One thousand years after “the time of fire,” a gentle craftsman and flute player forsakes both his true love and birthright to seek the fabled Shining Sea. Stel, born of proud but rigid Pelbar culture, embarks on an epic quest across an America dramatically changed by a long-ago nuclear war. Following him is his beloved wife, Ahroe, equally determined to find Stel, avoid disgrace, and share her own precious secret.
The Ends of the Circle is the second novel in the highly praised Pelbar Cycle, a classic series of postapocalyptic novels about the people of the Pelbar. Imaginative and reflective, this rousing tale introduces Stel—engineer and poet, adventurer and musician—one of the most memorable characters in modern postapocalyptic fiction.
Paul Osborne Williams was an American science fiction writer and haiku poet. Williams was professor emeritus of English at Principia College in Elsah, Illinois.
His most notable science fiction works are a series of novels, the Pelbar Cycle, set in North America about a thousand years after a "time of fire", in which the world was nearly totally depopulated. The novels track a gradual reconnection of the human cultures which developed. Much of the action takes place in the communities of the Pelbar, along the Upper Mississippi River — in the general vicinity of Elsah. Several cultures, including the matriarchal Pelbar, join together in the Heart River Federation. Others, especially the tyrannical Tantal and slave-raiding Tusco, fall apart after suffering defeats. The predominant characters are change agents: Jestak, Stel and his wife Ahroe Westrun. All are Pelbar. Williams won the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer in Science Fiction in 1983.
He is also known as a writer of haiku, senryū, and tanka, and wrote a number of essays on the haiku form in English. In a 1975 essay, he coined the term "tontoism" to refer to the practice of writing haiku with missing articles ("the", "a", or "an"), which he claimed made the haiku sound like the stunted English of the Indian sidekick, Tonto, in the Lone Ranger radio and television series. Williams was the president of the Haiku Society of America (1999) and vice president of the Tanka Society of America (2000).
Тук синдромът на втория роман вилнее с пълна сила. Както в десетки други поредици, авторът явно не е мислил за продължение и е избацал едно разширение на интересния си свят, като се е влиял от препоръките към предходната му книга. Резултатът е едно доста по-мрачно приключение, накъсано на епизоди за различни общества. Тези новите обаче са леко изсмукани от пръстите и граничат с нереалистичност (да, знам, фантастика, бля, бля, бля, но това е фантасмагория.) Иначе имаме страхотно, обещаващо начало и класически край, издържан в стил уестърн, но в бронзовата ера. Героите търпят невероятно голямо развитие, но от това страда сюжетът, който служи само за да изправя пред тях препятствия. Стил е каменоделец и музикант, израснал в консервативното и почти миролюбиво общество на Пелбар. След като се оженва за жена от най-традиционалисткото пелбарско семейство, роднините ѝ превръщат живота му в ад, като се стига до опити да го отстранят чрез инцидент. Той доброволно се самоотлъчва, а жена му, разбирайки че е бременна и определено не е права (естествено повече първото в тяхното матриархално и доста назадничево общество) тръгва след него. Двамата се сблъскват с живота в постапокалиптична Америка извън закрилящите ги градски стени и всеки ще разбере по нещо за себе си и по нещо за заобикалящият ги свят - настоящето и миналото му. Би трябвало да ми хареса "ходенето по мъките" на главния герой, но този път авторът му беше отредил доста брутални приключения (за разлика от тези на пича в предходната книга, които на моменти бяха наивни.) Мммм, общество от амазонки, държащи мъжете си като добитък; култ към слънцето; култ към знанието; кръвожадно ацтекоподобно племе; абсурдна група осакатени от радиацията старци, почитащи останки от самолет. По отделно са доста занимателни, но не успяват да се слеят в книга (не че е някакъв прецедент това, дори сега продължава да се прави.) Интересно в третата книга дали ще набара Средния път или пък ще измени изцяло сюжетната си концепция.
Honestly, I give it 4.9 stars as I like Stel and Ahroe. The world building on this is impressive, though I felt we could have learnt more about the Originals and Commuters, toward the end. Still, a nice story with a little romance and a love uncrackable by distance and challenge.
This book picks up several years after The Breaking of Northwall but focuses on a new set of main characters. Stel has joined the Dahmens by marrying Ahroe. Pelbar is a matriarchal society so Stel must be subservient to his wife and her female relatives. He has found this nearly impossible and has suffered many punishments. Still resisting their domination, the Dahmens decide to murder him by arranging an accident. He evades the attempt and leave Pelbar, and Ahroe decides to follow him. This setup allows Williams to chronicle a journey across the post apocalyptic landscape of North America. More than a thousand years have past, and society has split into many smaller societies, some quite idiosyncratic. The book feels a bit like a planetary romance by Vance, although William's style and language is more conventional. But, like Vance, Williams is concerned with human peculiarities, and how these can shape culture. A very underrated book and series!
3.5 Sterne Nach dem etwas unzureichendem Band Eins habe ich nicht mit einem guten Buch gerechnet. Die Hauptstory ist wieder mal papierdünn (wütende, zurückgewiesene strengläubige Pelbar rennt hinter ihrem entflohenen Gatten her. Es sei erwähnt, dass ihre Familie versucht hat ihn zu ermorden.)
Aber dann auf seiner Flucht treffen sie wieder auf jede Menge andere Leute und ihre Gebräuche und das ist tatsächlich spannend. Sowohl Stel als auch Ahroe wachsen an den Begegnungen.
Einzige Knackpunkte weiterhin: - die Konflikte werden zu schnell (und ab und an unglaubwürdig) gelöst - Williams kann keine Romanzen schreiben und bleibt weiterhin bei Instalove (nicht die MC) und das liest sich schmerzhaft
Wenn eure Bücherei die Reihe hat, lohnt es sich zu zugreifen. Band Eins ist und bleibt eine 470 Seiten Einführung in die Welt.
An interesting structure, as a man escapes from an oppressive society, and his wife chases after him - becomes a kind of parallel set of gulliver's travels as they both encounter various strange societies in a post apocalyptic kind of world (though this matters little to the overall plot). The individual vignettes with the societies are interesting for their variety, though some are much more on the nose than others. The growth of the two protagonists as they travel can be subtle, but noticeable. The dialogue can often feel strange, as it can jump between stilted to flowing depending who is talking, and to whom. It can make for strange tonal shifts if you haven't gotten a handle on the style yet. It feels like it's meant to be taken at the slow pace of a pre-industrial society.
In book 2 we meet another young man, Stel, who doesn't fit in. He has married into the most conservative family and they have decided that he must go--permanently. As he realizes this and realizes that either his wife either knows and is letting it happen or that she doesn't know and won't believe him, he decides, after almost dying while cutting ice, that he must leave. So he goes. He simply heads westward. His wife decides to follow him when she does figure out what happened. They both have great adventures, meet more tribal groups, some on the verge of extinction, some very warped and weird. That's the plot. It's lots of fun and I raced through it. On to book 3! ****
Derivative and corny but enough semi interesting ideas to make it easy to power through. I found it in one of my favorite places to look for stuff: a huge fantasy section of a used book store full of old sword and sorcery and weird science fiction books from the 80s and down, and it had enough of the qualities I like in those books that I didn't completely hate it. I will not say this a good book, though. If it were a couple hundred pages longer I couldn't have done it.
Erster Satz des Buches: "Von der Wetmauer des Rive-Turms in der Stadt Pelbarigen am Herzfluss beugte sich ein junger Gardist im strahlenden Licht der Wintersonne, die tief im Westen stand und von den Schneefeldern jenseits des Flusses reflektiert wurde, hinaus und gähnte."
In jedem Band gibt es zwei verschiedene Klappentexte, einmal der Allgemeine, auf der Rückseite und innen in der Klappenbroschüre noch einen kurzen, der den genauen Teil jeder Reihe beschreibt.
1000 Jahre nach dem nuklearen Holocaust. In den USA haben nur wenige Menschen den Krieg und die nachfolgenden Seuchen überlebt. Ihre Nachfahren sind wieder zu Wilden geworden, die das weite und zum Teil noch radioaktiv verseuchte Land als Jäger durchstreifen oder sich - wie in Pelbar - in kleinen befestigten Siedlungen verschanzen. Allmählich bilden sich kulturelle Zentren aus, erneut erstarkt die Welt. Auf gefahrvollen Expeditionen beginnt man die postatomare Wildnis des amerikanischen Kontinents zu erkunden und trifft auf tödliche Gegner.
Pelbar wird von Frauen regiert. Die Männer haben zu gehorchen und niedere Arbeiten zu verrichten. Doch Stel, ein junger Handwerker, ist nicht bereit sich zu unterwerfen. Er zieht die Freiheit der Prärien vor, trotz der Gefahren, die dort überall drohen. Stel wandert nach Westen, überquert die Berge, auf der Suche nach dem legendärem westlichen Meer, und stößt auf fremdartige Völker, und äußerst seltsame Spuren der fernen technischen Vergangenheit.
Auf dem Cover sehen wir Stel, den Protagonisten des zweiten Bandes. Umgeben ist er von einer herrlichen, weiß-blauen Winterlandschaft in den Bergen, vor ihm die zerstörten Reste eines Flugzeugs, versteckt in der Landschaft.
In diesem Band haben wir wieder einen angenehmen und ruhigen Schreibstil, nur dass die Charaktere diesmal mehr Tiefe aufweisen und die Handlungen schneller aufeinander folgen. Hinzukommt, dass hier mehr Tempo zu finden ist.
In "Enden des Kreises" begleiten wir wieder einen Pelbar, Stel und Arhoe, eine Dahmen, auf ihren Reisen. Die Beiden sind verheiratet, sehr zum missfallen ihrer Familie, die Stel das Leben zur Hölle macht. Die Dahmen erwarten von ihm ganz nach ihrer Kultur, dass er sich gänzlich unterwirft und gehorsam ist, aber so leicht lässt er sich nicht brechen. Er ist von Anfang an ein starker, symphatischer Charakter, der sich nicht runter kriegen lässt. Als sie ihn umbringen wollen ergreift er die Möglichkeit und flieht aus Pelbargien und verlässt die Frau, die er liebt. Angetan von Jestak seinen Abenteuern möchte auch er mehr von der fremden Welt sehen und begibt auf eine gefährliche Reise in den Westen. Schnell trifft er ein neues Volk nach dem anderem. Verglichen zum ersten Buch und die dort präsentierten Stämme, sind sie hier aufregender und unterscheiden sich viel mehr von den Pelbar und anderen bereits bekannten Völker. Auf seinen Reisen begegnet Stel einigen interessanten, überschaubaren Charaktere und das Thema der früheren Welt spielt eine größere Rolle. Es tauchen viel mehr Hinweise und Erkenntnisse auf, die die Vergangenheit mehr in den Vordergrund stellt als bisher.
Neben der Geschichte von Stel, erleben wir noch eine andere, die von der eigenwilligen Arhoe. Seine Frau kann es nicht ertragen, dass ihr Mann sie verlassen hat und beschließt ihn zurückzuholen. Auf ihrem Weg begegnen der künftigen Mutter einige Gefahren, aber sie findet einen passenden Begleiter in dem Shumai Hagan. Ihre Reise gibt eine weitere interessante Sicht mit sich und gespannt verfolgt man die beiden Wege die das Ehepaar einschlagen, denn sie verfehlen sich immer nur knapp! Beide Charaktere machen im Laufe der Handlung eine Veränderung durch und wachsen sichtlich mit den neu gewonnen Erfahrungen, aber ihre Zuneigung zueinander bleibt.
Zum Schluss lässt sich sagen, dass der zweite Band einen begeistert zurück lässt und man die beiden Protagonisten schnell ins Herz schließt, aber nicht nur sie! Aber wen noch, müsst ihr schon selber herausfinden! Wer die Kulturen und ihre Wirrungen im ersten Band liebte wird mit "Enden des Kreises" auf seine Kosten kommen, abgesehen davon bringt dieser Teil des Pelbar-Zyklus mehr aufregende Momente und Geschehnisse mit sich, da wir nun zwei Handlungsstränge mit wunderbaren Charakteren verfolgen.
The second book in Paul O. William's "Beyond Armageddon" series, this is a pulpy, early 80s post-apocalyptic genre piece, set in the US 1000 years after "the time of fire".
As cheesy as they often are, I like 70s and 80s post-apocalyptic fiction. Some of the books like The Postman are pretty good. Others, like Hiero's Journey or Williams' first entry The Breaking of Northwall: The Pelbar Cycle, Book One are pure pulp nonsense. That said, the fun lies in the author's imagining of what the future might look like after some immense disaster (usually nuclear war) completely changes the landscape of society. That means that when you get to a series, the first book does all the heavy lifting, and when the author writes the second book, they have to scramble to come up with new wonders to show.
As so often happens with post-apocalyptic fiction, Paul O. Williams is really struggling to think of new things in his second entry The Ends of the Circle, which leaves the reader a lot more time to notice plot and dialog. In this entry: plot is little more than an ethnography of some of the one-dimensional tribes in the Rocky Mountains. Dialog is awful. George Lucas-awful. Williams was an English professor, but I suspect they mean he taught English as a Second Language courses--the dialog is so poorly written that it can't have come from anyone who has actually read a book. A common paragraph format is "Exposition. Exposition. Dialog. And by the way unrelated dialog."
In the end, if you like this genre, read the first entry by all means. Just do yourself a favor and skip the second. This goes on for 5 more volumes, and while I do tend to punish myself in the name of completion-ism, I don't know that I'll be able to stomach another one of these.
This is the book that got me started on the Pelbar Cycle. Read it in high school and forgot about it until college days. Reread it several times and then went on a long hunt for the rest of the series. That took time and decades to round up. Anyway, the story is about Stel, who sets out to find the fabled Shining Sea, but between him and his destination lies a vast arena of poisoned cities of the ancients, blood thirsty barbarians, as well as the treacherous Children of Ozar. Stel’s quest brings him deep into the ancient world that vanished centuries before in a flash of light.
i just finished reading this book tonight, it only took me two days to read. i really enjoyed this book. i didn't know this book was part of a larger series and this was #2 in the series till i was already reading it. i really want to read them all now.
this is the kind of science fiction that i really like, its set into the future 1000 years after some nuclear disaster that almost killed everyone.
Williams' Pelbar novels were quaint. I enjoyed them as a 20-something, but have found them disappointing upon a reread in my 40s. This is by far the best of the series in which he makes the most of the future USA he's created. Short and easy to read. Worth a look. You don't need to have read the first in the series (which in my humble opinion was the worst written).
While better than the first book of this series (The Breaking of Northwall) this second story isn't quite up to what my memory made it out to be, either. A decent story. Readable. And just a bit too immature.
It was ok. It had little connection to its predecessor, and although good, I did not find it as engaging as the first. I was battling flu, at the time, so maybe that has affected my thoughts. Nonetheless, have ordered the next one from. Second hand book seller.