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The Sword of Forbearance: The Pelbar Cycle, Book Seven (Beyond Armageddon) (Bk. 7)

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"The Sword of Forbearance" is the seventh and final book of Paul O. Williams' "The Pelbar Cycle."
The primary focus of this concluding volume, as with many others in the series, is Stel Westrun and his family, and their part in the reunification of an America (or, as they call it, Urstadge) that was torn apart into tribalism a thousand years before in the "Time of Fire." Once again we find Stel quietly but stubbornly adhering to his firmly held beliefs, and in the process causing turmoil between the political factions of his city and, eventually, change in the larger society being created by that reunification.

His insistence on printing and distributing the ancient religious book recovered from the city of the Tantal (in book five, "An Ambush of Shadows") as he found it, rather than edited to fit current religious beliefs, causes him to have to flee his home (and wife) again. This time his flight takes him eastward, rather than westward (as in book two, "The Ends of the Circle"), to one of the "Eastern Cities" -- which, unfortunately, have chosen this time to escalate their border skirmishes with the Peshtak, who are new members of the Heart River Federation which is trying to make the reunification a peaceful one.

Despite his low-key, peaceful behavior, when the rulers of the city discover he is from Pelbarigan, they naturally conclude that he is a spy, but he is so comical they don't really take him seriously. Indeed, this is typical of the way Stel is perceived by people in power throughout the entire series: because he has no interest in power of his own, they think of him as a frivolous, silly little man of no import, until they attempt to push him around. Then they are flabbergasted to discover a startlingly immovable object, and find that their attacks usually rebound to do more political damage to themselves than to him.

The culture of the three "Eastern Cities" is one that might have been founded by a society of lawyers, bound by the letter of the law in contract matters, but rapacious in finding loopholes, so when Stel uncovers a rather serious breach of good faith on the part of Innanigan, the city which is the driving force behind the attacks on the Heart River Federation, he manages to get the others to abrogate the treaty requiring them to send military assistance -- which they were reluctant to uphold anyway. Unfortunately, the action which allows the other cities to break the treaty reveals just how far Innanigan is willing to go to maintain its position -- and how far Stel will go to stop it.

From the back cover:
"To the rulers of Innanigan, spring brought not thoughts of love but of western victories and rich lands seized from the peaceful Heart River Federation.

And so they went to war.

Yet this one was different, for Innanigan was the last renegade state in North America. If a just peace could be negotiated, the continent would be united again for the first time in a thousand years.

But if the conflict continued, civilization might be lost forever!"

This is the final (7th) book in the "Armageddon" series. I first discovered these when they were written in the early 1980's. They lay fallow on my shelves until recently. Paul O. Williams was a philosopher and a poet. He was an expert in Haiku. I found that he had died in June 2009. These books follow the development of society in North America 1100 years after a nuclear disaster. One group of people, called the Pelbar, develop a complex culture in the heart of the country next to the Mississippi River. It is through them that all the other groups on the continent begin to realize that they all descended from the same time, people, culture and language. These books are full of battles, subterfuge, exploration, and extraordinary characters and relationships. I especially liked Dome in the Forest and The Ends of the Circle.