Victory Harben

Fires of Halos (Edgar Rice Burroughs Universe)

By: Christopher Paul Carey, Mike Wolfer

Narrated by: Jaimee Draper

The ERB Universe's Swords of Eternity super-arc concludes with Victory Harben: Fires of Halos by Christopher Paul Carey, featuring the world of Halos from Edgar Rice Burroughs' legendary unpublished novel fragment, The Ghostly Script!

When Gridley Wave contact between worlds is inexplicably broken, young physicist Victory Harben returns to her home at the Earth’s core to help solve the mystery. Soon Victory finds the riddles of her past are hopelessly entangled with the machinations of an ancient and inscrutable queen of the Mahars, the inner world’s dethroned reptilian overlords. Unwillingly hurled into the cosmic void by the queen, Victory is hunted down across space and time by a vengeful being whose flaming sword absorbs the souls of the slain, delivering them to the ravenous lords of Halos. As Victory races to track down the key to her destiny, a storm of malevolent forces gathers against her, unleashing the secret rulers of the afterlife in an unholy tempest that threatens to shatter reality itself.

Includes the bonus novelette “Beyond the Farthest Star: Rescue on Zandar” by Mike Wolfer

When a hunting party from the village of the Ki-vaas goes missing, the tribe’s age-old customs decree the fate of its lost members to have been dictated by the gods. But the young woman Tii-laa cannot abide such hopeless dogma. Striking out on her own, she must risk both her place in the tribe and her very life, facing the planet Zandar’s deadly wilds and savage creatures in a desperate attempt to save her missing tribespeople!

THE FIRST UNIVERSE OF ITS KIND

A century before the term “crossover” became a buzzword in popular culture, Edgar Rice Burroughs created the first expansive, fully cohesive literary universe. Coexisting in this vast cosmos was a pantheon of immortal heroes and heroines—Tarzan of the Apes, Jane Clayton, John Carter, Dejah Thoris, Carson Napier, and David Innes being only the best known among them. In Burroughs’ 80-plus novels, their epic adventures transported them to the strange and exotic worlds of Barsoom, Amtor, Pellucidar, Caspak, and Va-nah, as well as the lost civilizations of Earth and even realms beyond the farthest star. Now the Edgar Rice Burroughs Universe expands in an all-new series of canonical novels written by today’s talented authors!

SWORDS OF ETERNITY SUPER-ARC

When an unknown force catapults inventors Jason Gridley and Victory Harben from their home in Pellucidar, separating them from each other and flinging them across space and time, they embark on a grand tour of strange, wondrous worlds. As their search for one another leads them to the realms of Amtor, Barsoom, and other worlds even more distant and outlandish, Jason and Victory will meet heroes and heroines of unparalleled courage and ability: Carson Napier, Tarzan, John Carter, and more. With the help of their intrepid allies, Jason and Victory will uncover a plot both insidious and unthinkable—one that threatens to tear apart the very fabric of the universe...

The Swords of Eternity super-arc comes to our universe in a series of four interconnected novels:

Carson of Venus: The Edge of All Worlds by Matt Betts

Tarzan: Battle for Pellucidar by Win Scott Eckert

John Carter of Mars: Gods of the Forgotten by Geary Gravel

Victory Harben: Fires of Halos by Christopher Paul Carey

℗ 2022 Oasis Audio

© 2022 Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Associated logos, characters, names, and the distinctive likenesses thereof are trademarks or registered trademarks of ERB, Inc. Used by Permission.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.

©2022 Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc. (P)2022 Oasis Audio

The conclusion of the Swords of Eternity saga

After several volumes, the Swords of Eternity super arc storyline is completed... mostly.
What started out with the Gridley Wave disappearing and several, seemingly unrelated, adventures across multiple ERB created worlds, we end up nearly a half million light-years away in the system which holds Poloda. The story moved from a scientific curiosity to a multiverse spanning threat in this book. We also get to be properly introduced to our heroine, Victory Harben. This is unusual for an Edgar Rice Burroughs based story as he tended to focus almost exclusively on the heroics of the male characters. I should state that I have always felt that the women in his stories were more adept at taking care of themselves than the heroes were. The men simply were willing to go to more insane lengths to succeed in their challenges. Victory Harben is right there making those wonderfully crazy decisions to win the day. She also happens to be an Einstein level genius, raised in Pellucidar, and taught how to fight by none other than Tarzan... and she's only just a little beyond a teenager. In short, she is a formidable hero to meet almost any challenge. I am looking forward to her future adventures.

This book is a rip snorting adventure that ERB would have been proud to be associated with. My only issue is that it does tend to veer into the highly bizarre world of quantum science fairly frequently and that can be a tad challenging to comprehend. The author does a good job of making it accessible, but the concepts are still mind boggling.

I recommend this book to anyone who enjoys the works of Edgar Rice Burroughs. This is the conclusion of a multi book story, but each volume is pretty self contained, this book most of all. You get more from reading them all in order, but the story here does a good job of filling in any key points.