تاریک‌دل (راج وایت‌هال)

The Empire that rules the north of Hafardine's single great continent is brutal and corrupt. Its armies have turned its neighbors into subjects, its economy rests on the backs of slaves, and its aristocrats plunder the provinces in the pretense of governing them. West of the Empire are islands whose every resident is a pirate or a slave. Across the isthmus to the south are barbaric tribes living in squalor and mutual warfare, united only in their hatred of cities and the folk who live in them. If the Empire falls, it will take with it the last glimmer of civilization on Hafardine in the thousand years since the collapse of interstellar communication - and the Empire will fall under the weight of its own greed and vices unless the two men on Hafardine who can read the signs manage to reshape the future. Publishers Weekly Veteran Drake (Mistress of the Catacombs) and relative newcomer Flint (1632) manage to instruct as well as entertain in this latest volume in their popular Belisarius series. Human space has fallen into anarchy and barbarism after the collapse of the Galactic Federation. On the planet Bellview, an artifact of the past a sentient battle computer called Center selects a young officer, Raj Whitehall, to be the father of the future in a revived Federation. After accomplishing their mission on Bellview, Raj and Center have their personalities downloaded into thousands of probes and sent into space. On the planet Hafardine, one of these probes merges with scholar Adrian Gellert, who holds a position roughly equivalent to a Greek in the authors' retelling of the Roman Civil War. Center and Raj's sociopolitical insights prove to be of critical importance to Gellert's father-in-law, the Justicar Verice Demansk, in his attempts to save Vanbert from itself. Most of the narrative excitement derives from the introduction of gunpowder and steam technologies to ancient warfare, while thorough knowledge of the underlying causes and conditions that shaped Rome's destiny lends authority. There's a sense of inevitability to the success of the progressive forces, and more than a little deus ex machina in the device of the omniscient cybernetic advisers. Because the opposition is uniformly incompetent and cupidinous, the story reads at times as if it were a didactic Soviet science-fiction novel, but most military SF fans won't mind. (Apr.) Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information. If the corrupt Empire ruling most of plantet Hafardine falls, so will the last remnants of civilization left behind when galactic civilization collapsed long ago. Only two men see the coming disaster, and have a plan to save the future With the corrupt and brutal Empire on the verge of collapse, exiled philosopher Adrian Gellert struggles to mold the barbarian tribes of the south into a powerful nation that can replace the Empire