THE STONE ARROW

by Richard Herley ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 22, 1985

No-frills, expeditious, and briskly grisly: a hero's tale set in Stone Age England, in which one man methodically wipes out a tribal village, using native materials of forest and stream. Tagart's forest tribe of nomads has been massacred by a village of farmers, the ""Burh,"" and he is determined on revenge. His first kill is a rather dim field worker, whose remains are posted here and there in a cautionary fashion. Next there's a bear attack (a complex process involving a captured cub); then the wife of the man who led the attack on Tagart's tribe is kidnapped, dangled head down (bound and gagged) from a tree, and left to die; there'll also be virtuoso work with ""snares and loops, nooses and treadles and triggers."" But Tagart's plot with poisoned mushrooms still lies ahead when he is captured as a slave by the men of the Flint Lord--and forced to work in the mines. So, after promising a doomed slave-boy that his sister Segle will be rescued from a brothel, Tagart escapes from the mines, returns to Finish off the Burh, saves Segle (as promised), and escapes again--amid a rousing medley of yelping hounds, mud, and miraculous waters. Wisely, Herley keeps the dialogue here neutral, efficient, and minimal. Instead he concentrates on an inventive series of missions impossible, featuring Tagart's step-by-step processes on the way to carnage spectaculars. With sketchy but inconspicuous backgrounds, from village dwellings to religious ceremonies: a sturdy, sanguinary Tarzan-tale for the strong of stomach--and the first novel in a projected trilogy, The Pagans.

Pub Date: April 22, 1985

ISBN: 0000824410

Page Count: -

Publisher: Morrow

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1985

Categories: FICTION