Published in 1959, the same year Hawaii became the fiftieth state in the union (as in Hawaii Five-O), this is the first of Michener’s big door-stopper books. It launched his successful career and made him…
It’s not often that the sequel to a great piece of literature surpasses the original. The Blood Star, the follow up to Nicholas Guild’s The Assyrian, manages to do this with little effort. Every now and then I put a book down and say, “Wow, I’ll never equal this.” Such were my feelings after I read the final page of this solid piece of literature.
So, you ask, what is this book about? It’s about Moore’s old Northampton neighborhood, which he terms “the boroughs” throughout the book. However, we don’t just see the outer, physical Northampton; we see it as a collection of ectoplasm layers. It’s all part of a multiverse created by the “builders”. These are angelic creatures who work to construct the “mansoul” or continuous reality of the boroughs.
The Assyrian by Nicholas Guild (Scribner, 1987) The Assyrian, by Nicholas Guild, is one of the few historical novels that look at the Ancient Near East (ANE). The book is a massive epic that covers…
