A fast-moving adventure story.

Cornelia Watson is a woman of stregth and character. She has battled the unique prejucies of her East Texas past and faces them in her present. In doing so, she follows a road less travelled.

This is an exciting prehistoric adventure with sympathetic characters. It moves right along.

I recently re-read all my Piper books, then re-read this one, and came to the same conclusion I had when I bought it new years ago: it was fun to read more about fuzzies, but the author took unacceptable liberties with a world that did not belong to them.

On its own it is an enjoyable and well written story, though not in anything like Piper's style. Think of it as a "television adaptation" of a story in the "real world" of Piper's Fuzzies, with the stretching and massaging that modern day TV types are genetically unable to avoid. The author tried to make this book their own, and in so doing made it an uncomfortable fit in Piper's world. Enjoy it, but don't try to think of it as the definitive extension of the Fuzzy storyline.

This is a wonderful story! I have read the H.piper books, It is the 'Life' of a fuzzy, and I would recommend it to anyone who enjoys the fuzzies and science fiction.

I'm a *big* Piper fan. When I got this story I devoured it in a single sitting. It's not Piper's style, at all, but the story of how the Fuzzies survived a thousand years of being stranded was utterly engrossing. Strongly recommended.

This episodic series of adventures spans many years in the life of Kla-Noh and his apprentice Si-Lun. They work closely with the Initiates (monks) who safeguard the magical knowledge of Shar-Nun. The 3 "secrets" of Shar-Nun are not central to the novel, by any means, although each secret is worked into one adventure.
Ardath Mayhar adopts the innocent story-telling style and archaic language of a Sinbad epic. Occasionally a poetic turn of phrase made me smile. There is much originality, but with echoes of fairytale, as in the chapter Shallah Sits at Her Loom. I was swept up in some of the tales (Eaters of Hearts, but found no surprises in others (Beast in the Barrens).
The complete altruism and self-awareness of the main characters will strike some as refreshing and comfortable. Like Batman, Kla-Noh is independently wealthy and lives to help solve the great dangers and mysteries of his time. On the other hand, this is all too good to be true.

The short stories of this collection are set in the same world as _How the Gods Wove in Kyrannon_, but a few years earlier, on another continent. The stories don't quite form a novel, but characters appear in multiple stories, and the events of earlier stories influence how later stories play out.

The language used is in the unusually formal and lyrical style as that in _How the Gods Wove in Kyrannon_: not as archaic as Elrond in _The Lord of the Rings_, however, and with a fair dollop of humour mixed in. This world has 'magic', but in the form of various flavors of ESP: telepathy, mainly, for long-range communication. Most of the more spectacular results of arcane knowledge seem to owe more to secret science than to magic. There are even hints that this may be a post-holocaust world.

"Three Secrets" - Kla-Noh, Seeker After Secrets (somewhat like a private investigator), wants to retire in a blaze of glory - and any secret that he doesn't possess maddens him with curiosity. He already knows the first secret of the Initiates - how to calm the seas - and even the deadly second secret, that of causing earthquakes. But the existence of the third secret, known only by the eldest of the Initiates, is a torment to him, and to reach the Tower of the Initiates out in the bay, he takes on a ragged sailor as an assistant - Si-Lun, whose eyes are much older than his years, and who appears to have secrets of his own.

"The Cat with the Sapphire Eyes" - Tro-Ven, a local sorcerer, once wooed, won, and wed a princess of another world as a ploy to learn her magical secrets. He abandoned her many years ago - but much of her knowledge could be used by only one of her own blood. His daughter, Li-Ah, brought to Shar-Nuhn against her will, now seeks the help of Kla-Noh and his assistant - a powerful talisman given her by her mother has disappeared. (Kla-Noh's first advice to his client shows that this isn't a rescue-the-helpless-princess story: he tells her to leave the search to him, because *she* should be practicing her command of her arts rather than despairing at her captivity. At best, it will doubly arm her against her father; at worst, she will still be stronger than had she given up.)

"The Man Who Thought Batwise" - Si-Lun's first tale of his own past. Despite Si-Lun's desire to go to sea, his father apprenticed him to an adept of science and sorcery - but Lo-Vahr's dabbling in secrets turned out to be far less wholesome than Kla-Noh's...

"Shallah Sits at Her Loom" - Shallah's family asks for Kla-Noh's help - her gift of prophecy, which impels her to compulsive weaving of tapestries while she's in its grip, is showing her something that seems likely to destroy her, if no one can break the vision's hold on her.

"The Weatherwitch" - Some of the evil done by the sorcerer Tro-Ven can never wholly heal, but Kla-Noh must do the best he can.

"The Beast in the Barrens" The wastelands inland of Shar-Nuhn are called barren because they are uninhabited - and for more sinister reasons, not widely known. A young kinswoman of Kla-Noh's is trapped on her farm out on the border. Some sinister creature creeps out of the barrens by night, killing her watchdogs, and she cannot leave her children unguarded even to gather food.

"The Flaming Feather" A strange messenger-bird makes its way to Kla-Noh's pigeon loft, but bearing no written message; the bird itself, of a breed unknown even to Si-Lun, seems to be the only message the sender could provide. But tempting two Seekers with a riddle can be effective enough. :)

"The Eaters of Hearts" - Returning home with Si-Lun from their last venture, Kla-Noh is put in mind of a tale of his youth, when he joined a voyage from the Purple Waters to the other ocean, that of the Blue, and the people he found there.

"A Quaking of Merchants" - The merchants of Shar-Nuhn allowed their greed to tempt them into selling the second secret of Shar-Nuhn to a foreign power; Kla-Noh and Si-Lun have been called in to salvage the situation.

"The Door Into Otherwhere" Kla-Noh has fallen seriously ill - but the worst problem is that his reserves have been drained by all the work he and Si-Lun have been doing lately. Si-Lun calls on the Initiates to try to bring Kla-Noh back before he ventures too near the brink of death - the door into otherwhere.

"The Shadow That Swallowed the World" - Sitting with Kla-Noh and their guest, staying with them while Kla-Noh recovers from his illness, Si-Lun at last tells the rest of his story - the events that left him the burnt-out wreck we first met.

"The Terror from the Hills" An unnatural atmosphere of tension has settled over Shar-Nuhn. "The merchants were barely civil to their wealthiest customers, and no more serious signal of malaise had Kla-Noh ever encountered." :) Even the Initiates are affected, some so far that they're becoming physically ill. But Kla-Noh relies on his wits far more than on any magic, and begins employing his Seeker's experience to tracking the trouble to its source.

"The Star of San-Dah" - Li-Ah's people need help. Every few centuries, the Star rises in the skies of Shanath, and anyone touched by its light will run mad. Only the Fellowship of the Strongholds - specially built ancient citadels - stand between the people of Shanath and the destruction of their civilization.

If you enjoy Gary Paulson's survival tales in "Hatchet" (as well as his two sequels to the same book) then you will certainly enjoy this book. It shares many of the same themes of adolescent survival tales. The hero is separated from any adult guidance by a quirky twist of fate and soon realizes that his survival depends on all the upbringing he has been exposed to so far. The similarities between the Paulson trilogy and this book are many. Both main characters are adolescent boys, traveling by air in small planes to meet other family members. Both pilots die of heart attacks and the boy in each story must survive a terrifying landing after flying off course for hours. Both characters must dig deep inside themselves to overcome fear, terror and harsh elements. The biggest difference, though, is in Hatchet, Brian depends on memories from his school teachers to stay alive, while Burr, in Medicine Walk, relys on the teachings of Nachito, a Navajo foreman from the ranch where Burr lives. Medicine Walk is not a long book, and can easily be read in a few hours. It's a great story to illustrate self-reliance and survival. It's also a great book to share after or before the Hatchet stories, because it lends itself well to comparison and constrasting (that's for you teachers out there:-)

I wish it were still in print, as I have given away the four copies I use to own, to former students who got hooked on reading after enjoying this book!

Monkey Station is a rather shallow, apocalyptic story withthe slightly novel twist of the survivors being hidden in the Amazon. Unfortunately the rest of the book lacks imaginative writing. Killer plagues? Yawn. Lonely band of survivors ekeing out a back-to-basics existence? Yawn again. Super-intelligent monkeys? zzzzz....

I was so involved with this book that I could not put it down. The characters were so interesting, and I could, in a way, relate to them. I recomend this book to all young ones, and adults alike. Monkey Station should be in all public and personal home libraries.

This book is a bore!If the author wants to write a book then she should at least write a decent one.

This story is beautiful, written in a way that moved me to tears more than once. I felt so sorry for this old ugly Appaloosa gelding but oh, he proved to be one of the most courageous horses that I have ever read about. When his children were in danger, old Chief came through like a hero and saved them from vicious dogs, losing his life in the process. It makes me cry just to write about it! But as sad as it was, this is a very good book and deserves to be included on the "must-read" horse book list for horse lovers.

this is the best horse book i fond it in the librairy and rent any time they have it's the best i recomend this book to all horse lovers. any one who dosen't like this book must not have any taste. becase to me it's the best ever!

An interesting choice of words, to call Stackpole western-esque. Aside from it being an arbitrary remark, I also find the validity of your praise to Bill Keith among others. I will say, Battletech is best served with a healthy dose of seriousness. Political and emtional climaxes and plot developments are were the forementioned authors excell. These new battletechs, while a good effort, fail to capture the real magic that Stackpole created with the "main characters" i.e. Victor, Kai, the Kells, the Steiners. Yes, anyone could read into this kind of character development as 'generic', but isn't that what we as humans love to see? The good vs. the evil and the justice so incurred? Katrina Steiner deserves to be punished and I want Victor to send her to prison. And you forget, the outline for the battletech universe was planned without and even before Stackpole's involvement with the series, so to say that his play to divide the characters by ethnicity is completely in error. There are some that think Stackpole had much less to do with Battletech's success than often said. I am, however, inclined to strongly disagree. Stackpole's novels possess a level of imagination and depth that most writers can never attain. He develops a love between the readers and the characters, and you care about their destinys. Whatever anyone else says, although some authors may write about Victor or omi or Kai or Clan Wolf, Stackpole could have done it better.

This was the first Btech novel I read as it was the first published. I thought it was so bad and I had so many better books to read in my library, I held off reading another Btech novels. I assumed that the others would also be as bad and didn't read another until boredom and a long bus ride caused crack open one of Stackpole's gems. I was hooked. The combat sequences and political intrigue of this book seem almost childish compared to the later books. The *only* reason I didn't give this book one star is because someone had to break ground for the other novels in the Battletech universe. I just wish this one would have been better.

Like an earlier reviewer said, this book is average, but I'm SICK of hearing how Stackpole is a good writer. PLEASE! The best authors in the B-Tech Universe are unquestionably Robert Charrette, Bill Keith and Loren Coleman. And for what its worth, the whole 'clone Hanse' was pretty novel in 87, but Stackpole copied it half-a-dozen times and he just basically went with the Western-esque states, i.e. Davion and Steiner, and made them the "good guys" and the Asian ones, Kurita and Liao, the "bad guys". I can't reiterate how much he [disappoints] as a writer. Please, read Charrette, Keith, Coleman, Gressman or Pardoe over Stackpole, they are all INFINITELY better! Also, I really wish someone would folow up on Kubasik's book, there isn't much out there on House Marik...

The author wrote A Golden Dream, a continuation or a beggining for H.B piper's Fuzzy Papers. Yet I didn't find this a fast paced fun filled book. Though it had it's perks. I was unable to get deeply involved with the book. The chacters are well brought up, but still they didn't have much appeal. It was also very hard to understand the story. As if deep down there was also another stroy inside this one, which I coudn't find to exsplain the first. Though I wouldn't reccommed this title to everyone it is a good book, but a wonderful Author. ~Isriah~