I just finished Nortstar Rising yesterday. I think LJ was being a bit lazy with this book. It didn't seem very plausable that the day after Rick tells Ryan where the other Cryo centers are that they just happen to find one of them. I think it would have been much more plausable, and made much better reading if they had searched for several weeks or months. Maybe a book or 2 in between would have been nice. The Viking village was interesting but again not very plausable. The interactions between Mildred and Doc were very interesting also. The introduction of an important character should have been handled much better. Also I doubt that a woman that knows firearms, and was dumped into DL would take an old .38 revolver as her sidearm, when there were hundreds of semi-auto pistols available to her, as I'm sure there were in the armory at the redoubt. LJ never did show much sense in his choice of Firearms, but maybe he didn't waste hundreds of hours reading gun magazines as a teen like I did. lol This book rates a 6.

Salamat

Ryan's group find themselves in Minnesota near another of the cryo facilities. A new member is added to the group, Mildred Wyeth, who is thawed out from a hundred years earlier. Some good scenes early on in the story, battling mutant bees and ants on the way to discovering a town of vikings.

This place has racial issues, the norseman thinking Jak as some god and Mildred as a devil because of skin color. Add in toxic waste radiation to the mix makes this place a pretty messed up town and Ryan's crew leaves it the way they leave most places. Nearly destroyed.
A decent read, lots of adventure, battles, and mayhem, a strong 6.

I've just starting re-reading the deathlands books I bought way back when they were first released. When I first dug them out of the loft I couldn't remember why I only had up to Seedling when there are soooo many afterwards. After reading Northstar Rising I remember! The books story line was shakey at best. The plot starts off well enough, with the jungle and finding Mildred but what the hell happened afterwards? Can anyone imagine Vikings in the US? Perhaps on the North East Coast or in New Foundland maybe but in Minnesota, no way. The books up until this one have at least had a coherent plot and the characters were driven by some sort goal. Here they seem to waste confused innocents and get themselves into situations that just don't seem believable. Like getting captured by the Vikings on the boat when they have blasters that would clearly rub all of vikings out in seconds. Or perhaps when they were doing the tests of manhood where each one of the main characters did something totally unbelievable (just cause they could). It was like Lawrence was trying to pad the book out to make it to 354 pages, or is that just me.

Perhaps 15 years on things I would have laughed at then just seem plain dumb now. Hoping the rest of the series is a bit better and the author gets some serious plots going soon or I might end my reading run at seedling again!

Lebrocco

I absolutely love Michael Herring's close-up artwork of Ryan. The man paints a picture perfectly of what this character looks like in my mind's eye.
Northstar Rising was different than the others in some ways - not only because it is the intro of Mildred to the series - but because of the Viking angle I suppose.
I have to agree with previous reviewers on Jame's choice of weaponry, but hey, he was the writer! And he made up for it because he could push out fun and exciting action/adventure like no one else!
This was a fun and exciting read, but far from one of the best. But alongside some of the latest books in the previous years - its a ten!

I am reviewing the GraphicAudio unabridged CD version

I cannot get over the Vikings.... They realy took the wind outa the sails on this one. Then again, Mildred Wyeth joins the gang.  YAY!!

I disliked this story allot, it seemed that the only point of this book was to justify Mildred's existence, in the last book, Mildred was found and unfrozen, this book shows why shes a member, I didn't care for this story that much..