''Burning Tower'' is a

fantasy novel Fantasy literature is literature set in an imaginary universe, often but not always without any locations, events, or people from the real world. Magic, the supernatural and magical creatures are common in many of these imaginary worlds. Fa ...

by American writers Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle. It is a sequel to ''

The Burning City ''The Burning City'' is a fantasy novel of social and political allegory by American writers Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle. It is set in an analogue of Southern California in an imaginary past shortly after the sinking of Atlantis about 14,0 ...

'', set some years after that novel concluded. It was published in 2005.

Plot summary

The three main characters are Sandry, a Lord of Tep's Town, Sandry's cousin Regapisk, also a Lord, and Burning Tower, a daughter of Whandall, the main character of the previous

book A book is a medium for recording information in the form of writing or images, typically composed of many pages (made of papyrus, parchment, vellum, or paper) bound together and protected by a cover. The technical term for this physical arr ...

. Regapisk is an incompetent Lord and his family arrange for him to be

shanghaied Shanghaied may refer to: *Shanghaiing, or forced conscription * ''Shanghaied'' (1915 film), a film starring Charlie Chaplin * ''Shanghaied'' (1927 film), a 1927 American silent film * ''Shanghaied'' (1934 film), an animated short film starring Mi ...

to become an

oarsman Rowing is the act of propelling a human-powered watercraft using the sweeping motions of oars to displace water and generate reactional propulsion. Rowing is functionally similar to paddling, but rowing requires oars to be mechanically atta ...

on a coastal ship. Sandry and Burning Tower are romantically linked throughout the book. Large flightless birds attack trading caravans, but Sandry fights them off. He is sent by the Lords with the caravan, of which Burning Tower is also a part, to discover the source of the birds. They travel to the southern city of Condigeo and then to Crescent City, defeating

terror bird Phorusrhacids, colloquially known as terror birds, are an extinct clade of large carnivorous flightless birds that were one of the largest species of apex predators in South America during the Cenozoic era; their conventionally accepted temporal ...

attacks along the way. In Crescent City, they are joined by Regapisk, who has escaped from his ship. The three of them travel on to the high-magic city of Aztlan, where Regapisk redeems himself. The authors researched

Aztec The Aztecs () were a Mesoamerican culture that flourished in central Mexico in the post-classic period from 1300 to 1521. The Aztec people included different Indigenous peoples of Mexico, ethnic groups of central Mexico, particularly those g ...

culture for the book, and many aspects of the culture depicted in the book are based on that research. This is explained in a brief note at the end of the book. Also mentioned is that within the described timeline, the

s continued to exist until long after humans spread through the Americas; this is based on the North American phorusrhacid ''

Titanis walleri ''Titanis'' was an extinct genus of giant flightless terror birds that inhabited North America during the early Pliocene to early Pleistocene epochs. The generic name, ''Titanis'', refers to the titans, Ancient Greek gods that preceded the Twelv ...

'' (but see McFadden ''et al.'' 2007).

Sources

* McFadden, Bruce; Labs-Hochstein, Joann; Hulbert, Richard C. Jr. & Baskin, Jon A. (2007): Revised age of the late Neogene terror bird (''Titanis'') in North America during the Great American Interchange. ''

Geology Geology () is a branch of natural science concerned with Earth and other astronomical objects, the features or rocks of which it is composed, and the processes by which they change over time. Modern geology significantly overlaps all other Ear ...

'' 35(2): 123-126. PDF fulltext
2005 American novels 2005 fantasy novels American fantasy novels Novels by Larry Niven Novels by Jerry Pournelle Collaborative novels {{2000s-fantasy-novel-stub