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Saint Leibowitz and the Wild Horse Woman [Hardcover]

Walter M. Miller Jr. (Author)
2.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (49 customer reviews)


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Book Description

October 1, 1997
It has been nearly forty years since Walter M. Miller, Jr., shocked and dazzled readers with his provocative bestseller and enduring classic, A Canticle for Leibowitz.  Now, in one of the most eagerly awaited publishing events of our time, here is Miller's masterpiece, an epic intellectual and emotional tour de force that will stand beside 1984, Brave New World, and A Canticle for Leibowitz.

In a world struggling to transcend a terrifying legacy of darkness--a world torn between love and violence, good and evil--one man undertakes an odyssey of adventure and discovery that promises to alter not only his destiny but the destiny of humankind as well. . . .

Millennia have passed since the Flame Deluge, yet society remains fragmented, pockets of civilization besieged by barbarians.  The Church is in turmoil, the exiled papacy struggling to survive in its Rocky Mountain refuge.  To the south, tyranny is on the march.  Imperial Texark troops, bent on conquest, are headed north into the lands of the Nomads, spreading terror in their wake.

Meanwhile, isolated in Leibowitz Abbey, Brother Blacktooth St. George suffers a crisis of faith.  Torn between his vows and his Nomad upbringing, between the Holy Virgin and visions of the Wild Horse Woman of his people, he stands at the brink of disgrace and expulsion from his order.  But he is offered an escape--of sorts: a new assignment as a translator for Cardinal Brownpony, which will take him to the contentious election of a new pope and then on a pilgrimage to the city of New Rome.  Journeying across a continent divided by nature, politics, and war, Blacktooth is drawn into Brownpony's intrigues and conspiracies.  He bears witness to rebellion, assassination, and human sacrifice.  And he is introduced to the sins that monastery life has long held at bay.

This introduction comes in the form of AEdrea, a beautiful but forbidden "genny" living among the deformed and mutant castouts in Texark's most hostile terrain.  As Blacktooth encounters her again and again on his travels--in the flesh, in rumors of miraculous deeds, and in the delirium of fever--he begins to wonder if AEdrea is a she-devil, the Holy Mother, or the Wild Horse Woman herself.

Picaresque and passionate, magnificent, dark, and compellingly real, Saint Leibowitz and the Wild Horse Woman is a brutal, brilliant, thrilling tale of mystery, mysticism, and divine madness, a classic that will long endure in every reader's memory.

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Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

This is the 30-years-in-coming sequel to Walter M. Miller's seminal work, A Canticle for Leibowitz. It chronicles the odyssey of Brother Blacktooth St. George, a fallen monk of the Leibowitz order who becomes secretary to the politically ambitious Cardinal Brownpony. Brownpony is involved in a complex scheme to break the rule of the Hannegan Empire, which dominates the 35th-century's post-apocalypse world. Even though Brownpony's plans will ultimately restore both the world and the declining Papacy to some form of order, he is not a religious man, although he is drawn to those who are. He sees something profoundly religious in Blacktooth, who on the surface seems to be a disgraced monk foundering in confusion because of his love for a woman, his semi-pagan visions of the Virgin Mary, and his nomadic heritage. Ultimately it seems that Brownpony's--and indeed humanity's--salvation may lie with Blacktooth, who will never quite realize how great is the gift he's been given.

From Library Journal

The long-awaited sequel to the classic A Canticle for Leibowitz (1959) was completed by Terry Bisson (Pirates of the Universe, LJ 3/15/96) from instructions left by Miller before his death in 1996. After World War III, America is divided into territories (Plains, Texark, Oregon, and others) struggling to reindustrialize. In this fragmented society, the papacy plays an important role in uniting the factions. In Texark, Nimmy Blacktooth regrets the vows he took to be a monk. While trying to get out of monastery life, he becomes embroiled in the search for a new pope. Unfortunately, despite its humor and social commentary, this book is a bit of a disappointment; the plot drags and seems pointless, and there is very little of the visionary sf that made the original so compelling. For larger sf collections and where the original book is popular.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product Details

  • Hardcover: 448 pages
  • Publisher: Spectra (October 1, 1997)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0553107046
  • ISBN-13: 978-0553107043
  • Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.3 x 1.5 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
  • Average Customer Review: 2.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (49 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #279,613 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

49 Reviews
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Average Customer Review
2.6 out of 5 stars (49 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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29 of 32 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars A church tapestry of politics and traditions, December 22, 2003
One author sets murders in a medieval Roman Catholic monastery and it becomes an object of popular acclaim. Another author sets Papal politics in a post-nuclear holocaust society and it's dubbed "Sci-fi", and tossed in the remainders bin. Neither book deserved the fate it received. Miller's second look at post-nuclear North American society reveals a church divided within and still struggling with Caesar after three millennia. Popes tend to church politics with one hand and civil society with another. Somewhere in the middle are the lesser religious tending their adherents or hiding from the conflicts.

One such "lesser religious" is a monk, Blacktooth St George. A resident at the monastery long dedicated to the memory of Isaac Leibowitz, nuclear scientist and martyr, Blacktooth harbours doubts about his calling. His roots are from the Plains people and their pagan heritage conflicts with the Roman Catholic Church's ideal of monotheism and self-sacrifice. Attempting to shed the burdensome vows, Blacktooth is conscripted to the service of a lawyer cardinal. Elia Brownpony, too, is a former Plainsman, but has risen quickly in the Church hierarchy due to diplomatic talents. Diplomacy usually involves conspiracy, and Brownpony must be adept at both for he is struggling to reunite the broken church. Theology isn't the basis of the schism, however. The expanding empire of Texark has challenged the Pope's power. Brownpony, wheeling and dealing, uses Blacktooth as a major instrument.

Politics are a lesser challenge to Blacktooth than the condition of his own spirit. Beset by visions and his glands alike, this mid-thirties adult is known as Nimmy, an appellation applied to young boys. He encounters a genetic mutant, a heritage of the holocaust, whose only flaws are an uncanny insight and a rampant libido. She seduces Nimmy, who doesn't quite break his vows, and supposedly produces two children. Her image haunts him as he goes about his role of personal assistant. He's also haunted by the multi-figured image of a pope of African descent. All these conflicting visions keep Blacktooth on edge and in peril. His reconciliation of all these disparate forces are the theme of Miller's "midquel" of Canticle for Leibowitz [this story commences at the middle of Canticle, not the end].

Swirling roles of church and state and the Church and the individual formed the basis of "Canticle". Expanded and enhanced in this book, they are nicely integrated with convulsions that shook the Roman Catholic Church after the 1960s. Bisson has done Miller's original draft proud in completing a compelling story of the pressures on faith. Through a complex plot, the characters are kept realistic, if somewhat bizarre. Religious institutions, particularly under stress, are never simple, and the complexities are well handled and you never lose the threads, no matter how tightly they seem tangled. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]

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18 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars I was truly immersed, November 6, 2000
By 
I don't really understand the overwhelming negative reaction to this work. I can see how someone who has loved and reread Canticle many times may have had their hopes of a true sequel left unfulfilled. Personally, I was amazed at the maturing of Miller's style and content, and his credible and immersive attempt at world building. I thought the tone, although more modern, was sufficiently similar to Canticle that I felt the connection necessary for "sequel nostalgia". I felt connected to the main characters, though, their thoughts and actions were sometimes mysterious, foreign, and often displeasing. But these were the things that affected me most about the story. The characters' world IS mysterious, foreign, and displeasing, as well as dangerous and primitive. From the gut-wrenching descriptions of death and illnesses, to the touching, if strange, relationship between the fallen monk Blacktooth and "genny" AEdrea, I found this novel to be an emotional and mind opening rollercoaster.
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16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars Don't Bother, April 19, 1999
By A Customer
This review is from: Saint Leibowitz and the Wild Horse Woman (Hardcover)
Having read the late Walter Miller's "A Canticle for Leibowitz" in the 70's and reread it several times in the ensuing decades, I was pleased, and a bit surprised, to see a copy of his newest work "Saint Leibowitz and the Wild horse Woman" in a second hand book shop. After reading it I am no longer surprised at where I found it . The book is opaque and disjointed with only a vaguely outlined plot that goes nowhere in particular. I got the impression that Miller was trying to recapture the sprit of his earlier work but he ended up being a poor imitation of himself. If you want to read "Saint Leibowitz and the Wild horse Woman" to compare it to the earlier work, there will be at least one used copy back on the market.
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