Stonehenge

by Harry Harrison, Leon Stover

The narrative is as virile and bloodthirsty as the tribes it commemorates - OXFORD MAIL

Ason, Prince of Mycenae, escapes slavery and death at the hands of the King of Atlantis and sets sail on a perilous journey to the island of the Yerni. But there he discovers that an important Mycenaean tin mine has been ransacked and all its staff butchered. Savagely he avenges his dead countrymen and makes himself chief of the island's warring tribes. To consolidate his newly-won power, he orders a symbol of unity and piece to be built - Stonehenge.

Stonehenge is a full-blooded historical novel: a tale of warriors and battles and confusion staged with considerable panache in the deeps of time long before the first recoded history in the West - OXFORD MAIL

This rousing adventure story set in the Europe of 1473 BC above all sets out to entertain. But it also has a rather more serious purpose - to expound another theory about the reasons for the building of the fascinating stone circles - MANCHESTER EVENING NEWS

Cover Illustration: Chris Achilleos

Genres: Fantasy, Historical Fiction, Historical, Fiction, Alternate History, American, Adventure

237 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1972

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

Harry Harrison (born Henry Maxwell Dempsey) was an American science fiction author best known for his character the The Stainless Steel Rat and the novel Make Room! Make Room! (1966), the basis for the film Soylent Green (1973). He was also (with Brian W. Aldiss) co-president of the Birmingham Science Fiction Group.

Excerpted from Wikipedia.

Reviews

[Chai · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have not finished reading this yet. At first I thought it was a nonfiction about Stonehenge, but then I started reading it and realized it is a historical fiction.

This book starts slow but gets increasingly better. The characters are well-fleshed out and alive. The suspense and pacing gets better after a couple chapters; when things start happening, they really suck you in. You have to keep turning pages to find out what happens next!

The world and cultures in this story are what really make it a gem. Descriptions and details are so vivid that I feel as if I am there, and the characters are such that I care and worry for them. Furthermore, little pieces begin to connect into a complete puzzle as the story goes along, making this quite the adventure. It is a very exciting tale with many things to pull people in - the history, the answer to the question "What was Atlantis like, perhaps?", romance, adventure, battles, a very brave hero, and the intrigue that comes with a different culture and time period.

I would recommend this book to anyone interested in mystical places, Atlantis, ancient history, Stonehenge, or someone who just wants to read a book that is not only exciting, but makes you think.

[Kylene · Rating 2 out of 5]

I picked up this book in either my freshmen or sophomore year of college (about 9 or 10 years ago) and I've just been carrying it around. It sounded interesting. It's a fictionalized idea about how Stonehenge came into being. And it was okay. And . . . just not all that captivating. I'm sure one of the guys who wrote it, since he's a professor of anthropology, did a great deal of research to make his idea work. And who knows? Maybe he's closer to the truth than I expect--I have no idea. My biggest problem with the book was the time given for things to happen (Oh, look! We've trekked from England to Greece in less than a week! On foot!) and that I really didn't care for the writing. It just didn't catch me up in the story. Honestly, not a book I'd really recommend.

[Kathi · Rating 3 out of 5]

The 40 page Afterword provides the archeological basis for the novel: the warrior culture, the ancient strife between Mycenae (Greek) and Atlantis (Minoan), the importance of tin, the culture of the proto-Celts, and the construction of Stonehenge. The novel is fleshed out over these bones, rich with detail but somewhat uneven in storytelling. Intep, the Egyptian builder, was the most interesting character to me.

[Chris Sudall · Rating 3 out of 5]

A pretty good historic romp which tries to explain past events through the adventures of two men.
I enjoyed the story and trying to work out where events were taking place (this is very badly explained by a poorly written historical footnote from a professor at the end). Unusually, however, for Harrison the main characters are totally unsympathetic and poorly developed.
Another one for my run through of his books and one of the poorer ones.

[Marianne · Rating 2 out of 5]

A violent tale of how Stonehenge was built, as well as the fate of real world Atlantis. I like the way it ties in various cultures, and relates how they might see each other. It also tells a likely story to the strife of the day. Didn't feel the need to keep it though. Somehow, in the telling, it all felt rather ordinary, if bloody.

[Simon Gosden · Rating 4 out of 5]

A short violent and brutal book about a time when life was short, violent and brutal. It starts in Atlantis and ends up in South West England as a group of shipwrecked adventurers travel across the land eventually ending up on Salisbury Plain where they are responsible for creating the megalith with the help of an Egyptian engineer.
Needed a damn good map.

[Lester · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good change from my usual reads..needing lots of 'mindless' reading to pass time. Low concentration is a nicer way to say mindless.
This book, with bits of history thrown in, was great. There are hundreds more 'sci fi' type stories on the shelf waiting to be read..............

[J.P. Reedman · Rating 1 out of 5]

Dated,even when first published. An old idea that somehow a monument like Stonehenge couldn't be a British creation but had to have been engineered by Greeks and so on. I remember that in the notes at the end, Harrison's anthropologist mate was quite horrified by the new dates for Stonehenge which kind of blew their Greek/Atlantis theories out of the water. Stonehenge is much older but he was convinced the new dates must be wrong...actually, they WERE wrong, the monument is even older still! They also had a pet theory that Woodhenge nearby was some kind of gigantic tower where warriors lived, despite no evidence of any kind of a roof.Woodhenge was probably a religious structure, like Stonehenge, but at least Harrison had these 'warriors' living near Durrington walls, which WAS a settlement...some novels have people wandering all over the stones and living just outside the bank, which just never happened.Stonehenge was not a place where hundreds of people were milling about.

[Laren · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fabulous! I'm sure Harry wrote the racy bits!

[Niklas .gallen · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is based on Three warriors that fight against the Empire.It is a tuff read but when you are done you want to read the next book.

[Kenneth Flusche · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting fiction, built as a toom or a meeting place?

[Jocelyn Montalvo Cullum]

I registered a book at BookCrossing.com!
http://www.BookCrossing.com/journal/14694899