[KTY]≫ Download Free The Reavers of Skaith Leigh Brackett 9780345244383 Books

The Reavers of Skaith Leigh Brackett 9780345244383 Books

Download As PDF : The Reavers of Skaith Leigh Brackett 9780345244383 Books

The Reavers of Skaith Leigh Brackett 9780345244383 Books

All three books are awesome. Just rad through them after finding them again (Bought used copies because I loaned mine out twenty years ago.)


Tags : The Reavers of Skaith [Leigh Brackett] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. Safe at last, or so Stark thought. But before he could escape from the dying planet of the ginger star,Leigh Brackett,The Reavers of Skaith,Ballantine Books,0345244389,Non-Classifiable

The Reavers of Skaith Leigh Brackett 9780345244383 Books Reviews

As with the previous entries in this series, Leigh Brackett does not cheat her many enthusiastic readers. The final showdown between the Dark Man, Eric John Stark, and the rulers of Skaith comes about in this rousing volume. By turns dark, violent, and spellbinding, The Reavers of Skaith is a triumph of the imagination that brings the chronicles of the world of Skaith to their end. Brackett's roots in both pulp science fiction and pulp noir mystery are on display as she takes us on a trip with Stark and his allies across a dying world to save its inhabitants from certain doom. Unlike others in its genre though, the series ends on a bittersweet note very palpable to the reader. It is a fitting conclusion to Brackett's trilogy, her writing career, and sadly her own life. Thank you for writing these books, Ms Brackett. I will treasure them always even as I laud you for the ingenius work you gave us in your career.
To read Leigh Brackett is to return to a simpler era of science fiction - and I say that with all respect and affection. Brackett was a prolific writer for science fiction pulp magazines in the 40's and 50's, especially for "Planet Stories," which promised "Strange Adventures on Other Worlds." Though written later, Brackett's Skaith series lives up to that motto. It is a straightforward adventure story a man on a quest traversing an alien world, encountering strange foes, making allies, fighting to survive. There's no post-modern psychological baggage, no mind-blowing quantum technology, just clean, simple story-telling.

The Skaith books follows the exploits of Eric John Stark, "the Dark Man" - a character Brackett used in several short stories in the pulp era - as he tries to rescue his foster-father, Simon Ashton, who has been taken captive on the backwater world of Skaith. Stark is a great pulp hero, a man raised by semi-human natives on Mercury, who has learned to cover his animal instincts with a veneer of civilization. He is smart, strong, and without fear, and when he needs to fight - which is often - he unleashes the savage within.

Skaith is an old world orbiting a dying sun, growing ever colder. The encroaching cold has reduced a once-technological society to a medieval state, ruled by the Wandsmen. When starships arrive, the inhabitants of Skaith discover for the first time that they are not alone in the universe, and some dream of leaving. This threatens the Wandsmen's power, however, so they abduct the off-world representative, Ashton, which draws in Stark and sets powerful events in motion.

Reavers is the third book in Brackett's Skaith trilogy. Though sold as separate books, they are a continuous story, so you'll need to begin with Ginger Star and Hounds of Skaith before reading Reavers.

For the modern science fiction reader, it is satisfying to return to the genre's roots, and experience what first attracted readers a strange world, a brave hero, and lots of fighting and action. I almost feel guilty that I enjoyed Skaith as much as I did.
First released in 1976, "The Reavers of Skaith" serves as both the wonderful finale of author Leigh Brackett's Skaith trilogy AND a fitting coda to her 36-year career. "Reavers," as it turned out, would be Brackett's final piece of published fiction before her death, at age 62, in 1978. Of course, the so-called "Queen of Space Opera" was not completely idle during her final years--she kept busy by writing the initial draft for a little picture to be later known as "The Empire Strikes Back"--but "Reavers" would serve as the finale of her legendary authorial career. Fortunately, Brackett went out with a bang, and fans of the first two books in this particular trilogy--"The Ginger Star" and "The Hounds of Skaith"--should be left happily grinning by the exploits of Brackett's most famous character, Eric John Stark, here. The third installment is at least as colorful, fast moving and thrill packed as the first two had been, and ties up all loose ends very pleasingly, indeed.

In "The Ginger Star," Stark had traveled to the planet Skaith, in the Orion Spur, to rescue his friend and mentor Simon Ashton from the planetary rulers, the Lords Protector, and their underlings, the Wandsmen. Skaith was a planet in ferment, a dying world orbiting a dying sun, with one of its city-states, Irnan, petitioning the Galactic Union for the right to emigrate, and the Lords Protector doing everything to maintain the status quo. In "Hounds," Stark and Ashton had gathered together a motley assemblage of desert tribesmen and had gone on to conquer one Skaithian city after another. By the end of Book 2, it had seemed as if the Irnanese had indeed won their right to emigrate, as a delegation of them--along with the seeress Gerrith, the Iubarian queen Sanghalain, the amphibian Morn of the Ssussminh people, Alderyk of the winged Fallarin, Stark and Ashton, the sympathetic turncoat Wandsman Pedrallon, and several others--was being taken to the G.U. capital world of Pax to discuss the situation. In "Reavers," however, we learn that all had not gone as planned. Rather than bringing the delegates to Pax, the greedy Antarean Penkawr-Che, the starship captain, had kidnapped the lot, ransomed them to their respective peoples, and made plans to plunder and sack the entire planet! As Book 3 opens, Stark and Ashton are being tortured by the piratical captain, and this final volume in the trilogy details their escape and subsequent flight into the southern half of the planet, all the while recruiting allies again to retake the Wandsmen stronghold at Ged Darod....

As in the previous two books, Brackett throws any number of exciting set pieces into her story, including Stark and Ashton's thrilling escape from Penkawr-Che's clutches atop an inhospitable heath; another escape from the mutated Children-of-the-Sea's sacrificial ceremony; a raid that Stark and his followers, including the telepathic Northhounds, make on one of Penkawr-Che's ships; Stark's initial meeting with the Four Kings of the White Isles (a people of the polar south who live on drifting ice floes); and the final gigantic battle at Ged Darod. Again, Brackett displays a formidable talent in the depiction of crowded, multisided and complicated martial scenes. It is a marvel how she can make the reader clearly envision the fighting between the Wandsmen and their mercenaries on one side, and Stark, his hounds, the Fallarin, the four-armed Tarf, the Ssussminh, the six desert tribes, the Iubarians, Pedrallon's people from Andapell, and the Four Kings' barbarians on the other. And there are any number of wonderful lesser scenes, too, such as the raid that Gerrith and her band make on a harbor town to steal a sailing ship; Stark's solo mission to rescue Pedrallon from his own castle in Andapell, where he is being held prisoner; and the marvelous sequence in which Penkawr-Che and his men break into the mountain stronghold/treasure repository of the mutated Children-of-Skaith-Mother, resulting in a battle between laser blasters and more primitive poison darts. Ever imaginative, Brackett adorns her book with pleasing touches at every turn; I love those hibernating worshippers of the Cold Goddess, the Nithi, as well as those carnivorous trees, sentient flowers and vicious, yellow birds.

Unlike the first two books in the series, Stark himself is not present in every single scene. Rather, we get sections depicting what is going on with the various nations we had previously encountered, and wonderfully well-done chapters amongst the Lords Protector and the Wandsmen. The net effect is to portray an entire planet in turmoil, as winter sets in, the harvests fail, and the peoples begin to grow restive. I would have to say, thus, that "The Reavers of Skaith" is the most fully fleshed out, most well rounded and detailed of the three books in the trilogy. Indeed, so much is going on by the time the reader is 20 pages short of completion that it seems doubtful that the author will be able to wrap things up satisfactorily; remarkably enough, she does.

I have said this before, but Brackett really was one helluva writer. In her violent battle segments, she could depict with the red-blooded gusto of a Robert E. Howard, and in her quieter moments, she could compose a line of almost poetic beauty; e.g., "Her voice rang, clear and strong, with a haunting melancholy, a bell heard across hills when the wind is blowing." As in the first two books, she often employs archaic language here to reinforce the notion of a primitive people on the decline ("Get you to the rowing benches. We are foredone…"), and has her hero, Stark, come off as a kind of Conan/Tarzan of the spaceways (never more apparent than when Stark kills a furry jungle animal, breaks it in half, and eats it raw!). But we also get to see another side of Stark's character here, and his reaction to Gerrith's ultimate fate is a touching one, indeed.

In all, "The Reavers of Skaith" is a sweeping finale to a wonder-filled trilogy. As was "The Lord of the Rings," this trilogy is really meant to be taken in as one long book, and has been published as such in the past, under the title "The Book of Skaith." It is a terrific feat of world building, and at the end of nearly 600 pages, the reader feels that he/she knows the various cultures, religions, politics, geography and history of this particular planet very well. It is a pleasing combination of space opera and sword & sorcery-type fantasy, those fantastic elements including the Corn King's ability to summon the Cold Goddess to freeze his foes; the prophesies of Gerrith the seeress; the Eye of the Mother jewel that can foresee future events; and the ability of the Fallarin to talk to (!) and control the winds.

Books 1 and 2 of the trilogy had each featured detailed maps depicting Stark's epic journeys north and south, and happily, Book 3 performs the same useful service. But this new map is the most complex one yet, showing us Stark and Ashton's journey AND Gerrith and her band's journey, their eventual uniting and wending down farther into the polar south, and then north again into the tropics and the Fertile Belt. Hats off to the artist who executed these three wonderful drawings, as they greatly assist the reader in visualizing Stark's lengthy wanderings. Book 3 also includes a preface describing the background, places and peoples of the previous two novels, but of course, this is hardly a substitute for having read those books in full.

I mentioned earlier that this novel was Brackett's swan song as an author, but that is not entirely true. In recent years, a posthumous short story has been released by Haffner Press, entitled "Stark and the Star Kings." The only collaboration between Brackett and her husband, pulpmaster Edmond Hamilton, this story would seem a must for yours truly to seek out. And speaking of Haffner Press, its upcoming release "The Book of Stark," which will include the Skaith trilogy as well as three Stark novellas from 1948 – ’51, will also include "Brackett's working notes for the abandoned fourth Stark novel from 1977"! The mere thought of a fourth Stark, possibly Skaith, novel is a fascinating one. What a tremendous loss to the world was the passing of "The Queen of Space Opera"!

(By the way, this review originally appeared on the Fantasy Literature website ... a most excellent destination for all fans of Leigh Brackett....)
The Book deserves 5 STARS but the pricing rates only 3 STARS

The STORY Line is great and it shows that there were WORD SMITHs that did not need the hype and glitz of super technology to create a totally interesting and fascinating story!

I am VERY VERY disappointed to see that the books were published in CHINA.

The pricing from for these slim books published in CHINA for about FITY CENTS per unit was EXTREMELY over priced. After buying the 3 book series from I found to my disappointment that other vendors were selling the exact same volumes for about one half the price including shipping.

AMAZON YOU SHOULD BE ASHAMED OF YOUR EXORBITANT PRICING!!

You normally have the lower price for your loyal customers.
All three books are awesome. Just rad through them after finding them again (Bought used copies because I loaned mine out twenty years ago.)