War of the Sky Lords - Hardcover

BROSNAN, JOHN

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0575043806 ISBN 13: 9780575043800

Publisher: London: Victor Gollancz, 1989., 1989

Synopsis

hardcover with dust jacket

About this title

From Kirkus Reviews

Sequel to the so-so The Sky Lords, a medium-future post- holocaust saga of duelling airship warlords that have enslaved the disease-ravaged, starving survivors on the ground; second part of the Sky Lords trilogy. Jan Dorvin, the Minervan heroine of part one, having acquired the Sky Angel, a brand-new ship bulging with Old Science technology, attempts to defeat her rival warlords in their ancient, disintegrating vessels, and free their hapless slaves. Meanwhile, beneath the Antarctic icecap, a few genetically altered humans, the Eloi, survive; they have produced a human offspring, Ryn, a handsome, lonely youth who fantasizes about being Robin Hood. Somehow, a set of bad-guy Sky Lords have learned of the icecap base's existence, and their fleet hotfoots it southward in the hope of extracting Old Science secrets from the Eloi. Ryn, calling himself Robin, desperate to escape the stultifying Eloi, joins their fleet in his own advanced spaceship by promising to help them defeat Jan; but then he betrays them to join Jan. The latter has her own problems: her computer system is in revolt, and her son is turning into a clone of the evil, genetically enhanced Milo. Finally, the vengeful bad-guy Sky Lords show up to attack Jan; Milo takes over the Sky Angel and kicks Jan out, along with the injured Robin. After various unpleasant adventures, they escape in Robin's ship while a monster takes care of the bad guys. Amiable nonsense for the most part, though some of the incidents have a repellently sadistic edge. Depravities, however, are no substitute for orthodox storytelling virtues, which are in rather short supply here. -- Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

From Publishers Weekly

This sequel to Brosnan's The Sky Lords is as fast-paced and action-packed (and lurid and shallow) as its predecessor. Since the Gene Wars devastated the Earth with biological weapons, civilization has collapsed into a semi-feudal state: an enslaved peasantry of surface dwellers ("earthworms") pays tribute to the rulers of the Sky Lords, giant airships left over from before the Wars. But former slave Jan Dorwin, in command of the Sky Angel, a brand-new airship which can easily defeat the others, aims to free the groundlings. She is hindered, however, by the sentient computer, which is going insane, that controls the airship; by the diabolical Milo, her old enemy, now bizarrely resurrected after his death in the first book; and by the Sky Lords, unwillingly aided by Ryn, a runaway from a prewar utopian enclave, and his super-high-tech plane. Brosnan's plot and prose are straight out of the pulp adventure tradition, and offer the pleasures of stereotypical characters, a shot of sex and some rather gruesome violence, but nothing more.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: London: Victor Gollancz, 1989.
• Publication date: 1989
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0575043806
• ISBN 13: 9780575043800
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 304