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Valhalla
A post-apocalyptic doomsday novel from“one of the truly great American writers of the 20th century” (The Guardian). In the dystopian future, the government has collapsed, cities are burning, and a roving gang called Mau Mau is marauding across America. A drifter named Walter Stone finds refuge at a lakeside camp, where the survivors of a plane crash have met up with other refugees, and are struggling with a constantly changing cast of leaders, as well as limited supplies. Across the lake stands the palatial Valhalla, a mansion well supplied with food and ammunition, where a wealthy junkman and his daughters live. The goal is to take control of Valhalla. The obstacles are certain death across the lake, rootless bands of killers threatening the camp, and a way of life that is quickly slipping away. “A commanding writer of unusual power and delicacy.” —The New Yorker “A born storyteller.” —St. Louis Post-Dispatch
318 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1980
5 people are currently reading
58 people want to read
About the author
Newton Thornburg
17 books46 followersBorn in Harvey, Illinois, Thornburg graduated from the University of Iowa with a Fine Arts degree. He worked in a variety of jobs before devoting himself to writing full-time (or at least in tandem with his cattle farm in the Ozarks) in 1973.
His 1976 novel Cutter and Bone was filmed in 1981 as Cutter's Way. The New York Times called Cutter and Bone "the best novel of its kind for ten years." Another novel-to film Beautiful Kate was filmed in Australia in 2009 and starred Bryan Brown and Ben Mendelsohn. It was directed by Rachel Ward, who is Bryan Brown's real-life wife.
Thornburg died on May 9, 2011, a few days shy of his 82nd birthday.
His 1976 novel Cutter and Bone was filmed in 1981 as Cutter's Way. The New York Times called Cutter and Bone "the best novel of its kind for ten years." Another novel-to film Beautiful Kate was filmed in Australia in 2009 and starred Bryan Brown and Ben Mendelsohn. It was directed by Rachel Ward, who is Bryan Brown's real-life wife.
Thornburg died on May 9, 2011, a few days shy of his 82nd birthday.
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
March 16, 2015
This is not your typical post-apocalyptic thriller. The story follows the life of Walter Stone as he attempts to find a safe haven following the financial and political collapse of the United States. Rather than an abrupt collapse, the failure of the government is a gradual decline and some flashbacks describe events taking place and their causes (generally blamed on the government's inability to make good choices in the face of lobbying by special interests). Written in the 70s, the book mentions presidents Nixon, Ford, and Carter, as well as "the next guy."
Walter's story picks up after he escapes from the city, trying to reach a place in the country owned by his bigoted neighbor (who is killed before the story begins). On the way, he encounters a plane crash and rescues the survivors, a trio of rich young people who are ill equipped to survive in this new world that they find themselves in. In spite of the dysfunctional nature of his new companions, Walter feels a need to help them and they continue to play a role in the remainder of the story.
Finding themselves taken in by a disparate group of survivors living near a lake in the Ozark's, Walter continues to deal with the wildly varied personal natures of the other survivors, his own little group, and the holy grail of survival, a secure compound nearby that has unlimited electricity, food, and other needs that his group hungers after, called Valhalla. Walter also finds himself dealing with a roving gang that appears only interested in destroying what little chance his people have of survival.
The story is well written, but quite dated in it's racist aspects. This is primarily due to the nature of the times in which it was written, and does not detract from the story too much. You have to place yourself in the 70s and remember how things were in those days. It is a good analysis of how society might collapse in the face of financial ruin and discusses the root causes and issues relating to how modern society would handle a disaster of this nature. Thornburg also covers several of the main characters in significant depth and you feel that you could encounter similar people if you were in Walter's situation.
If you're a fan of post-apocalyptic fiction that doesn't involve zombies, then you'll probably enjoy reading this book. Keep in mind the time in which it was written, however, and don't let the racist biases get to you. I read this courtesy of the Henderson NV public library's inter-library loan program as no local libraries had a copy and the purchase price was prohibitive, so my thanks are extended to that fine institution.
Walter's story picks up after he escapes from the city, trying to reach a place in the country owned by his bigoted neighbor (who is killed before the story begins). On the way, he encounters a plane crash and rescues the survivors, a trio of rich young people who are ill equipped to survive in this new world that they find themselves in. In spite of the dysfunctional nature of his new companions, Walter feels a need to help them and they continue to play a role in the remainder of the story.
Finding themselves taken in by a disparate group of survivors living near a lake in the Ozark's, Walter continues to deal with the wildly varied personal natures of the other survivors, his own little group, and the holy grail of survival, a secure compound nearby that has unlimited electricity, food, and other needs that his group hungers after, called Valhalla. Walter also finds himself dealing with a roving gang that appears only interested in destroying what little chance his people have of survival.
The story is well written, but quite dated in it's racist aspects. This is primarily due to the nature of the times in which it was written, and does not detract from the story too much. You have to place yourself in the 70s and remember how things were in those days. It is a good analysis of how society might collapse in the face of financial ruin and discusses the root causes and issues relating to how modern society would handle a disaster of this nature. Thornburg also covers several of the main characters in significant depth and you feel that you could encounter similar people if you were in Walter's situation.
If you're a fan of post-apocalyptic fiction that doesn't involve zombies, then you'll probably enjoy reading this book. Keep in mind the time in which it was written, however, and don't let the racist biases get to you. I read this courtesy of the Henderson NV public library's inter-library loan program as no local libraries had a copy and the purchase price was prohibitive, so my thanks are extended to that fine institution.
March 2, 2023
I expected a typical novel of survivalist/prepper fiction (my guilty pleasure), but holeeee shit, this book is so much worse. I am surprised that it is not mentioned in the same breath as far-right screeds like The Turner Diaries or Camp of the Saints. I can only assume this is because it is a lesser known work.
The book is set in a post-collapse United States in the 1980s. What started with economic collapse led to riots and violence, and the country has been through what is, in essence, a race war. Roving gangs of black people called the Mau Mau rampage across the country, looting everything they come across and raping and murdering the white people they come across. I quote from the book: "The gangs would seek out likely neighborhoods and move in, hitting one house after another, breaking in, beating and killing the inhabitants and taking whatever they wanted, sometimes staying on for a day or two if the place was luxurious enough and had enough food and booze to keep them happy. Often they took 'slaves,' whites whom they forced to serve them in one capacity or another, usually sexual. Predictably... the whites of the city made almost no resistance. It was his belief that the same monotonous decades of eastern liberal media propaganda had conditioned the black man to believe he could rob and rape and kill with impunity had conditioned whites to confusion, impotence, and - even now - guilt."
Yeah. Holy shit.
Another snippet, about the main character's phone conversation with his ex-wife:
"She told him of the conditions there, how all of Southern California was now virtually a province of Mexico. One heard Spanish more than English and the Mexican flag flew almost everywhere, even over public buildings. The earlier Chicano-black race wars had subsided, with the Chicanos the clear victors. And the whites, who had sat on the sidelines till it was too late, made one last attempt at reasserting their hegemony, with their police, their National Guard, their weaponry. But they too finally had broken before the awesome numbers of the Mexicans, the hungry and penniless hordes with absolutely nothing to lose and very little to gain either."
The protagonists of this book are mostly white refugees (with a few token African Americans) who have escaped the cities to the countryside and banded together to survive. The female characters have no depth whatsoever and exist just as sex objects. The antagonists are the roving gangs of black Mau Mau who they inevitably encounter. The author describes his white characters by their names, but non-white characters by their race, thus dehumanizing them. "He saw a black coming," or "there was a group of blacks." He also uses descriptors such as "rampaging ghetto kids." And the "blacks" in his story do nothing but pillage, rape, murder and mutilate - apparently just for the enjoyment of it. His characters occasionally wax polemical about why this is, but never come to a conclusion. It is just accepted in this book that "blacks" are bloodthirsty savages. It's every racist's fantasy, laid out on the page.
Many of the protagonists of the story are written as liberals who, even while under attack from these monstrous gangs of non-white people, will argue with one another about political correctness or whether it's moral to put up a fight. Here's yet another snippet:
"She smiled dubiously. 'But that still leaves the problem of morality. I mean, if you kill someone in order to take what he has - isn't that murder?'
'No, it's war.'
'I see. And we're on one side and the Mau Mau are on the other?'
Now it was Stone's turn to smile. 'You hadn't noticed?'
'Because they're black, they're the enemy, is that it? ...Aren't they just trying to survive, the same as we are?'"
Mind you, this conversation takes place in the book right after their group has been attacked and one of them murdered. The woman in the conversation has been raped by one of the Mau Mau. The characters aren't liberals - they're conservative caricatures about what they imagine liberals to be. They're strawmen.
This story reminds me of many of the urban legends that arose in the summer of 2020, during the George Floyd protests. People would say something like, "I know this girl who was a big supporter of Black Lives Matter. Anyway, she drove by a BLM protest and they pulled her out of her car, raped and murdered her. The liberal media refuses to report on it." I heard so many variations of this silly tall tale, but it always included a liberal person getting their comeuppance in the eyes of the racist conservative telling the story. This entire book reminds me of a novelization of that tall tale.
Definitely avoid this garbage. Even if you can somehow overlook the racism (as other reviewers seem to have been able to do) the story isn't even good or engaging.
The book is set in a post-collapse United States in the 1980s. What started with economic collapse led to riots and violence, and the country has been through what is, in essence, a race war. Roving gangs of black people called the Mau Mau rampage across the country, looting everything they come across and raping and murdering the white people they come across. I quote from the book: "The gangs would seek out likely neighborhoods and move in, hitting one house after another, breaking in, beating and killing the inhabitants and taking whatever they wanted, sometimes staying on for a day or two if the place was luxurious enough and had enough food and booze to keep them happy. Often they took 'slaves,' whites whom they forced to serve them in one capacity or another, usually sexual. Predictably... the whites of the city made almost no resistance. It was his belief that the same monotonous decades of eastern liberal media propaganda had conditioned the black man to believe he could rob and rape and kill with impunity had conditioned whites to confusion, impotence, and - even now - guilt."
Yeah. Holy shit.
Another snippet, about the main character's phone conversation with his ex-wife:
"She told him of the conditions there, how all of Southern California was now virtually a province of Mexico. One heard Spanish more than English and the Mexican flag flew almost everywhere, even over public buildings. The earlier Chicano-black race wars had subsided, with the Chicanos the clear victors. And the whites, who had sat on the sidelines till it was too late, made one last attempt at reasserting their hegemony, with their police, their National Guard, their weaponry. But they too finally had broken before the awesome numbers of the Mexicans, the hungry and penniless hordes with absolutely nothing to lose and very little to gain either."
The protagonists of this book are mostly white refugees (with a few token African Americans) who have escaped the cities to the countryside and banded together to survive. The female characters have no depth whatsoever and exist just as sex objects. The antagonists are the roving gangs of black Mau Mau who they inevitably encounter. The author describes his white characters by their names, but non-white characters by their race, thus dehumanizing them. "He saw a black coming," or "there was a group of blacks." He also uses descriptors such as "rampaging ghetto kids." And the "blacks" in his story do nothing but pillage, rape, murder and mutilate - apparently just for the enjoyment of it. His characters occasionally wax polemical about why this is, but never come to a conclusion. It is just accepted in this book that "blacks" are bloodthirsty savages. It's every racist's fantasy, laid out on the page.
Many of the protagonists of the story are written as liberals who, even while under attack from these monstrous gangs of non-white people, will argue with one another about political correctness or whether it's moral to put up a fight. Here's yet another snippet:
"She smiled dubiously. 'But that still leaves the problem of morality. I mean, if you kill someone in order to take what he has - isn't that murder?'
'No, it's war.'
'I see. And we're on one side and the Mau Mau are on the other?'
Now it was Stone's turn to smile. 'You hadn't noticed?'
'Because they're black, they're the enemy, is that it? ...Aren't they just trying to survive, the same as we are?'"
Mind you, this conversation takes place in the book right after their group has been attacked and one of them murdered. The woman in the conversation has been raped by one of the Mau Mau. The characters aren't liberals - they're conservative caricatures about what they imagine liberals to be. They're strawmen.
This story reminds me of many of the urban legends that arose in the summer of 2020, during the George Floyd protests. People would say something like, "I know this girl who was a big supporter of Black Lives Matter. Anyway, she drove by a BLM protest and they pulled her out of her car, raped and murdered her. The liberal media refuses to report on it." I heard so many variations of this silly tall tale, but it always included a liberal person getting their comeuppance in the eyes of the racist conservative telling the story. This entire book reminds me of a novelization of that tall tale.
Definitely avoid this garbage. Even if you can somehow overlook the racism (as other reviewers seem to have been able to do) the story isn't even good or engaging.
May 16, 2017
Newton Thornburg is one of the great writers of the late twentieth century and should be better known and more read than he is. Many of his novels explore themes of rootlessness and disconnectedness. Often, his characters are at wit's ends, unemployed, puttering about, getting into trouble. His novels, especially his crime novels, are not your typical shoot-em-up stuff, but are multi-layered journeys into complex characters.
Valhalla is more of a dystopian future novel than a crime novel, although many of the same elements found in Thornburgh's crime novels are found here, including the moral quandaries, the rootlessness, the jealousies, the lusts, the wanting to prove oneself over and over again. Valhalla is about a world that has fallen apart. The economy has collapsed to the point that money is worthless except to start a fire. Violent, lawless, ruthless inner-city gangs have taken over the cities and are now roaming the countryside preying on the few communities of survivors.
The main character of the story is Stone, who has managed to develop a few survival skills, which are put to a test when he meets a trio of elite, wealthy persons who have crashed in a private plane. The interdependence and jealousies that develop between this small group are intense and explode when they sort of join a larger community.
There are many dystopian novels that have been out for decades of such bleak future worlds such as Heinlein's Farnham's Freehold and Richard Matheson's I Am Legend. More recently, many of us have watched The Walking Dead. There is a lot to understand about human nature when faced with survival and desperation and what we are made of and what it does to us and our character. Thus, even though this is a setting that has been explored by many, it is certainly worth exploring again in Valhalla and few have ever written about such a bleak future as well as Thornburgh has done here.
On the way, the novel looks into such ideas as morality, guilt, capital punishment, racism, jealousy, and leadership. Every one of the characters in this book seems to develop over time and become more complex. It is without question an absolutely outstanding book and well worth reading.
Valhalla is more of a dystopian future novel than a crime novel, although many of the same elements found in Thornburgh's crime novels are found here, including the moral quandaries, the rootlessness, the jealousies, the lusts, the wanting to prove oneself over and over again. Valhalla is about a world that has fallen apart. The economy has collapsed to the point that money is worthless except to start a fire. Violent, lawless, ruthless inner-city gangs have taken over the cities and are now roaming the countryside preying on the few communities of survivors.
The main character of the story is Stone, who has managed to develop a few survival skills, which are put to a test when he meets a trio of elite, wealthy persons who have crashed in a private plane. The interdependence and jealousies that develop between this small group are intense and explode when they sort of join a larger community.
There are many dystopian novels that have been out for decades of such bleak future worlds such as Heinlein's Farnham's Freehold and Richard Matheson's I Am Legend. More recently, many of us have watched The Walking Dead. There is a lot to understand about human nature when faced with survival and desperation and what we are made of and what it does to us and our character. Thus, even though this is a setting that has been explored by many, it is certainly worth exploring again in Valhalla and few have ever written about such a bleak future as well as Thornburgh has done here.
On the way, the novel looks into such ideas as morality, guilt, capital punishment, racism, jealousy, and leadership. Every one of the characters in this book seems to develop over time and become more complex. It is without question an absolutely outstanding book and well worth reading.
September 6, 2019
Another Step Toward Extinction
Stories of survival have always caught my attention, and especially those set in a future of unimaginable destruction. I think maybe my fascination began with ALAS BABYLON when i encountered it in the early 60s, and has continued over the years to post-apocalyptic stories, whether from science fiction or any of the other genres. This book dates itself in the 80s and the middle-American attitudes of those times. What seems to be overt racism in the opening chapters is off-putting, but as the story evolves so also does the reader’s understanding of the protagonist and his world view. At its core, this is an adventure story. Its characters are believable, and a few are actually likable. The evil conjured by the shutdown of civilization, and that threatens the people in this story, is frightening. The author has done an admirable job of making it seem believable, and all too inevitable.
Stories of survival have always caught my attention, and especially those set in a future of unimaginable destruction. I think maybe my fascination began with ALAS BABYLON when i encountered it in the early 60s, and has continued over the years to post-apocalyptic stories, whether from science fiction or any of the other genres. This book dates itself in the 80s and the middle-American attitudes of those times. What seems to be overt racism in the opening chapters is off-putting, but as the story evolves so also does the reader’s understanding of the protagonist and his world view. At its core, this is an adventure story. Its characters are believable, and a few are actually likable. The evil conjured by the shutdown of civilization, and that threatens the people in this story, is frightening. The author has done an admirable job of making it seem believable, and all too inevitable.
January 21, 2018
Upscale post-apocalyptic fiction written in a sparse but often poetic prose that fits an all-too-believable narrative set in a sparse but beautiful land.
Everyman finds himself thrust into a hero narrative that he feels he falls short of, ends in an attempt at redemption and...
...no spoilers here, do yourself a favour, read it and find out for yourself. I bought a couple more by the same author on the strength of this one.
Everyman finds himself thrust into a hero narrative that he feels he falls short of, ends in an attempt at redemption and...
...no spoilers here, do yourself a favour, read it and find out for yourself. I bought a couple more by the same author on the strength of this one.
November 16, 2021
Love dystopian. Love Thornburg, but this one doesn't measure up to his Cutter and Bone or Dreamland.
June 21, 2016
Different to Thornburgs crime thrillers, but still a great read. He creates an easy to imagine dystopian world.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews