This first volume is rich in dramatic episodes and sentimental intrigue. Bordage again succeeds in getting the feeling of adventure running through his pages. L'écran fantastique, January 2008
It's inventive, creative, impossible to imagine. Read Frère Ewen by "the king" Bordage, it's a delight. Yozone, 10th December 2007
Pierre Bordage marks his return to the Space Opera with Frère Ewen, which stretches out over several decades of interplanetary voyages. We find themes dear to Bordage’s heart: religion, exotic beliefs and cultural shocks. Adventure and romance are combined with murderous folly.
We look forward to the second book. http://jehaisleprintemps.net/, 28th December 2007
The gallery of characters, the tender and understanding way the writer sees his creations, his ease at generating a wonderfully touching empathy with them, all these elements are easily sufficient to win the day.
Conclusion? : total respect! http://www.yozone.fr/
Frère Ewen is not just any Science Fiction novel, it is constantly bewitching, a superb human adventure that we experience to the full right through the four hundred and forty-six pages of the book. Pierre Bordage almost systematically leads us to a series of cliff-hangers encouraging us to do just one thing: carry on reading. Even then it isn’t as if he needed to use this artifice to push us along. The narrative flows with excellent style and never engulfs the reader in superfluous detail.
Well, it was so good that I had to start Soeur Ynolde, the next one in La Fraternité du Panca, which I really recommend to you.
Reading this, with Bordage’s talents, I had the soundtrack, voices, images and the colours.
Pierre Bordage has the talent of an “enchanter”, a word he uses in his book to evoke a smooth-talking wizard. For me he is an “enchanter” of hope and that came along at just the right time to face the wintry weather and greyness of this New Year.
Pierre Bordage, through his novels, even in the most desperate ones, always reconciles me to humanity. After the first voyage in an almost infinite timescale with Frère Ewen, I was longing for the follow up. Here I am, after reading Soeur Ynolde, in exactly the same state. Pierre hasn’t written a schmaltzy novel, far from it. He strikes home through his words when humanity self harms by its lack of respect for others. He strikes and then he soothes. Pierre Bordage is a humanist enchanter. A good read for escaping the gloom that surrounds us.
Your name has to be Pierre Bordage to dare so intrepidly to get down to the monumental task of writing a five-volume space opera. But well, Pierre Bordage is the best French story-teller of our times and his literary style continues to assert itself from book to book. Combining the adventures of a soldier-monk called by his order to save the galaxy from a terrible danger and the voyage of exile of two young refugees, Bordage propels us into a gripping story, where action, love and the sombre grief of mourning intermingle. This book-world takes us right to the heart of everlasting humanity. Thierry HUBERT, Le Dauphiné Libéré, December 2007
This first volume, filled with tenderness and the trials and tribulations of life, is a triumph. We see the birth of present and future conflicts on several levels, from the nuclear family right up to the entire stellar system.