With Fire and Sword

Title: With Fire and Sword
Author: Henryk Sienkiewicz
Genre: Historical Fiction, Heroic

          Set during the time of a great Cossack uprising in the Grand Duchy of Polo-Lithuania. An aged Lieutenant leads a small band of warriors desperately holding off the Mongol Hordes. The winter of 1647 has not been good. No snow has fallen and the rivers haven't frozen over. This according to the Lieutenant is a sign from the gods that great turmoil is to come. Just as that said a band of loyal Polish Cossack attack the lieutenants band, leaving no survivors. A cloaked woman stands over the lieutenant as the chapter ends. She pulls out a knife, slits his throat, and leaves.
          This is what looks like a good book(first of a trilogy). After all, the author has won a Nobel Prize for literature. The book has become compulsory reading in Polish schools and is labeled as the greatest work of literature that has come out of Poland in the last 2 centuries. Though the book is historical fiction, featuring many famous historical figures of Eastern Europe at the time, it does favor those great moments of heroism over pure fact/fiction combination.