Dies the Fire

Rating:
Summary: Good book, but it could have been SO much better.
Review: Don't get me wrong, I like Stirling, but this was not his best work. The central plot was great, but all too often I had to just ignore the glaring coincidences that happened to the characters ("Oh, look we just found an ex-SAS member who just happens to make long-bows in his spare time!") I mean, come on! Within a couple chapters the main characters have surrounded themselves with the exact kind of people one would want in such a crisis. Way too convenient.... And don't get me started on that annoying character Juniper! All the wiccan stuff makes you want to laugh. If you want a great end-of-the-world story go read The Stand by King or Swan Song by McGammon. Those books won't disappoint you.

Rating:
Summary: Kinda Flaky
Review: I like these sorts of books. What I like about them is imagining how real people would react in a situation that is unimaginable. The problem is that the author uses flaky, unreal characters that are hard to relate to. I would not like a book that preached to me about christianity, and likewise I do not like this book when it so often seems to be preaching the Wiccan religion. I bumped it up from one to two stars only because there are some good action scenes, and the character Mike Havel seems to be somewhat believable, if a little to good at living in the brave new world Stirling creates. Read this if you are a die hard fan of similar books or in to pseudo fantasy novels, otherwise don't waste your money.

Rating:
Summary: Spectacular! Post-apocalyptic at its best
Review: I read this after reading Stirling's 3 vol. Nantucket trilogy. Although I read mostly horror, I love post-apocalyptic fiction (The Stand, Swan Song, Malevil, etc.). All of these Stirling books, ostensibly time-travel, are also, and to a greater extent, post-apocalyptic.
Dies the Fire, the most recent of them, is the best (and two sequels are planned!). This is one of the best books I've read in recent years. The characters are people I'd like to know (as are the ones in Nantucket).
A great, enjoyable, and unfortunately all-too-fast read.

Rating:
Summary: A Compelling Read
Review: I've thoroughly enjoyed Steve Stirling's "Alternate History" books about Nantucket, "Island In The Stream Of Time" and the others in this series. They are well-written page turners. But what happened to the present when Nantucket headed for the past? Wellllll.... Could have been many things, perhaps a splitting of the time-stream, or 20th century Earth could be like nothing we could imagine, or... "And now for something completely different!"

So, when the huge energy storm surrounded Nantucket, everything changed on Earth. Immutable laws of the cosmos Changed. Electricity no longer works. Nor do gasoline, diesel, or propane powered engines, and explosives don't explode. Which means guns don't work. So Sam Colt no longer makes people equal. Especially the police and military.

One of the characters figures that it's "Alien Space Bats" experimenting, and it could be. I once heard an ugly statistic. It was figured that one third of people are basically bad and will search for ways to steal, etc. One third are weak, and will steal/loot if nobody is looking, or if they figure they can't get caught. And one third are basically honest.

Not very good odds.

Are the characters "cardboard" as one reader suggests? I don't think so! If you can tell Mike Havel from Ken Larsson or Dennis, and Juniper from Signe or Pam, you have characters that stick in your mind.

Mike Havel is an ex-marine, now a pilot who crashes his light plane but saves his passengers, the Larssons. He now needs to trek with them back to civilization. But civilization is gone. Fortunately for the good people he meets, and unfortunately for the bad guys, he is an experienced backwoodsman, as well as a trained killer when need be.

Juniper Mackenzie is a professional musician with a Celtic turn, but is also a Wiccan. And her particular brand of "being close to the Earth" as well as an unusual tough-mindedness helps save her "coven" and start the beginnings of a community.

The story of these two and their followers, and the evil men who come crawling out of the woodwork when there is no "duly constituted authority" to keep them under control, make a fine novel the moves rapidly along and keeps you hooked until the wee hours. Although this is the first in a projected trilogy, it ends on a high point. But you want to read more to find out what happens next.

Is Feudalism unlikely as one reviewer suggests? Unfortunately, I think not. We need to build the great Monasteries to survive against the ravages of history, and that ain't happening, despite Google.

Rating:
Summary: Spellbinding
Review: Let's get a couple of things straight. This is not really an "alternative history" book. It takes place in the 1998 and it was written in 2004. The action could equally well have taken place six years later. Nor is it a time-travel book: the characters don't really go backwards in time or anything like that. Nor is it really a science fiction book. After all, there is a weird change after which people still function but electricity does not, solar energy works but dynamite does not, guns won't fire because gunpowder burns too slowly, and gasoline engines won't work but gasoline burns rather well, thank you! Kerosine, twigs, and matches burn normally. Meanwhile, hot air balloons work but steam engines don't work. I was waiting to find out if airguns still worked!

No, this is a fantasy book, where the laws of nature haven't merely changed, but no longer seem to make any sense or be consistent. And there are all sorts of unlikely coincidences in the story. Still the characters do make sense. Many of them fight for their lives and for the lives of their loved ones. And the motivations of the characters made at least as much sense as those in most of the other catastrophe fiction books I've read.

I found the book captivating, and I liked the characters. And I was very happy to read a book that had a Wiccan heroine and a favorable treatment of Wicca in general.

If you are thinking of getting this book, do so! You'll really enjoy it.

Rating:
Summary: Could have been better...
Review: Next time I meet up with Walter (Jon Williams) I will be passing along a message to S.M. Sterling about "Dies the Fire;"

Good book, could have been better.

As someone who is in the SCA, quite frankly the antagonist would have been stopped from the beginning. Okay, okay - I know. There has to be an antagonist for the "good" people to fight and making the person a historian / fringe SCA type goes with the back to the Middle Ages in reference to technology. But someone like him would have been stomped in the ground as soon as he attempted to take over.

I also have problems with the lack of technology. For things to not work then some fundamental laws of chemistry and physics have to be altered rather drastically. Sorry, but I just can't buy into this.

There are other small inconsistancies such as the old Mormon couple just happen to have had a delivery of seed potatoes yet not having an adequate supply of insulin (hint - it could have been kept in the root cellar); or the blacksmith happening to know how to make riveted chainmail (it isn't that easy - I should know - my wife teaches armoring at the local college); or how this person or that person just happened to be where they were when they are needed (such as the SAS sergant).

Still, these inconsistancies won't stop me from reading the next book(s) in the series. However, I will get them used or from the local library.

Rating:
Summary: It's the end of the world as we know it...
Review: Stirling has written a real gem, one of those books that's hard to put down once you start. In the scenario that he comes up with he manages to ask a chilling question: what happens when all those tons of food that comes into a city every day just stops coming? The fact that gunpowder doesn't work (as well as electricity) is a nice touch, although it stretches the believability of the story just a bit. Also, the good fortune the Bear Killers have in finding people who just happen to have medieval-friendly skills is just a little hard to swallow, but it does make for a great story.

Stirling has left himself a LOT of room to come with a sequel. I hope he takes advantage of it!

Rating:
Summary: An end of the world done well
Review: The strength of this first book of a series is in the believable behaviour of the people in a world where electricity, internal combustion engines and firearms no longer work. The carnage, desperation and brutality as people scramble for food is sometimes tragic and always dramatic. The survivors the book focuses on are a bit too clever at times, and tend to build things a tad too easily for my cynic's eye. And, talented people like vets, horse wranglers, and blacksmiths, not to mention men who can make bows, come along too quickly, and too readily. But it's quite engrossing watching them trying to put together new societies and rules amidst the blood and horror. No hint of why the laws of physics have been overturned is given, not in this book, anyway, but the world set up is believable and constant. Though I have my doubts whether a bunch of Americans would immediately revert to feudalism. This book, though, is well worth a read, and I will be buying the sequels when they emerge to find out how they make out. A warning: My copy had 30 pages duplicated, and was missing 30 pages (278-310), so you might want to check that as soon as you get the book.

Rating:
Summary: Good Concept but Big Disappointment
Review: This book by S.M. Sterling was a big dissapointment to me. It had a very good concept but the new age withcraft spouted by one of Sterling's major characters (Juniper Mckenzie) was both annoying and disgusting. Juniper is constantly praying to this or that "goddess" and on at least one occasion prayed to the "horned one." I quit reading it after only a few chapters because of that kind thing. It could have been a good book if Sterling would have just kept that kind of crap out of his writing.

Rating:
Summary: Frustrating but Engrossing
Review: What a fascinating, frustrating book. The scenario of a sudden end to hi-tech has such potential as a background for a ripping adventure yarn that it carries the book. It's easy to get caught up in the fantasy of "what would I have done", since it is set in an alternative near past.

But Stirling appears to have gotten lazy, allowing the story to drift toward becoming a simple fantasy genre with a salting of a few remnants of technology to spice it up. I say "appears", because I hope that he is cunningly lulling readers into a comfortable mental rut, from which he will violently wrench us in a future book.

The two main characters are in a sense tragic figures - fated to become powerful - except Stirling portrays them as so pure of spirit that they never really need to struggle to resist the temptation to abuse their growing power. Their nemesis is portrayed almost as a cartoon villain - though I could accept that as merely the characters' view of him, given their limited contact with him.

Stirling could salvage this storyline in a future book by showing Lord Bear and Lady Juniper defeating "The Protector", but in the process threatening to become mirror images of him as power corrupts them. Lord Bear has already started down that path, establishing himself as a feudal lord, his justice swift, violent and easy - perhaps he is doomed.

Will Lady Juniper begin to suspect what is happening to her, and fight to draw humanity back from the edge of a new dark age? Perhaps she will see through the suspiciously sudden potence of her Wiccan gods, and realize that a false god or gods have caused this terrible disaster and cynically taken on her mythos as a convenient mask? Is this a technological singularity novel in fantasy genre disguise? I hope so. I'd hate to think this was a story about alien space bats.

I give this book 3 stars, but if Stirling recovers in future books, I will retroactively make it 5.