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Tales of the Empire

<p>The Killer Angels (1974) is a historical novel by Michael Shaara that was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1975. The book tells the story of four days of the Battle of Gettysburg in the American Civil War: June 29, 1863, as the troops of both the Union and the Confederacy move into battle around the town of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, and July 1, July 2, and July 3, when the battle was fought. A film adaption of the novel, titled Gettysburg, was released in 1993.</p><p>Reading about the past is rarely so much fun as on these pages.</p><

A cosmic disturbance transports the island of Nantucket and its inhabitants over three thousand years back in time to the shores of a Stone Age America. In addition to coping with the day-to-day problems of survival and the trauma of losing all connection with the modern world, the residents of the time-stranded island find their lives complicated by the presence of native tribes across the water. Stirling's (The Ship Avenged, Baen, 1997) imaginative foray into time travel should also please fans of alternate history.<

In the bestselling Island in the Sea of Time, 20th-century Nantucket was inexplicably hurled back to the Bronze Age. In the sequel, Against the Tide of Years, the villainous renegade William Walker introduced muskets, cannon, and other deadly anachronisms to Odysseus's Greece, making himself king and positioning himself to overthrow the democratic Republic of Nantucket and destroy his archenemy, Commodore Marian Alston. Now, in the trilogy's rousing conclusion, On the Oceans of Eternity, Walker's powerful army conquers Troy and invades Babylon, Nantucket's last great ally, as Walker's blood brother, the king of Tartessos, blocks Commodore Alston's Nantucket navy at the straits of Gibraltar. If Nantucket's tiny forces cannot defeat Walker's army and allies, the world will be plunged into a Dark Age bleaker and more devastating than any known in our history.<

The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield is a rich story about secrets, ghosts, winter, books and family. The Thirteenth Tale is a book lover's book, with much of the action taking place in libraries and book stores, and the line between fact and fiction constantly blurred. It is hard to believe this is Setterfield's debut novel, for she makes the words come to life with such skill that some passages even gave me chills. With a mug of cocoa and The Thirteenth Tale, contentment isn't far away.<

<p>Entre mentiras, recuerdos e imaginación se teje la vida de la señora Winter, una famosa novelista ya muy entrada en años que pide ayuda a Margaret, una mujer joven y amante de los libros, para contar por fin la historia de su misterioso pasado.</p><p>«Cuénteme la verdad», pide Margaret, pero la verdad duele, y solo el día en que Vida Winter muera sabremos qué secretos encerraba Él cuento número trece, una historia que nadie se había atrevido a escribir.</p><p>Después de cinco años de intenso trabajo;, Diane Setterfield ha logrado el aplauso de los lectores y el respeto de los críticos con una primera novela que pronto sé convertirá en un clásico.</p><

<p>Jeremy Marsh es un periodista especializado en desenmascarar fraudes con apariencia de hechos sobrenaturales. Allí donde parece darse un caso extraño que escapa a toda explicación lógica, él se empeña en demostrar que para encontrarla sólo hace falta investigar el caso a fondo y seguir en todo momento los dictámenes de la razón. Hasta ahora nunca se ha equivocado, y con esa determinación viaja a Boone Creek, una pequeña localidad de Carolina del Norte, en busca de la causa real que se esconde detrás de unas apariciones fantasmagóricas en el cementerio del pueblo. La leyenda local habla de una maldición y de almas que vagan con sed de venganza, pero ¿cuánto de verdad y cuánto de fábula hay en esa leyenda, como en todas las demás?</p><p>Sin embargo, Jeremy ha de enfrentarse a algo verdaderamente inesperado, para lo que esta vez su razón no tiene respuesta: el encuentro con Lexie Darnell, la nieta de la vidente del pueblo. Y es que Jeremy podía prever que Lexie lo ayudaría en sus pesquisas gracias a su trabajo como bibliotecaria, pero no que él acabaría enamorándose perdidamente de ella. El dilema no tardará en surgir: si la joven pareja quiere empezar a construir un futuro en común, Jeremy deberá arriesgarse a otorgar un voto de confianza a la fe ciega, en la que nunca había creído…</p><

Quizá los olores evoquen el privilegio de la invisibilidad. Antes del tacto, sucede el olor, como mensajero de una esencia que sabe desaparecer en el aire y ser agente de un gran poder. La seducción que despliega el olor es implacable: se instala en nosotros y sella su poderío en los tejidos de la memoria. Jean-Baptiste Grenouille tiene su marca de nacimiento: no despide ningún olor y por ello hace temer la presencia de algún demonio. Al mismo tiempo posee un don excepcional: un olfato prodigioso que le permite percibir todos los olores del mundo. Desde la miseria en que nace, abandonado al cuidado de unos monjes, Jean-Baptiste Grenouille lucha contra su condición y escala posiciones sociales convirtiéndose en un afamado perfumista. Crea perfumes capaces de hacerle pasar inadvertido o inspirar simpatía, amor, compasión… Para obtener estas fórmulas magistrales debe asesinar a jóvenes muchachas vírgenes, obtener sus fluidos corporales y licuar sus olores íntimos. Su arte se convierte en una suprema e inquietante prestidigitacion. Patrick Süskind, convertido en maestro del naturalismo irónico, nos transmite una visión ácida y desengañada del hombre en un libro repleto de sabiduría olfativa, imaginación y enorme amenidad. Su persuasión iguala la de su personaje y nos propone una inmersión literaria en el arco iris natural de los olores y en los turbadores abismos del espíritu humano.<

In seventh-century China, during the great Tang dynasty, a young girl from the humble Wu clan entered the imperial gynaecium, which housed ten thousand concubines. Inside the Forbidden City, she witnessed seductions, plots, murders, and brazen acts of treason. Propelled by a shrewd intelligence, an extraordinary persistence, and a friendship with the imperial heir, she rose through the ranks to become the first Empress of China.<

Cal and Niko

<p>Half-human/half-monster Cal Leandros knows that family is a pain. But now that pain belongs to his half-brother, Niko. Niko's shady father is in town, and he needs a big favor. Even worse is the reunion being held by the devious Puck race—including the Leandros' friend, Robin—featuring a lottery that no Puck wants to win. </p><p>As Cal tries to keep both Niko and Robin from paying the ultimate price for their kin, a horrific reminder from Cal's own past arrives to remind him that blood is thicker than water—and that's why it's so much more fun to spill.</p><

Accelerando

W „Accelerando” Stross przedstawił wizję przyszłości człowieka wygenerowaną w oparciu o ekstrapolację nie tylko poziomu nauki, ale przede wszystkim rozwoju ekonomii, co dotychczas pomijano w klasycznej fantastyce naukowej. Stross mocno opiera się na prawach ekonomii, czyniąc z głównego bohatera międzynarodowego przedsiębiorcę. Ewolucja ekonomiczna w ujęciu Strossa doprowadza w przyszłości do uzyskania świadomości przez korporacje. „Accelerando” Charlesa Strossa jest doskonałym przykładem poważnej spekulacji na temat przyszłości człowieka i cywilizacji, co dawno porzuciła polska fantastyka.<

<p>Rosja po wielkim wybuchu. Rzeczywistość tworzy się od nowa, tylko czasem spod ruin zburzonego miasta ludzie wydobywają księgi — pamiątki minionej epoki.</p><p>Czy książka może stać się przedmiotem pożądania? Czy czytane bez opamiętania teksty wzbogacają, czy też odrywają od rzeczywistości, dają fałszywy obraz świata? Dokąd prowadzi pragnienie władzy i dlaczego historia zatacza zawsze to samo koło? Kyś to niezwykle zabawna satyra na współczesną Rosję i jej mieszkańców. Wydobywa największe słabości narodu, bierze pod lupę mechanizmy władzy. Niestety, wytykane przywary mogą i nam wydać się dziwnie znajome. Lektura Kysia skłania do uważnego spojrzenia na polskie realia. Oby wynikająca z tego refleksja nie ostudziła przyjemności obcowania z tekstem wnuczki wielkiego Tołstoja!</p><

<p>Amazon.com Review</p><p>In war-torn Manchuria of the 1930s, two lives briefly find peace over a game of go in Shan Sa's third novel, The Girl Who Played Go (translated by Adriana Hunter). The unnamed characters, a Japanese soldier stationed in China and a 16-year-old Manchurian girl, narrate their stories in alternating first-person chapters. For the girl, the struggles of Independent Manchuria take a back seat to her discovery of love and the awakening of her sexuality. For the soldier, his idealized dreams of samurai honor and imperial conquest are slowly displaced by homesickness, troubled recollections of his earthquake-torn youth, and remorse over a lost love. But the solitary concerns of each character are eventually submerged by the tides of war. The girl's first lover, Min, is a revolutionary. His ardor for his virgin conquest is matched by a doomed patriotism. Simultaneously, the soldier comes to relish the girl's home town, Thousand Winds, in Southern Manchuria, and becomes distrustful of his own nationalism. His daily games of go with the young female stranger awaken a new passion in him that becomes entwined with admiration for her aggressive play.</p><p>As they hardly speak, the soldier and the girl's views of each other remain clouded in Sa's technically facile narrative maneuvers. Where the soldier sees love, the girls sees escape. By maintaining the first person, Sa (winner of the French Prix Goncourt du Premier) leads the reader not only to experience the Japanese and Manchurian perspectives of the occupation, but also she offers glimpses into the deep failure inherent in cross-cultural and cross-generational communication. Couple with the rich historical detail, Sa's narrative games reward close reading amidst the briskly paced spiral into tragedy. -Patrick O'Kelley</p><p>From Publishers Weekly</p><p>In her first novel to appear in English (her two previous novels, published in French, won the Prix Goncourt and the Prix Cazes), Sa masterfully evokes strife-ridden Manchuria during the 1930s. The first-person narration deftly alternates between a 16-year-old Chinese girl and a Japanese soldier from the invading force. As in the Chinese game of go, the two main characters-the girl discovering desire, the soldier visiting prostitutes, both in a besieged city-will ultimately cross paths, with surprising consequences for both. Sa's prose shifts between lavish metaphor-the girl's sister, grieved by an adulterous husband, is "not a woman but a flower slowly wilting"-and matter-of-fact concision ("We weary of the game and kill them," the soldier says of two Chinese prisoners, "two bullets in the head"). The most absorbing subplot is Sa's careful rendering of the girl's sexual awakening. Though at first intrigued by a liaison with a revolution-minded student, she is reluctant to enter adulthood, a state she views as fraught with injury and falsehood, "a sad place full of vanity." To escape her increasingly troubled life, she becomes a master at go, eventually taking on the soldier, who is in disguise. As the two meet to play, they gradually become entranced, even while war rages around them. The alternating parallel tales add an extra spark of energy to this swift-moving novel, as Sa portrays tenderness and brutality with equal clarity.</p><p>***</p><p>Japan 's bloodbath in China during the 1930s began in Manchuria, a resource-rich region in northeast Asia. This prelude to World War II in the Pacific haunts Shan Sa's story of young lovers whose worlds collapse in a typhoon of despair. The Girl Who Played Go, the fiction winner of the 2004 Kiriyama Prize, has an economy of prose that allows the novel to cover an epic time, while focusing on the tragedy of a Chinese girl who loves a Japanese boy. This boy comes to her as an enemy soldier trying to maintain his father's samurai ethic; she comes to him as a member of an aristocratic Manchu yellow-banner family that has served the Qing emperors in Peking. His side is on the rise, hers in decline.</p><p>The protagonists meet in a public park, a place where one can play the ancient board game of Go. Both play masterfully, initially knowing nothing of each other's identity. They are strangers in a game of strategy, much like their political leaders in Tokyo and Nanking. The interplay of two youngsters and two empires drives the narrative, allowing the author to counterpoise the Japanese story with its Chinese counterpart. Family portraits from both sides illuminate two teenagers driven to adulthood before their time, cheated of a full youth and the critical years when they might have discovered their humanity – already a challenge in a time of terror and terrorism with the Manchurian war regressing into bitter guerrilla fighting, which results in atrocities on both sides.</p><p>Shan's voice is unmistakably Chinese – feminine but hard, finely tuned and precise. Not a word is wasted, no excess of emotion shown. She colors her background with a few swift strokes that a master calligrapher would admire. Her dialogue has a staccato rhythm, somewhat like a Chinese Hemingway with bullet prose. Ornamentation is not for Shan, stark reality is.</p><p>More than pleasure, readers will become involved in a healing process. As horrific as the war was, its aftermath has brought a dreadful hatred between the former enemy states. Japan bashing dominates much of what comes through in recent Chinese literature. This book offers a way around the sepsis wasting away a possible healing. Shan has created two life-loving youths shattered in a hellish war that carries them and millions like them to early deaths. Even-handed in her treatment of both main characters, she allows a reader to see the richness of both Japanese and Chinese culture, making us imagine how they might each enrich the other once again</p><p>Reviewed by Patrick Lloyd Hatcher</p><

<p>Al loro ritorno sulla Terra gli astronauti scoprono che le cose sono cambiate dalla loro partenza, e che il mondo è popolato solo da donne. L’uomo è considerato un pericoloso residuo del passato.</p><p>Vincitore dei premi Hugo e Nebula per il miglior romanzo breve in 1977.</p><