Hands of Glory

By Jaan Kangilaski

Book Overview

No Synopsis Available.

• Format: Mass Market Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0345284895
• ISBN13: 9780345284891
• Release Date: January 1981
• Publisher: Del Rey Books
• Length: 295 Pages
• Weight: 0.35 lbs.

Customer Reviews

An alchemists obsession

The flavor of the book immediately takes you back to a timeless realm, in this case, somewhere along the Baltic coast, somewhere between Konigsberg and Latvia (presumably), where newer ideas from the south (Renaissance) have infiltrated but where the medieval still has firm hold over the minds of believers. Once in the past, a tribe called merely, "The men", who were nomads and hunters, collided with a semi-agricultural group of humans who herded animals and were covered with dung with their filth, likely slightly more advanced and organized. These herders one night rose up, killed all of "The men" and raped the women of "the men", thus interminging their blood forever. However, they made a fatal mistake: they forgot to kill the shaman, and was this the wrong shaman to pass up, because he had a plan and the means to accomplish them across millenia. Within a sword of a special metal he desposited his fanatical mind and spirit, with his unique, twisted and clever obsessions, waiting for the day for someone to come along to be his instrument. The main character, an alchemist, discovers the sword. It talks to him, and starts to seduce him, possessing the spirit of a shaman that promptly judges you according to three criteria: One of the "men", one of the "enemy" with the "dung-covered knees", or "others", who are of no concern. The alchemist is judged to be one of the "men", making him a "friend". And the sword has its plan. The shaman in the sword is relentless, seeking to ritually slash to slivers all those who are descended from the enemy. Not only does it appear in your dreams, but it can take over anyone it takes in order to destroy any descendant of the enemy it finds. The alchemist becomes obsessed that this sword that it suspects that it is possessed by a demon, and seeks to reach into the occult to summon demons that might be able to provide answers, hence the green, naked lady with the hooves on the illustration. While keeping "old Adam" down in the face of this shimmering temptress, he seeks answers, but does not find them with her. So, what is it about this book that makes it worth a read. To put it mildly, while the book has roots in fantasy, the occult, history, place and time, it grabs you with its own little world, building upon the vaguely possible and then moving forward with a world that literally takes over your mind. Moving forward with that world is the instrument of the sword that takes over the reason of men just as strongly as the instrument of sex and temptation represented by the demons the alchemist consults for knowledge. In a place where men attempt to live, trade, fight and work, this sword is altogether something different that will never leave things the same, because in the deepest sense, it does not care about the consequences of its desire for revenge... Yet, since the world of the alchemist is so violent, it is scarcely noticed except in passing. Strangely compelling as a book to a young