Product Description

There is but one law: eat or be eaten. Stopmouth and his family know of no other life than the daily battle to survive. To live they must hunt rival species, or negotiate flesh-trade with those who crave meat of the freshest human kind. It is a savage, desperate existence. And for Stopmouth, considered slow-witted hunt-fodder by his tribe, the future looks especially bleak. But then, on the day he is callously betrayed by his brother, a strange and beautiful woman falls from the sky. It is a moment that will change his destiny, and that of all humanity, forever. With echoes of "Tarzan", "Conan" and the "Truman Show", Peadar O Guilin's debut is an action and ideas packed blockbuster that will challenge your perceptions of humanity and leave you hungry for more.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #403977 in Books
• Published on: 2007-09-06
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 448 pages

From the Inside Flap
There is but one law: eat or be eaten

Stopmouth and his family know of no other life than the daily battle to survive. To live they must hunt rival species, or negotiate flesh-trade with those who crave meat of the freshest human kind.

It is a savage, desperate existence. And for Stopmouth, considered slow-witted hunt-fodder by his tribe, the future looks especially bleak. But then, on the day he is callously betrayed by his brother, a strange and beautiful woman falls from the sky.

It is a moment that will change his destiny, and that of all humanity, forever.

With echoes of Tarzan, Conan and the Truman Show, Peadar Ó Guilín's debut is an action and ideas packed blockbuster that will challenge your perceptions of humanity and leave you hungry for more.

About the Author
Peadar O Guilin has been writing curious stories for as long as he can remember. One of his school reports claimed that he had "a talent for communication, which he abuse[d]." Since then, he has written plays, published short stories and performed as a standup commedian. He has taken part in a project to translate the Linux operating system into Irish and is fluent in French and Italian. Peadar lives in Dublin where he works for a giant computer company. You can learn more about Peadar's published work on his web-site: www.frozenstories.com. Come and visit!

Customer Reviews

Darwinian Sci-Fi
A tribe of humans lives in a vast, crumbling city in the midst of a forested land. No-one knows who built the city or why. The Tribe survives by hunting hostile species for food, or trading flesh with more neutrally-aligned races. When a hunter becomes too wounded or too elderly to endure, they are expected to Volunteer for the flesh-trade. It is a harsh world of kill or be killed, eat or be eaten, where the strong survive and the weak perish.

Stopmouth is a hunter low in confidence due to his constant stutter, overshadowed by his more heroic, intelligent brother. But the Tribe needs them both to survive, when their rival species form an unprecedented alliance and a strange force falls from the skies which will drastically change Stopmouth's life forever...

The Inferior, Book One of The Bone World Trilogy, is a refreshingly different type of speculative fiction, channelling many of tropes of fantasy but gradually subverting them with SF ideas as the storyline continues to develop. The world of the Tribe is an intriguing one, a savage landscape where different races battle for survival and for flesh and the good of the many comes before the good of the individual. It is also a world where nothing is as it first appears, and later chapters introduce new races, new locations, new ideas and characters which add to the tapestry of the storyline.

The Inferior is being marketed as a Young Adult series, but it's a fairly harsh book, not skimping on the details of cannibalism or the visceral nature of the hunt and combat. I imagine the author had a great time inventing different monsters and species, with the vile Longtongues and Diggers being particularly unpleasent. The characters are likewise an interesting bunch, from our main protagonist Stopmouth through his two-faced brother Wallbreaker, the courageous Rockface and the enigmatic Indrani. However, outside of this main group it could be argued that some of the other characters are only lightly sketched, and the rather late introduction of a villain and foil for Stopmouth doesn't quite work as well as it should. The other key criticisms are that nowhere on the spine, the cover or indeed inside the book is it revealed that this is a trilogy, so some may find the abrupt ending a bit startling. Finally, a major plot revelation is given away by the book's cover blurb, so be very careful about reading it. Note that the last two issues are faults of the publisher, not the author.

The Inferior is an enjoyable debut novel from a clearly talented author. An intriguingly harsh Darwinian story of life struggling to survive in the face of the environment, this book is different enough from a lot of recent SF&F to make a vivid impression on the reader and leave them wanting more.

Cracking characters
The first book in the bone world trilogy and as a new author is a refreshing new take in Young Adult Speculative Fiction. Seen as young adult fiction this tale with its content is something I would advise for a more mature audience as its content is pretty strong with vivid descriptions of cannibalism being a prime example. Well written and a great offering from the author with fully rounded 3D characters topped off with a world that the reader is eager to discover and I think will make this author someone to watch in the YA area.

The Inferior -- A Superior Effort from an Exciting Debut Author
Well first, I'd like to thank Peadar for personally sending the review copy of his book (despite his catapulting ideas!) to me. I was very intrigued when I heard about it. It's been marketed as a YA in some places, as a straight SF in others...

For Stopmouth and the rest of his Tribe, to kill is to survive. On a world where all other sentient life is out to eat you, community and family spirit is a must. No communications between any of the other races of beasts is possible--the only man who succeeded in learning any of their speech was half mad already...

That is, until a beautiful woman fell out of the sky, a woman with knowledge of civilization and technology far superior to, as some of her people call the humans on the ground, the savages.

Chased out of his Tribe, they begin the long arduous journey to the Roof, the place where the woman, Indrani, is safe and can reveal all to Stopmouth. But it is, of course, a journey fraught with peril, for, above all things, some races of beasts have found a way to cooperate and fight together. And the civilised humans of the Roof aren't so keen on having her back...

This was a really interesting, and fun YA/SF novel. The characterisation was rich and well done, and the ending of The Inferior leaves me in no doubt that the next two volumes in this trilogy will be just as good.

With Stopmouth, it's nice to see a hero with, well, in the eyes of the people of his world, at least, a disability. His relationship with Indrani and his nervousness in approaching her, after years of scorn for his impediment, was quite touching and realistic.

The promise of the world of the Roof, civilised and safe, overlapping with the world of the savages is something that excites me greatly. It soon becomes clear, as with many of the times humans have tried to put themselves above everything else, that perhaps the "savages" aren't the savages at all...

A truly original story with characters that could be read all day. There are flaws of course--this book is not going to blow your mind full of ideas (and headaches), and I would not expect any one to buy it thinking it to be a hard gritty SF novel, but it is nevertheless, a riveting and engaging YA debut. A very worthy 8 out of 10. The Inferior is superior to any Young Adult book I've ever read.


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