What do you think?
Rate this book
The Seedbearers Trilogy #1
The Seedbearers
Vardek the Butcher, Lord Commander of the Army vs. Khamadek, High Priest of the Temple of the SunThe future of mankind lay in the balance. Arrayed in battle formation were the forces of evil and the legions of good - men and supernatural powers locked in a war to the death. The High Priest was an old man, his powers waning fast. His weakness and vanity - coupled with the lust of Zesta, the High Priestess - had allowed the Temple to sink to a point where Vardek could openly defy the immense power of the priesthood. Out of his defiance would come total destruction. The entire Atlantean nation was doomed to be engulfed. Nothing would remain to show it had ever existed. But some few would survive the holocaust. These were the seedbearers to the new age.
282 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1974
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
December 15, 2025
This is the first volume of a trilogy, followed by The Power of the Serpent and Twilight of the Serpent. The Conan-esque cover by Ken Barr makes it look like a straight swords & sorcery adventure, but it's a very mystical New Agey fantasy about the destruction of Atlantis with Illuminati-influenced overtones. This first book indulges in some graphically detailed violent sexual assault, which is toned down in the subsequent books, which are also much better written, though the character development and usage is a little off kilter. The trilogy was published in the mid-1970s in England, followed by Bantam editions in the U.S., and Timlett seems to have published little else until a couple of unrelated novels appeared after the turn of the century. The soundtrack for this Atlantean tale would be some obscure heavy metal, not Donovan nor King Crimson. I enjoyed it, for the odd outlook and viewpoint, well enough to read the other two when they came out.
Want to Read
January 29, 2024Here’s the 1976 Corgi mass-market (282 pages), with cover art by Peter Valentine. Sets an entirely different tone compared to the sword & sorcery feel of the Bantam edition and others.
November 16, 2013
A Game of Thrones on the Titanic
Peter Valentine Timlett’s 1976 The Seedbearers starts a trilogy. Ostensibly inspired by history, the tale takes place on the island of Ruta (Atlantis). The cover blurb is accurate: it is a “bloody, sensual tale of an immense and violent struggle in the Atlantis of ancient Legend.” It begins with a brutal first chapter; the body of work is all political intrigue laced with sensual, adult themes; the final third is a satisfying, all-out-war synchronized with cataclysm.
Many tits are exposed, and all are gilded in gold: The domineering, Mayan-like Toltecs lead a fragile coalition. The Toltec’s themselves are split into the army and priesthood camps, and they rule over the Akkadian craftsman and Rmoahal slaves. They all live on Ruta. Chapter one is over-the-top, presenting all cultures as sexist in some way; in fact, misogyny appears intricate to the plot. The nicer cultures may treat woman okay, but still like to sacrifice virgins. Another rapes and murders them. Another eats them on occasion. In the first chapter alone there is (1) a beheading of a young girl… the subsequent eating of her corpse, (2) the a rape of one girl by >4 dozen soldiers, (3) a traditional sacrifice of young girl strapped to an altar, and (4) a slave girl whoring to maintain her life.
Timlett represents no culture in a positive light (to support the plot), but having just read Charles R. Saunders’ Imaro (in which a wondrous blend of fantasy warfare was mixed respectfully with African history) it was jarring to see the presentation of the enslaved, black Rmoahal as ruthless cannibals led by Voodoo priests.
Sword & Sorcery?: This was pitched to Sword & Sorcery fans, but the magic is limited to telepathic and psychic elements. There are several instances in which the astral realm is explored, and the story flirts with ghosts & invisible demons (more of this would have been welcomed). The closest thing to a magic-item is the “Instrument of Mating” (a ritualistic wooden phallus…seriously).
Rating & Recommendation: Fans of George R.R. Martin’s A Game of Thrones (A Song of Ice and Fire series) should enjoy this. Martin may be a better writer of characterization & adult-soap-opera, but Timlett offers similar adult-fantasy themes that come to closure in one novel (this does start a trilogy, but this first dose could stand alone). Atlantis is doomed to sink after all (that is no spoiler), but there are several groups vying for power: in a nut shell, this is “Game of Thrones” on the Titanic.
The characterization probably deserves a 3-rating, but the plot is thoughtfully constructed and the action delivered well. I tend to give the initial story in a trilogy a “4’ if I am inclined to check out the second, which I am (The Power Of The Serpent).
Peter Valentine Timlett’s 1976 The Seedbearers starts a trilogy. Ostensibly inspired by history, the tale takes place on the island of Ruta (Atlantis). The cover blurb is accurate: it is a “bloody, sensual tale of an immense and violent struggle in the Atlantis of ancient Legend.” It begins with a brutal first chapter; the body of work is all political intrigue laced with sensual, adult themes; the final third is a satisfying, all-out-war synchronized with cataclysm.
Many tits are exposed, and all are gilded in gold: The domineering, Mayan-like Toltecs lead a fragile coalition. The Toltec’s themselves are split into the army and priesthood camps, and they rule over the Akkadian craftsman and Rmoahal slaves. They all live on Ruta. Chapter one is over-the-top, presenting all cultures as sexist in some way; in fact, misogyny appears intricate to the plot. The nicer cultures may treat woman okay, but still like to sacrifice virgins. Another rapes and murders them. Another eats them on occasion. In the first chapter alone there is (1) a beheading of a young girl… the subsequent eating of her corpse, (2) the a rape of one girl by >4 dozen soldiers, (3) a traditional sacrifice of young girl strapped to an altar, and (4) a slave girl whoring to maintain her life.
Timlett represents no culture in a positive light (to support the plot), but having just read Charles R. Saunders’ Imaro (in which a wondrous blend of fantasy warfare was mixed respectfully with African history) it was jarring to see the presentation of the enslaved, black Rmoahal as ruthless cannibals led by Voodoo priests.
Sword & Sorcery?: This was pitched to Sword & Sorcery fans, but the magic is limited to telepathic and psychic elements. There are several instances in which the astral realm is explored, and the story flirts with ghosts & invisible demons (more of this would have been welcomed). The closest thing to a magic-item is the “Instrument of Mating” (a ritualistic wooden phallus…seriously).
Rating & Recommendation: Fans of George R.R. Martin’s A Game of Thrones (A Song of Ice and Fire series) should enjoy this. Martin may be a better writer of characterization & adult-soap-opera, but Timlett offers similar adult-fantasy themes that come to closure in one novel (this does start a trilogy, but this first dose could stand alone). Atlantis is doomed to sink after all (that is no spoiler), but there are several groups vying for power: in a nut shell, this is “Game of Thrones” on the Titanic.
The characterization probably deserves a 3-rating, but the plot is thoughtfully constructed and the action delivered well. I tend to give the initial story in a trilogy a “4’ if I am inclined to check out the second, which I am (The Power Of The Serpent).
June 7, 2012
The Author's Preface to the story is a weird critter that pooh-poohs the version of Atlantis as written by Plato and invokes the authority of the "Mystery Schools of Western Esoteric Tradition" as a direct line from the Mystery Schools of ancient Greece. And he does so without any detectable irony.
So that pretty much sets the tone for what follows.
At first blush, it appears that much of his background is actually drawn from theosophy and the writings of Helena Blavatsky (and I can't believe I just spent a few minutes looking it up). He mines it fairly heavily, adding trappings and rituals described in some detail, and using words like "seals" and "lodge" in specific and unfamiliar ways, and occasionally digressing into some weird technical information. I've seen quite a bit of science fiction from the early pulp era recycle Blavatsky (it was practically a tradition because so much is so entertainingly crackpot) but Timlett seems to be going beyond its outermost trappings and is not emulating the pulp material. At times the intensity of the writing and the intellectual rigor to the system he devised or purloined gave me pause...is he reciting his own beliefs?
Identifying the island of Ruta as the basis of legendary Atlantis results in certain expectations of the eventual outcome (an outcome well and truly spoiled by the over-the-top cover art, the cover text, and words like "total destruction", "doomed to be engulfed", and "few would survive the holocaust" on the back cover). From that perspective, the story takes an awful long time coming to terms with the island's doom and at several points fiddles with the idea of salvation at the last moment.
The last third felt unreasonably slow-moving, as the story transitions from political maneuvering and betrayal to an out-and-out military campaign and the orderly and planned escape of the island's refugees. The second part was not as interesting as the first.
So that pretty much sets the tone for what follows.
At first blush, it appears that much of his background is actually drawn from theosophy and the writings of Helena Blavatsky (and I can't believe I just spent a few minutes looking it up). He mines it fairly heavily, adding trappings and rituals described in some detail, and using words like "seals" and "lodge" in specific and unfamiliar ways, and occasionally digressing into some weird technical information. I've seen quite a bit of science fiction from the early pulp era recycle Blavatsky (it was practically a tradition because so much is so entertainingly crackpot) but Timlett seems to be going beyond its outermost trappings and is not emulating the pulp material. At times the intensity of the writing and the intellectual rigor to the system he devised or purloined gave me pause...is he reciting his own beliefs?
Identifying the island of Ruta as the basis of legendary Atlantis results in certain expectations of the eventual outcome (an outcome well and truly spoiled by the over-the-top cover art, the cover text, and words like "total destruction", "doomed to be engulfed", and "few would survive the holocaust" on the back cover). From that perspective, the story takes an awful long time coming to terms with the island's doom and at several points fiddles with the idea of salvation at the last moment.
The last third felt unreasonably slow-moving, as the story transitions from political maneuvering and betrayal to an out-and-out military campaign and the orderly and planned escape of the island's refugees. The second part was not as interesting as the first.
September 9, 2012
Review of The Seedbearers by Peter Valentine Timlett
The 1970’s was the heyday of the “sword and sorcery” boom that started a decade earlier with the publication of pulp fantasy adventure writer Robert E. Howard’s Conan stories by Lancer Books. The popularity of Howard’s newly re-discovered (at least to the young fantasy readers such as myself at the time) coupled with the earlier surge of interest in fantasy spearheaded by the mass market paperback editions of J. R. R. Tolkien’s “The Hobbit” and “The Lord of the Rings” published by Ballantine Books lead to a decade where mass market paperback fantasy books could be found almost anywhere, grocery stores, newsstands, and of course book stores. The general plots of most of these works included barbarian warriors, decadent civilizations, beautiful priestesses and queens, and stirring battle scenes.
The decade of the 70’s saw a spate of new authors who were grounded in the sword and sorcery tradition as exemplified by Howard and other authors such as Fritz Leiber, C. L. Moore and Henry Kuttner. Among the newer authors who started their careers in this period were Karl Edward Wagner, Charles R. Saunders, and Roland Green. One of the newer authors to emerge in this period was British writer Peter Valentine Timlett who wrote a trilogy of novels set in the Atlantis of Theosophical literature and legend rather than the Atlantis of Plato’s writings. The first book in the series is The Seedbearers, published in Britain in 1974 and then in America by Signet paperbacks in 1976. The book is still fairly easy to find on the usual used book sites, and has its followers. Several friends who are fans of the genre recommended it to me as an interesting take on the Atlantis myth as well as a stirring adventure. I recently read it to see what my own take would be on the novel.
The book opens with a brief preface by the author where he mentions that his novel is based on the Atlantis of “certain Mystery Schools of the present-day Western Esoteric Tradition” which is (of course) different from the Atlantis described by Plato in Timaeus. Just how the two versions differ is not described by Timlett, leaving the reader to search that information out for him or herself. The novel starts out with some gruesome action, as a young girl is raped on a beach by fifty warriors, and then has her throat slit. Similar scenes of rape, pillage, cold blooded murder continue in the first few pages, all apparently committed by a victorious army led by a General known as Vardek the Terrible, whose invading army consists of three races or ethnic groups, red-skinned Toltecs (of whom Vardek is the leader), light skinned Akkadians (sort of a mercenary engineer corps for theToltecs), and dark skinned Rmoahals, who are a subservient race to the Toltecs. The Rmoahals are ferocious fighters who don’t mind engaging in cannibalism and necromancy. The mixed army has been sent by the weak King Baralda of the Thousand Isles (of which the “twin islands of Ruta and Daiteya” are apparently the capital and the equivalent of our Atlantis) as a “trade expedition” to the nearby mainland of Amaria, but instead of engaging in commerce, Vardek has simply slaughtered all the Amarians whom his army has come in contact with. Character name after character name come in a flash in the first couple of chapters, as Timlett makes a point of introducing everyone who will have a part to play in the novel as quickly as possible. At the same time he also makes sure that each character pontificates at length the various political, religious and personal agendas that each of them espouse, so that the reader will have little doubt as to where everyone stands in the highly telegraphed ahead of time apocalyptic armageddon coming up later in the novel. I personally found this style to be quite off putting. Similar sounding names (Vardek, Baldek, Melachadek, Naradek, Khamaradek) caused confusion. I thought the characters lacked complexity. They were either brutal, misogynistic sadists or noble, idealistic warriors in the service of all that is good, working towards a climactic conflict between good and evil. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis pull this off, but I prefer a little more ambiguity in my opposing forces.
I also found Timlett’s prose to be overly dramatic and much too verbose in places. An example comes early in the book, “For a time the people flourished under the ruling principles of the priesthood, but generation followed generation, and the inherent weakness, fed by centuries of inbreeding, caused the breath of evil once more to waft over the land---and the Sacred Clan, the royal family, became weak and ineffective, and the Sun Temple priesthood grew in pride and arrogance.” Overlooking the fact that this is one sentence with at least seven comas, the “breath of evil waft(ing) over the land” just struck me as over the top.
This apparently is some folk’s cup of tea, so to speak, but I found the book virtually unreadable, forcing myself to stick with it so as to be able to give an honest review. I honestly can’t recommend it to anyone that I normally recommend fantasy to, without at least pointing out my many reservations regarding the novel. If brutal violence with cruel generals and sorcerers is your thing, Karl Edward Wagner did it better and still introduced shades of moral complexity in his character Kane. If necromancy in your fantasy is of interest, then Clark Ashton Smith also did it much better in his Xothique stories. If you’re looking for interesting takes on the Atlantis legend, then I can heartily recommend the works of Robert E. Howard in his Kull, Conan and Skull Face stories, Henry Kuttner in his Elak tales, Larry Niven in his “The Magic Goes Away” series, Manly Wade Wellman’s Kardios and also his Hok stories, along with a host of others, but I failed to find many redeeming qualities in this book. I’m pretty sure that I won’t be going out of my way to read the next two novels in the trilogy, but I’ll list them in an effort for completeness, The Power of the Serpent, and The Twilight of the Serpent.
I’m afraid a one is all I can give here.
The 1970’s was the heyday of the “sword and sorcery” boom that started a decade earlier with the publication of pulp fantasy adventure writer Robert E. Howard’s Conan stories by Lancer Books. The popularity of Howard’s newly re-discovered (at least to the young fantasy readers such as myself at the time) coupled with the earlier surge of interest in fantasy spearheaded by the mass market paperback editions of J. R. R. Tolkien’s “The Hobbit” and “The Lord of the Rings” published by Ballantine Books lead to a decade where mass market paperback fantasy books could be found almost anywhere, grocery stores, newsstands, and of course book stores. The general plots of most of these works included barbarian warriors, decadent civilizations, beautiful priestesses and queens, and stirring battle scenes.
The decade of the 70’s saw a spate of new authors who were grounded in the sword and sorcery tradition as exemplified by Howard and other authors such as Fritz Leiber, C. L. Moore and Henry Kuttner. Among the newer authors who started their careers in this period were Karl Edward Wagner, Charles R. Saunders, and Roland Green. One of the newer authors to emerge in this period was British writer Peter Valentine Timlett who wrote a trilogy of novels set in the Atlantis of Theosophical literature and legend rather than the Atlantis of Plato’s writings. The first book in the series is The Seedbearers, published in Britain in 1974 and then in America by Signet paperbacks in 1976. The book is still fairly easy to find on the usual used book sites, and has its followers. Several friends who are fans of the genre recommended it to me as an interesting take on the Atlantis myth as well as a stirring adventure. I recently read it to see what my own take would be on the novel.
The book opens with a brief preface by the author where he mentions that his novel is based on the Atlantis of “certain Mystery Schools of the present-day Western Esoteric Tradition” which is (of course) different from the Atlantis described by Plato in Timaeus. Just how the two versions differ is not described by Timlett, leaving the reader to search that information out for him or herself. The novel starts out with some gruesome action, as a young girl is raped on a beach by fifty warriors, and then has her throat slit. Similar scenes of rape, pillage, cold blooded murder continue in the first few pages, all apparently committed by a victorious army led by a General known as Vardek the Terrible, whose invading army consists of three races or ethnic groups, red-skinned Toltecs (of whom Vardek is the leader), light skinned Akkadians (sort of a mercenary engineer corps for theToltecs), and dark skinned Rmoahals, who are a subservient race to the Toltecs. The Rmoahals are ferocious fighters who don’t mind engaging in cannibalism and necromancy. The mixed army has been sent by the weak King Baralda of the Thousand Isles (of which the “twin islands of Ruta and Daiteya” are apparently the capital and the equivalent of our Atlantis) as a “trade expedition” to the nearby mainland of Amaria, but instead of engaging in commerce, Vardek has simply slaughtered all the Amarians whom his army has come in contact with. Character name after character name come in a flash in the first couple of chapters, as Timlett makes a point of introducing everyone who will have a part to play in the novel as quickly as possible. At the same time he also makes sure that each character pontificates at length the various political, religious and personal agendas that each of them espouse, so that the reader will have little doubt as to where everyone stands in the highly telegraphed ahead of time apocalyptic armageddon coming up later in the novel. I personally found this style to be quite off putting. Similar sounding names (Vardek, Baldek, Melachadek, Naradek, Khamaradek) caused confusion. I thought the characters lacked complexity. They were either brutal, misogynistic sadists or noble, idealistic warriors in the service of all that is good, working towards a climactic conflict between good and evil. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis pull this off, but I prefer a little more ambiguity in my opposing forces.
I also found Timlett’s prose to be overly dramatic and much too verbose in places. An example comes early in the book, “For a time the people flourished under the ruling principles of the priesthood, but generation followed generation, and the inherent weakness, fed by centuries of inbreeding, caused the breath of evil once more to waft over the land---and the Sacred Clan, the royal family, became weak and ineffective, and the Sun Temple priesthood grew in pride and arrogance.” Overlooking the fact that this is one sentence with at least seven comas, the “breath of evil waft(ing) over the land” just struck me as over the top.
This apparently is some folk’s cup of tea, so to speak, but I found the book virtually unreadable, forcing myself to stick with it so as to be able to give an honest review. I honestly can’t recommend it to anyone that I normally recommend fantasy to, without at least pointing out my many reservations regarding the novel. If brutal violence with cruel generals and sorcerers is your thing, Karl Edward Wagner did it better and still introduced shades of moral complexity in his character Kane. If necromancy in your fantasy is of interest, then Clark Ashton Smith also did it much better in his Xothique stories. If you’re looking for interesting takes on the Atlantis legend, then I can heartily recommend the works of Robert E. Howard in his Kull, Conan and Skull Face stories, Henry Kuttner in his Elak tales, Larry Niven in his “The Magic Goes Away” series, Manly Wade Wellman’s Kardios and also his Hok stories, along with a host of others, but I failed to find many redeeming qualities in this book. I’m pretty sure that I won’t be going out of my way to read the next two novels in the trilogy, but I’ll list them in an effort for completeness, The Power of the Serpent, and The Twilight of the Serpent.
I’m afraid a one is all I can give here.
March 23, 2020
I thought this would be a fun sword and sorcery read, but the graphic (and badly written!) gang rape and murder on the VERY FIRST PAGE noped me right out of there.
January 4, 2022
A grim, feral kind of fantasy in the vein of Conan and John Carter, with lots of fights, violence, and gory deaths. But, seemingly an attempt at a more modern take on it, where there are higher aspirations at play, and consequences for living a life of sin. The story and characters are simple but told in bold tones, and the fantasy world and its magic and rituals are kind of fascinating in their own way. Their society is a harsh caste system built on race, with enough parallels to real life stereotypes that it can't be overlooked or accepted as a coincidence.
I can't say it was a great book, but I was kind of fascinated to read it and see where it went. The racial overtones mean I don't think I can really recommend it to people, however.
I can't say it was a great book, but I was kind of fascinated to read it and see where it went. The racial overtones mean I don't think I can really recommend it to people, however.
June 2, 2009
This is the first in a fairly wide ranging trilogy by Timlett extending from the time of Atlantis's fall to the time of the Roman invasion of Britain and the Druid resistance. Truly excellent works. The next two books are The Power of the Serpent and The Twilight of the Serpent.
March 13, 2019
I really wanted to give this a high four star review. The concept is fantastic, the plot is fast and the characters are great. But while this is an excellent story it is utterly undermined by constantly gratuitous sexual contact and violence, which makes it harder to take the rest of the story seriously.
April 14, 2021
Full on book with some good parts in it but could of done less with the sorcery and more the sword for my liking
March 28, 2022
Ehh, I was not impressed
Read
February 27, 2009The Seedbearers by Peter Valentine Timlett (1976)
Read
April 12, 2013some where some how i came across a cover and two pages ,i found hem very interesting to a point that i needed to read the whole book in case i could have access
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews