The Sunrise Lands

by S. M. Stirling Narrated by Todd McLaren

Overview

A generation has passed since the Change that rendered technology inoperable around the world, and western Oregon has finally achieved a degree of peace. But a new threat has risen in Paradise Valley, Wyoming. A man known as the Prophet presides over the Church Universal and Triumphant, teaching his followers to continue God's work by destroying the remnants of technological civilization they encounter-and those who dare use them.



Rudi Mackenzie, son and heir of the mystic Juniper, must journey with seven friends across a continent in chaos to the Sunrise Lands to solve the riddle of what destroyed a civilization. And as the friends journey farther into the interior, enemies may be within their own band as well as outside it.

Editorial Reviews

Paul Di Filippo

After establishing a wild-eyed premise (aliens change the laws of physics to suppress electricity, gunpowder and other high-energy phenomena), Stirling proceeded with scrupulous and ingenious realism to show how the survivors of the Change could reconstruct a tolerable level of civilization. In this book, his focus has shifted from the elder generation to those born into the new world and raised to adulthood knowing no other. A stranger riding into peaceful Oregon from the East attracts the attention of a militaristic cult known as the Church Universal and Triumphant. The man seems to play a part in their prophecies, and dangerously questing into the very heart of their empire seems to be the only way for him to deal with the matter. Sword-arm strength and a pure heart are no guarantee of victory in Stirling's suspenseful story.
—The Washington Post

Publishers Weekly

Set 12 years after A Meeting at Corvallis(2006), Stirling's latest novel of a chaotic near-future U.S., crippled when the mysterious Change rendered most technology nonfunctional, combines vigorous military adventure with cleverly packaged political idealism. When assassins pursue a traveler into Oregon's Willamette Valley, the resulting skirmish propels the heirs of three influential local leaders on a risky continent-crossing mission to Nantucket. Stirling's narrative deftly balances sharply contrasting ideologies-the Mackenzies' proto-Celtic clan system in Oregon against Gen. Lawrence Thurston's strict and principled military democracy in Idaho, the zealotry of the Church Universal and Triumphant versus the pagan Powers venerated by the Mackenzies-though the most difficult cosmological questions are never addressed. Meanwhile, there are hints of otherworldly intervention and time travel on Nantucket, echoing the parallel continuity established in Island in the Sea of Timeand its sequels. Despite these fuzzy underpinnings, the thought-provoking and engaging storytelling should please Stirling's many fans. (Sept.)

Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information

Booklist

Brilliant action.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940170544011
Publisher:	Tantor Audio
Publication date:	04/28/2008
Series:	Emberverse Series , #4
Edition description:	Unabridged
Sales rank:	915,984

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