Nonborn King Paperback – May 12, 1987

Great book but as others have said, this classic (and the others in the serious) are so badly translated into e-books I can't believe Amazon doesn't take them off the market until the publisher goes back and actually edits them.Thankfully I am the type of reader that can read around error but a lot of these are so horrible I couldn't ignore them either -which made reading one of my all time favorite books (well the entire first four of the series) rather difficult and I have stopped by the Kindle versions of the rest.I will not be purchasing anymore until this problem is solved but again Julian May's story telling and actual writing are totally amazing; which is what I am giving five stars for.If I could give 0 stars for the formatting I would...some people actually demanded their money back and I don't blame them. Amazon, please make the publisher fix this!

This is my favorite sci-fi/fantasy series of all time.Julian May has a unique ability to build hyperbole that continues to point towards a climax then surprises the reader's expectations by discovering yet another peak beyond that one. She appears to have used a thesaurus heavily to throw in words which the reader will not be familiar with. That delights some people and turns other away. At some times this seems forced but mostly it flows.She's taken several of the basal desires and fantasies that we have and put a face on them complete with many distinctive characters and an astonishing number of in depth scientific references which make you wonder just who was she that she was able to pull so many fields in to one epic series.Truly an internally consistent self contained universe you'd want to visit....were it not so dangerous!Five stars all around.

Just finished reading this book on Kindle and was greatly disappointed at the horrible transcription job.I'm not sure if a single page didn't contain typos.Come on Amazon - how can you charge $9+ for a book that someone transcribed so sloppily?Really makes we wonder if this electronic book thing will ever be as good as it could be.

While there are some problems with the translation into Kindle format (words such as "and" often appear as "ad" as one example),these reviews, in my mind, at least, are about the quality of the novel; and that is what my comments are directed towards. The Non-Born King is - as were the first two in the series: The Many Colored Land and the Golden Torc - incredibly literate and well written and exciting throughout, and each of the four are - perhaps the best written - quality wise - of any scifi books I've read. The story, action and integration of all the various parts from the first two in the series flow perfectly onward in the Non-Born King. I am rereading the entire 4 book series after having read them 20 years ago and finding they stand up very well over time. I highly recommend these 4 as among the best of all Scifi, and the Non-born King fits perfectly in the mix.

The story of this book is fantastic. I read the paperback many years ago and loved it. I really enjoyed re-reading it. This ebook version kind of sucks though. They apparently used an OCR capture to digitize it and somethings are consistently wrong. the letters "ll" becomes "d", "al" becomes "d", etc. A lot of variations on this. Very distracting and drops you out of the zone. Some sentences I had to re-read multiple times just to make sense of them. It is a real shame because the story is fantastic. I'm giving it a 5 for the story but I would pass on the ebook.

Speaking first to the merits of the book itself, the Nonborn King is a great story, and an integral part of the series that started with the Many-Colored Land (or, potentially, with Jack the Bodiless, or Intervention, depending on how one defines a "start" in a series that wraps around time in a giant loop). The author's background as a technical science writer shows through in the detail used to describe the ancient setting and the advanced technology of the Exiles, much of which doesn't exist but certainly sounds as if it should. The story is a satisfying set-piece, with striking imagery and classic mythological archetypes throughout, working towards a larger conclusion in The Adversary. I first read this series something like 30 years ago, and I'm thrilled to see that it's still an entertaining and rewarding experience even after all this time.Now, that said, the formatting and editing of the Kindle edition is somewhere between "poor" and "shameful." It has the earmarks of OCR without any meaningful attempt at proofing, and the issues become more pronounced as you work through the book (as if some token effort was dedicated to trying to clean up the early portions of the book, perhaps in response to the complaints noted in other comments). I don't envy the proofreader who is responsible for these novels. The originals have intricate formatting conventions for various forms of speech and communication, and the author drops technical, historical, and foreign terms throughout the novel. Part of the appeal, as a reader, is that there is a certain expectation by the author that you can keep up with this usage, or even enjoy trying to puzzle out the meaning of various words from context. In some ways, it is the perfect Kindle book because of the on-demand dictionary for each new or interesting word. But it must be a nightmare to proofread, and this far along in its life-cycle of the book, you have to wonder if there are sales to support the time and effort it must take.However, it is being sold as a Kindle book, and at a high price-point for a book 30 years post-publication. If you're going to sell it, at a premium, pay someone to read it and to fix it. The typos are distracting, at best, and render passages incoherent, at worst. Since, as a repeat reader, I pretty much know where things are going, I can muddle through -- but I shouldn't have to. And the poor reviews are probably costing sales on Kindle. For me, the convenience of having it available anywhere, and the convenience of being able to increase the size of the font to suit my weakening eyes, make these issues tolerable. But the source material deserves so much better.

Brilliant, read this 30 years ago and again this year...just as good as first time, very good story, well told!!

I’d forgotten how good this series is, The Nonborn King is dark and covers the aftermath of the flood. A great series.

The media could not be loaded. Solo la portada está bien - el resto es un libro que se llama The North Wind por Alexandria Warwick. Desafortunadamente fue un regalo para un amigo que vive en Alemania y me costará casi lo mismo para devolverlo que el precio que pagué para el libro. Un desastre de producto

Some interesting developments after the flooding in the last book, and our Aiken Drum, the joker, starts to show some kingly skills in a world that is fraught with tension. We start to see how the Rebellion exiles are going to be woven into the storyline. The Tanu become more likeable in this book, although there seems to be no shortage of psychopaths in the story.

Was Julian May schreibt, zeugt von tiefer Menschenkenntnis. Mitreißend! Die verschiedenen Kräfte lassen sich leicht vielen Menschen zuordnen, die wir alle kennen. Eine Mischung aus Jungs Archetypen und Campbells Heldenreise.

It was great to revisit this classic science fantasy novel. Just as good as when I first discovered it ( and since mislaid the physical copy- I suspect my son nicked it! )