The Protector's War: A Novel of the Change (Change Series) (Mass Market Paperback)

by S. M. Stirling (Author) "I've been here before, John Hordle suddenly realized, his thumb moving over the leather that covered the grip of his bow..." (more)
Key Phrases: camas flowers, war cloaks, war harness, Sir Nigel, Nigel Loring, Sam Aylward (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
Stirling's Dies the Fire began an alternative history trilogy with a stunning premise: in 1998, the laws of nature suffered a mysterious change: gunpowder can't explode, electrical devices don't work-in short, the last 250 years of high-tech gadgetry suddenly are useless. This sequel shows what has happened to the world since the collapse of civilization. A group of people in the Pacific Northwest have joined together to rediscover old skills; Mike Havel, leader of the Bearkillers clan, and Wiccan priestess/folksinger Juniper Mackenzie help their followers adjust to new possibilities. Nearby, however, kinky former college professor Norman Arminger is exploiting his knowledge of medieval lore to manage the Protectorate, a brutal and ruthlessly-expanding dictatorship. This middle volume of the trilogy shows skirmishes between the factions, leading up to an inevitable confrontation. Stirling's pictures of ruined cities and towns are grimly convincing, and his loving descriptions of familiar landscapes gone wild are wonderful. If the people were as freshly imagined as their world, the novel would be splendid, but even with cardboard characters, it's still an extremely readable installment in a better than average tale.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Booklist
The Bearkillers and Clan Mackenzie of Dies the Fire (2004) have spent the eight years since the Change, which left the world without such conveniences as electricity and gunpowder, carving out a home for themselves in the rich farmland of Oregon's Willamette Valley. The peace they enjoy is fragile, thanks to the Protector of Portland, Norman Arminger, who is ready to wage war to control the valley's farmland with methods derived from a medieval warlord: slavery, feudal oppression, and thugs running his army. The arrival of British survivors on a Tasmanian ship complicates matters, especially when they encounter Arminger first. The Mackenzie (i.e., clan leader), Juniper, brings a mystical attitude to the confrontation, and it begins to seem as though in this world without familiar technology, magic might in fact be just around the corner. The Bearkillers, meanwhile, are ever more influenced by Tolkien, thanks to the obsession of certain younger members. Stirling's blending of fiction and history produces a strange, hybrid civilization, in which the confrontation between warlord and mystic is viscerally satisfying. Regina Schroeder
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 608 pages
• Publisher: Roc (September 5, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0451460774
• ISBN-13: 978-0451460776
• Product Dimensions: 6.4 x 4.2 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars See all reviews (116 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #43,242 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

80 of 94 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Dammit, Steve, Get an Editor!!!, September 11, 2005

By	Walt Boyes "Walt Boyes" (Aurora IL USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: The Protector's War: A Novel of the Change (Hardcover)

I have been impatiently waiting for this book ever since Dies the Fire came out. I have to say I am disappointed. There are parts of the book that are WONDERFUL and there are what appear to be huge chunks missing from the plot and from the story, as if the editor (or Stirling himself) took an axe to the manuscript.
Lakaeditn is an old Hawaiian illness peculiar to extremely successful authors, similar to lakanookie, a disease peculiar to geeky kids.
What I think is that this book should have been edited much better.
For example, the book abruptly switches from Stirling's normal, and very well done, linear exposition mode, to retrograde exposition where the point of view starts to shift and then returns to the omniscient editor. Each time this happens, the book seems to start over. It is as if Stirling wrote four or five versions of the same book, and then shuffled the pages of the ms. together and sent it to the editor.
The thing that bothers me the most is that the book could have been and should have been one of the best books Steve Stirling has ever written. His writing style has improved, and his infatuation with kinky sex for the sake of kinky sex has been reduced to normal levels.
In addition, the bad guys become less like scary sociopaths and cardboard villains, and become real people. To be able to make us care about the Lord Protector and his wife, and about King Charles III is terrific writing.
Now I can go back to waiting to find out what really happens in the Protector's War, which still hadn't started by the epilogue.

Walt Boyes
The Bananaslug. at Baen's Bar

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Slightly; okay, not slightly, QUITE disappointed., April 26, 2006

By	HerOdyssey "HerOdyssey" - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Protector's War (Hardcover)

First of all; for a book about a Protector's War, there's very little war. There are just a few skirmishes and a kidnapping. The rest of the book was a babbling tangle of political infighting and conversations--as well as a predictable arrival of love interests from England. I do enjoy descriptive writing, especially when it involves the Northwest; however, much like Conquistador, there's simply too much of it sometimes, and it tends to take away from the plot. I do enjoy knowing that zoo animals now comprise the wildlife of this new world, but hearing it ten zillion times does get slightly old.

This book was a labour to finish. I kept expecting something to happen; and something actually did, on the final few pages, and then I was left hanging. That's a cruel device I thought this author might be above inflicting on his readers. It cannot hurt you to read this if you're want for something to keep your brain occupied (but active and engaged... I am doubtful those will be inspired by this book); however in truth, you probably won't miss much between Dies the Fire and Meeting at Corvallis (chapters of which have already been posted online)if you decide to skip this book. I'm sure other postings and reviews will summarize the new characters and drudging, and tiny forward movement of the continuing plot.

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Disappointing, November 12, 2005

By	S. Moffett "rap" (phoenix) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: The Protector's War: A Novel of the Change (Hardcover)

I was really looking forward to this because I enjoyed Dies The Fire so much but this just wasn't very good. For starters, I hated the jumping around in the second half of the book, partly because the first half was fairly linear and then out of no where, time suddenly starts jumping around. I could get past that if the story had been more interesting but this is clearly just an extensive set up to "A Meeting In Corvallis". There's no war with the Protector, and one of the few positive things I can say is that I liked that the Protector was fleshed out a little and not just a raging badass. The Wiccan stuff on it's own didn't bother me at all, but I do find the mass conversion of the area somewhat impplausible. Everyone just abandoning Christianity leaving just a minority in the Mackenzie lands seemed unlikely considering that Sutterdown had a much higher population than the Mackenzie clan. Signe as a jealous murderous bitch didn't do much for me either and the endless cutesy referencing of Tolkien just grated on me. (I know Tolkien is popular, but it's not that popular and not that beloved) Over all I think society is a lot more resilent than to completely collapse into mythology in under ten years.