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The Mantooth
92,533 words (263 pages)
This work is copyrighted.
Copyright 2000 Christopher Leadem.
Ten thousand years after nuclear holocaust, Earth has reverted to the savage garden, and Man to his Neanderthal roots. Yet a man-child is born, fully human, and a young woman wakes to find the world she knew is gone.
Excerpt
two felt another dimension being added
to the room. The colors around them grew suddenly brighter, edged with
gold, and in the back of their minds they felt the vicarious sensations
of a great, bodiless spirit swooping downward from the heavens, like a
giant eagle diving towards the Earth. The room became dark, all save
the misty blueness of the mirror. The fire dimmed, as if on cue, and a
pinpoint of brilliant light appeared at the very center of the glass.
There it grew in size and intensity until the magnitude of its
brightness forced Kalus to shield his eyes and look away. Sylviana stood
motionless, face turned and arm raised, disbelieving. For until now the
Spirit had spoken to her only as a voice, a signal translated into words
by the machine. The image was dimmed to a tolerable brilliance. She
lowered her arm.
Then a different Voice was heard, deep and alive, like the whisper of
the wind and the roar of an ocean. It was an eternally resilient and
yet melancholy sound, time-wizened and thought
A reasonably well written story but I felt that the author was under pressure to wrap up the story. The last couple of chapters almost seemed to be written by someone else and didn't have the same flow as the rest of the book.
Overall, a good book, but I found myself skipping over some of tedious and overly-wordy parts. The premise is quite interesting, and the characterization is very good. the author was able to make you care about the 2 main characters.
This one is something of a throwback. It reminded me somewhat of "Planet of the Apes," somewhat of "One Million Years B.C." The genre is 'end of the world', but not in the traditional sense. Man (virtually) destroys himself, but not the earth. Instead the radiation from nuclear war takes Man back to a more primitive time, himself less evolved, even Neanderthal.
But one character is born fully human, thus the inevitable conflict. From the very first chapter he is made an outcast in a world where individuals rarely survive. Yet he meets his match in Sylviana, the daughter of a 20th Century scientist who put her into suspended animation as the bombs started falling.
Thus it also becomes an echo of Adam and Eve, and yet a further clash of cultures. The story grows and evolves, including both human and animal characters, some who have evolved into rational beings even as Man digressed.
The book is divided into three parts, and as such, has not one ending but three, which is interesting. And the book ends not with hints of a sequel, but by the observation that, "And so one chapter ended, even as another began."
Life goes on. I like it.
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