Night Fall

Author of Poetic Thoughts from the Heart of a Woman and Mama and Us.......2007-04-05

Determined to seek out and destroy the source of the fae-borne evil that is rapidly strengthening its control over the world called Erna, Damien Vryce, the warrior priest, has renewed his dangerous alliance with Gerald Tarrant, the immortal sorcerer known as the Hunter, and together with Hesseth, a woman of Erna's native species, the Rakh, they will dare the treacherous ocean crossing to Erne's eastern continent. But the crossing may well prove the least of their worries. For though the eastern continent appears to be a haven of stability and prosperity, this image of paradise masks an underlying corruption that threatens the very essence of the human spirit. And the three are soon forced to flee south into realms long since abandoned to the dark fae and its creatures.

Lost in a land where those who offer hope of salvation may prove to be the true masters of treachery, and steadily drawn toward a rendezvous which may rob them of that which is even more precious than life, will Damien, Tarrant, and Hesseth find their own fragile alliance shattered by a power out to possess or destroy all of humankind?

It DOES take a little bit to get into it in the beginning. There is a lengthy introduction to a couple of the main characters... But it makes it that much better throughout the rest of the book!

Once it gets going, it was all I thought about and every spare minute I had the book was in my hands! I'm reading #2 right now and can already see it building up again and can't WAIT to see where this journey takes me!!

It's a wonderful book for people who like this sort of book; i.e., the premise is that humans are basically too dumb to accomplish much of anything without getting a kick-start from some vastly-superior all-knowing eternally-wise civilization. It's a good story of one-dimensional characters encountering a faceless perfection; for an analogy, think of a world in which everyone is a clone of the Stepford Wives without their wit, wisdom or waxy perfection.

It does raise the question -- What would life be like if it was perfect? Clarke doesn't offer an answer, except for one young lad who wants to know more than the limits of perfect knowledge. The first two-thirds of the book set out the usual dazzling Clarke scenario; the final third degenerates into the "life is more than you can understand" formula. His city of perfection is neatly packaged in one megalopis, perhaps somewhat like the Paolo Soleri vision of FutureWorld; the element that upsets me is the assumption this vastly superior technology can't nurture a pot of geraniums outside its rigid borders.

In my view, humans always test the limits of the possible and permissable. Clarke assumes a human future where people don't color outside the lines; in contrast, anyone who's been in prison (I assume Clarke hasn't; every month I work with a dozen or so people just out of prison) knows the impossibility of living inside a closed door or blank wall.

Clarke is a classy writer, he tells intriguing stories. Personally, I don't like his sense of pessimism and deus ex machina escapism to explain the vicissitudes of mankind; but, for those who think humans need a marvelous or malevant mechanical miracle to explain our faults, future or follies . . . . Clarke is very good.

Average customer rating:

will remind the audience of the Mamur Zapt tales

Night Falls on Damascus: A Novel
Frederick Highland
Manufacturer: St. Martin's Minotaur
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Contemporary | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Historical | Genre Fiction | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Historical | Mystery | Mystery & Thrillers | Subjects | Books

General | Mystery & Thrillers | Subjects | Books
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ASIN: 0312337892
Release Date: 2006-12-12

A crime of passion brings on a harrowing criminal investigation in a divided land

Set in the exotic and turbulent world of Syria in the 1930s, Night Falls on Damascus tells the story of a French-Syrian police inspector, Nikolai Faroun, caught up in a complex murder investigation of a beautiful and controversial woman from a prominent Damascus family.

Vera Tamiri made enemies for her good works as well as her cosmopolitanism. On one hand was she was a social reformer who had tried to advance the health and welfare of Arab women in a volatile community hemmed in by custom and hostile to social change. However, Vera had a shadowy side: she cultivated a Bohemian pose, gambled recklessly, and was not always wise in her choice of companions---and lovers.

Faroun suspects that she may have fallen victim to a gruesome crime of passion. However, he soon realizes that there is more to this crime than a jealous lover. In a country chafing under foreign rule and divided by sectarian strife, Vera Tamiri made a tempting political target. In a city seething with anger and revolt, Inspector Faroun begins unraveling a conspiracy from Syria’s troubled past, a secret that Vera may have uncovered---at the cost of her life.

As the elements of a sinister and elusive crime bubble to the surface, Faroun must be careful not to bring to light secrets of his own---the real reason for his presence in Damascus and a compromising relationship with the beautiful and willful wife of a well-connected French businessman. All games, in the end, must be played against the dark backdrop of a city that has been the center of Middle Eastern intrigue for millennia, the stony ground where Cain slew Abel, where Saladin once ruled, and where Nikolai Faroun must discover the key to the murder of a courageous woman who dared to disturb the ancient order.

A gripping murder mystery, Night Falls on Damascus richly evokes a time and place where the deadly conflict between modernism and tradition in the Middle East first came into play.

Praise for Ghost Eaters

“A swashbuckling, seafaring novel with mystical overtones.”
---Publishers Weekly

”An exciting, smoothly written naval adventure set in Malaysia during 1875. Touching on the politics of war, the power of superstition, and the fragility of civilization, this is exhilarating escapist fare.”
---Booklist

“The book is peopled with rich, enigmatic characters whose pasts are shrouded in mystery and whose motives are close held secrets.”
---Jim Nelson, author of the Revolution at Sea series

“Glorious shades of Joseph Conrad, but with wry humor! Splendidly written and an intriguing adventure /mystery in the grand old style.”

---Dewey Lambdin, author of the Alan Lewrie series
“Unashamedly and convincingly Conradian in its subject matter and scope, and in the raw and elemental language of its telling . . . this is the work of a devoted and accomplished storyteller, and of a gifted writer and craftsman, for whom the completed tale is considerably more than the sum of its parts.”
---Robert Edric, author of The Broken Lands

Maclean, a poet by trade, brings his formidable powers of observation to bear on the scenery and lifestyle of the crofting community of Sanna on the Ardnamurchan Penninsula is the Western Highlands, the home of his crofter parents. Through inference and empathy, he delineates a hard way of life that was not without its own built-in rewards. He contrasts it with the easier life of those in suburb and city, never sentimentalizing the earlier way of living, but leaving us to draw the conclusion of which was the more satisfying way to spend one's days.

Maclean is intelligent and his prose is thought-provoking on nearly every page. He is occasionally exasperating and always highly opinionated--an individualist sometimes rugged, but more often all-too-humanly vulnerable. He is even at times a downright curmudgeon. But he is always a poet. This is a book to savor, to share, and to keep.

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Night Fall - Large Print Edition
Nelson Demille
Manufacturer: Warner/Doubleday Large Print
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
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ASIN: 0739449079