Rating: 
Summary: A Terrific Novel
Review: The first rule of fiction is to be true to the characters and let the story flow from them. While a lot of science fiction focuses on ideas to the detriment of characterization, Holy Fire works really hard to be true to its characters, especially Mia/Maya. The ideas are there too, as they always are in Sterling, but the flow naturally from the story. A terrific book.
Rating: 
Summary: Search for self in the future
Review: This book has a lot of the trappings of science fiction-- life extending technology, genetically engineered pets, virtual reality games-- but the center, in the end, is the search for emotional completion engaged upon by Mia Ziemann, the protagonist of the book. In this book, Ziemann goes through a radical life extesion procedure that pushes her through the life of the young and vivid and out the other side through to the Holy Fire. Many things impressed me about this book, and I found it very hard to put down, but one of the things I liked the most was the truthfulness of the search for this elusive quality. Mia isn't instantly a great artist. She doesn't discover amazing abilities she should have exploited earlier. All she uncovers (but that 'all' is everything) is the will to carry through and develop for herself. There were frequent loose ends in the book (I felt like the memory palace and the Plato sequences were never developed fully enough) but the book itself was strong enough to carry them. Definitely recommended.
Rating: 
Summary: Boring Story, Interesting Ideas
Review: This book was good in that it has some interesting ideas about the future, mortality and aging. This might have made it recommendable.
But the story didn't have any meat on it. It was actually pretty boring and ultimately a disappointment. And for this, it's not really recommendable.
Rating: 
Summary: Zzzzzzz
Review: Too long, boring plot (near zero drama), peppered with numerous implausibilities from the school of sci-fi writing that thinks it can throw in whatever utopian, hair-brained idea it likes (almost at random) without regard to context or economic plausibility. Bleah. Three stars for concept, minus two for draining the life from it.
Rating:
Summary: good stuff
Review: Well this is the first book bu Bruce sterling i read. it was assigned to as a part of my literature class at the local community college. it was a good book. it is set in the future where old people are the richest and have all the power, and those who could afford it could live longer lives thanks to life extension procedures. The main character is an old lady named Mia who has spent her whole life being cautious and never lived her life to the "fullest" Mia realises that her life sucked and went in for a radical procedure that made her young again. but she was under strict observation, she fled to europe and had meet alot of people as she tries new thing she had never experienced before. good read not alot of science fiction to confuse the heck out of no one,.
Rating:
Summary: A convincing future
Review: With this book, Bruce Sterling has created one of the most believable futures I have read. Most of his predictions are well-reasoned, and he doesn't overlook the social consequences of his technologies. The characters are believabler as well, although Mia/Maya is the only one fleshed out at length. Sterling's writing style is good; although he isn't exactly a poet, his sentences and paragraphs are clear and the book is quite readable. The only real problem is the plot, which is a little hard to follow. Personally, I can enjoy a good setting as well as a good plot, but if you demand plenty of action then you might not like this book.Unfortunately, I haven't found Sterling's other novels to be as good as this one--I wasn't that impressed with 'Distraction' and didn't even finish 'Heavy Weather.' His short stories are well worth a look, though.
Rating:
Summary: HOT WRITER VISITS POST-CW EUROPE, WRITES OF GROWING OLD
Review: You know, there's really no GOOD reason why we should spend only 10% (or 12% or whatever, pace the latest political drumroll) of GDP on HEALTHCARE. Bruce Sterling writes about a future, not far off but far enough, in which we've just thrown up our hands and let it absorb as much as it will. Which, as he rightly extrapolates, is a LOT. HOLY FIRE is about the Health Care Budget That Ate America. It's also about "cosmetology," as in "College of Cosmetology" (as in, where beauticians go first)-- how to look younger than you are, and (maybe) feel better than you do or would. One of our HANGUPS in deciding how much we should spend on health care as a nation, is deciding what is "cosmetic" and what is "really medical." Sterling sees right through this: It's all the same. He writes a novel to show us. Maya Ziemann is a Medical Economist who starts out strolling about San Francisco but translocates quickly to Eastern Europe, where, unfortunately, she remains more or less thereafter, having experiences about getting older . Sterling is a chewy writer; not too crisp, especially here, but chewy. HOLY FIRE needs a bit of "holy fire" (as in action; a narrative "hot foot") to get itself going. It SOUNDS (reads) often enough as if it were WRITTEN by a 94-year-old woman. I ordered this book from AMAZON sight unseen and read it right through -- as I will Sterling's next effort, without a doubt. This isn't one of his best, but that still puts it well up, percentile-wise, on the competition. Sterling's an Idea Writer. And what the heck, you may LIKE Mia Ziemann as she either does or doesn't grow very old
Rating:
Summary: Sterling's best novel -- "A+"
Review: _____________________________________________
Mia, a 94-yr old woman at the close of the 21st C., tries a new life-
extension treatment. She emerges in the body of a thrill-seeking
20-yr-old. . . you say you've seen this story before? Not as
related by master extrapolationist, storyteller & all-around fine
writer Bruce Sterling.
Let's go into the polity, the medical-industrial complex that rules the
world, where "the whip-hand of coercive power is held by
smiling & stout-hearted medical rescue personnel. And by social
workers. And by very nice old people. . ."
"There were, of course, some people who disagreed with
the entire idea of life extension. Their moral decision was
respected & they were perfectly free to drop dead."
The story-line is simple: a bildungsroman, the wanderjahr of a
95-yr-old girl thru 21st C. Europe.
We're at a fashion show in fin-de-siecle Roma. Mia is getting ready:
..they put the wig on & she left human perfection for a
higher realm. It was a very smart wig. This wig could have leapt from
her scalp like a supersonic octopus & flung its piercing tendrils right
thru a plaster wall... It was a staggeringly pretty wig, a wig in rich,
solid, deeply convincing, faintly luminescsent auburn, a wig as
expensive, as cozy & as well-designed as a limousine... When it
curled lustrously about her neck & shoulders it behaved the way a
woman's hair behaved in daydreams...
The models were old women, and they looked the way that modern
old women looked when they were in truly superb condition ...
They showed none of the natural signs of human aging, but they were
just a little crispy, a little taut. The models were solemn and sloe-eyed
and dainty and extremely strong...
Their clothes were decorative and columnar and slender hipped and
without much in the way of a bustline... The clothes were
splendidly cut... Rather ecclesiastical, rather bankerly, rather like the
court dress of high-powered palace eunuchs from the Manchu
Forbidden City...
Well. I could go on, & probably would if I had a scanner, or was a better
typist.... but you should be picking up the flavor of the book, the
richness and density of invention. Sterling at his best reads something
like a collaboration between Tom Wolfe & John McPhee. Folks, I've
been reading this stuff for 40 years. and I'm hear to tell you, it don't get
much better than this.
Highly recommended.
Review copyright 1996 by Peter D. Tillman
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