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The Servant of the Manthycore
A gripping tale of the ancient Middle East! "Behold a warrior woman as ruthless, bloody, and honorable as the ancient world in which she walks, spanning more than forty lifetimes, while Ur and Babylon seethe with a thousand gods... What we have here is no less than a bright new epic, written with the bold spirit of the 21st century, yet spanning back into the mists of time. From Michael Ehart's fierce imagination comes an unforgettable gritty heroine, both human and goddess, and yet something much more... Gilgamesh, Elric, and Conan have finally met their female match!" -- Vera Nazarian, author of DREAMS OF THE COMPASS ROSE and LORDS OF RAINBOW
- GenresFantasy
176 pages, Paperback
First published October 11, 2007
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About the author
Michael Ehart
11 books5 followersMichael Ehart's stories have appeared recently in Ray Gun Revival, The Sword Review, Every Day Fiction, Flashing Swords and Fear and Trembling, and in anthologies including Damned in Dixie, Return of the Sword and Unparalleled Journeys II.
His book The Servant of the Manthycore from DEP is considered by critics to be one of the best fantasy books of 2007. Michael Moorcock writes in the foreword, "It resonates with the authenticity of genuine myth, bringing a deep, true sense of the past; a conviction which does not borrow from genre but mines our profoundest dreams and memories; the kind which give birth to myths."
Ehart is married to one of the most beautiful women in the world and would offer "pistols for two, coffee for one" to anyone who disagrees but pesky laws get in the way and so offers instead to naysayers a referral to a good optometrist.
You can find out more about what he is up to at http://mehart.blogspot.com .
"
His book The Servant of the Manthycore from DEP is considered by critics to be one of the best fantasy books of 2007. Michael Moorcock writes in the foreword, "It resonates with the authenticity of genuine myth, bringing a deep, true sense of the past; a conviction which does not borrow from genre but mines our profoundest dreams and memories; the kind which give birth to myths."
Ehart is married to one of the most beautiful women in the world and would offer "pistols for two, coffee for one" to anyone who disagrees but pesky laws get in the way and so offers instead to naysayers a referral to a good optometrist.
You can find out more about what he is up to at http://mehart.blogspot.com .
"
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
January 14, 2021
An interesting little book, that received zero attention, despite being pimped by Michael Moorcock, and should have been.
This is a fix-up of short stories, welded loosely into a novel-like order. Some fix-ups work better than others, this one is fairly tight, except that most of the stories are from the first person PoV of Ninshi, the anti-heroine, while two of the tales are told in third person limited by other characters. There is also a slightly longer tale, "Tears of Ishtar" that in the chronology becomes a set-up for actions that then occur off-stage. So as an anthology it is excellent, as a novel, it's patchy.
The premise is unique and original, the more so in that the decidedly pagan sword & sorcery Bronze Age world is subtly fused with the author's own Christianity in the way that one might have seen in a 1950s epic. For the non faithful that might sound awful, but here it really works to tell a larger story -- our cursed heroine encounters pagan gods and monsters and her endless life makes her immune to their claims and promises of power; she also encounters evidence of a God that seems greater and above these beings, one who might offer her a chance at redemption -- but refuses that salvation for reasons of both love and hate. It makes the larger story more interesting without becoming nothing but a morality play.
The action is crisp, Ninshi and her young ward Miri are both intriguing characters, and the Bronze Age setting feels real.
This is a fix-up of short stories, welded loosely into a novel-like order. Some fix-ups work better than others, this one is fairly tight, except that most of the stories are from the first person PoV of Ninshi, the anti-heroine, while two of the tales are told in third person limited by other characters. There is also a slightly longer tale, "Tears of Ishtar" that in the chronology becomes a set-up for actions that then occur off-stage. So as an anthology it is excellent, as a novel, it's patchy.
The premise is unique and original, the more so in that the decidedly pagan sword & sorcery Bronze Age world is subtly fused with the author's own Christianity in the way that one might have seen in a 1950s epic. For the non faithful that might sound awful, but here it really works to tell a larger story -- our cursed heroine encounters pagan gods and monsters and her endless life makes her immune to their claims and promises of power; she also encounters evidence of a God that seems greater and above these beings, one who might offer her a chance at redemption -- but refuses that salvation for reasons of both love and hate. It makes the larger story more interesting without becoming nothing but a morality play.
The action is crisp, Ninshi and her young ward Miri are both intriguing characters, and the Bronze Age setting feels real.
Displaying 1 of 1 review