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Horseclans #18
The Clan of the Cats
THE HUNTER
When Milo Morai, the Undying High Lord, and his Horseclans warriors found the tower ruins, they welcomed it as the perfect citadel from which to hold off the packs of ravenous wolves eager for their blood. But the ancient building hid a secret far more dangerous than either wolves or any human foe, for in its depths waited The Hunter - the penultimate product of genetic experimentation gone wild, one of the few descendants of a powerful breed that had long outlasted its human creators. The Hunter - who, with fang, claw, and blood-chilling speed would challenge the Undying Lord himself to a battle to the death!
When Milo Morai, the Undying High Lord, and his Horseclans warriors found the tower ruins, they welcomed it as the perfect citadel from which to hold off the packs of ravenous wolves eager for their blood. But the ancient building hid a secret far more dangerous than either wolves or any human foe, for in its depths waited The Hunter - the penultimate product of genetic experimentation gone wild, one of the few descendants of a powerful breed that had long outlasted its human creators. The Hunter - who, with fang, claw, and blood-chilling speed would challenge the Undying Lord himself to a battle to the death!
221 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published January 1, 1988
10 people are currently reading
193 people want to read
About the author
Robert Adams
74 books68 followersFranklin Robert Adams (August 31, 1933 - January 4, 1990) was an American science fiction and fantasy writer, formerly a career soldier. He is best known for his "Horseclans" books. He wrote as Robert Adams, an abbreviated form of his full name.
Adams was an early pioneer of the post-holocaust novel. His Horseclans novels are precursors to many of today's attempts at this type of story, many of which do not exhibit his painstakingly detailed world view or extraordinary plot follow-through (many of his Horseclans books are so interlinked that they make sense only when read in order; he did not create many "stand alone" books in the series).
Hallmarks of Adams' style include a focus on violent, non-stop action, meticulous detail in matters historical and military, strong description, and digressions expounding on various subjects from a conservative and libertarian viewpoint.
Adams was an early pioneer of the post-holocaust novel. His Horseclans novels are precursors to many of today's attempts at this type of story, many of which do not exhibit his painstakingly detailed world view or extraordinary plot follow-through (many of his Horseclans books are so interlinked that they make sense only when read in order; he did not create many "stand alone" books in the series).
Hallmarks of Adams' style include a focus on violent, non-stop action, meticulous detail in matters historical and military, strong description, and digressions expounding on various subjects from a conservative and libertarian viewpoint.
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
May 18, 2019
This backtracks on an earlier tale of when Milo and his friends were hemmed in a control tower surrounded by vicious wolves and helping to treat an injured big cat and her cubs.
Meanwhile we learn more of Milo's history and that of a scientist James Bedford by Milo reading his personal diaries of his whole research and workaday situations with colleagues and a viper in the nest of the research team.
As always well thought out and plotted to slot in with earlier strands of the preceding novels.
Meanwhile we learn more of Milo's history and that of a scientist James Bedford by Milo reading his personal diaries of his whole research and workaday situations with colleagues and a viper in the nest of the research team.
As always well thought out and plotted to slot in with earlier strands of the preceding novels.
September 26, 2020
Finally answers the question, "Where did the saber toothed cats come from?"
December 27, 2015
I knew that I was taking a chance with this novel. I started out reading the Horseclans novels a long time ago, but only the first 12 books were ever published in the UK, so I picked up the others over the next 25 years r so as and when I found them. I've known for years that the author died leaving the series unfinished, but I didn't know that much about this final volume.
I was looking forward to the book, based on the premise. With the later volumes all tending to involve a hefty amount of back detail on Milo's life in and around World War II, I was expecting something fairly similar here. Unfortunately, this appears to have been the first part of at least a two-part novel run, because we don't actually find out how the Cats came to be, or exactly how they joined the Clans. The first forty or so pages of the novel is simply a repeat of detail from an earlier novel introducing Milo and his companions to the Mother and her cubs. While a certain amount of the novel goes back to spend more time in that period, it's not nearly as much as I'd hoped.
The novel spends a fair amount of time starting to explain how the Cats came to be, putting us back in the position of viewing the group of scientists and venture capitalists responsible for the work involved in trying to reintroduce an extinct species, as well as some back detail on other, similar projects responsible for reintroducing species such as the quagga, but that story doesn't finish either. The story is presented as Milo learning the events around the creation of the Cats from the personal journals of a senior financier involved with the programme, with some commentary and personal reflection from Milo about the times.
That leads to the next couple of big problems. In this novel, Adams pushes the date of World War III back into the 21st century, and also gives us some glimpses of his version of the 21st century, which are generally wrong. Video chatting is done via expensive hardware, rather than software or VOIP, and he presents a secure hotel for the wealthy that exists on a large, offshore platform only reachable by air, boat, or undersea rail, complete with anti-aircraft defenses. He also comments on the increasing sense of impending doom in international relations.
Where it goes really off the rails is when Milo starts commenting on the underlying cause for the inevitability of World War III, initially from the point of view of his being drummed out of the US military in the 70s, during the Vietnam War, and then more generally. Apparently what went wrong with the world is that soft, liberal, wishy-washy pinkos and commie sympathizers didn't let right-thinking people in the military wage war on Russia immediately after World War II, and then compounded that disaster by refusing to allow the military to fight the Korean and Vietnam wars in the same manner as the closing stages of World War II - by carpet-bombing enemy cities, or possibly nuking them, and waging total war. Mankind could've had a great and glorious future, but all those deluded liberal wishy-washy pinko commie sympathizers - and actual commies, working to bring down the US - prevented the US from destroying Soviet Russia, becoming the sole, unquestioned world power and leading all of the other nations into a great and free future.
The decline in public safety within US cities is mentioned, but Milo has an answer for that, too - it's the fault of those aforementioned liberal left-wing pinko commie sympathizers who worked to take guns out of the hands of sensible people, thereby stopping them from keeping the streets safe, because as Milo avows, "an armed society is perforce a civil society". I did initially wonder if Adams was attempting to add depth to Milo by showing that in his own way, he's as prejudiced or hidebound as everyone else, particularly at this relatively early stage, and that as he went on to become High Lord and rule the Confederation, he matured and got wiser, but I just really don't think the writing is clever enough to make me believe that.
Did I mention that the villain working to stop the development of the Cats in the 21st century is a fat, unhealthy, bullying, left-wing commie vegetarian? And not even a clever one. Vegetarians get a pretty good slating here as well, alongside all of the (at best) delusional left-wing liberals and pinko commie sympathizers.
I was hoping the Horseclans would go out in a satisfying fashion, but instead the series seems to end mid-rant... and not even a good rant.
I was looking forward to the book, based on the premise. With the later volumes all tending to involve a hefty amount of back detail on Milo's life in and around World War II, I was expecting something fairly similar here. Unfortunately, this appears to have been the first part of at least a two-part novel run, because we don't actually find out how the Cats came to be, or exactly how they joined the Clans. The first forty or so pages of the novel is simply a repeat of detail from an earlier novel introducing Milo and his companions to the Mother and her cubs. While a certain amount of the novel goes back to spend more time in that period, it's not nearly as much as I'd hoped.
The novel spends a fair amount of time starting to explain how the Cats came to be, putting us back in the position of viewing the group of scientists and venture capitalists responsible for the work involved in trying to reintroduce an extinct species, as well as some back detail on other, similar projects responsible for reintroducing species such as the quagga, but that story doesn't finish either. The story is presented as Milo learning the events around the creation of the Cats from the personal journals of a senior financier involved with the programme, with some commentary and personal reflection from Milo about the times.
That leads to the next couple of big problems. In this novel, Adams pushes the date of World War III back into the 21st century, and also gives us some glimpses of his version of the 21st century, which are generally wrong. Video chatting is done via expensive hardware, rather than software or VOIP, and he presents a secure hotel for the wealthy that exists on a large, offshore platform only reachable by air, boat, or undersea rail, complete with anti-aircraft defenses. He also comments on the increasing sense of impending doom in international relations.
Where it goes really off the rails is when Milo starts commenting on the underlying cause for the inevitability of World War III, initially from the point of view of his being drummed out of the US military in the 70s, during the Vietnam War, and then more generally. Apparently what went wrong with the world is that soft, liberal, wishy-washy pinkos and commie sympathizers didn't let right-thinking people in the military wage war on Russia immediately after World War II, and then compounded that disaster by refusing to allow the military to fight the Korean and Vietnam wars in the same manner as the closing stages of World War II - by carpet-bombing enemy cities, or possibly nuking them, and waging total war. Mankind could've had a great and glorious future, but all those deluded liberal wishy-washy pinko commie sympathizers - and actual commies, working to bring down the US - prevented the US from destroying Soviet Russia, becoming the sole, unquestioned world power and leading all of the other nations into a great and free future.
The decline in public safety within US cities is mentioned, but Milo has an answer for that, too - it's the fault of those aforementioned liberal left-wing pinko commie sympathizers who worked to take guns out of the hands of sensible people, thereby stopping them from keeping the streets safe, because as Milo avows, "an armed society is perforce a civil society". I did initially wonder if Adams was attempting to add depth to Milo by showing that in his own way, he's as prejudiced or hidebound as everyone else, particularly at this relatively early stage, and that as he went on to become High Lord and rule the Confederation, he matured and got wiser, but I just really don't think the writing is clever enough to make me believe that.
Did I mention that the villain working to stop the development of the Cats in the 21st century is a fat, unhealthy, bullying, left-wing commie vegetarian? And not even a clever one. Vegetarians get a pretty good slating here as well, alongside all of the (at best) delusional left-wing liberals and pinko commie sympathizers.
I was hoping the Horseclans would go out in a satisfying fashion, but instead the series seems to end mid-rant... and not even a good rant.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
June 3, 2013
This last book in the Horseclans series was published a year and a half before the author's death, but finished so abruptly that I wonder if he stopped writing due to illness (he was only 56 at the time of his death). In the second last chapter, a man introduces himself to one of the characters and invites him to dinner — and that's the last we hear of either of them! The alternative is that I'm missing a lot of pages...
Beyond that, Adams has a bad habit of having his characters — particularly Milo Morai, the chief protagonist of the majority of the Horseclans novels — digress into long monologues, often unrelated to the storyline and getting into long rants about current-ish American right-wing politics. Things suddenly went all meta when, as I skimmed over one of them Morai, opined: “And God knows, the religious and quasi-religious flakes had as many causes over the years as the left-liberal flakes, the right-wing radicals or any of the rest of the lunatic fringe. After a short while, a reader got to recognize the telltale catchwords and phrases that indicated ‘this was written by or for a bunch of flakes’ and most of us would just glance briefly over the patent claptrap or skip it entirely.”
Thank for that, but couldn't we just have skipped the patent claptrap?
July 26, 2010
The Horseclans series was pretty good, particularly books like Bili the Axe. Thi is a later one in the series and is exploring, to me, somewhat less interesting elements of the story concept. Adams did have solid narrative drive in his stories, though, so all of his work is enjoyable.
January 22, 2016
The Horseclans series is probably the best blend of fantasy and SiFi I have ever read. Pretty much something for everyone in these books. Great characters, epic storyline, fantastic writings. My highest recommendation
Read
August 22, 2008Horseclans 18 Clan (Horseclans) by Robert Adams (1988)
October 30, 2008
This was one decent.
Read
January 17, 2016Horseclans
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews