A Dirge for Sabis

The Sword of Knowledge #1

by C.J. Cherryh, Leslie Fish

CAN SABIS BE SAVED?

Ancaran hordes swarm her Northern borders . . . Her armies are flung back broken upon her walls . . . Those with the wealth to do so flee daily to the lands beyond the Sea . . .

Born of brute force, the Sabirn Empire falls now to an even greater force, a force that only a weapon born half a millennium before its time could withstand. The Sabirn have such a super-weapon—but what if the rulers are too short-sighted to recognize it, or too tight-fisted to pay the price? Then truly it will be time for A Dirge for Sabis!

Genres: Fantasy, Fiction, Science Fiction, Science Fiction Fantasy

393 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1989

About the author

Currently resident in Spokane, Washington, C.J. Cherryh has won four Hugos and is one of the best-selling and most critically acclaimed authors in the science fiction and fantasy field. She is the author of more than forty novels. Her hobbies include travel, photography, reef culture, Mariners baseball, and, a late passion, figure skating: she intends to compete in the adult USFSA track. She began with the modest ambition to learn to skate backwards and now is working on jumps. She sketches, occasionally, cooks fairly well, and hates house work; she loves the outdoors, animals wild and tame, is a hobbyist geologist, adores dinosaurs, and has academic specialties in Roman constitutional law and bronze age Greek ethnography. She has written science fiction since she was ten, spent ten years of her life teaching Latin and Ancient History on the high school level, before retiring to full time writing, and now does not have enough hours in the day to pursue all her interests. Her studies include planetary geology, weather systems, and natural and man-made catastrophes, civilizations, and cosmology…in fact, there's very little that doesn't interest her. A loom is gathering dust and needs rethreading, a wooden ship model awaits construction, and the cats demand their own time much more urgently. She works constantly, researches mostly on the internet, and has books stacked up and waiting to be written.

Reviews

[Joy · Rating 3 out of 5]

This 30 yr old series is classic sword and sorcery although very light on the magic part. More a plot mirroring the scientific advances that lead to horrors of modernizing warfare. The authors are more syfy famous and that shows in how they build this medieval world.

Enjoyable read if a bit dated (not as grim as most fantasy these days) by master storytellers.

[Justine · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good story that may be simple but it is entertaining. I like the character relationships and while there is romance it doesn't take over the story. The magic system is very simple and explained very well.

[Douglas Summers-Stay · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this on the plane to a conference in California. I had picked up The Best Alternate History Stories of the 20th Century to read but noticed that the cover had Hitler wearing a Confederate flag on his shoulder and thought, maybe not the best book to be seen carrying in public. So I pulled this C.J. Cherryh book I had gotten from a library booksale at some point and never read. It's a collected edition with some sequels called The Sword of Knowledge.
It's mildly fantasy-- people can wish good luck or bad luck on things-- but mostly invention of cannons and steamships by a group of refugee inventors while on the run from a war. In that sense its more science fiction than fantasy, as the theme Knowledge Is Power is the main takeaway. The processes of casting bronze and the problems the inventors needed to solve were realistic, though rather sped-up from what happened in reality, I think. The action keeps moving. It's not her deepest book, but I was entertained.
It was co-written with Leslie Fish, who I know only as a filk singer (that's SF and fantasy songs). Wikipedia claims Cherryh wrote none of it but a removed introduction, but I'm certain that's false: it has her early writing style all throughout (for example, her idiosyncratic way of swearing).

[Lynda · Rating 3 out of 5]

A group of friends flee a war zone together and during their travels bond and become like a family. Now in their new home, they end up fighting a war of their own, one of wizardry and firepower.

[Rain · Rating 3 out of 5]

A simple good story, entertaining light read, with well-written characterisation.

[Shae Erisson · Rating 4 out of 5]

w000, that was fun!

[AM · Rating 4 out of 5]

An entertaining novel with a unique magic system, interesting characters, and a well-developed world.

[rainbow3 · Rating 2 out of 5]

Finished reading on Thursday, April 16, 2009. . Yipes, the first couple of pages are turning my hair grey. Early experiments with gunpowder. Lets just fire a projectile out of a metal tube and watch its passage toward a distant target, then lets swiftly check whether or not we can re-fire out of the same tube? Most importantly have the seams held? Hey, lets just pour more gunpowder down into this hot metal tube, to see?

Hold on a minute, I’m thinking… Hot metal tube and gunpowder, and a query over whether the seams are holding. Lets get back to that word - HOT!!!

There was an amusing start here, the 1st couple of pages of ‘explosive’ scene setting were entertaining then I got bogged down around page 14 because of the pages of military history I had to negotiate to get that far, I had started to zone out a little… I trotted on through that though and really was enjoying it till I put it down, somewhere in my flat… and it must have fallen into a wormhole!

ADDED – 21 March 2010 ~ Updating my reading records and have realised this review had not been added to my online records - till now!
I am such a Cherryh fan I did want to read this but it took me some persevering to complete, the creation of the epic tale, lots of back story political shenanigans and chunks of military history causing me to zone out more than somewhat. Also the nature of the tale told necessitated some periods where the activity drifted and during some of the lulls particularly near the end I felt I was on hold waiting for something to happen.

The book starts with a dramatic breathless race, determining friend from foe as a company of artisan inventors prepare a large group of people, in secret, to flee a city under siege; escape into enemy territory that once had belonged to some of the fleeing group, scary evasion of pitiless warriors; the search for historic artifacts of power or at least answers in a now ruined and abandoned, cursed ancient city; setting up credibility under assumed personas, and finally establishing a economic stronghold hidden deep behind enemy lines while, in essence, developing superior weaponry!

This ended up feeling like it had blended two or three stories together and in the process left many loose ends most of which I anticipate would not be picked up in the following sequel. That was another issue, I hadn’t focused on the fact before reading this that the cover stated this was Book 1 of the Sword of Knowledge, and so had no idea as I read it that it was one of a series, and that was disappointing as I wanted a greater sense of the story rounding off. I finally realised a sequel was in the offing as the closer I got to the end, the feeling of another sequence of events just kicking off started to alert me.

In retrospect I recall that despite having some brilliant passages and intriguing plot trails it left me feeling flat though it certainly had many points of interest throughout.

[Karen Ireland-Phillips · Rating 3 out of 5]

**SPOILER ALERT** for these books, published in 1989.[return][return]In this shared world trilogy C.J. Cherryh fully exercises her history fetish by exploring the what-if inherent in the rise, fall and adaptation of cultures. [return]The main characters, over a timeline of nearly a thousand years, are the descendents original citizens of the Sabirn Empire, and the cultures and empires which conquer and oppose them. [return]In Book 1, A Dirge for Sabis, Ancaran hordes from the north (pushed by barbarians from even further north, of course – this is Cherryh) conquer the Sabirn Empire and overrun the capital, Sabis. This despite the efforts of a group of patriots including a “natural philosopher”, a smith, an army officer, and a resourceful magician to construct a weapon that could hold them off. The group of patriots are forced to flee, finding a new patron behind the Ancar lines and using their knowledge to scare off a cult fleecing the locals. [return]“If at first you don’t succeed, get the hell out of the way.”[return] Followed by Wizard Spawn[return]Book II of the Sword of Knowledge series[return]C.J. Cherryh and Nancy Asire[return][return]500 years later, (See A Dirge for Sabis) Book II concentrates on the remnants of the Sabirn people, and the scorn and persecution they suffer under the rule of the descendants of the Ancar in Sabis. This is our “one person makes a difference book”. Chemist (and alchemist) Duran rescues a Sabirn boy injured in an attack behind his shop, and is stunned to discover that his neighbors disapprove – strongly. Worse, the presence of the boy in Duran’s home leads to rumors of witchcraft and alchemical deeds that reach the ears of the court. Eventually, he flees with the boy, the boy’s grandfather, and other Sabirn who know secrets of which he could only have dreamed. [return][return][return]Reap the Whirlwind[return]Book III of the Sword of Knowledge series[return]C.J. Cherryh and Mercedes Lackey[return](See Also, A Dirge for Sabis and Wizard Spawn) Book III brings the descendents of the protagonists of Book I and II together to resist the depredations of the Wind Clan (fleeing, in a nice bit of symmetry, the pursuit of another clan and *their* overlords). Having joined forces as a scholarly quasi-magical organization, they’re able to use the secret magics of the Sabirn, the strengths of the Ancar, the tenets of Duran, and the tenacity of the scholar’s leader to bring the Clan into alliance. [return][return]Book one shows the Cherryh touch the most clearly – the multi-layered plotting, characters who turn out to be much different than first perceived. The early chapters were clearly her work, and Leslie Fish does a great job keeping up and fleshing out the characters and story.[return]The next two volumes are much simpler in plot and characterization, though not without the occasional surprise. If not up to Cherryh’s, Asire’s and Lackey’s best work, still worth a read.

[Jen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting. Picked this up in slim pickings at a used book store because of it's connection to C.J. Cherryh (although it seems the idea was loosely connected to Cherryh, and the story itself is Leslie Fish's).

The characters are interesting, but the story itself is situation-driven, rather than character-driven. An exploration of might-have-beens in a world that looks vaguely like a Mediterranean alter-ego. Medieval inventions and barbarian hordes of which parallels can easily be found in our own Goths, Visigoths, and Asian Mongols.

Interesting, and I'm tempted to hunt down the other books in the series, except other reviews indicate they're written by different authors and don't quite meet the high standards of the first.

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found this to be a compelling start to the series by Leslie Fish but ultimately let down by weaker later instalments by the other authors.
Incidentally Cherryh (who I love) has little to do with this book. Apparently she originally wrote some introductions which were subsequently deleted by the publishers.

[Lian Tanner · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very different in style from the other books of Cherryh's I've read, but just as gripping and entertaining, with a subversive humour and wonderful characterisation. It'll be interesting to read the next two books in the trilogy and see if the different co-authors affect the style.

[Leslie Fish]

Fantasy need include no more than *one* fantasy element -- in this case, "well/ill-wishing" -- in order to work.

[Mark Lacy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not very good. I don't plan on reading sequels.

[Lindsay · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love most of Cherryh's book and was delighted with this one written with another author.

[Alina · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not a bad book; it got more interesting towards the end. Overall meh.

[o jh · Rating 2 out of 5]

awkward exposition dump in first chapter. not feeling it.

[Dez Amiday · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great adventure.