Heroes Die

hardcover, 563 pages

Published Sept. 5, 1998 by Del Rey, Ballantine Books.

ISBN:
978-1-56865-831-5
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4 stars (22 reviews)

HEROES DIEBut Caine's no hero. He's an assassin.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. He is free.At home on Earth, Caine is Hari Michaelson, a superstar whose adventures command an audience of billions. Yet he is shackled by a rigid caste society, bound to ignore the grim fact that men die on a far-off world for the entertainment of his own planet--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.Matthew Woodring Stover has created a spectacular, page-turning …

4 editions

Review of 'Heroes die.' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

SECOND READ 2023
Started re-reading the series.
It's much better on the re-read, I have to say. The uneven writing no longer bothers me, now that I know that the story is all good and, dare I say it for these books, entertaining :-)

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FIRST READ 2015:
Quick impressions:
Refreshing premise, very interesting.
The writing is rough and unpolished. I don't mean "gritty". I mean untried, uncertain and a little bit uneven. Like the writing of a student. Maybe it is because of the use of soliloquy as an important element.
But the story makes more than up for that. Fast-paced, twisty. It is as twisty as I would have wanted the books in the Locke Lamorra series had wanted to be. I was never surprised by the outcome, everything is easy to figure out, but the fact is that I still enjoyed following the leads.

You can clearly …

Review of 'Heroes die.' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

This is one of my favorite books, but it's actually a book I would not recommend to very many people. It's very, very, violent, and it can be gruesome and graphic in its depiction of violence. Some of the violence is sexual in nature--particularly the main villain, Berne, talks about, fantasizes about, and perpetrates rape. There's a lot of offensive stuff, too, including strong language and slurs about gender and sexuality. Some of the above (although thankfully not the sexual violence) is engaged in by our protagonist. Basically, if you think that any of the above will upset you, stay far away from this book and others by this author.

All of that makes it sound like a big brainless gore-fest, but it's not. This novel deals heavily with the consequences of violence, told largely from the perspective of a violent and murderous protagonist, Caine. It's actually a well-thought-out adventure …

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