Customer Reviews

Spears of God

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

The other reviewers were accurate but much too kind. The book was an effort to read, and the ending was kooky.

The author's speculations about meteorites and the possibility of life from outer space were interesting, but they would should have been in a book half as long.

Once again Hendrix produces another unreadable mish-mash of neo-intilectual, metaphysics drenched drivel. Perhaps a good editor could have pulled this stinker out of the trash heap, but doubtful. As usual he seems totally out of touch with his readers, and worse yet with science itself, where are all the good Pixel-Stained Technopeasants when you need them. A total loss.

Spears of God came out earlier this year, and I've had a copy since the spring, but it somehow got shuffled to the back of my TBR pile and only just now surfaced. It is a stand alone novel, but given the infinite mulitverse nature of Hendrix's fictional universes you might recognize the quantum twins of some of the big players and events from his other books, although having read his earlier novels isn't necessary to follow the action.



This book is about events leading up to the end of the world, or at least the end of the world as we know it. Unlike almost every book I've read on that theme it does not deflate at the end, but walks the line between apocalypse and transcendence perfectly. In the end main characters are completely transformed on some levels, and completely unchanged on others, which it has always seemed to me would be the realistic outcome of living though "then-the-world-changed" sort of events.



This is far and away Hendrix's best novel, with some of his most sympathetic characters and the final few chapters are the sort of page turners that make you want to stay up past bedtime or come back late from lunch to finish. It is full of ideas. There are occasional data dumps, but the dumps are fascinating and often take unexpected turns. Any two points make a line, and in this novel every line goes someplace. That stretches credulity somewhat, but did not distract from my enjoyment of the book. The story is about smart people solving big problems, their volleying of ideas back and forth like a tennis balls, is part of the fun. Far more annoying than the data dumps were the redundant reminders of info learned, and theories proposed, earlier in the novel and the overuse of clever, bordering on cute, word play acronyms.


Hendrix's writing isn't for everyone, but if you like a book that's crammed full of ideas you would never have thought to put together yourself, his novels should be on your reading horizon.

For Science Fiction fans looking for a novel that tackles the possible origin of multi-cellular life on earth with a hard emphasis on scientific details, Howard Hendrix's Spears of God should provide an enjoyable adventure.

Hendrix pushes the technological boundaries of biological processing and human warfare in logical ways, and does a solid job of describing how such things might advance in the not too distant future. His knowledge of advanced military assets is impressive, as is his background on complex biological processes.

The novel takes the interesting position that multi-cellular life on the planet earth might have come from fungus attached to interstellar meteorites. Hendrix develops several parallel plots, each starting in a different country. The stones are fought over by competing factions, stolen and then analyzed to uncover the special powers passed on to people coming in contact with chemical derivatives of materials on the meteorites.

The intertwined plots each lead to independent discovery of the secrets of the alien stones that long ago impacted the earth. All the plots converge in an action-packed ending in the Middle East, an area that is not only tumultuous but also timely.

The first chapters are sure to grab most readers and pull them forward. I especially enjoyed the plot line involving the orphaned children with special powers. The ending pulls everything together and does a satisfactory job wrapping up the threads. But the middle of the book seems to be devoted to lengthy technological expositions with a healthy dose of acronyms.

If you put the book down and come back to it a day or two later, you might find yourself forgetting what the acronyms mean. At least that's what happened to me, and maybe it means I'm getting old. A page up front devoted to a list of acronyms would have helped.

Armchair Interviews says: Action-packed story but maybe too much technology for the casual reader.

It's a bit weaker than the book before it but still a good read.
Sometimes I get annoyed by the spiritual psychobabel built into his model of "higher consciousness", but Hendrix is a good enough writer to
make even a sceptic give some thought to even his wilder ideas.
Hendrix has a cast of characters that weave in and out of his books and
keep them related, some of them alternative world takes on bits of the
same story. It makes the book more interesting if you read his previous
books.

In South America scientists Dr. Michael Miskulin and biologist Professor Susan Yamada climb the Caacamuni by themselves in search of ruins two billion years old that they believe holds the key to evolution. When they reach their destination, they find a remote isolated tepui and a scene out of a horror movie. An entire tribe with the exception of four children has been eradicated by apparently a militia using modern weaponry on these primitive people. Michael and Susan takes the four survivors to Paul Larkin, whose sister Jacinta watched this same space-fungus worshipping tribe vanish through an apparent wormhole (see BETTER ANGELS).

However the three young girls and lone boy appear to have enhanced mental powers including the ability to telepathically communicate. Different groups want the kids and the meteorite that contains the space-fungus that the devastated tribe worshipped. NSA Director Jim Brescoll, Susan and Michael try to keep the kids safe while trying to prevent religious, government and military groups from stealing the meteorite in a global arms cold war that could turn hot. At the same time Darla Pittman is shot several times in her lab as she studies the fungus; she lives because she touches the fungus.

SPEARS OF GOD is a complex not easy to read science fiction thriller as Howard V. Hendrix goes into incredible depths in the science but at the cost at times of action; long stretches of the tale provide the scientific concepts as exposited mostly by Michael, Susan and Darla, but it not easy to grasp by us scientifically-impaired. Readers who prefer the cerebral rather than the action will want to follow the escapades of a small band of mostly scientists battle against several power-grabbing groups.

Harriet Klausner

I am a long time (4+ decades) reader of scifi and this novel is a RARE treat!
No other author has written with such command of diverse and intertwined scientific and spiritual disciplines since the Hyperion series by Dan Simmons.
It is NOT an easy read novel which adds to the pleasure of its discovery.

It is deeply considered craftmanship as a well written journey into strange lands and thought space based on REAL SCIENCE from our current cutting edge scientific world.
While inviting the reader to THINK in new ways about the unexamined prejudices that circumscribe our species and are reflected in the impending and historically validated apocolyptic situations we wish to ignore.
It is articulate in opening doors to speculation about what has brought out species to this place in our evolution and what we are being offered as opportunity to create the world envisioned in this quote:
"To make the world work for 100 percent of humanity in the shortest possible time, through spontaneous cooperation, without ecological offense or the disadvantage of anyone." - Buckminster Fuller

If you want to be stimulated and transported get and read this book today!

from the outer reaches of monktana...

I remain,
yours truly,

monk