviruses, and the World's Most Perfect Beer Container. Along the way, they discover that sometimes the world just doesn't want to be saved, and that while duty always calls, sometimes nature calls louder and duty has to wait.
The Last Protector
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Editorial Reviews
Review
The Last Protector is a fascinating meld of super-high-tech and medieval machismo, with its mystery cleverly revealed by bits and pieces of its backstory over time. Techno-marvels abound, including the modern equivalent of seven-league boots, nanobots that repair broken limbs, a mind-manipulating musical instrument, and a sword that cuts everything except its owner. ...The Last Protector is wrought with superlative imagination. The action sequences flow smoothly. The suspense and mystery carry the reader through the penultimate question of whether the characters will succeed in saving the worlds of this richly-crafted multiverse. --Lee Denning, author of Monkey Trap
This is as perfect a book as I have ever read. I could not imagine a more perfect one. Character and story development are both masterful, building from intriguing introduction to deep familiarity, without forfeiting any of the mystery. The story deepens and broadens without losing any of its richness. The story flows in and out of present time, delving into multiple threads, without ever getting tangled up in any of them. All resolve together, rather like Saughblade's tartan: torn, blood-stained, ragged, and the fit mantle for any king by the end. --David A. Schmaltz, author of The Blind Men and the Elephant
This is the best fantasy book I have ever edited. Or is it science fiction? I like the characters, I like the world the author built, and I love the humor. But all this is the sugarcoating: as with all great writing, under all the adventure, there are serious messages that deserve thought. --Dr. Bob Rich, writer, mudsmith and psychologist
This is as perfect a book as I have ever read. I could not imagine a more perfect one. Character and story development are both masterful, building from intriguing introduction to deep familiarity, without forfeiting any of the mystery. The story deepens and broadens without losing any of its richness. The story flows in and out of present time, delving into multiple threads, without ever getting tangled up in any of them. All resolve together, rather like Saughblade's tartan: torn, blood-stained, ragged, and the fit mantle for any king by the end. --David A. Schmaltz, author of The Blind Men and the Elephant
The Last Protector is a fascinating meld of super-high-tech and medieval machismo, with its mystery cleverly revealed by bits and pieces of its backstory over time. Techno-marvels abound, including the modern equivalent of seven-league boots, nanobots that repair broken limbs, a mind-manipulating musical instrument, and a sword that cuts everything except its owner. ...The Last Protector is wrought with superlative imagination. The action sequences flow smoothly. The suspense and mystery carry the reader through the penultimate question of whether the characters will succeed in saving the worlds of this richly-crafted multiverse. --Lee Denning, author of Monkey Trap
This is as perfect a book as I have ever read. I could not imagine a more perfect one. Character and story development are both masterful, building from intriguing introduction to deep familiarity, without forfeiting any of the mystery. The story deepens and broadens without losing any of its richness. The story flows in and out of present time, delving into multiple threads, without ever getting tangled up in any of them. All resolve together, rather like Saughblade's tartan: torn, blood-stained, ragged, and the fit mantle for any king by the end. --David A. Schmaltz, author of The Blind Men and the Elephant
This is the best fantasy book I have ever edited. Or is it science fiction? I like the characters, I like the world the author built, and I love the humor. But all this is the sugarcoating: as with all great writing, under all the adventure, there are serious messages that deserve thought. --Dr. Bob Rich, writer, mudsmith and psychologist
This is as perfect a book as I have ever read. I could not imagine a more perfect one. Character and story development are both masterful, building from intriguing introduction to deep familiarity, without forfeiting any of the mystery. The story deepens and broadens without losing any of its richness. The story flows in and out of present time, delving into multiple threads, without ever getting tangled up in any of them. All resolve together, rather like Saughblade's tartan: torn, blood-stained, ragged, and the fit mantle for any king by the end. --David A. Schmaltz, author of The Blind Men and the Elephant
The Last Protector is a fascinating meld of super-high-tech and medieval machismo, with its mystery cleverly revealed by bits and pieces of its backstory over time. Techno-marvels abound, including the modern equivalent of seven-league boots, nanobots that repair broken limbs, a mind-manipulating musical instrument, and a sword that cuts everything except its owner. ...The Last Protector is wrought with superlative imagination. The action sequences flow smoothly. The suspense and mystery carry the reader through the penultimate question of whether the characters will succeed in saving the worlds of this richly-crafted multiverse. --Lee Denning, author of Monkey Trap
About the Author
Daniel C. Starr spent 26 years in the telecom industry, where (among other things) he helped develop one of the first commercial cell phone systems. Since retiring, he's become known as the coolest sub ever in the St. Charles, IL school system. In addition to SF/Fantasy, he writes about project management. Some say it's the same thing.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Last Protector,
This review is from: The Last Protector (Paperback)
Good science fiction and fantasy can be hard to come by these days and the biggest problem is a lack of characters that seem real. Too many are absurd extensions of silly comic book style heroes, all strength and no weakness and never any deeper than a cookie sheet. But "The Last Protector" does not suffer from this problem. The characters are real and seem like people you could meet in your daily life. They succeed and fail and generally live like people do. Just like us they live in a world of obvious problems and subtle causes. This is what fantasy should be, the fantastic adventures of real people. Buy this book.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Excitingly, addictively unique,
By Joe K (Los Angeles, United States) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Last Protector (Paperback)
"The Last Protector", Starr's first published novel, was impossible for me to put down. While reading the first few entertaining chapters you may believe you've stumbled upon a funny little light-hearted fantasy novel. But as the book progresses it draws you into it's darker, truly scifi core. Starr has created an incredible world here that, while completely realized in this book, could be continued into a groundbreaking series. I can't speak highly enough of the technological magic (magical technology?) that simultaneously makes this one of the best fantasy as well as one of the best scfi books I've ever read. If you've a fan of either genre (or even better, both!) you should read this book. You won't be disappointed :).
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Raucous Romp through the Future,
By
This review is from: The Last Protector (Paperback)
I put off writing this review because I was suffering from vertigo. The doctors don't know what spun my head, but it may well have been from reading the swirl of adventures of Scrornuck Saughblade, the title character of "The Last Protector."
The book's abundance of interesting characters engage in a raucous romp from the opening barroom brawl, but Saughblade is such a multi-dimensional character, he pretty much steals the show. How to describe him? One of the many villains says, "You are a nuisance, Mr. Saughblade, nothing more than a drunken lout who distracts your betters from serious business. And yet you have made yourself remarkably inconvenient. For that reason alone you should have been quietly eliminated." But another character says, "I sometimes think he was a Golden Retriever in a past life." Finally, Saughblade is summed up as, "You're whatever you need to be." So in the end, though all sorts of characters, human and otherwise, try to have him noisily eliminated, Scrornuck manages to save the world. Well, no, actually he saves at least two worlds--with never a dull moment.
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