Translated in French to English:
Introduction
Background of the Study
Pierre Bordage was born in January 1955 in La Réorthe, Vendée, France. After uneventful years at school, nine years of karate and a few banjo lessons, he discovered writing during a workshop at Nantes University in 1975…
A few trips to the Orient and some experience as a bookseller later, he settled down in the Gers in 1985 and wrote Les Guerriers du silence (The Warriors of Silence). Not until 1992 did he meet his first editors, at Vaugirard, having returned to Paris in the meantime to work as a sports reporter. He was offered the Rohel series. Back in 1992 L’Atalante received the manuscript of Les Guerriers du silence and published it in March 1993. This space opera with epic dimensions where hundreds of worlds clash, powerfully based on our myths and collective imagination, had immediate public success, which in no way diminished over the three years during the publication of the trilogy. Recognition by both amateurs and professionals came when he was awarded the Prize for l’Imaginaire and the Julia Verlanger Prize for Les Guerriers du Silence in 1994 and the Cosmos 2000 Prize for La Citadelle Hyponéros (The Citadel of Hyperneros) in 1996.
In the summer of 1999, he left to live in the United States for two years with his family before returning to his native region in France.
With L’Enjomineur in 2004, Pierre Bordage renders homage to this region by enhancing historical facts with fantastical elements. This trilogy was awarded the Imaginales Prize in 2007.
Today Pierre Bordage lives in the French South-West. During several years he served as President of the International Science Fiction Festival Les Utopiales.
Pierre Bordage was born in January 1955 in La Réorthe, Vendée, France. After uneventful years at school, nine years of karate and a few banjo lessons, he discovered writing during a workshop at Nantes University in 1975…
Literature Review
Some one hundred worlds make up the Confederation of Naflin, including the sumptuous and refined Syracusa. However, in the shadow of the ruling family, the mysterious Scaythes of Hyponeros, from a distant world, gifted with disturbing psychic powers, are plotting a gigantic plot of which the establishment of a dictatorship over the Confederation is only one step. Who could stand in their way? The warrior monks of the Absourate Order? Or should we take into account this obscure employee of a travel company who drowns his boredom in alcohol on the planet Deux-Saisons? Because his life changes the day a beautiful Syracusan woman, hunted, passes through the door of his agency… Few French science fiction novels are animated by a truly epic breath. Pierre Bordage, from his first attempt, delivers to us with Les guerriers du silence the first part of an authentic Space opera.
Who, then, can stand up against them? The monk-warriors of the Absourate order? Or will they have to rely on an obscure employee in a travel agency, who is drowning his sorrows on the planet Two-Seasons? Because his life is turned upside-down the day a beautiful Syracusan woman who is being trailed, turns up on his doorstep.
The Confederation of Naflin is a vast political entity encompassing hundreds of worlds, with varied customs and religions, and diverse modes of government (although generally authoritarian and aristocratic), but which have managed to agree on a sort of “minimum regime”, consisting of a council of the main heads of state and adherence to a few common economic principles – in the best interests of each party.
The Confederation of Naflin also has military forces: the Interlice, the Confederal Army, a sort of interplanetary super-police force, and the Absourate Order, made up of warrior monks tasked with protecting the integrity of the Confederation. Within the latter, Syracusa is a powerful planet that dictates its clothing styles to the nobility of the entire known universe, and one of whose princes commands the Interlice.
The main oddity of the Syracuse aristocracy: the mysterious Scaythes of Hyponeros, non-humans from an unknown planet, who have managed to make themselves indispensable, have entered its ranks. The Scaythes first sold their services to the nobles as telepathic spies, then as bodyguards preventing… any telepathic espionage!
The final stage of their takeover of Syracusan society, one of their own, Pamynx, has been appointed Grand Constable, a key position in the government. With the full complicity of the Church of Kreuz, with its expansionist and totalitarian aims, the Scaythians will begin to brutally take control of the entire Confederation.
“The thoroughness and breadth of the description combine with the precision of the psychological portraits and the spiritual dimension of the characters and worlds crossed to make these WARRIORS OF SILENCE a success that is all the more exceptional since Pierre Bordage is signing his first novel here.” (Joëlle Wintrebert)
Themes
The Warriors of Silence addresses different themes on human nature, both creative and destructive, both sovereign and easily subjected to something else (the Scaythes). The work criticizes not religions, but dogmatism and the misuse of religious teachings for the benefit of the seizure of power by a minority.
The specter of a possible nuclear catastrophe (due to a war on Earth, an accident on Ut-Gen) is evoked in the background as a warning about the risks of progress, but the main illustration of this theme is the creation of the Scaythes from robots abandoned by humans.
Characters
The 12 Warriors of Silence
• Aphykit Alexu / Naia Phykit: daughter of Sri Alexu, a master of Inddic science. She flees during her father’s assassination and benefits from the help of Tixu Oty, whom she initiates into Inddic power, before becoming his wife.
• Yelle: the daughter of Tixu and Aphykit, she has the power to sense the advance of the threatening void and which she calls the “blouf”. It also seems that she benefits from a certain prescience. • Aphykit Alexu / Naia Phykit: daughter of Sri Alexu, a master of Inddic science. She flees during her father’s assassination and benefits from the help of Tixu Oty, whom she initiates into Inddic power, before becoming his wife.
• Shari Rampouline / The Mahdi Shari of the Hymlyas: one of the last inhabitants of the Earth, he is initiated by a mysterious hermit, the madman of the mountains. He learns to make stones fly then meets Tixu and Aphykit. His search for wisdom pushes him to undertake a long wandering between the worlds, during which he meets Oniki Kay. It is he who discovers the Indic annals.
• Jek At-Skin: born on the radioactive planet Ut-Gen, he discovers his powers as a human-source by calming a tribe of desert hyenas, which earns him the nickname “Prince of Hyenas”. Could he be the chosen one of the Jersalémines?
• San Francisco: Formerly prince of the American tribe of Jer Salem, he was condemned to exile for heresy. He became a space pirate under the name of San Frisco as second in command of the Viduc Papironda, and met Jek during his journey when the latter wanted to leave Ut-Gen. Thanks to the word of the Abyn Elian, he can make himself invisible for a few seconds. He masters bladed combat.
• Phoenix: San Francisco’s fiancée, originally from the same world as the latter. Thanks to the word of the Abyn Elian, she can also make herself invisible for a few seconds.
• Oniki Kay: Member of a female corporation on Ephren, this very agile thûta is a real organ acrobat, she is outlawed for having loved Shari. Exiled to an island, she gives birth to Tau Phraïm there.
• Tau Phraïm: the son of Shari and Oniki, he knows how to speak to coral snakes and move in the same way as them: silently, quickly and skillfully. Despite his very young age, he seems to benefit from a precocious maturity, even more than Yelle.
• Fracist Bogh: educated by the Kreuzian Church, he becomes its muffi (grand master) under the name of Barofill the Twenty-fifth. It is the post-mortem revelations of his predecessor Barofill the Twenty-fourth that persuade him to side with the warriors of silence. He learns the inddic graphemes of protection and healing, which allows him to escape mental inquisitions and to heal Ghë.
• Ghë: a passenger on the El Guazer, a convoy of ships of Earth exiles, she is revealed to be one of the twelve chosen ones during a trance. She will be the only survivor of the convoy. She masters telepathy.
• Whu Phan-Li: the last knight of the Absourate Order, converted into a child trafficker and brought back to the right path by a clairvoyant. Like any veteran knight of the Absourate Order, he kills with a scream and masters close combat.
Other important characters
The warriors of silence take up such a place in the story that it is difficult to see other important characters emerge. However, we can mention:
• Constable Pamynx, a Scaythe of Hyponeros who is the very first character that we discover in the story and a key piece of the first stage of the plan of the masters Germes.
• Menati Ang, lord of Syracusa then emperor of the galaxy, manipulated by the Scaythes of Hyponeros.
• Seneschal Harkot, a Scaythe deliberately “unfinished” by the Hyponeros in order to simulate human feelings.
• Marti de Kervaleur, a Syracusan nobleman on the run who ends up stranded on the Free City of Space before meeting Jek and San Frisco.
• Muffi Barofill the Twenty-fourth, high pontiff of the church of Kreuz. Other important characters
The warriors of silence take up such a place in the story that it is difficult to see other important characters emerge. However, we can mention: