Zulu Heart by Steven Barnes

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Zulu Heart by Steven Barnes
pub:Aspect Science Fiction/Times Warner. 463 page enlarged paperback. Price: $24.95 (US), $36.95 (CAN). ISBN: 0-446-53122-7

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'Zulu Heart' is Steven Barnes's sequel to 'Lion's Blood'. It is also set in Bilalistan, his alternative nineteenth-century North America. This is a continent colonised by Africans, who have brought their varied cultures and Islam with them, to this new world.

Steven Barnes Zulu Heart Europe, devastated by plague, has also been colonised by African states who enslave its population to labour on the new territories' plantations. Once again, the main protagonists are Kai and Aidan, who started the previous book as boys but by the beginning of this one have grown into men.

Kai is now a man of power as well as one of wealth. He has his own vast plantation, but also political and judicial status in the territory as a whole. Aidan, the former Irish slave, is now a freeman and sets off to the frontier to establish his own township. Although he and Kai are close friends he still suffers from racial harassment from the dominant black settlers in the region.

This book is far more than just a reversal of the historical roles on a slave plantation in the Deep South of the United States in the mid-nineteenth century. Barnes creates a rich cultural mix using, for example, vivid descriptions of meals, weaponry, clothing and architecture, to create a quite distinct civilisation.

In this, he explores what makes people what they are and does this in the form of an exciting story. What used to be called 'a ripping good yarn'. Bilalistan is not a static creation but is changing. It is still controlled by one of the major African powers but an impending war there is creating tensions with factions from both sides and a growing independence grouping, threatening to plunge Bilalistan into a civil war.

This adds to the already increasing rift between the rapidly industrialising North and the agricultural South as well as a growing anti-slavery movement. Kai, one of the Southern noblemen, is desperate to discover what the Caliph, Bilalistan's viceroy, is being instructed to do by his master, the Pharaoh, in distant Alexandria.

For that, he needs to get someone inside the Caliph's palace and steal a cipher device. Aidan is persuaded to submit himself to slavery again to get into the Caliph's palace. He poses as a form of gladiator because he wishes to rescue his long lost sister and wants, by his courage, to win more than a bare, grudging freedom for himself and his people. The story unfolds with assassins, seductions, treachery and the start of the feared civil war.

A naval battle, individual combat and an assortment of exotic ladies all add to the drama and excitement. This is a good story, thoroughly recommended, and I am looking forward to what I am sure must be a further sequel. I will add that Steven Barnes is an African-American. Whilst this doubtless influences him to choose to set his story on the North American continent and has clearly given him an interest in African culture, I would not feel qualified to make a literary criticism and call this a 'black' book.

I also ought to admit at this stage that I am Irish, as are most of the downtrodden characters in 'Zulu Heart'. What I can say is that those of you who like the genre of alternative fiction will enjoy this book as will those who like a good story, well told.

It is not essential to have read the previous book, 'Lion's Blood' to enjoy this one.

Paul Hanley

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