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Shaman: Kim Stanley Robinson
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Shaman by Kim Stanley Robinson. The story of a boy's day-to-day struggle to survive in the wilderness captures the brutal conditions of the Ice Age.

“The shaman is a sorcerer, a doctor, a mystic, an engineer and an artist, too: guided by Thorn, Loon is allowed access to a series of underground caverns, where successive generations have painted dramatic scenes on the walls. Robinson has based these specifically on the Chauvet Pont d'Arc cave in the Ardèche, which was discovered two decades ago, and has recently been the subject of Werner Herzog's documentary Cave of Forgotten Dreams; his descriptions are vivid and beautiful.

“...this is mainly Loon's story. Through him, we meet the rest of the Wolf pack, a tight tribe of around 40 humans: Schist, the headman, and his wife, Thunder; the other teenage boys, Hawk and Moss; and the old woman, Heather, who has an encyclopaedic knowledge of herbs...

“Robinson injects some drama with a conflict against another tribe of ice-dwelling northerners, but this is mostly a simple story of day-to-day survival in the Ice Age. The most moving section of the book is a melancholy friendship between Loon and one of "the old ones", the Neanderthals who had inhabited Europe undisturbed until humans arrived from Africa.”

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Littlestone
Posted by Littlestone
13th October 2013ce
14:03

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Books of possible interest (Littlestone)

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