Lord of Darkness

By Robert Silverberg

Book Overview

From Hugo and Nebula Award-winning author Robert Silverberg, Lord of Darkness is a classic swashbuckling adventure.Captured by pirates and brought to the west coast of Africa, young British seaman... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0877954720
• ISBN13: 9780877954729
• Release Date: January 1983
• Publisher: Arbor House Pub Co
• Length: 153 Pages
• Weight: 2.10 lbs.

Customer Reviews

An English Seaman in Darkest Africa in the 16th Century

This is a well-written historical novel from an author who's best known fro his science fiction/fantasy writing. Interestingly, the auther (Silverberg) has an interest in history and archeology and has written another couple of historical novels, including one titled "Gilgamesh the King" set in Sumer and based on one of the first written epics. Back to this book, the plot is straightforward - young Bristish seaman Andrew Battell is part of the crew of an English ship seeking treasure along the coast of Brazil. Battell is abandoned onshore after Indians attack the crew and is then captured by the Portugese, shipped in chains to the portugese colony of Angola, he becomes a pilot for the Portugese before falling foul of the authorties and being jailed and sentenced to death. He escapes into the African interior and joins a bllod-thirsty and savage African warrior tribe that rules the interior of Angola, where he becomes the blood-brother of the warrior king called the "Lord of Darkness." Eventually he makes his way back to England in his old age. As a historical fact, Andrew Battell and many of the other characters in this novel actually existed. Battell went to sea in 1589, was captured in Brazil, shipped to Angola and spent 20 years there before returning to England in 1610, where her dictated his memoirs to the geographer Samuel Purchas. An abridged and garbled version was published in the book "Purchas His Pilgrims" in 1625, of which a modern edition appeared in 1901: "The Strange Adventure of Andrew Battell" edited by E G Ravenstein (London, the Hakluyt Society). These served as the basis for Silverberg's historical novel, but while the main facts of the story are historical, much of the detail in the book is fiction. It's quite a well-written historical novel, as another reviewer mentioned, much in the style of James Clavell's Shogun and set around the same time. Also gives a bit of insight into the early Portugese colonies - as were most of the european outposts in Africa until the 18th Century, there "colonies" were merely small forts on the coast used to collect slaves for shipment to the Americas.

lord od literature

Out of the 30 or 40 books of silverberg's that I've read, this one 'The lord Of Darkness' would have to be one of his most accomplished. Notable for his Sci-Fi and Fantasy, it came as a nice surprise to find this book of his as a Fictional/Factual historical novel. The writing is exceptionally articulate, graphic and highly entertaining. I wont go into the guts of the story, only that it's about an Englishman named Andrew Battel who was a pirate for the British, who ended up as a prisoner of the Portugals, and who spent the best part of 20years in Western Africa living among the Jaqqa's. (It's surmised anyway)Lot's of sex and cannibalisism to satisfy any morbid reader of these sort's of books. This book has much more to offer than blood and guts though, and it's up to the individual reader as to what they get out of it.Try it, you'll be surprised, even if you're a hardened Silverberg fan

Exciting, serious -- a good historical read!

Written in a fashion which recalls Clavell's Shogun, this is a tale of an English sailor's adventure in deepest Africa during the early years of European colonization. Lost on the shores of Portuguese Africa, our hero finds himself first impressed into the service of the European masters of this land -- later establishing himself in the local colonial community. But the real highlight of this book occurs when he finds himself trapped in the back country where he becomes a servant to a savage cannibal king whom the Europeans and other native peoples live in fear of. Sliding into the very savagery of the people who adopt him, he becomes one of them and lives, for a time, the life of barbarism & adventure their rough existence decrees -- leading their armies into grim and bloody battles and partaking in their bloody and gruesome feasts. In the end this man finds his European self again and manages to make his escape from his adopted kinsmen, returning to England with a mulatto wife to live in retirement and write his memoirs. It's not clear if this story was based on or elaborated from real events but it reads like it could have been. I read it years ago and so am a little cold on some of the details but thought, then as well as now, that it was a worthy contribution to the kind of literature which Shogun exemplified -- though it's not quite as compelling. --- SWM author of The King of Vinland's Saga