Heroes die

Locations
Call Number: Fantasy
On Shelf At: Downtown Library

Location & Checkout Length	Call Number	Checkout Length	Item Status
Downtown 2nd Floor 4-week checkout	Fantasy	4-week checkout	On Shelf

COMMUNITY REVIEWS

A deceptively smart book in an action-movie wrapper. submitted by eknapp on November 9, 2011, 2:47pm Man, I love this book. It's a brutal Orwellian novel in which a caste-based dystopian Earth government turns a parallel-dimension swords-and-sorcery version of Earth into a sort of deadly virtual-reality television show.

The author has several black belts and it shows in the combat descriptions. He excels at creating believably insurmountable antagonists...really at creating characters in general. It's awash in moral complexity: no good-vs-evil here.

My only complaint is a nit-pick: the hero frequently tosses off macho earthy one-liners that I think are meant to demonstrate his poor Labor roots, but he's too intelligent and educated for them to ring true. Actually, the whole book is intelligent and well-written enough that they sound out of place. But as I said, it's a minor quibble.

On reread number three: Although Heroes Die is extremely violent, the most wrenching incidents involve the casual dehumanization of members of lower castes, often by benign or even well-meaning individuals. (A high-caste woman of the low-caste hero, as if he weren't there: "He's so polite. Just very well-behaved.") That this stands out in a story containing seriously creative and graphic torture scenes is a testament to Stover's skill.