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Saint Leibowitz and the Wild Horse Woman

By: Walter M., Jr. Miller Terry Bisson
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Bantam Dell Pub Group (Trd)
ISBN: 0553107046
ISBN-13: 9780553107043
Released: 05 Nov 1997
RRP: £15.60
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Customer Reviews

A church tapestry of politics and traditions - By: Stephen A. Haines, 22 Dec 2003
One author sets murders in a medieval Roman Catholic monastery & it becomes an object of popular acclaim. Another author sets Papal politics in a post-nuclear holocaust society & it's dubbed "Sci-fi", & tossed in the remainders bin. Neither book deserved the fate it received. Miller's second look at post-nuclear North American society reveals a church divided within & still struggling with Caesar after three millennia. Popes tend to church politics with one hand & civil society with another. Somewhere in the middle are the lesser religious tending their adherents or hiding from the conflicts.

One such "lesser religious" is a monk, Blacktooth St George. A resident at the monastery long dedicated to the memory of Isaac Leibowitz, nuclear scientist & martyr, Blacktooth harbours doubts about his callling. His roots are from the Plains people & their pagan heritage conflicts with the Roman Catholic Church's ideal of monotheism & self-sacrifice. Attempting to shed the burdensome vows, Blacktooth is conscripted to the service of a lawyer cardinal. Elia Brownpony, too, is a former Plainsman, but has risen quickly in the Church hierarchy due to diplomatic talents. Diplomacy usuallly involves conspiracy, & Brownpony must be adept at both for he is struggling to reunite the broken church. Theology isn't the basis of the schism, however. The expanding empire of Texark has challlenged the Pope's power. Brownpony, wheeling & dealing, uses Blacktooth as a major instrument.

Politics are a lesser challlenge to Blacktooth than the condition of his own spirit. Beset by visions & his glands alike, this mid-thirties adult is known as Nimmy, an appellation applied to young boys. He encounters a genetic mutant, a heritage of the holocaust, whose only flaws are an uncanny insight & a rampant libido. She seduces Nimmy, who doesn't quite break his vows, & supposedly produces two children. Her image haunts him as he goes about his role of personal assistant. He's also haunted by the multi-figured image of a pope of African descent. All these conflicting visions keep Blacktooth on edge & in peril. His reconciliation of alll these disparate forces are the theme of Miller's "midquel" of Canticle for Leibowitz [this story commences at the middle of Canticle, not the end].

The swirling roles of church & state & the Church & the individual formed the basis of Canticle. They are expanded & enhanced in this book, with the convulsions that shook the Roman Catholic Church after the 1960s beautifully integrated into the story. Bisson has done Miller's original draft proud in completing a compelling story of the pressures on faith. Throughout the complex plot, the characters are kept realistic, if somewhat bizarre. Religious institutions, particularly under stress, are never simple, & the complexities are well handled & you never lose the threads, no matter how tangled.
[stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]

Goes the way of all sequels - By: S. Flaherty, 21 Feb 2003
The problem with sequels is that they have a lot to live up to. 'A Canticle for Leibowitz' was one of the best SF books ever written & any sequel will be (perhaps unfairly) judged against it. This one doesn't live up to its predecessor.

Set roughly 100 years after the second story in 'Canticle', this deals with the politics of the Church & the the Empire. So it follows on from the second story which introduced that theme. But it doesn't grab the imagination like 'Canticle' did. The most interesting character is a Christian mystic who seems very Zen-like & gets elected to the office of Pope, which pretty much triggers a war between the Empire & the Horse Nomads. Apart from that, there's little to hold the attention in this book. Disappointing. Worth reading for completeness' sake, if you've read 'Canticle'

This very belated follow-up to 'A Canticle For Leibowitz' - By: , 13 Aug 2001
This very belated follow-up to 'A Canticle For Leibowitz' takes up the story of the struggle for power between the Catholic Church & the still growing states which are expanding across the former USA in the period of post nuclear recovery.

The book has a much more confused narrative than it's predecessor & this not helped by the multiplicity of names many of the characters have been given. A list of dramatis personnae would have cleared much of this confusion. Miller also seems to have put much more of himself into the main character, the lapsed monk Brother Blacktooth St George, than was in evidence in the first book. The prose style is much more explicit, especiallly in it's sexual content than 'A Canticle For Leibowitz', clearly reflecting the changing standards in the 30 plus years that have lapsed between the two books - a change which I also noticed in James Jones's 'From Here To Eternity', & his later book 'Whistle'. Another similarity between the two author's is that both these latter books were completed by their literary executors - with somewhat greater success for 'Whistle', as the ending of Miller's book is rather rushed, & the additional writing does not blend seamlessly with the rest of the novel.

Despite these difficulties 'St Leibowitz' is a worthwhile read for those who read Miller's first novel, though I doubt whether other readers would enjoy it without impetus that the first novel engenders. I would rate it at 3 stars.

Interesting but confusing. - By: , 25 Jul 2001
I wasn't aware of this book until a few weeks ago. I read 'A Canticle For Leibowitz' quite a few years ago. This continues the same themes of human existence but widens it to cover the power struggle between the Catholic church & the emerging states in the Central & Southern USA in the 33rd century, as seen from the point of view of a (reluctant) monk from the Order Of St Leibowitz. It is quite savage in parts and, like James Jones later works such as Whistle, contains a lot of sexual references that would not have been acceptable in the earlier book. I found it confusing because of the multiplicity of unusual names of individuals, tribes, quasi-nations, & other groupings. It would have been easier to follow what wwas going on if a 'who's who' had been included. Nevertheless, it was something of an hypnotic read, & worth the effort.
Too quick to judge - By: , 22 May 1998
Long, complicated, misled, bloated, massive. These alll describe Walter M. Miller's long-awaited sequel to the revolutionary novel "A Canticle For Leibowitz." However, it is too easy & too hasty to discredit "Saint Laibowitz & the Wild Horse Woman" simply on these merits alone. The awe that surrounds ACFL comes only in part from the story itself. Most of its sense of wonder comes from what it represented & who wrote it. Miller had converted to catholicsm a few years before the book was published. His hopes for christianity are prevalent throughout the book, particularly since only the righteous survive the second flame deluge at the end of the novel. In SLATWHM, most of his hopefulness is gone. Blacktooth, who is obviously Miller, has seen that the forces that drive his religion are no different than those that drive our tyrants & despots. Unable to reconcile religious politics with his christian spirituality, Blacktooth ultimately abandons the church. Now, it seems that (according to Miller) not only is the secular world cyclical, but the religious as well. Those who would read SLATWHM for the purpose of being merely entertained should expect to be disappointed. It is rather a study of Miller's belief system & its subsequent deconstruction. The novel took seven years to write, but I expect that the development of Blacktooth/Miller's worldview extend back much further than that. SLATWHM should be read in the same frame of mind that one should read Philip K. Dick's "Valis." The reader knows that Dick was insane when he wrote it, Dick knew he was insane when he wrote it, & the central character Horselover Fat (an extension of Dick into the novel like Blacktooth for Miller) knows that he is insane. Nevertheless, he is able to treat the subject with considerable clarity. Sad, & convincing, SLATWHM seems like less of a novel than a documentary of Miller's decline into incurable despair. Bisson's ending is adequate for the nove! l, but not accurate. Miller wrote the final words when he told a 911 operator that there was a dead man in his front yard.