Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)In Her Name is a superior science ficton novel, with intimate insight into its characters' thoughts and feelings, a fully realized alien culture, sweeping space battles, and fierce hand to claw combat.
Fans of Edgar Rice Burroughs may feel at home in the first part of the book. It features a blue-skinned race of alien female warriors and a lone boy who grows up with them, learning to fight as they do. In the process he becomes both more and less than human. It seems a bit like a cross between Tarzan and Barsoom.
But this is not your grandfather's pulp fiction. It is a complex (but clearly structured) tale that takes us through the life of Reza Gard. From his struggles on an orphanage planet to his capture and assimilation into the Kreelan race, to political twists and turns as his native and adopted races clash, the book grows along with him from adventure story to military science fiction, but never forgets to let us relate to the rich array of characters he meets. This is 21st century sci fi, with questions of personal identity and how one relates with the universe integrated with bloody combat.
Readers of the old pulps would also be surprised at the number of strong female characters. Although like everything else in the book, we know them primarily through their connections with Reza, they stand on their own as interesting people.
One word of warning: if this was a movie, it would be rated R. Not all readers will be comfortable with the harshness, the language, and the explicit nature of some of the plot elements. Those that are will see that they are a legitimate part of the drama, but others may find them distasteful.
Overall, this is a great example of the self-publishing that Amazon's Kindle enables. It's hard for any book to work its way through the traditional process that gets a paperback in your local store. Hopefully, one of the traditional publishers will become aware of the book here and release it to the (currently) much wider audience it deserves. For this reader, though, the Kindle was perfect for an epic that would otherwise be quite bulky.
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This is the omnibus edition of In Her Name, and contains the complete story that are also available as individual titles called In Her Name: Empire, Confederation, and Final Battle.As one reviewer said, In Her Name is 'a grand story of love, power, sacrifice and good versus evil" that seamlessly blends together epic fantasy, science fiction, and romance as it chronicles the coming-of-age of a young warrior hero torn between love and honor...The galaxy is at war. The Confederation of Humanity is a democracy fracturing under the strain of nearly a century of war with alien invaders, the warriors of the Kreelan Empire. Humanoids with blue skin, fangs and fingers that end in razor sharp talons, they have technology that is millennia beyond that of the Confederation, yet they seek out close combat with sword and claw, fighting and dying to honor their god-like Empress. For the Confederation, there is no negotiation, there is no surrender. There is only the fierce struggle to survive.On an embattled world, young Reza Gard finds himself face to face with Tesh-Dar, the greatest of the Empire's warriors. Born to a race whose recorded history spans half a million years, Tesh-Dar - a warrior priestess - is endowed with powers that are supernatural to human eyes. In Reza's eyes, the eyes of a boy whose parents she has just slain, she is a monster. Holding him off the ground, face to face, she is slowly strangling him when he lashes out with his dead father's knife, cutting her face across the left eye. Surprised and impressed with this young human animal, she bestows upon him a matching wound, a trophy of sorts, and inexplicably lets him live.Orphaned and alone, Reza is sent to the planet Hallmark. Supposedly a safe haven for war orphans, in reality it is little more than a slave labor planet. Toiling in grain fields under a burning sun, Reza leads a ragtag band of orphans doing the best they can to survive.But again, Tesh-Dar intervenes in his life. Leading an attack against Hallmark, she has been sent by her Empress on a special mission: to gather human children and return them to the Empire as part of an experiment to see if they have souls. Reza, along with thousands of others, is captured, with Hallmark left behind in flaming ruin.He awakens to the silver-flecked cat's eyes of Esah-Zhurah, a young warrior tasked with teaching him the language and customs of her people. At first beaten and caged, Reza gradually earns her grudging respect. Over the years that follow he not only survives, but thrives as he learns the warrior ways of the Empire, becoming both more and less than human. As the relationship between the two young warriors deepens, Tesh-Dar and the Empress wonder if Reza may be the One foretold in an ancient prophecy, who will redeem the Kreelan race from an ancient blood curse.As Reza's final challenge looms, Esah-Zhurah performs an ancient blood ritual that binds them together in body and spirit. For the first time the Bloodsong, the tie that binds every Kreelan soul to the Empress, echoes in his veins, at last making him one with the Children of the Empress.But his acceptance of the Kreelan Way leaves him with a dreadful choice: he must either make war against the humans, or - if he refuses - leave the Empire and Esah-Zhurah behind forever. The path he takes leads him toward a destiny set in motion millennia before, with the fate of both races hanging in the balance...
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