dja777's review
3.0
A little slow in parts, but it's always fun to return to the Emberverse. However, the main characters are less interesting to me than the ones from the previous two series.
mjfmjfmjf's review
3.0
Long book with way too much war. And the pacing seemed off. But there was a good story hidden inside. And the reuse of characters used in the short story collection was pretty good. The focus on the various young ladies actually worked pretty well. It's bad a more focused story wasn't there instead. Say a real pov based story switching between just a few. At least this one didn't feel tired. And adding in the Japanese story-line definitely gave it a bit of a different feel. 3.5 of 5.
mage_cat's review against another edition
3.0
I think I'm officially done with this series. The world Stirling has created in his Change novels is fascinating, but he and I clearly have different ideas about what makes a story interesting. Relationships between people and culture clashes are far more often told than shown (at least in the detail that I would like) while fights that I would gladly see quickly summed up go on for pages. It's not a bad series. It's just not as much to my taste as I wish it was.
sbisson's review against another edition
4.0
Recent Reads: The Desert And The Blade. S.M. Stirling's Change saga heads into southern California on a quest for another magic sword. Up Topanga, into Death Valley and beyond. Much excitement and nation building ensues.
ineffablebob's review against another edition
5.0
The Golden Princess (prior book in this series) was long and had little action. Mostly it felt like an entire novel's worth of setup. All that led into a whole lot of things happening in this book. It's still long, 600 pages in the hardback edition I read, but this time action is not missing. It feels like the two books were meant as one narrative arc, so long that it had to be published in two parts. (Maybe it was, I dunno.) If you felt a bit let down by The Golden Princess, I think you'll find that The Desert and the Blade is a return to what we're used to in the Emberverse series.
hamiltwan's review against another edition
4.0
Better than the last in the series, maybe not as good as the early ones. If you made it through enoguh change series books to get here, read it. But don't start with this one.
essemmarr's review against another edition
4.0
*does some quick Googling...*
Jesus Christ. It's been twelve freaking years since this series debuted. We're also twelve books into it (plus one collection of short stories by mostly-other authors set in this universe). Annnd, as my review of _last_ year's entry, The Golden Princess, showed, I struggle with why I'm still reading this series.
So I'm not going to spend much time on this save to say: it's better than the last book was. We get action, the plot moves forward quite a bit, we get to find out what happened to the greater LA area after The Change... it's a decent entry in a series that probably should have been put to bed two arcs ago.
I'm not entirely sure why I'm still reading it save for the fact that Stirling _can_ knit a yarn pretty goddamned well, and I'm juuuuust enough of a sucker for "oh, we get to find out what happened to THAT part of the world after the Big Disaster?" that I'll put aside my inherent disdain for the increasing magical elements of this tale and bull through just for that.
Stirling is very, very good at creating and writing about alternate versions of our world (his Draka books remain my second-favorite type of this genre, juuuust barely beat-out by the downright depressing and therefore all-too-believable agonies of John Barnes' Century Next Door series...), and injects just enough of that into these books at this point to keep me grimly reading along, regardless of how many orbits my eyes have to do in their sockets at times when the fuckin' McClintocks and McKenzies have to argue over the trivial differences between their fake-ass dipshit clans for the 79th time...
Fortunately, The Desert and the Blade is a lot better than The Golden Princess was, given that Things Actually Happen in this entry. The High Princess' Quest is in full flower, and they get through a good chunk of it. Stirling seems to have realized that part of the draw of this series was finding out what's going on elsewhere on our post-Change globe, so he introduces some characters who have had reason to travel that globe, and therefore can spend entire chapters describing what happened elsewhere. It's a fun, showy example of just how good Stirling is at world-building, and I appreciate the appearances here.
I can't give much more detail without giving away reasons to actually read this thing, and I assume anyone even considering it is already familiar with the world because good fuckin' luck jumping in on Vol. 12 if you aren't. In a world where this type of book has been almost entirely taken over by Young Adult tropes (bleaugh), I appreciate that Stirling is still writing somewhat more adult tales of the apocalypse, his staunch advocacy of Renn Faire nonsense aside. It's far from his best book, but certainly the best this series has seen for a while, and further sets up the next entry to be pretty far-ranging and interesting to my particular tastes.
So, if you're into this series already, you'll probably like this. If you're not, this book will probably just confuse you. If you like to spend your weekends m'ladying your way through Society for Creative Anachronism meetings, who are we kidding, you've probably already written erotic fanfic based on this world.
Jesus Christ. It's been twelve freaking years since this series debuted. We're also twelve books into it (plus one collection of short stories by mostly-other authors set in this universe). Annnd, as my review of _last_ year's entry, The Golden Princess, showed, I struggle with why I'm still reading this series.
So I'm not going to spend much time on this save to say: it's better than the last book was. We get action, the plot moves forward quite a bit, we get to find out what happened to the greater LA area after The Change... it's a decent entry in a series that probably should have been put to bed two arcs ago.
I'm not entirely sure why I'm still reading it save for the fact that Stirling _can_ knit a yarn pretty goddamned well, and I'm juuuuust enough of a sucker for "oh, we get to find out what happened to THAT part of the world after the Big Disaster?" that I'll put aside my inherent disdain for the increasing magical elements of this tale and bull through just for that.
Stirling is very, very good at creating and writing about alternate versions of our world (his Draka books remain my second-favorite type of this genre, juuuust barely beat-out by the downright depressing and therefore all-too-believable agonies of John Barnes' Century Next Door series...), and injects just enough of that into these books at this point to keep me grimly reading along, regardless of how many orbits my eyes have to do in their sockets at times when the fuckin' McClintocks and McKenzies have to argue over the trivial differences between their fake-ass dipshit clans for the 79th time...
Fortunately, The Desert and the Blade is a lot better than The Golden Princess was, given that Things Actually Happen in this entry. The High Princess' Quest is in full flower, and they get through a good chunk of it. Stirling seems to have realized that part of the draw of this series was finding out what's going on elsewhere on our post-Change globe, so he introduces some characters who have had reason to travel that globe, and therefore can spend entire chapters describing what happened elsewhere. It's a fun, showy example of just how good Stirling is at world-building, and I appreciate the appearances here.
I can't give much more detail without giving away reasons to actually read this thing, and I assume anyone even considering it is already familiar with the world because good fuckin' luck jumping in on Vol. 12 if you aren't. In a world where this type of book has been almost entirely taken over by Young Adult tropes (bleaugh), I appreciate that Stirling is still writing somewhat more adult tales of the apocalypse, his staunch advocacy of Renn Faire nonsense aside. It's far from his best book, but certainly the best this series has seen for a while, and further sets up the next entry to be pretty far-ranging and interesting to my particular tastes.
So, if you're into this series already, you'll probably like this. If you're not, this book will probably just confuse you. If you like to spend your weekends m'ladying your way through Society for Creative Anachronism meetings, who are we kidding, you've probably already written erotic fanfic based on this world.
leons1701's review against another edition
3.0
In some ways I feel as if this series has really dropped off, and yet it's still a solid read, if less creative and exciting than the early books. The introduction of the Japanese and Koreans to the series definitely opened up some new things to explore (actually got inspired to pick up a bit more on Japanese history and culture that I wasn't familiar with, so there's that) . At the same time, the series is turning even more overtly mystical, with more magic swords, visions, evil magic, etc.
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