Honoured Enemy: Book 1 (Legends of the Riftwar) - Softcover

Feist, Raymond E.; Forstchen, William

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0006483887 ISBN 13: 9780006483885

Publisher: HarperVoyager, 2002

Synopsis

The first of a major new Feist acquisition, returning to his best-loved series. Written with Bill Forstchen, acclaimed writer of great military fantasy novels in the US.

FREEDOM AT ANY PRICE?

Hartraft’s Marauders, a crack band of Kingdom raiders, are a special unit designed to infiltrate and fight behind enemy lines. They are currently heading for a frontier garrison, after a disastrous encounter with the Tsurani.

Meanwhile, a Tsurani patrol is sent to support an assault on the same garrison. Both sides arrive at the same time and discover the garrison has been overrun by a migrating horde of moredhel (dark elves) and they are forced by circumstances to band together and fight as one unit to survive.

The only problem is, who do they hate the most – their mutual enemy, or each other? As they make their way across the unknown Northlands to freedom, they have to struggle not only with the elements and their enemies, but also their conscience. For what is more important – one’s life or one’s honour?

About this title

Review:

Honoured Enemy is the first of a series of novels--Legends of the Riftwar--which act as sidebars to the main action of Feist's epic of the clash of two worlds. Here, in the middle of the desperate war between the Kingdom and its Tsurani invaders, patrols from each side find themselves forced into a perpetually collapsing alliance against an enemy that wants to kill both. The Kingdom commander, Dennis, has a fairly standard set of scores to settle, notably the seizure of his ancestral home on his wedding night and the death of his entire family, including his new wife. The Tsurani leader, Asayaga, has a complex set of political feuds and obligations to balance against his need to survive. Add to the mix a couple of attractive sisters and a long-standing fratricidal blood feud between their light-elve scout and the dark-elf commander of the pursuing army, and the stage is set for a superior Sword and Sorcery western--and yet at times it becomes something more. There is a real sense here of the depths of winter and of the difficult practicalities of replacing a wrecked bridge in the middle of a battle, of scouting and quarter-mastering and all those unglamorous tasks that get soldiering done. --Roz Kaveney

Review:

Feist remains one of the most reliable practitioners of epic fantasy and it's well known that his legion of admirers have besieged him with requests for further entries in his best-loved saga, the Riftwar sequence. Clearly, the pressure was too much to resist, as Honoured Enemy inaugurates a new Legends of the Riftwar sequence, co-written with Forstchen (a less illustrious name). Hartraft's Marauders, an lite group of kingdom raiders, are happiest practising their speciality: infiltrating and wreaking havoc behind enemy lines. As the new book starts, they are en route for a frontier garrison. But so is a Tsurani patrol, with a mission to attack the same garrison. When the two groups discover that their objective has been overrun by a vicious horde of dark elves, they become reluctant allies in order to survive. As in earlier books, Feist's subject is the tension of shifting loyalties, with unwilling allies forced to choose between the lesser of two evils: the enemy fighting by their side. His prose is always blunt rather than poetic, but Feist and his co-writer know precisely what the genre requires in terms of colourful and ambitious world-building.

About this edition

• Publisher: HarperVoyager
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0006483887
• ISBN 13: 9780006483885
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 352