Heroes Die - Matthew Woodring Stover

Heroes Die

By Matthew Woodring Stover

  • Release Date: 1998-07-21
  • Genre: Epic Fantasy
Score: 4.5
4.5
From 65 Ratings

Description

A man shouldn’t die with no understanding of why he’s been murdered

Renowned throughout the land of Ankhana as the Blade of Tyshalle, Caine has killed his share of monarchs and commoners, villains and heroes. He is relentless, unstoppable, simply the best there is at what he does.

At home on Earth, Caine is Hari Michaelson, a superstar whose adventures in Ankhana command an audience of billions. Yet he is shackled by a rigid caste society, bound to ignore the grim fact that he kills men on a far-off world for the entertainment of his own planet—and bound to keep his rage in check.

But now Michaelson has crossed the line. His estranged wife, Pallas Rill, has mysteriously disappeared in the slums of Ankhana. To save her, he must confront the greatest challenge of his life: a lethal game of cat and mouse with the most treacherous rulers of two worlds . . .

Reviews

  • A Knockout Thriller

    5
    By Hero de deep derp
    I was sick of popcorn fantasy, and was ready to write off the entire genre, when I found Heroes Die. Caine is an incredible anti-hero of incredible emotional depth, and the events that follow him, and the ones that he precipitates, are astonishing in their scope and description. The writing is beautiful and raw, like Faulkner and Bruce Willis, like Oscar Wilde in a gunfight. I've loaned this book to dozens of people, men and women, feminists and rednecks, fast food workers and grad students -- not once has anyone disliked this book. Unless you're lame, you will love it.
  • Amazing

    5
    By Handsom Devil
    Very well written, if blindingly violent. Stover takes out the good and the bad and inserts a grey area pragmatism that is at times shocking in its simplicity. Not for the faint of heart the writer manages to make Caine both the most honest hero and the most brutal; both to the reader and to Caine himself.