Saint Leibowitz - Softcover

Miller, Walter M. Jr.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1857235614 ISBN 13: 9781857235616

Publisher: Orbit, 1998

Synopsis

It's been over 50 years since Walter M. Miller Jr published A Canticle for Leibowitz. Now, in an important publishing event, here's his epic intellectual & emotional tour de In a world struggling to transcend a terrifying legacy of darkness--a world torn between love & violence, good & evil--one man undertakes an odyssey of discovery that promises to alter not only his destiny but the destiny of humanity as well. Millennia have passed since the Flame Deluge, yet society remains fragmented, pockets of civilization besieged by barbarians. The Church is in turmoil, the exiled papacy struggling to survive in its Rocky Mountain refuge. To the south, tyranny is on the march. Imperial Texark troops, bent on conquest, are headed north into the lands of the Nomads, spreading terror in their wake. Meanwhile, isolated in Leibowitz Abbey, Brother Blacktooth St George suffers a crisis of faith. Torn between his vows & a Nomad upbringing, between the Holy Virgin & visions of his people's Wild Horse Woman, he stands at the brink of disgrace & expulsion from his order. But he's offered an escape of an assignment as translator for Cardinal Brownpony, which will take him to the contentious election of a new pope & then on pilgrimage to New Rome. Journeying across a continent divided by nature, politics & war, Blacktooth is drawn into Brownpony's intrigues. He witnesses rebellion, assassination & human sacrifice. He's introduced to the sins that monastery life had held at bay. This introduction comes in the form of Aedrea, a beautiful but forbidden "genny" living among the deformed & mutant castouts in Texark's most hostile terrain. As Blacktooth encounters her repeatedly on his travels--in the flesh, in rumors of miraculous deeds & in fevered deliria--he begins to wonder if Aedrea is a she-devil, the Holy Mother or the Wild Horse Woman herself. Picaresque, passionate, dark & compellingly real, Saint Leibowitz & the Wild Horse Woman is a brutally thrilling tale of mystery, mysticism & divine madness.

About this title

Review

This is the 30-years-in-coming sequel to Walter M. Miller's seminal work, A Canticle for Leibowitz. It chronicles the odyssey of Brother Blacktooth St. George, a fallen monk of the Leibowitz order who becomes secretary to the politically ambitious Cardinal Brownpony. Brownpony is involved in a complex scheme to break the rule of the Hannegan Empire, which dominates the 35th-century's post-apocalypse world. Even though Brownpony's plans will ultimately restore both the world and the declining Papacy to some form of order, he is not a religious man, although he is drawn to those who are. He sees something profoundly religious in Blacktooth, who on the surface seems to be a disgraced monk foundering in confusion because of his love for a woman, his semi-pagan visions of the Virgin Mary, and his nomadic heritage. Ultimately it seems that Brownpony's--and indeed humanity's--salvation may lie with Blacktooth, who will never quite realize how great is the gift he's been given.

From the Publisher

Praise for A Canticle For Leibowitz:

"Angry, eloquent. . . a terrific story."
--The New York Times

"An extraordinary novel...chillingly effective."
--Time

"An extraordinary novel...Prodigiously imaginative, richly comic, terrifyingly grim, profound both intellectually and morally, and, above all, is simply such a memorable story as to stay with the reader for years."
--Chicago Tribune

"An exciting and imaginative story. . . Unconditionally recommended."
--Library Journal

Praise for Terry Bisson:

"Bisson's prose is a wonder of seemingly effortless control and precision."
--Publishers Weekly

"Bisson's work is a fresh, imaginative attempt to confront some of the problems of our time."
--The Washington Post Book World

Edition details

• Publisher: Orbit
• Publication date: 1998
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1857235614
• ISBN 13: 9781857235616
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 566