Customer Reviews

Sacred Stones

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

After having read and enjoyed Beyond the Sea of Ice, Corridor of Storms, Forbidden Land and Walkers of the Wind, I was looking forward to reading the continuation of The First Americans series. After having read the first 110 pages of Sacred Stones last night, I am wondering what became of the cast of the first four novels. I think that it should be pointed out that the following books are not directly continuing the earlier books. I am enjoying them, but I hope to find out what happened in between the ages that the story skips.

Couldn't put it down. There is something wise and wonderful in this often blood curdling book. No wonder Western Writers of America voted it one of the outstanding paperback originals of the nineties. As always, Sarabande takes his readers on a rivetting journey back in time. The spirit of the past four novels in the series is alive and well in a new and astounding era of prehistory. I love the new characters! There is something almost Arthurian about them.

This book and all of the others in the series are WONDERFUL!!! They are so vivid in their descriptions of the land they are in and the people also. I own and have read all the books in this series and each one can stand alone but they are even better if you read them all in order. I have read the whole collection at least 3 times per book they are so good. If you like this style of writing then there is no better series of books to read. You will fall in love with people in the books and hate others for trying to destroy the ones you love. They are all a MUST READ!!

Read all the books leading up to this one. They were really involving, followed each other well, were able to build upon one another. This last book: Sacred Stones was not. It felt as if it was by a different author trying to write about the same subject many many years later and hide the fact that they were not the same author. It was a pretty decent book, but if you are getting thies in order to continue the sequence, then you will be let down I think.

Again William Sarabande has hit the mark!!! Gutsy story, full of wonderful dialog, and well researched history of the First Americans. I couldnt put the book down. He nails his caracters with the first introduction to them in the story line, and builds upon them as they play vital roles in the story. Will look forward to more of his works as they come available. Thank you for a wonderful reading sensation.

I did wonder at the start why they are following the owl, a Native American symbol of death, at the beginning of the story, until I got it. It did put a small sad level of the inevitability of history in the story that we could have done without, but that is all in the future.
I found it interesting how the author had the characters understand their history as a people with all of the gaps and missing and re-invented parts to make up for the loss of the old knowledge kept by the "Blue Faces". When I found out what the "Sacred Stones" were and what there people thought they were and what they could do I was left shaking my head at their lack of knowledge. How could they forget that they are...ah,well, then I realized that the author had drawn me in and I was hooked to the new series. We must learn new ways.

I'm disturbed by the rave reviews this book is getting from the other reviewers on this and other sites; I'm reading this entire series, recommended to me by a trusted friend as something terrifically *bad*, out of something akin to horrified fascination with the idea that this is what sells, this is what people are reading. I worry about the human race; Sarabande's characters are flat and uninteresting, unrealistically motivated, speak and think with identical voices ... the only reason we know their personalities are different from each other's is because the author goes out of the way to *describe* those personalities to us. The author slept through those introductory English classes where the professors beat "show, not tell!" into your head with a two-by-four. The bizarre leap from one set of characters and time period to another, possibly an attempt to start over with a clean slate, didn't bother me after the initial moments of "guh? What just happened here?" but the religious reverence with which Torka and Lonit were held in this book was enough to make me gag (although it *does* remind me a bit of the strange reverenge Sarabande is paid by his fans on these websites). The action proceeds at a good clip, and there are *moments* in the book that approach dramatic or fascinating, but there are so many botched attempts, moments of outright stupidity, and agonizing attempts at character development that fall so short of the mark it's almost comical that this is a book (and a series) I cannot respect.

Read the phone book instead! It may not be as engaging, but it will probably broaden your horizons!

Another good book by Sarabande. You'll enjoy reading this one.

William Sarabande is the gore-master of the ancient people series. He occasionally rises to descriptive eloquence, and he very occasionally tries to describe ancient cooking and housekeeping methods, like Jean Auel does (but much better). But the overriding thing that I hate about Sarabande is the unrelenting blood! Horrific killings, sacrifices of virgins, tortures, delayed deaths, yuck. I know that some Native Americans practiced horrific killings (I hated "Dances with Wolves" too!) But this is not entertainment for me. It is horror, like watching Gremlins or reading a Stephen King novel. I also felt that the religious themes of this novel were too advanced, too close to what we know, to sound authentic. For example, Ysuna will gain life everlasting if she eats of the white mammoth. Is this something that true Native Americans believed? I don't know. It just sounded suspiciously like Western thought (or Middle Eastern blood atonement religions.)

I read this book because I liked a previous one where Navakh was almost a real character, and even his moment of death was described quite interestingly. But even that novel was real bloody. I shouldn't have thought Sarabande would change. Sorry.