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People Of The Fire (1991)

People of the Fire (1991)

Book Info

Rating
3.93 of 5 Votes: 3
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ISBN
0812521501 (ISBN13: 9780812521504)
Language
English
Publisher
tor books

About book People Of The Fire (1991)

People of the Fire (North America's Forgotten Past, #2)Gear, W. MichaelGear, Kathleen O'neal The world is dying. In drought and over hunting the animals are disappearing. The people are starving. The wolf bundle the legacy of first Man has weakened, all it power and prestige has been drawn out. In a gamble First Man and the wolf bundle being a quest to renew the wolf bundle and find a path to save the world. Clear water is a dreamer, who is given a vision she does not like. But she follows the path that power asked her. Unfortunately life was not easy for her. She left her people only to die tragically leaving her young infant son, and her old friend. The Berdache, Two Smokes finds a place with the Short Buffalo People. He lives through torture and pain, as they do not revere his place of power. Hungry Beaver is rising in power with his imagined dream, and his corrupted vision of the people. Blood bear, husband of Clear Water and father of her child, has promised power to get the Wolf Bundle back, but he does not believe in power. And he continues his miss use of power, and continues to weaken the Wolf Bundle. The draught continues and war is on the land. Will the gamble of power work out. Will a new Dreamer emerge in this land of fire, and dance a new way to the spiral of the world.Character List:People of the Fire (climate change)dreamer: Little Dancer (birth name) Fire Dancer given byhis power quest.Wolfdreamer/ the Sun man (given name)WhiteCalf: old dreamer teaches the dreamer, she does notunderstand all the dreams.TwoSmokes: berdache (woman trapped in a man’s body) Makes apromise on the wolfbundle to protect and raise Little Dreamer.HeavyBeaver: False dreamer deluded that he can make updreams and forces the people to his ideals.ElkCharm: The love-interest of Little Dancer, mother of hischildrenBloodBear: Father of Little dancer, husband of Clear water,holder of the wolf bundle,Tanager: An independent-minded Red Hand warrior-woman, thenew leader of the Red Hand as she brings the people back together and gives thepeople hope.Power object: wolf bundle (has to be revived)"contents, A large bear claw with abit of snow-white fur attached. a pieceof carved ivory bearing the effigy of amonster. a large stone dart point of aworkmanship.. the point long and lancelet, fluted at the base- amonster-hunter's point. A raven's head wound in sweet grass.... A seashell..... a string of wolf's teeth on a cracked and stiff thong .... and thebag sewn of a wolf pelt with the design copied from the original."

Incredibly disappointing compared to "People of the Wolf". Rather than gradually introducing the characters, the reader is inundated with them in the first 20-30 pages. This forced me to return to earlier pages just to get it straight who is who...and who is who relative to the Red Hand and the Short Buffalo. As another reviewer noted, the plot does eventually get interesting. Unfortunately, the plot had no direction or interest until about the 80% mark. Further, the plot turns out to not be all that different from the first book. If you like re-hashings of the "reluctant and rebellious chosen one eventually succumbing to a predestined spiritual path" theme, then you'll love this. If you just finished "People of the Wolf", take a break before reading this so as to not start it with high expectations.

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Where's the fire?Seriously, where is the fire?Oh wait, there it is. 20 pages from the end.The first 300 pages of this book do nothing. It's only in the last 150 pages that the story gets remotely interesting and begins to come together. Once I figured out where the writers were going, I enjoyed it, but were I not such a stickler for finishing books I would have abandoned it long ago.It starts off as a ripoff of the first book in the series - a boy with a special destiny and a complicated parentage (Little Dancer/Wolf Dreamer), a wise woman (White Calf/Broken Branch), and some antagonists intent on destroying him (Blood Bear/Heavy Beaver/whoever the other twin was in the first book). However, there is no clear female protagonist like Dancing Fox.Anyway, it's been thousands of years since Wolf Dreamer led the People through the ice tunnel. The People have hunted most of the wildlife to extinction and are getting hungry, and hungry people get cranky and raid each other's camps. Climate change isn't helping either as droughts set in. All that's left of Wolf Dreamer is a sort of magic purse called Wolf Bundle.No really, I'm serious.The book has some bloody stupid passages where the magic purse appears to be talking to Wolf Dreamer, who still seems to watch over his people and argue with the magic purse about the best way to lead the People to a more fertile land. And they hope the People will be better stewards of wildlife.Given that the writers are archaeologists, I expected this series to have more information about how these mesmerizing ancient peoples lived. Instead, we get a bunch of speculative garbage and mumbo-jumbo that makes these books more paranormal than historical. If there were less magic purse and more character development, we'd have a pretty good book.In fairness to the characters, they were at least a little more carefully constructed than in the previous book. It was easier to tell them apart and figure out who was who. The book does a decent job of showing Little Dancer's struggle to accept his role as Dreamer against his desire to stay with his family, something that "People of the Wolf" did not do very well.Speaking of characters, Two Smokes was awesome. My favorite moment in the book is when he figures out what to do with the tasty grass samples he carries around, and we see how Little Dancer will help lead the People in a more sustainable lifestyle.
—A B

The Gears are the best at what they do, which is writing about pre-history based on archeology, creating a plausible fictional story to help us to understand the facts and thus preserve our own Native American history. Kathleen and Michael have been my lamplight in becoming a Native American historical fiction writer. They alone are responsible for peeking my interest in our dim past and have provided a window to that time and place of which they write. If you desire to see the past of our unknown history of the Native tribes of North America, I advise you to make all of the Gear's books your first choice. You can do no better. Kitty Sutton
—Kitty Sutton

I enjoyed People of the Wolf more, but this was definitely a good sequel. I am not sure I enjoyed the end though. With Wolf Dreamer, we understood him giving up on his love - because he died, basically. For Fire Dancer, he could have went back home. The Epilogue made it worse,when you realize she lived the rest of her life alone, waiting on him. It was a rather sad ending, when you consider she was so important to the Power by teaching him Love. Did he forget the lesson already, just because he
—Ken

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