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St. Leibowitz #2
Saint Leibowitz and the Wild Horse Woman
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.
566 pages, Paperback
First published September 4, 1997
69 people are currently reading
2836 people want to read
About the author
Walter M. Miller Jr.
147 books961 followersFrom the Wikipedia article, "Walter M. Miller, Jr.":
Miller was born in New Smyrna Beach, Florida. Educated at the University of Tennessee and the University of Texas, he worked as an engineer. During World War II, he served in the Army Air Corps as a radioman and tail gunner, flying more than fifty bombing missions over Italy. He took part in the bombing of the Benedictine Abbey at Monte Cassino, which proved a traumatic experience for him. Joe Haldeman reported that Miller "had Post Traumatic Stress Disorder for 30 years before it had a name".
After the war, Miller converted to Catholicism. He married Anna Louise Becker in 1945, and they had four children. For several months in 1953 he lived with science-fiction writer Judith Merril, ex-wife of Frederik Pohl and a noted science-fiction author in her own right.
Between 1951 and 1957, Miller published over three dozen science fiction short stories, winning a Hugo Award in 1955 for the story "The Darfsteller". He also wrote scripts for the television show Captain Video in 1953. Late in the 1950s, Miller assembled a novel from three closely related novellas he had published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction in 1955, 1956, and 1957. The novel, entitled A Canticle for Leibowitz, was published in 1959.
A Canticle for Leibowitz is a post-apocalyptic (post-holocaust) novel revolving around the canonisation of Saint Leibowitz and is considered a masterpiece of the genre. It won the 1961 Hugo Award for Best Novel. The novel is also a powerful meditation on the cycles of world history and Roman Catholicism as a force of stability during history's dark times.
After the success of A Canticle for Leibowitz, Miller never published another new novel or story in his lifetime, although several compilations of Miller's earlier stories were issued in the 1960s and 1970s.
In Miller's later years, he became a recluse, avoiding contact with nearly everyone, including family members; he never allowed his literary agent, Don Congdon, to meet him. According to science fiction writer Terry Bisson, Miller struggled with depression during his later years, but had managed to nearly complete a 600-page manuscript for the sequel to Canticle before taking his own life with a gun in January 1996, shortly after his wife's death. The sequel, titled Saint Leibowitz and the Wild Horse Woman, was completed by Bisson and published in 1997.
Miller was born in New Smyrna Beach, Florida. Educated at the University of Tennessee and the University of Texas, he worked as an engineer. During World War II, he served in the Army Air Corps as a radioman and tail gunner, flying more than fifty bombing missions over Italy. He took part in the bombing of the Benedictine Abbey at Monte Cassino, which proved a traumatic experience for him. Joe Haldeman reported that Miller "had Post Traumatic Stress Disorder for 30 years before it had a name".
After the war, Miller converted to Catholicism. He married Anna Louise Becker in 1945, and they had four children. For several months in 1953 he lived with science-fiction writer Judith Merril, ex-wife of Frederik Pohl and a noted science-fiction author in her own right.
Between 1951 and 1957, Miller published over three dozen science fiction short stories, winning a Hugo Award in 1955 for the story "The Darfsteller". He also wrote scripts for the television show Captain Video in 1953. Late in the 1950s, Miller assembled a novel from three closely related novellas he had published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction in 1955, 1956, and 1957. The novel, entitled A Canticle for Leibowitz, was published in 1959.
A Canticle for Leibowitz is a post-apocalyptic (post-holocaust) novel revolving around the canonisation of Saint Leibowitz and is considered a masterpiece of the genre. It won the 1961 Hugo Award for Best Novel. The novel is also a powerful meditation on the cycles of world history and Roman Catholicism as a force of stability during history's dark times.
After the success of A Canticle for Leibowitz, Miller never published another new novel or story in his lifetime, although several compilations of Miller's earlier stories were issued in the 1960s and 1970s.
In Miller's later years, he became a recluse, avoiding contact with nearly everyone, including family members; he never allowed his literary agent, Don Congdon, to meet him. According to science fiction writer Terry Bisson, Miller struggled with depression during his later years, but had managed to nearly complete a 600-page manuscript for the sequel to Canticle before taking his own life with a gun in January 1996, shortly after his wife's death. The sequel, titled Saint Leibowitz and the Wild Horse Woman, was completed by Bisson and published in 1997.
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February 4, 2012
This book is nowhere as bad as some have made it out to be, and, indeed, had the original Canticle for Leibowitz not been written, this book standing alone might have established Miller's reputation.
Miller's "problem" was that he hit a grand-slam home-run in Canticle, and he spent the remainder of what must have been a sad and frustrating life trying to get out from under Canticle's shadow. For a long time the prevailing view was that he had given up writing altogether. But the truth was that he spent decades writing that next book, fighting what must have been crushing depression that led him to commit suicide in 1996.
I read somewhere that manuscript left behind was a good one-third longer than the finished work - and I, for one, would love to know what was cut out. Perhaps one day those texts will become available.
Miller was not a "one-book wonder," however much his reputation rests upon Canticle. Before Canticle, he had written and had published some forty-one short stories, three of which were edited to create Canticle.
I refer you, the reader, to an insightful article by David N. Samuelson, The Lost Canticles of Walter M. Miller, Jr., published in 1976 and available on-line: http://www.depauw.edu/sfs/backissues/...
In retrospect, the popularity of Canticle in the late 1950s and early 1960s was clearing owing to the pandemic fear of nuclear annihilation. Saint Leibowitz and the Wild Horse Woman appeared when that fear had largely past, although it clearly still obsessed Miller. Moreover, those issues in Miller's short stories and identified by Samuelson were revisited in much greater detail in Saint Leibowitz ...Wild Horse Woman.
Having praised the book and given it five stars, I do admit, I did not find it easy to get into. And I do wish a background summary (written by the editor and printed in italics)and Dramatis Personae had been supplied, for I did for a while have difficulty keeping straight who was who.
But on second and closer reading, not only were things clearer, but sharper and in greater focus.
I just wish people would put Canticle in the back of their mind when approaching Saint Leibowitz and judge it in the wider context of the themes that appeared in his other thirty-eight short stories.
Miller's "problem" was that he hit a grand-slam home-run in Canticle, and he spent the remainder of what must have been a sad and frustrating life trying to get out from under Canticle's shadow. For a long time the prevailing view was that he had given up writing altogether. But the truth was that he spent decades writing that next book, fighting what must have been crushing depression that led him to commit suicide in 1996.
I read somewhere that manuscript left behind was a good one-third longer than the finished work - and I, for one, would love to know what was cut out. Perhaps one day those texts will become available.
Miller was not a "one-book wonder," however much his reputation rests upon Canticle. Before Canticle, he had written and had published some forty-one short stories, three of which were edited to create Canticle.
I refer you, the reader, to an insightful article by David N. Samuelson, The Lost Canticles of Walter M. Miller, Jr., published in 1976 and available on-line: http://www.depauw.edu/sfs/backissues/...
In retrospect, the popularity of Canticle in the late 1950s and early 1960s was clearing owing to the pandemic fear of nuclear annihilation. Saint Leibowitz and the Wild Horse Woman appeared when that fear had largely past, although it clearly still obsessed Miller. Moreover, those issues in Miller's short stories and identified by Samuelson were revisited in much greater detail in Saint Leibowitz ...Wild Horse Woman.
Having praised the book and given it five stars, I do admit, I did not find it easy to get into. And I do wish a background summary (written by the editor and printed in italics)and Dramatis Personae had been supplied, for I did for a while have difficulty keeping straight who was who.
But on second and closer reading, not only were things clearer, but sharper and in greater focus.
I just wish people would put Canticle in the back of their mind when approaching Saint Leibowitz and judge it in the wider context of the themes that appeared in his other thirty-eight short stories.
December 24, 2014
Hard to rate, even when I discount the last hundred or so pages written by another hand. If I also posit that Walter M. Miller (rest in peace) left an unfinished book behind him, whose first four-five hundred pages still needed his hand – and if I don’t blame the book for that – then it’s a definite four stars. It was very interesting to follow Miller to this, forty years later, which I did out of curiosity and respect for the writer who gave us Canticle. This one seemed to me a case of half-realised potential, with the loss of its author’s hand in the end product evident.
To call this a sequel sets up expectations of it being like Canticle. But he’s lived forty years between. He’s changed his views. Often – since I re-read Canticle this same month – I thought I saw him putting in the things he now believes he left out of Canticle. Revising its ideas. It was, at times, like a commentary on the early book – from which, I thought, he must have felt quite distanced himself.
Where Canticle has been experienced, including by me, as a hymn to the Catholic Church in history, the Saint and the Horse Woman (I don’t know how to abbreviate that title) is frequently church criticism and satire. Where, in a group read, we spoke of an absence of women, here women and also sexuality are very present. With loose ends: I’ll never know what he meant by his running theme of androgyny. A complaint of mine in Canticle, that his Plains Indian-inspired culture is out of a cartoon, is well fixed, with half the book’s attention on the Plains Nomads’ unhappy interactions with a conquering state and church. The other half is church politics. Church politics, Nomad politics: I too feel the book can get bogged down in scenes of politics, to uncertain end. Because we begin with Blacktooth, an ex-Nomad monk, questioning whether he belongs in the old monastery, his visionary search as he blurs Saint Leibowitz and the Wild Horse Woman of his people; I’ve seen Blacktooth understood to be Miller’s spokesperson for his own loss (although it’s not a simple loss) of faith. A pity, then, that we lose sight of Blacktooth’s inner journey for interminable sections – and that his story is resolved by another hand than Miller’s.
There’s almost no science fiction left. It was much more like reading a (burlesque) historical fiction on the medieval church, muddled up with the American West. Canticle’s concerns with science aren’t pursued, and the post-nuclear-war setting becomes accidental.
To call this a sequel sets up expectations of it being like Canticle. But he’s lived forty years between. He’s changed his views. Often – since I re-read Canticle this same month – I thought I saw him putting in the things he now believes he left out of Canticle. Revising its ideas. It was, at times, like a commentary on the early book – from which, I thought, he must have felt quite distanced himself.
Where Canticle has been experienced, including by me, as a hymn to the Catholic Church in history, the Saint and the Horse Woman (I don’t know how to abbreviate that title) is frequently church criticism and satire. Where, in a group read, we spoke of an absence of women, here women and also sexuality are very present. With loose ends: I’ll never know what he meant by his running theme of androgyny. A complaint of mine in Canticle, that his Plains Indian-inspired culture is out of a cartoon, is well fixed, with half the book’s attention on the Plains Nomads’ unhappy interactions with a conquering state and church. The other half is church politics. Church politics, Nomad politics: I too feel the book can get bogged down in scenes of politics, to uncertain end. Because we begin with Blacktooth, an ex-Nomad monk, questioning whether he belongs in the old monastery, his visionary search as he blurs Saint Leibowitz and the Wild Horse Woman of his people; I’ve seen Blacktooth understood to be Miller’s spokesperson for his own loss (although it’s not a simple loss) of faith. A pity, then, that we lose sight of Blacktooth’s inner journey for interminable sections – and that his story is resolved by another hand than Miller’s.
There’s almost no science fiction left. It was much more like reading a (burlesque) historical fiction on the medieval church, muddled up with the American West. Canticle’s concerns with science aren’t pursued, and the post-nuclear-war setting becomes accidental.
March 25, 2011
Walter M. Miller committed suicide before completing his sequel to his only other novel, A CANTICLE FOR LEIBOWITZ. Terry Bisson was hired to edit and finish the book from Miller's outline. That hybrid became SAINT LEIBOWITZ AND THE WILD HORSE WOMAN.
This novel is more of a 'midquel', rather than sequel, because its events take place 80 years after CANTICLE's part two, called "Fiat Lux" (c. 3254 AD, and 600 years before CANTICLE's part three.
SAINT LEIBOWITZ reminded me very much of Herbert's DUNE. They are both sprawling novels dealing with the political machinations of both Church and State, and they both center on the manipulations of the mysterious, isolated, less-civilized nomadic peoples whose loyalties will tip the balance of power.
It is finely characterized and the battles and various landscapes are sufficiently detailed to place you within the action and setting without creating a leaden narrative.
I listened to BOOKS ON TAPE's audio version narrated by Jonathan Marosz. He handled the character voices well, but Miller's names for the MANY characters in the novel became confused in my ears-head because of similarity in sound. It would be easier to distinguish on the written page.
Recommended for fans of Miller & CANTICLE.
This novel is more of a 'midquel', rather than sequel, because its events take place 80 years after CANTICLE's part two, called "Fiat Lux" (c. 3254 AD, and 600 years before CANTICLE's part three.
SAINT LEIBOWITZ reminded me very much of Herbert's DUNE. They are both sprawling novels dealing with the political machinations of both Church and State, and they both center on the manipulations of the mysterious, isolated, less-civilized nomadic peoples whose loyalties will tip the balance of power.
It is finely characterized and the battles and various landscapes are sufficiently detailed to place you within the action and setting without creating a leaden narrative.
I listened to BOOKS ON TAPE's audio version narrated by Jonathan Marosz. He handled the character voices well, but Miller's names for the MANY characters in the novel became confused in my ears-head because of similarity in sound. It would be easier to distinguish on the written page.
Recommended for fans of Miller & CANTICLE.
July 7, 2008
Oddly enough, I seem to be one of the few people here who enjoyed the sequel much more than its predecessor. I found A Canticle... devoid of much of the human suffering that pervades this book, which questions the conflict between faith and tradition, desire and happiness, and what it means to be a good human being. SLatWHW tackles some heavy moral issues of how best to synthesize your emotions with your scruples in order to lead a godly life, and admits that self-sacrifice, though good for your soul, sucks hard. I thought this was a good, challenging read that helped me understand better how weak people can be, emotionally, and how heroic it is when we learn to deal with how we feel instead of ignoring our inner selves.
August 1, 2021
Apparently many consider this sequel a letdown from the previous book, but I don't know why. Miller did an amazing job of world-building, obviously putting a lot of anthropological reading into his development of the Plains Nomad culture and the political geography of North America. The mysticism and heterodoxy of Nimmy and Amen Specklebird are also interesting, considering Miller was probably going through his own crisis of faith when writing them.
February 11, 2025
This is the sequel to A Canticle for Leibowitz that won Hugo for the Best Novel in 1961. The book was written much later, and published in 1997 (after the author’s suicide) finished by Terry Bisson (according to whom, there was an original 600-page manuscript that lacked the finale, but had an outline and dialogues). Known erroneously as "Walter Miller's other novel" (based on the comment by David Hartwell), this is a notably different book in a lot of aspects. Where the first was a combination of three novellas that don’t really allow for a worldbuilding or character development further than general outlines, this one is much stronger on these two counts, but what it lacks (for me) is the sense of wonder. Instead, it is a story mixing Indian wars with the medieval contest of Popes and anti-popes, set in the lands of the former USA six centuries after the nuclear war.
The story follows the life of Brother Blacktooth "Nimmy" St. George, a monk at Leibowitz Abbey. He is an anti-thesis to Brother Francis from the start of the first book. As the name suggests, Blacktooth is from nomads (post-nuclear Indians) and if Francis dreams of becoming a monk, Blacktooth wants to leave the monastery. He is a talented linguist but he hates his work of translating all seven volumes of the Venerable Boedullus’s Liber Originum, that scholarly but highly speculative attempt to reconstruct from the evidence of later events a plausible history of the darkest of all centuries, the twenty-first—of translating it from the old monastic author’s quaint Neo-Latin into the most improbable of languages, Brother Blacktooth’s own native tongue, the Grasshopper dialect of Plains Nomadic, for which not even a suitable phonetic alphabet existed prior to the conquests (3174 and 3175 A.D.) of Hannegan II in what had once been called Texas.
He has his wish granted in an unexpected manner: Visiting Cardinal Elia Brownpony (called the Red Deacon since he was never ordained as a priest) enlists his services as a translator. There are intrigues: the Church arms nomads (and mutants) with new multi-shot guns (revolvers) to fight against Texarkan empire. Then there is a lot of (quite sarcastically described) court politics of the Holy See that ends up in electing a (possibly unhinged) hermit a new Pope. Meanwhile Blacktooth steps from his chastity vows and has an affair with a spook (a mutant that looks normal). There we have some stuff highly unlikely in the previous novel, like a genital mutilation of the said spook.
Overall, this wasn’t a book for me, I tortured myself to finish it.
The story follows the life of Brother Blacktooth "Nimmy" St. George, a monk at Leibowitz Abbey. He is an anti-thesis to Brother Francis from the start of the first book. As the name suggests, Blacktooth is from nomads (post-nuclear Indians) and if Francis dreams of becoming a monk, Blacktooth wants to leave the monastery. He is a talented linguist but he hates his work of translating all seven volumes of the Venerable Boedullus’s Liber Originum, that scholarly but highly speculative attempt to reconstruct from the evidence of later events a plausible history of the darkest of all centuries, the twenty-first—of translating it from the old monastic author’s quaint Neo-Latin into the most improbable of languages, Brother Blacktooth’s own native tongue, the Grasshopper dialect of Plains Nomadic, for which not even a suitable phonetic alphabet existed prior to the conquests (3174 and 3175 A.D.) of Hannegan II in what had once been called Texas.
He has his wish granted in an unexpected manner: Visiting Cardinal Elia Brownpony (called the Red Deacon since he was never ordained as a priest) enlists his services as a translator. There are intrigues: the Church arms nomads (and mutants) with new multi-shot guns (revolvers) to fight against Texarkan empire. Then there is a lot of (quite sarcastically described) court politics of the Holy See that ends up in electing a (possibly unhinged) hermit a new Pope. Meanwhile Blacktooth steps from his chastity vows and has an affair with a spook (a mutant that looks normal). There we have some stuff highly unlikely in the previous novel, like a genital mutilation of the said spook.
Overall, this wasn’t a book for me, I tortured myself to finish it.
January 3, 2013
I struggled with this book, an 'interquel' to Miller's previous novel, A Canticle for Leibowitz. The middle third of this mature-themed novel was difficult reading but I am satisfied to have finished it. At first I couldn't figure out what the book was supposed to be about. Then I realized it was really about one man, Brother Blacktooth "Nimmy" St. George, born a nomad but who joined the monks at the St. Leibowitz Abbey in the Southwest desert, but who through all his life struggled to find a balance between his culture and his vows, his duty to man and duty to God, and his human desires. Yes, he is the main character and so the book was obviously about him, but I kept waiting for the book to broaden into a story with broader implications. It didn't, as the conflicts and grand plans of the supporting characters in the book ultimately fizzled into a literal burnt-out state where almost all was lost, except the revelations in Nimmy's heart and the effects on the reader. In the end I was sad it was over. This book's imagery and philosophical issues now haunt me, as I try to figure out both the meaning of what Miller was trying to convey through the characters and situations in this book, and also how this book helps to expand the universe he laid out in his earlier Leibowitzian novel. It was not an easy read, but I think, a worthwhile read, especially for fans of the post-war survivalism genre and readers looking to challenge their views of the true meaning of faith, the Catholic church, and what it means to be a human in relation to both.
June 29, 2007
The sequel to A Canticle for Liebowitz was thirty years in the making, but unfortunately, Miller seems to have forgotten how to write a novel in those decades. Many of the moral and ethical arguments that made Canticle so brilliant are still present, as is the occasional bit of dry humor, but these are overshadowed by long and drug-out passages, poor plotting, and a conclusion that seems to have been hastily written the night before the book went to press (the "Wild Horse Woman" from the title, for example, virtually never appears in the novel; I'm still confused as to why her name appears so prominently on the book's spine). There is still much to gain from reading Saint Leibowitz, and there are passages that will haunt me for years to come (like the torturing of Esitt Loyte). The book's faults, however, made such gains painful and too-long-in-the-coming. My final opinion: Saint Leibowitz could have used a couple more runs through the typewriter.
May 16, 2013
It was a bit of a slog. There were too many characters with multiple and similar-sounding names for me to keep them straight. I'm not sure what the point of the book was..? Maybe that no one wins in war?
September 18, 2019
Okay, I had to read "A Canticle for Leibowitz" for a Medieval History class when I was in college. My professor thought that, even though it takes place in a dystopian future, that it really showed what life might have been like in medieval Europe. Well, I absolutely loved the book. How come no one ever told me it had a sequel (written forty years after the original). This book is long and dense and difficult, and of course, I really liked it. It's not for everyone - read the other one first, for sure.
June 2, 2025
This book is nasty. Actually, it was Miller's first proper novel, since "A Canticle for Leibowitz" was assembled from the author's corpus of short stories. I was right when I said, in my review of the prequel, that Miller gave us his best with "A Canticle" — "Saint Leibowitz and the Wild Horse Woman" lacks the scope and dignity of its predecessor. The only redeeming quality is the nuanced and witty worldbuilding. What remains of the 80 pages I forced myself to read was the miserable experience of a barbaric monk who had night visions of a naked lady riding a flying horse (and there's an outrageous suggestion that could be the Virgin Mary). Poor Brother Blacktooth wants to leave the monastery. He's sexually assaulted by a fellow monk (God help me!) and leaves the monastery with a cardinal, and then... Falls on further sexual encounters to discover his own sexuality? What?!
It's a shame it was written by a Catholic author. It's a shame it was an author's last work before his own inflicted death. After all the success and praise he got with "Canticle", what was going through his mind while he wrote this?
Usually, I don't write reviews for books I do not finish. In this case, I feel compelled to write: Do yourself a favour, never touch this novel.
It's a shame it was written by a Catholic author. It's a shame it was an author's last work before his own inflicted death. After all the success and praise he got with "Canticle", what was going through his mind while he wrote this?
Usually, I don't write reviews for books I do not finish. In this case, I feel compelled to write: Do yourself a favour, never touch this novel.
September 27, 2015
What the hell happened to Walter M Miller?
In the 1950's he was a fairly consistent writer of short-stories who ended the decade producing one of the kite-marks of "literary" post-apocolyptic science fiction, A Canticle for Leibowitz.
Then, all of a sudden, he produced precisely nothing until this follow-up novel 40 years later - and this was only published posthumously, after he blew his own brains out with a gun and an editor whittled down a sprawling 600 page manuscript by a third.
I had previously read Canticle and it deserves the reputation that led me to hunt it out. It's witty, erudite, unusual and appears to be written by a very smart and funny man with an extensive knowledge of latin. Yet that was it for Miller, and he only left this frustratingly disappointing sequel before committing suicide. That's really sad.
This novel is not exactly a straight sequel either because Canticle featured three connected novellas that spanned a millenium, and this is story is set somewhere between the second and third novella from that earlier volume.
That means firstly that all the characters are new (except one, I won't go into that). although figures who featured in the previous novel are referenced. Tt means that you already know how things turned out after this, so it better be a cracking good yarn.
But it was far from cracking. Most of its 400 pages were taken up with complicated exposition detailing the political machinations between the church, the controlling state, and a multitude of independent clans, and it was largely pretty dull.
When Miller focused on the more narrow human travails of his characters, most notably Brother Blacktooth, it was much more interesting, but everyone seemed swamped by the wider issues, and appeared only indistinctly against the sprawling backdrop.
A shame, in every way.
In the 1950's he was a fairly consistent writer of short-stories who ended the decade producing one of the kite-marks of "literary" post-apocolyptic science fiction, A Canticle for Leibowitz.
Then, all of a sudden, he produced precisely nothing until this follow-up novel 40 years later - and this was only published posthumously, after he blew his own brains out with a gun and an editor whittled down a sprawling 600 page manuscript by a third.
I had previously read Canticle and it deserves the reputation that led me to hunt it out. It's witty, erudite, unusual and appears to be written by a very smart and funny man with an extensive knowledge of latin. Yet that was it for Miller, and he only left this frustratingly disappointing sequel before committing suicide. That's really sad.
This novel is not exactly a straight sequel either because Canticle featured three connected novellas that spanned a millenium, and this is story is set somewhere between the second and third novella from that earlier volume.
That means firstly that all the characters are new (except one, I won't go into that). although figures who featured in the previous novel are referenced. Tt means that you already know how things turned out after this, so it better be a cracking good yarn.
But it was far from cracking. Most of its 400 pages were taken up with complicated exposition detailing the political machinations between the church, the controlling state, and a multitude of independent clans, and it was largely pretty dull.
When Miller focused on the more narrow human travails of his characters, most notably Brother Blacktooth, it was much more interesting, but everyone seemed swamped by the wider issues, and appeared only indistinctly against the sprawling backdrop.
A shame, in every way.
April 8, 2010
Story of two men, simply monk and noble (charismatic) arcibishop, later pope, from future middle-age-like (plus in some aspects renaissance-like and 19. century-like)world about finding way to God, love and hapiness.
I thought for first time about dogmatica and spiritual confussion in middle age. It must be terrible! I feel so sorry for the poor people...
But, all this is so interesting! Very good book.
And there are some gay stories, too :o), some nice, some cruel ones: poor sweet (gay young unhappy monk, later succesful gay priest) Torrildo (I love him and wish him happiness!), other (bad) arcibishop (uncle of ruler of Texark), who likes young boys (as Torrildo - he rape him and want to kill him), the terrible rape of poor first main hero (monk) as boy by soldiers (he fears soldiers his all life because it), terrible rape of mother of second main hero (arcibishop), which led her in lesbian relationships only (she was probably bisexual, also she can love women, when men hurt her so much) and to hate her child (arcibishop) born from this rape, "manly" behaviour of brave barbarian nomads who wiill always rape all women (from little girls to old women) and all boys, and so on... Surprisingly a lot of it.
I thought for first time about dogmatica and spiritual confussion in middle age. It must be terrible! I feel so sorry for the poor people...
But, all this is so interesting! Very good book.
And there are some gay stories, too :o), some nice, some cruel ones: poor sweet (gay young unhappy monk, later succesful gay priest) Torrildo (I love him and wish him happiness!), other (bad) arcibishop (uncle of ruler of Texark), who likes young boys (as Torrildo - he rape him and want to kill him), the terrible rape of poor first main hero (monk) as boy by soldiers (he fears soldiers his all life because it), terrible rape of mother of second main hero (arcibishop), which led her in lesbian relationships only (she was probably bisexual, also she can love women, when men hurt her so much) and to hate her child (arcibishop) born from this rape, "manly" behaviour of brave barbarian nomads who wiill always rape all women (from little girls to old women) and all boys, and so on... Surprisingly a lot of it.
February 19, 2013
My reaction in one sentence: What the eff was the point?
There’s a problem if I finish reading your book and I have no idea why you wrote it. And I honestly have no idea why Miller wrote this. What did he think he was discussing? Did he think he actually made some kind of point?
I wanted this to be good; it started out with so much potential. Since the main characters are primarily Nomads who have chosen service to the Church, I figured there would be a great exploration of the tension between and conflation of pagan/tribal/animist/polytheist/psuedo-matriarchal worldview and christian/civilized/theist/monotheist/patriarchal worldview. Which could have been awesome, but Miller chose to beat it up, strangle it, draw and quarter it, and then bury it under six feet of overly-complicated arcane Catholic political garbage. By the end of the book, the reader feels rather like zie has been subjected to the same series of tortures.
A longer review may be found here
There’s a problem if I finish reading your book and I have no idea why you wrote it. And I honestly have no idea why Miller wrote this. What did he think he was discussing? Did he think he actually made some kind of point?
I wanted this to be good; it started out with so much potential. Since the main characters are primarily Nomads who have chosen service to the Church, I figured there would be a great exploration of the tension between and conflation of pagan/tribal/animist/polytheist/psuedo-matriarchal worldview and christian/civilized/theist/monotheist/patriarchal worldview. Which could have been awesome, but Miller chose to beat it up, strangle it, draw and quarter it, and then bury it under six feet of overly-complicated arcane Catholic political garbage. By the end of the book, the reader feels rather like zie has been subjected to the same series of tortures.
A longer review may be found here
January 28, 2010
Miller's first (and only other) novel, A Canticle for Liebowitz, is rightly regarded as classic. This posthumously published sequel is, in my opinion, just as good as the first (a minority view, I think). The story takes place around the same time as the second part of Canticle, and is an engrossing story with vivid characters. The symbolism and themes are often similar to Canticle's, with similar pessimism & dark humor, but Miller meanders into eastern mysticism too, and we even see heroism in some characters (tragic more than comic, but still heroic!).
November 18, 2021
There were times I hated the book, but in the end I did enjoy it. I enjoyed it as much as the first. I know Miller did not finish the book and the ending is perfect, so who gets the credit. It is a pity that he suffered so, but his mind was an original. There is not much more I can say without revealing too much.
February 4, 2014
The last novel written by Walter M. Miller before his death in the 1970s (with considerable posthumous rework by science-fiction author Terry Bisson at the Miller family's request), Saint Leibowitz and the Wild Horse Woman is a sequel to Miller's classic postapocalyptic novel A Canticle for Leibowitz.
This time, the action all happens within the lifespan of Brother Blacktooth "Nimmy" St. George of the Abbey of Saint Leibowitz, a hundred years after the action in the "Fiat Homo" chapter of A Canticle for Leibowitz.
The empire of Texarkana, under the virulent Hannegan dynasty, is expanding in all directions and even asserting authority over the Roman Catholic Church by pressing its own Cardinal, the current Hannegan's pederast uncle, as a candidate for Pope at a conclave held in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains after the previous Pope's death.
Nimmy St. George is drafted (because of his origins among the fierce nomadic plains tribes who stand between Texarkana and Hannegan dominion over the West) to be secretary and translator to Cardinal Brownpony, a lay lawyer appointed Cardinal to oversee the Church's secret plans for defending humanity against the Hannegan dynasty, and so travels a roundabout route with Brownpony to the conclave by way of meetings in the plains with mysterious nomads, turncoat Texarkana officers, and little communities of mutants deformed by the radiation left after World War Three nine centuries earlier. And there the action begins.
Saint Leibowitz and the Wild Horse Woman is a rich book, with wry humor and genuine pathos, and endless twists and turns... in many ways, it's different from A Canticle for Leibowitz, more of a contemporary novel than that earlier work of Miller's. I can recommend it both for those of us who read and loved and for those for whom this will be their first taste of Walter Miller, Jr. It's an absorbing read.
This time, the action all happens within the lifespan of Brother Blacktooth "Nimmy" St. George of the Abbey of Saint Leibowitz, a hundred years after the action in the "Fiat Homo" chapter of A Canticle for Leibowitz.
The empire of Texarkana, under the virulent Hannegan dynasty, is expanding in all directions and even asserting authority over the Roman Catholic Church by pressing its own Cardinal, the current Hannegan's pederast uncle, as a candidate for Pope at a conclave held in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains after the previous Pope's death.
Nimmy St. George is drafted (because of his origins among the fierce nomadic plains tribes who stand between Texarkana and Hannegan dominion over the West) to be secretary and translator to Cardinal Brownpony, a lay lawyer appointed Cardinal to oversee the Church's secret plans for defending humanity against the Hannegan dynasty, and so travels a roundabout route with Brownpony to the conclave by way of meetings in the plains with mysterious nomads, turncoat Texarkana officers, and little communities of mutants deformed by the radiation left after World War Three nine centuries earlier. And there the action begins.
Saint Leibowitz and the Wild Horse Woman is a rich book, with wry humor and genuine pathos, and endless twists and turns... in many ways, it's different from A Canticle for Leibowitz, more of a contemporary novel than that earlier work of Miller's. I can recommend it both for those of us who read and loved and for those for whom this will be their first taste of Walter Miller, Jr. It's an absorbing read.
December 4, 2014
I really enjoyed this book, way more than I thought I would. An interesting take on the post-apocalyptic genre, which often times finds itself shying away from religious storytelling as it can be difficult to justify its existence in science-fiction in general.
I find myself wanting to give this book four stars and yet I am held back by one crucial factor; the ending. In A Canticle For Leibowitz, a few ugly points about society and religion are faced and I was left feeling changed, as I believe a good novel can do. This book however, seemed to have no point to it other than being a further examination of a society whose heritage is nuclear war.
Recommended for fans and students of post-apocalypse novels only, though some religious merits are to be found as well.
I find myself wanting to give this book four stars and yet I am held back by one crucial factor; the ending. In A Canticle For Leibowitz, a few ugly points about society and religion are faced and I was left feeling changed, as I believe a good novel can do. This book however, seemed to have no point to it other than being a further examination of a society whose heritage is nuclear war.
Recommended for fans and students of post-apocalypse novels only, though some religious merits are to be found as well.
September 13, 2011
I'd read Miller's A Canticle for Liebowitz as a kid. Post-holocaust novels were quite popular then when the threat of global thermonuclear war was much discussed. Unlike most other such books, Canticle was touching, wryly amusing, even hopeful. Civilization had not quite collapsed and the Church, as in the Dark Ages, maintained fragments of culture and learning.
This book was intended as a sequel, being set many years after its predecessor. Unfortunately, Miller did not live to see it through to completion. That was done by another. For Miller's sake and for the sake of childhood memories, I would like to think that the reason it's so inferior is because of its dual authorship.
This book was intended as a sequel, being set many years after its predecessor. Unfortunately, Miller did not live to see it through to completion. That was done by another. For Miller's sake and for the sake of childhood memories, I would like to think that the reason it's so inferior is because of its dual authorship.
September 9, 2016
Until the last portion of this book, I thought it slightly inferior to its predecessor, A Canticle for Leibowitz - which would only have been expected, as this was published forty years after the classic. But the end was a thing of such beauty, and gave such perspective to the earlier portions of this book, and fit so well with the first, that I put it away like a treasure when I had finished it. This is mystical science fiction at its best.
Addendum: Turns out - and this is shocking to me because it worked so well - that Terry Bisson largely wrote the last hundred pages, six months after Miller's death. See http://www.terrybisson.com/page4/page...
Addendum: Turns out - and this is shocking to me because it worked so well - that Terry Bisson largely wrote the last hundred pages, six months after Miller's death. See http://www.terrybisson.com/page4/page...
December 3, 2012
This book was somewhat underwhelming to me. I read it immediately after I finished Canticle (which I love) for the third time and it just does not live up to the standard of the first book.
The focus of the book on politics is an interesting choice. I enjoyed the parts about the conclave. However, the 'human side' of the story was not fleshed out. Many characters felt like cardboard to me.
The book was wel structured though. I would recommend it to someone who really enjoyed Canticle but with a caveat. I don't think I wil re-read this book.
The focus of the book on politics is an interesting choice. I enjoyed the parts about the conclave. However, the 'human side' of the story was not fleshed out. Many characters felt like cardboard to me.
The book was wel structured though. I would recommend it to someone who really enjoyed Canticle but with a caveat. I don't think I wil re-read this book.
October 12, 2008
I am ashamed to admit that this book was so bad that I stopped reading it half way through. This is very out of character for me.
I don't know if Miller's interests changed over the intervening 30 years or if the substantial differences between Canticle and Wild Horse Woman reflect the thoughts and interests of Terry Bisson, who completed the book after Miller's suicide. Either way, I do know that this book ought not to have been written.
I don't know if Miller's interests changed over the intervening 30 years or if the substantial differences between Canticle and Wild Horse Woman reflect the thoughts and interests of Terry Bisson, who completed the book after Miller's suicide. Either way, I do know that this book ought not to have been written.
Want to read
July 7, 2014I loved Canticle for Liebowitz when I was younger--I read it three or four times.
I was shocked and saddened when I heard that the author committed suicide. I've never used the book in my courses as a consequence.
Some day, I hope to stumble across the sequel and see how it goes.
May God have mercy on Walter. May his soul and the souls of all of the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace.
I was shocked and saddened when I heard that the author committed suicide. I've never used the book in my courses as a consequence.
Some day, I hope to stumble across the sequel and see how it goes.
May God have mercy on Walter. May his soul and the souls of all of the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace.
June 26, 2020
This was extremely disappointing for me, considering how much I enjoyed the first book. There was really not much depth in this one or even interesting character development. I was actually falling asleep trying to read it because it wasn’t engaging at all.
March 17, 2022
A sequel of sorts to Miller’s ‘A Canticle for Leibowitz’, this novel takes place between parts 2 and 3 of Canticle, following the life of Brother Blacktooth St. George of Leibowitz Abbey during a struggle between the Church and the Hannegan Empire.
May 19, 2025
This is, admittedly, a very strange book. It is the sequel, prequel, something of the classic sci-fi novel, A Canticle for St. Leibowitz also by Walter M. Miller, which is a very strange blend of post-apocolypse and pre-Vatican II Catholic spirituality (especially from the religious orders). The earlier novel follows the Order of St. Leibowitz through the post-apocalyptic wastelands from nuclear war sometime in the 1950s or 60s and mass Simplification which wiped out most of human learning until it was painful reconstructed and humanity does it again. This book is placed about a century or so after the second book, Fiat Lux, and follows a disgraced monk of the monastery of St. Leibowitz into a story which combines the post-apocalyptic landscape combining Catholic spirituality, Native American spirituality, colonialism, power plays and what looks suspiciously like an Avignon papacy. And strange.
Part of the strangeness, I think, is that this is only based on a manuscript by Miller, so another writer has completed it. It is really hard to tell what is Miller being strange and the editor adding things for modern sensibilities. There is more sex in this novel than Canticle, which I wonder if that isn't added. But it is very much the same world, told, this time, from more in the centre of the action.
It is still worth reading, if you've read Canticle. Disorienting, yes, but an interesting story about power, faith and human understanding. It deserves to be read more.
Part of the strangeness, I think, is that this is only based on a manuscript by Miller, so another writer has completed it. It is really hard to tell what is Miller being strange and the editor adding things for modern sensibilities. There is more sex in this novel than Canticle, which I wonder if that isn't added. But it is very much the same world, told, this time, from more in the centre of the action.
It is still worth reading, if you've read Canticle. Disorienting, yes, but an interesting story about power, faith and human understanding. It deserves to be read more.
November 30, 2024
Did you ever wonder what happened to the nomadic tribes in the second part of A Canticle for Leibowitz? No? Well too bad that's mostly what this book is about.
There's a lot to find frustrating about this book, but honestly the biggest one were the names. Maybe this is a me problem but it felt like almost every character has multiple names that are used interchangeably. In general, the book just doesn't have the same zing as its predecessor.
The idea of a post-apocalyptic crusade is interesting and the book does improve in the last ~quarter but not enough.
There's a lot to find frustrating about this book, but honestly the biggest one were the names. Maybe this is a me problem but it felt like almost every character has multiple names that are used interchangeably. In general, the book just doesn't have the same zing as its predecessor.
The idea of a post-apocalyptic crusade is interesting and the book does improve in the last ~quarter but not enough.
July 14, 2025
A fitting sequel to Canticle whose despair at Man's propensity towards plotting reinforces the hopeful ending of Canticle's part 3. The story's denouement in New St Peter's was a powerful punch at ecclesiastical pride and those living by the sword having to die by the sword. Amen Amen.
Numerous great lines, including a character's "fall from grace ending with a thud: being named Cardinal Deacon" of the Pope's own titular parish.
Numerous great lines, including a character's "fall from grace ending with a thud: being named Cardinal Deacon" of the Pope's own titular parish.
September 1, 2025
Okay so full disclosure, I plan on completing this book (I feel like I owe it to the author of Canticle) but the binding of my copy disintegrated and I physically cannot finish it.
I will say thus far the story was not grasping me.
I will say thus far the story was not grasping me.
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