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Lost Millennium #2
Second Fire
How do you win a battle lost 6,000 years before you were born? How do you make sure winning that battle doesn’t lose you the war?
The 21st Century is dead, killed by a runaway designer plague. Only two people survived the century. 2nd Lieutenant Launa Obrian and her sole subordinate, Captain Jack Walking Bear. There mission, travel back 6,000 years and help a peaceful band of farmers fight off the horse raiders from the steppe and maybe, just maybe, turn human history from death and conquest to cooperation and construction.
They’ve won their first battle, but they know there is more to come. Some of the farmers walk after the soldiers. Some refuse to consider killing, even to protect themselves. Most of the farmers just wish the horse raiders would go away.
It is among these that Launa and Jack must find enough soldiers to stand between the lances of the raiders and the farms and herds of these people. But is just winning the battle enough?
Is the changes they must bring to harden muscles, harden weapons, and harden hearts something that may destroy from within the very lives they were sent to save?
Ride with Launa and Jack as they seek to start a Second Fire. A Second Fire that will burn out the poison from the steppe without burning up the way of life that may be Humanity’s only hope.
The 21st Century is dead, killed by a runaway designer plague. Only two people survived the century. 2nd Lieutenant Launa Obrian and her sole subordinate, Captain Jack Walking Bear. There mission, travel back 6,000 years and help a peaceful band of farmers fight off the horse raiders from the steppe and maybe, just maybe, turn human history from death and conquest to cooperation and construction.
They’ve won their first battle, but they know there is more to come. Some of the farmers walk after the soldiers. Some refuse to consider killing, even to protect themselves. Most of the farmers just wish the horse raiders would go away.
It is among these that Launa and Jack must find enough soldiers to stand between the lances of the raiders and the farms and herds of these people. But is just winning the battle enough?
Is the changes they must bring to harden muscles, harden weapons, and harden hearts something that may destroy from within the very lives they were sent to save?
Ride with Launa and Jack as they seek to start a Second Fire. A Second Fire that will burn out the poison from the steppe without burning up the way of life that may be Humanity’s only hope.
412 pages, Kindle Edition
First published July 1, 1997
14 people are currently reading
67 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
March 10, 2017
Things develop well in this second book of the series. Even the ending is well handled, in spite if its clear lead into a third book. The author has tackled two several difficult subjects at once: interpersonal relationships in a rapidly changing environment, the effect of time travel, and the origins of war. All are well handled.
January 12, 2015
Second Fire (Lost Millennium #2)
by Mike Moscoe, Mike Shepherd
In the second outing of this series we rejoin Lt. Launa O'Brian and Captain Jack Walking Bear living among the People of the Badger. Even though the epilogue of the first book seemed to indicated they accomplished their goal, the fight isn’t over. The prologue jumps back to the future they were sent from, so does that mean they created an alternate future and didn’t change their own timeline (the only actual plausible time travel scenario)? The sequel gets more brutal than the first and more time is spent on the culture of the people, but not but the sequel wasn't really needed.
Launa and Jack continue training recruits from the People of the Badger to fight in the next wave of the horsemen. However, their efforts are often thwarted by the very peaceful nature of the people that they want to preserve. Most than the tactical problems of training and resisting the invasion, they must wage a PR campaign as well.
Much of the book is spent with the day to day life of the “old Europeans” as Launa tends to call them. Politics, religion (Speaker for the Goddess, etc), festivals, and sex.
When one of their wiseman (Kaul) goes to the horsemen in peace, he is tortured and mutilated, then Laura and Jack rescue him along with a captive woman (Killala). That brutality, sets the people on a different path, they didn’t believe Launa and Jack before but after that, they start becoming a true army.
As the war rages on (OK, it really just a couple of small battles), changing the people as war does, Launa and Jack constantly question how do they win against the horsemen without becoming them?
At the end, even though it was claimed to be a one way trip in book one, a gate opens allowing Launa and Jack to return to the future. But having been successful, they end up in an entirely different future. Unfortunately, the author made the mistakes time traveling /alternate universe stories often have. Alternate version of people from the original timeline. Alternate but nearly identical history (such as 1492 Christine Colon discovering the western hemisphere!).
The world is more peaceful but far from perfect. In the last line, Jack wonders if they will need to go back and try again! Queue the next sequel.
by Mike Moscoe, Mike Shepherd
In the second outing of this series we rejoin Lt. Launa O'Brian and Captain Jack Walking Bear living among the People of the Badger. Even though the epilogue of the first book seemed to indicated they accomplished their goal, the fight isn’t over. The prologue jumps back to the future they were sent from, so does that mean they created an alternate future and didn’t change their own timeline (the only actual plausible time travel scenario)? The sequel gets more brutal than the first and more time is spent on the culture of the people, but not but the sequel wasn't really needed.
Launa and Jack continue training recruits from the People of the Badger to fight in the next wave of the horsemen. However, their efforts are often thwarted by the very peaceful nature of the people that they want to preserve. Most than the tactical problems of training and resisting the invasion, they must wage a PR campaign as well.
Much of the book is spent with the day to day life of the “old Europeans” as Launa tends to call them. Politics, religion (Speaker for the Goddess, etc), festivals, and sex.
When one of their wiseman (Kaul) goes to the horsemen in peace, he is tortured and mutilated, then Laura and Jack rescue him along with a captive woman (Killala). That brutality, sets the people on a different path, they didn’t believe Launa and Jack before but after that, they start becoming a true army.
As the war rages on (OK, it really just a couple of small battles), changing the people as war does, Launa and Jack constantly question how do they win against the horsemen without becoming them?
At the end, even though it was claimed to be a one way trip in book one, a gate opens allowing Launa and Jack to return to the future. But having been successful, they end up in an entirely different future. Unfortunately, the author made the mistakes time traveling /alternate universe stories often have. Alternate version of people from the original timeline. Alternate but nearly identical history (such as 1492 Christine Colon discovering the western hemisphere!).
The world is more peaceful but far from perfect. In the last line, Jack wonders if they will need to go back and try again! Queue the next sequel.
June 17, 2014
I am really enjoying this series! Combo of sci-fi and ancient history and war. Even the romance and sex involved were done well and made sense to the plot. While I plod through 5 or 6 books on Kindle at a time, I always seem to be reading a hardcopy of this series at a rapid rate! I could not find this series online, had to resort back to my wonderful local library!
January 5, 2008
I enjoyed this up until the end which I found fairly unsatisfying. If you really liked the first book, then you may find this worthwhile but if you were indifferent to the first book then you can probably skip this.
May 6, 2014
Good book with tough scenes and a just ok ending.
July 23, 2019
5/2016 - Second in the series continues to keep me interested and wanting more.
7/2019 - still loving rereading this series!
7/2019 - still loving rereading this series!
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews