Anyone who reads the fantasy genre has read a story of this type: person from Earth is transplanted to other world. The Seventh Sword, however, plays with the conventions of this type of story a lot, which makes the story far more unique, thought-provoking, and fun than any of the others. Wallie is the antithesis of the fantasy hero--a peace-loving intellectual at heart, an unconventional teacher and a trickster, driven by necessity to do things he hates the thought of.

If you read this series (and I urge you to, several times), pay attention to the Hamlet references, the repetition of "power corrupts", and the water/jewels imagery. These are books that reward deeper readings.

It kills me that this book (and the series) isn't available in a more durable (hardcover) edition! This is one of my favorite series and I have read and re-read it several times over the last few years. Duncan has taken the old "stranger in a strange land" fantasy novel and given it a fresh and delightful new feel. Read the series the first time just to enjoy the interaction. Read it again to see just how many clues leading up to the ending that you missed (and then tell everyone you really knew they were there all along! :) ). Gives the series a try! It is worth your time.

Book 1 of The Seventh Sword

While the formula is now become traditional (man from our world transported to a different universe), this story is an absolute delight to read. The prose is very descriptive and evocative without being flowery or tedious (a very difficult tightrope to walk), the characters quickly develop depth and personalities, and it is very, very easy to suspend disbelief and immerse yourself in the story. The ending prepares you for the next book without really being a cliff-hanger. Sword and sorcery, sort of -- with a twist. Does Clarke's Law explain everything? You decide..

I'd rate this 'G.'

...Which I know sounds like hyperbole, but I've yet to read such a detailed world fleshed out with such elegance and ease. The writing is never intrusive--unforgettable characters like Lady Thondi and Brota make great entrances and are given thorough descriptions, but it never feels like the author is just stretching his characterisation muscles. This book seethes with tension and explodes periodically into some great action sequences, but it's perhaps most satisfying as love stories intertwined. No spoilers, but the scene where Jja washes Wallie after his humiliation, or Katanji with Diwa, or Nnanji wooing Thana--these thrill me every time I read them.

You're missing out (especially if you write fantasy) if you judge this series by its cover art. ;)

This three book series is fantastic! A must read! A great love story to boot!

The Seventh Sword is a great series. I couldn't put the books down. Wally Smith dies on earth and wakes to find himself in the body of a master swordsman, living another man's life in another world. Suffice it to say, his 20th century values don't quite match those of the man's body he is inhabiting, which makes for some interesting turns as he runs into people who recognize him...

The Seventh Sword is an underread and underappreciated trilogy--a lot is going on under the surface of these three books, but the surface is such a readable story that it's accessible to anyone. The plot, as other reviewers have mentioned, is typical fantasy, but there are major, important differences which reveal themselves in this book and The Coming of Wisdom (2nd in the series). Every time I read these books, I'm swept up in the action, but I also see facets and symmetries I hadn't noticed before. This book, more than the first two, delves into the problems of idealism versus necessity, the proper use of power, what a person's identity really is (body, mind, beliefs, values, memories, reactions, desires?), faith and technology, how people grow and develop, and a lot more. The characters are unforgettable--anyone who's read these books will have an instant reaction to names like Katanji, Tomiyano, Thana, Tivanixi, or Jja.

Read these books, and read them again.

"The Reluctant Swordsman" (Seventh Sword, Book 1)introduces the characters and world/universe the author continues with in "The Coming of Wisdom" (Seventh Sword, Book 2)and "The Destiny of the Sword" (Seventh Sword, Book 3). This is a brilliant trilogy which remains at the top of Dave Duncan's impressive body of work. This third book doesn't just follow the first two. It reveals things which the author put there all along, giving the reader a new appreciation of the characters and events. That sounds confusing, but read it and see.

The characters remind me of Dungeons and Dragons Roll Playing Games (D&D RPG's). The hero is a 7th level swordsman who picks up a 7th level priest as a travelling companion. There is the same satisfaction of watching a companion swordsman advance through the ranks as there is developing your own character's skill levels in an RPG. There are also some other character types familiar to RPG's (archer's are held in contempt). This is not one of those cheap knockoffs on a D&D game though. This is just one element of the world the author has created which is kind of fun.

The author created a universe with a multitude of gods, like the Greek and Roman gods. While this is very common in the sword and sorcery genre, Dave Duncan has made the gods active participants in his story. One god makes repeated appearances, talks with the hero, and performs the occasional miracle. The author is able to keep the gods from completely overshadowing the human characters by stressing how they value "free will" for there own purposes. The author's brilliant use of deity characters (a recurring element throughout his best series) add facets to this story which lift it above a simple Conan type "guy with sword" story.

This trilogy has a detailed, multi-leveled plot which twists enough to keep you in suspense right up until the ending. And the ending reaches the appropriate dramatic climax, then has a satisfying denouement where the characters reap their rewards and the author ties up any loose ends. When this book ended, I was left saying, "Wow, imagine that!"

The only thing I can even think of that I didn't like about this trilogy is that it ended. The author really wrapped things up for the characters. It would be almost impossible to continue the story. I do hope that Dave Duncan comes back to this world with some new characters though. Maybe the old characters can have a cameo in the new story. . .

Book 3 of The Seventh Sword [conclusion]

The final book in this series, 'Destiny' isn't as easily read on its own as the first and middle books ('The Reluctant Swordsman' and 'The Soming of Wisdom'). However, this is that rare thing: a trilogy conclusion that really concludes the story. It's an happy ending, no fear -- and it leaves you feeling good and fulfilled, so there's no need for Duncan to write more. (It *could* be done, of course, as McCaffrey did with 'Nerilka's Story,' but it isn't a foregone conclusion that it will be -- or even should be.) Excellent reading; a real page-turner.

This one's rated 'G' by me.

The book Thor is one of my favorites...assuming there are not two. The synopsis above does not seem to describe at all the book I and the reviewers have read. The book I so enjoyed described a loyal dog's silent, lonely, heroic struggle to protect his family from an enemy within which he had no chance of defeating. It's truly a wonderful book, in some ways in the spirit of Watership Down or Tailchaiser's Song. The book described in the synopsis, however, seems to be the story of a beloved pet in real life. Very confusing...if you find the suspense tale entitled Thor, on which I believe the movie "Bad Moon" (and equally bad movie, but not the author's fault) was based, pick it up. It's a wonderfully engaging one or two night read that will keep you up til dawn. I hope the author gives those of us who enjoyed the book so much another night or two of pleasure...it's a stretch, but if Bruice Willis continues to get into Die Hard situations, why not Thor? Thrilling, heartwrenching read. Poor kitty.

reviewer o.c., ca. certainly never saw or read the book. as a shepherd trainer and owner i would have to describe this a combinatin of poetry and fine art. genuinely touching. a remarkable epitaph to a dog that was loved and is missed.

Thor was one of my favorite books! When the secret of the family's uncle came out was very scary! When a wild animal keeps coming and kills the young cat that thor actually loves he is sent to the pound and the owner crys as he is taken away. It certainly made me cry after a dignified dog was thrown into the pound!

I am a fourteen-year-old who someday wants to become a doctor, but until I read this book I honestly had no idea what the medical residency entailed. Although Residents did not discourage me from my dream, it definitely opened my eyes to what I will be facing in less than ten years. However, I feel that this book is also of interest to people who do not have any interest in a medical career, simply because when it's estimated that 100,000 people die every year because of doctors' errors, it's obvious that this issue affects more than just the small percentage of the population going through residency training. A definite five-star read.

Residents : The Perils and Promise of Educating Young Doctors gives a very true-to-life description of the often overworked and abused physician in training. When I read this book I was at the end of a very frustrating political battle in my own residency training which ended sadly with my moving into another field where I could still make use of my medical knowledge and training. In the book there are cases which sadly paralleled my own experience. The most positive aspect of this book is that it can make everyone aware of this often abusive training system which has a very powerful impact on medical training in this country and which ultimately effects everyone's health care. It is important for everyone to know what goes on in teaching hospitals and this book is both informative and very readable. It is unfortunate that it is currently out-of-print since it is important reading for anyone who is concerned about the health care system. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in the field of health care or who cares about those who may need the services of a physician both now and in the future. It is a must read!

David Duncan's exploration of the life of residents was fascinating and frightening. I couldn't put the book down. He really made me think twice about the current educational system for Doctors in this country. I can't wait to read another of Mr. Duncan's explorations! Amy Kemp (AMYMKEMP@AOL.com

Superb. Subtle, well-sustained, gentle, affecting. Best fiction I've read in a long time.

What a thought-provoking, utterly refreshing book. Nice to go beyond magical realism and find this cool and contemporary Mexican writer.

What a funky, quirky, rich and refreshing story. Unlike anything I've read all year. If you or someone you know loves Mexico, and loves a subtle but hilarious story, AND wants to know one of Mexico's most important contemporary writers, buy this book!

Although Hernando De Soto: A Savage Conquest in the Americas is a biography, it reveals as much about the hideous cruelty the Spanish inflicted upon indigenous peoples as it does about the great conquistadors. In doing so, author David Ewing Duncan allows the reader to balance the triumphs of Soto with the vast human destruction he left in his wake. Neither an apologia nor a polemic, this book stays close to the facts and represents the best in popular history.

Meticulously researched and beautifully written, De Soto unfolds like a riveting novel as it follows the explorer from his impoverished youth to his anti-climatic death near the Mississippi River. To anyone interested in the European conquest of the Americas (or in the decimation of the Indians and their cultures) this book is a must read.

In addition to Soto, the author chronicles the achievements and savageries of such other notables as Cortez, Pizarro, Balboa, and Coronado. The book cleverly references and analyzes the works of American and Spanish historians, including those who were present as the conquerors murdered, raped, pillaged, enslaved, proselytized and bravely explored in South, Central and North America. Where there is a disparity in the record Duncan examines the conflict and suggests the account he considers the more reliable. At times the contemporary American Soto enthusiasts and the Spanish historians who are referenced throughout the book prove almost as intriguing as their subject matter.

Given the tremendous undertaking this work represents, Duncan manages to produce a highly readable and lively book. Even if the author can't help but reveal his personal revulsion at Soto's blatant inhumanity, Duncan also is objective enough to acknowledge flashes of true heroism and bravery. The Soto that the author presents is a historic Indiana Jones figure who descends into a Conrad-like Heart of Darkness.

The book cleverly incorporates maps, charts, paintings, and other graphics into the text. Further, although it may be tempting to skip the footnotes due to the length of the text, the reader is well advised not to do so. Buried in these footnotes are clever thoughts, insights and explanations.

This book richly deserves five stars and a second look by anyone who skipped it when it was first released.

I came to this book because I enjoyed the author's other work: Calendar is a fascinating read, and From Cape to Cairo is really compelling. When I started this biography of Soto, I was surprised about the academicness of the work--lots of footnotes, for example. But as I read on, I found the same qualities which make reading Duncan's other works such a joyful experience present here. Though Soto may not be a "fun" topic, Duncan's prose is a great pleasure. And, as always, I learned a lot.

I discovered this book in my final year of my PhD, and I am so glad I did. It was indispensible to me and a great revision guide in the time leading upto my viva. I am now doing a post doc in protein crystallography and still use it and recommend it to graduate students and undergrads. I just wish that there were more books similar to this one, but going through other protein crystallography programs and showing how to solve structures. This book is mainly for XtalView and SHELX structure solutions, can you write another one on O and CNS & REFMAC structure solutions! Totally worth every penny and have had to buy another copy as the one I had originally has worn away!

I'd read the first book, back in my undergrad days and resorted to another to get the overall jist of things for basic understanding. But now that I'm actually a "practicing" crystallographer, I find this book indispensable. McRee explains with both detail and DIRECTION such that not only is the context understandable, but it is USABLE...hence the title of the book. All I could wish for were problems, like solving difference Pattersons and the likes...

When I was in my late teens and early twenties, I was moved by Vonnegut, Kesey, and Robbins. Now I am in my forties and those books don't elicit the same sort of response. This book does. It's the best of the late sixties and early seventies literature with the added maturity that twenty five or thirty years of experience brings. Reading The Brothers K has been a most entertaining reminder of the way things were, the way things still are, and the fundamental values of family life. It has affected my attitude and perspective, even my behavior. I've actually become more tolerant of the day to day foibles of my own three sons (at least temporarily) since diving into the world of the Chance brothers (thank you, David Duncan for that above all). The other readers' comments can fill you in on the plot and characters; I'll just say this -- if a 700 pate book seems too long, just read Book One -- 110 pages. Chances are, you'll be hooked on the Chances, and be the better for it.

Sigh. Who has time for the epics anymore? Not a college student, it would seem. "Read?" most scoff. "I haven't got time, what with my busy schedule, for a short story, let alone a big book that reaches nearly 700 pages in length."

Still, somewhere out there is the rare reader who likes the challenge an epic presents, loves to get lost in fascinating, multi-layered characterizations and plots that expand over decades.

For those readers, there is David James Duncan's 1992 offering, "The Brothers K." It excels on all those fronts I just mentioned, and on several more.

But when a friend recently handed it over to me, suggesting that I take a look, I too balked at its size:

"Look at it! Are you trying to kill any semblance of a social life I may have? This thing is mammoth and unwieldy!"

But my friend was persistent and so I went home and took a look. And soon became lost in the words, the story, the characters.

"Brothers K" is about the Chance family. Father Hugh is a mill worker who used to be the most promising baseball player around, until an accident at the mill cost him his dream. Mother Laura clings obsessively to her Adventist religion, since it once protected her from the darkest hour of her past.

Together, they have four boys and two twin girls. Everett is the oldest, a charming, witty rogue who doesn't share Laura's faith. Peter is next, and is a fellow cynic. Irwin is the large and innocent third child. Kincaid is a blank slate, who serves as the readers' eyes in the guise of the book's narrator.

The twin girls, Bet and Freddy, come later and more or less fulfill the role of younger sisters to the four brothers and little else, although they have a heartbreaking scene involving their grandmother's death that paves the way for the story to come full circle later.

Those are the characters. There is a plot, but Duncan takes it so lackadaisically and slow across the sands of time that in essence it can all be summed up in one word: Lifetime. For this is very much the saga of the Chance family, and all of their adventures therein.

We literally see the Chance boys grow up before our very eyes, watch as their characters age and grow, or regress, experience life and flirt with death.

Around halfway through the book, the four brothers (the "K" is an allusion to "The Brothers Karamazov," by Fyodor Dostoyevsky) each go off in search of their own way; Everett becomes a draft-dodger, Peter a philosopher, Kincaid a hippie, and Irwin goes to fight in Vietnam.

There is no rush on Duncan's part to tell the story, and so there can be no rush from the reader to finish it.

For this is a book in which the getting there is very much the draw, and readers are rewarded their patience by Duncan's sense of humor, sometimes gentle, other times abrasive, many times subtle and always hilarious.

But if you're the sort who seeks immediate gratification and "lite" escape from your reading, "Brothers K" is told in a series of broken up chapters and chapters-within-chapters, making it easier to simply pick it up, read a section or two and then return to whatever else you were doing.

If you can, that is. It's a hypnotic, intoxicating read, which will make putting the book down difficult.

And when you finally do finish, if you're like me, you will be so moved from the whole experience you will have to leave the room and walk the book off. It's that good.

Upon returning to your room, of course, there will be the brand-new temptation to pick it up and start all over again.

David James Duncan's style is so unique and so personal and descriptive you can't help but be pulled into his writing. It doesn't matter what he's writing about - you will find yourself hooked. His passion for life comes across in all of his work.


The Brothers K is my favourite novel of all time. Yes it is about baseball, religion, the 60's - but mostly it is about family. You will love reading this book but hate turning the last page.

This book is beautiful, simple, funny, and deep like a dark, swirling undercut bank of a good trout stream, in which secrets lurk, and wonder is promised on the very next cast. This is only fiction because the characters themselves are the creation of the author's imagination...yet in reality they are an amalgamation of all of us, each one having a purely human experience. Fishing is a metaphore in this book, not what the book is about, though folks who do fish, especially those who study the stream and just "know" where the fish will be will find a special appreciation for this book. It is philosophy told in the context of a story, like "Ishmael" by Daniel Quinn, or Richard Bach's "Jonathan Livingston Seagull," or as has been mentioned many times, Robert Pirsig's "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance."

I am certain that The River Why would be read and understood 60 different ways by any 50 people who read it. For me, it was a compelling journey of a young man, trying to navigate the waters of understanding between what is true, what is not, and finding that those two extremes don't exist. Old ways of seeing the world didn't work when he was confronted with real life "stuff," like death, love, time, and the creatures with whom we share this little wet planet. Over the course of a year on one of any Coast Range rivers of western Oregon, he discovered the "middle path," a path that made sense to him, brought him peace, brought him understanding, and ultimately brought him love, reunion with his family, and a sense of his place in the universe.

This is a book for those who are drawn to nature and native wisdom as doorways to spiritual insight. It is a book I will give away as gifts to special people whom I believe it could touch as it touched me. Spend 15 minutes with it, and you, too will be "hooked!"

Ocassionally, you read a book that becomes a part of you and stays with you long after you have put it down. David James Duncan has created nothing less than a tangible experience of reading. You will read countless glowing reviews, but the best thing you may do is read this contemporary classic for yourself. You will find yourself making references to your friends and family about characters like Gus, Titus, Eddie and even a dog named Descartes. You will laugh and cry with characters that become people, because of an author that writes as tenderly and sensitively as the river flows.

This may be the most meaningful novel I have ever read. Duncan's book takes the reader into a deeply touching world of ecology, wit, Spirit, desire and fish. Lots of fish. While I could heave accolades on the author's fabulous dialogues and descriptions or the level of character development, all of that would be to miss, what was to me, the greatest quality of the book. Duncan takes the reader into the searchings (and findings- kind of) of one Oregon soul. The reader will not only laugh, cry and ponder... the sensitive reader will travel with Gus Orviston and encounter life and vibrancy too scarce in our world. It is a transforming book. Read it. Read it on your knees. Read it while dancing. Read it sailing. Read this book.