The book starts out with Mike Havel, a bush pilot with a background in special forces. Havel has been a survivor practically since the day he was born. His military experiences as well as his heritage as an American Indian come into play time and time again. Yet for all his survival skills, Havel is constantly in over his head as he tries to lead a ragtag group to safety. That effort snowballs and it isn’t long before Mike finds himself responsible for a group of mercenary horseman.
Mike Havel is one of those iconic heroes that I love to read about. No matter how hard the road is, he tries to do the right thing all the time. And best of all, sometimes doing the best thing brings him the most problems. He handles himself well in a fight, but he still struggles to figure out how to handle other people and get things done. Fortunately, he’s got people he picked up along the way who have skills that add to his leadership. I really enjoyed the fact that Mike couldn’t do everything by himself as well. The realization that he didn’t always have the answer and needed other people made me like him even more.
With Havel, Stirling concentrates on the warrior’s role in society. Havel has a specialized skill set, and it’s one that people are willing to pay for no matter what the economy does or what kind of world he’s in. He’s willing to risk his neck to further his goal of taking care of his people, and he’s even willing to train others to risk their necks as well because he knows they have no choice and no other skill sets. He can’t teach them everything, but he can teach them to survive and to fight.
The other major character in this novel is a Celtic witch named Juniper. She practices Wiccan rituals and maybe manifests some magical power in this novel, but Stirling carefully hides that card. Technology has ended in the world and he doesn’t come out and say that magic has returned. Personally I don’t know if I really want magic to return. I like this rough-hewn world that the author has created as it is, without throwing in any magic spells.
With Juniper, Stirling concentrates on the necessity of a family and a society. Where Havel becomes a wanderer, Juniper and her people work hard to settle in, to start a farm and raise a crop that they can live off. However, settling down also makes them a target. When other people see that they are successful at taking care of themselves, they come to Juniper and her little group in need. Alternately, Stirling shows the hard side of life, in that not everyone can be taken care of when resources are meager. Then he shows how a family or society continues to grow sometimes even when it’s not convenient.
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