Spero by A.R. Horvath

Spero by A.R. Horvath

by A.R. Horvath
(Holman, WI, USA)

The second book in the Birth Pangs series, Spero, will be released in hard cover on October 20th, 2008.

About:
The setting is America in the not too distant future. Disease and War has brought the country to its knees but in doing so has created new opportunities. Beginning with the first glimpse of a nuclear flash, the individuals in Spero join the hordes of refugees as they try to regroup and rebuild. Tasha, a beloved character from book one of the Birth Pangs series, guides her wounded charge through the carnage to a place of safety and healing. But war is never far off, and efforts to fight off despair using human effort abound. These have been tried and found wanting. In Spero, something else is offered.

+++++++++

"Spero is an imaginative fantasy that subtly instructs, entertains, and intellectually provokes the reader. It is fascinating reading. I'm definitely hooked on this series." Jean Heimann at Catholic Fire.

# Pages: 364
# Language: English
# List Price: $15.95
# Birth Pangs Price: $12.95
# ISBN-13: 978-0-9791276-4-9

Spero is available at www.birthpangs.com. Also available at amazon.com

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Spero by A.R. Horvath

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Spero
by: Danny F

‘Spero’ (Hope) is one of those Latin words that you sort of know, even if you were lucky enough to attend a school which didn’t obstinately prioritise fluency in dead languages. It is incorporated in quite a few modern English words, most obviously ‘desperate’, or ‘de - sperate’, meaning literally ‘without hope’. Fortunately, although the times that AR Horvath is writing about may indeed be desperate, the quality of the writing itself is far from it.

Spero elaborates on the events described in ‘Fidelis’, but starts and ends in different places. This may sound like an odd way to tell a story (book two of a series traditionally picks up where book one finished, after all), but it proves to be a refreshing and clever way to - almost literally - weave a narrative, with a different thread of the future history that Horvath is constructing being plucked out of the tapestry of the whole and examined.
We follow the fortunes of two characters who we met in Fidelis, Tasha and King, from their first meeting just after a massive nuclear strike on the USA. Told initially from Tasha’s point of view, but thereafter mostly from King’s perspective we get a different look at the unfolding events in this post-apocalyptic landscape. At first the two friends are making their own way through the troubled country, giving us an insight into events not witnessed by the primary characters of Fidelis, but later we come to the first meeting of Tasha and King with Fides and Fermion, now seen and described through different eyes.

Here is where Horvath’s device of overlapping different characters’ narratives in successive books risks becoming repetitive as we are taken through events we have already read about, but the change in point of view and the individual concerns of the new characters (in the teenage King’s case, touchingly recognisable worries about girls are jarringly set against a back-drop of dystopian civil war) make the story fresh and interesting, even if we occasionally know what is coming next.

Some questions from Book One are answered (who is Fermion?), while others are left unresolved (who are the Shadowmen?). Puzzles still remain at the end of the book about the characters we have been following throughout - for instance, is Tasha, who slays multiple highwaymen with rather more skill than your average elderly lady, really all she seems? Tune in for Book Three to find out (I sincerely hope!).

Horvath’s villains are a nice mix of well-rounded characters who can be quite difficult to spot, and out-and-out rotters with nothing to recommend them whatsoever. This balance between the black-and-white good vs evil ideology of a traditional heroic adventure story (or any of George W Bush’s speeches) and a more thoughtful approach satisfies both emotionally and intellectually.

Danny F, England.

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‘Spero’ (Hope) is one of those Latin words that you sort of know, even if you were lucky enough to attend a school which didn’t obstinately prioritise fluency in dead languages. It is incorporated in quite a few modern English words, most obviously ‘desperate’, or ‘de - sperate’, meaning literally ‘without hope’. Fortunately, although the times that AR Horvath is writing about may indeed be desperate, the quality of the writing itself is far from it. Spero elaborates on the events described in ‘Fidelis’, but starts and ends in different places. This may sound like an odd way to tell a story (book two of a series traditionally picks up where book one finished, after all), but it proves to be a refreshing and clever way to - almost literally - weave a narrative, with a different thread of the future history that Horvath is constructing being plucked out of the tapestry of the whole and examined. We follow the fortunes of two characters who we met in Fidelis, Tasha and King, from their first meeting just after a massive nuclear strike on the USA. Told initially from Tasha’s point of view, but thereafter mostly from King’s perspective we get a different look at the unfolding events in this post-apocalyptic landscape. At first the two friends are making their own way through the troubled country, giving us an insight into events not witnessed by the primary characters of Fidelis, but later we come to the first meeting of Tasha and King with Fides and Fermion, now seen and described through different eyes. Here is where Horvath’s device of overlapping different characters’ narratives in successive books risks becoming repetitive as we are taken through events we have already read about, but the change in point of view and the individual concerns of the new characters (in the teenage King’s case, touchingly recognisable worries about girls are jarringly set against a back-drop of dystopian civil war) make the story fresh and interesting, even if we occasionally know what is coming next. Some questions from Book One are answered (who is Fermion?), while others are left unresolved (who are the Shadowmen?). Puzzles still remain at the end of the book about the characters we have been following throughout - for instance, is Tasha, who slays multiple highwaymen with rather more skill than your average elderly lady, really all she seems? Tune in for Book Three to find out (I sincerely hope!). Horvath’s villains are a nice mix of well-rounded characters who can be quite difficult to spot, and out-and-out rotters with nothing to recommend them whatsoever. This balance between the black-and-white good vs evil ideology of a traditional heroic adventure story (or any of George W Bush’s speeches) and a more thoughtful approach satisfies both emotionally and intellectually. Danny F, England.

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