The Sabres of Paradise: Conquest and Vengeance in the Caucasus Paperback – January 19, 2015

A historic book that reads like a novel. one can easily see how it influenced the Dune book series.Colonel

Interesting story. Entertaining writing style.

Absolutely brilliant and completely absorbing. The most compelling nonfiction work I've read in years. Worth every single minute spent reading.

This is a must read for anyone interested in the history of the Caucausus and/or Russia. This is Blanch's tour de force, evidently the culmination of years of research and travel in the region, and she does not disappoint. The historical tale and larger than life personalities detailed are more than enough to hold a reader's interest. She manages to straddle the line between fact and romantic fiction, paying close attention to detail while never over-committing her sympathies to one side or the other.I can't speak to historical inconsistency here, not being a specialist in the area, that said, in a book of this scope, there is bound to be some. If you can put that aside, "Sabres of Paradise" is a sweeping, entertaining read, and a fascinating look into a world that has certainly passed, but whose remnants live in various movements throughout the world. Good book.

This is a thorough and well written book about the Caucasus -- its wars, tragedies and Imam Shamyl, the charismatic leader who fought for his country's independence. Anybody interested in the region's history will be rewarded by reading this book. As a complement, readers might be interested in "Between Love and Honor" by Alexandra Lapierre, who deals with another side of the Caucasus tragedy. Seller delivered promptly the book in perfect condition. Highly recommend both book and seller.

Rather disappointed in this book. I read so much about the "groundbreaking" personal qualities of the author, Leslie Blanch, that I thought her "masterwork" (per the New York Review of Books and Amazon) would be, at the least, intriguing. Well, at best, it's labyrinthine - I've had to research almost everything she writes in other sources. Really and truly, she's thrown together a lot of romantic facts that she learned about the subjects - apparently first-hand from interviews and in no way necessarily accurate - and attempted to describe a period of Russian and Caucasian conflict and history in the first half of the 1800s. Colorful to be sure. Sadly, rather repetitive. And, in the end, not very illuminating, since she forgoes chronological narrative in favor of impressionistic anecdotes. Y'know what? This book would probably be best as a supplement to an actually accurate accounting of the events and personalities. But, still, color without cogent context is tough to swallow. An interesting author; a less interesting book.

Frank Herbert was inspired by this narrative; he used several words as well as cultural concepts to model the Fremen tribes.Additionally, having just completed "War and Peace", I learned more about Russia in the first 100 pages of Sabres than in the 1000 pages of W&P.

The Caucasus are one of the last places to fall to the modern world. A curious mix of the ancient world where language families found nowhere else linger. The traditions have been preserved in this great book.