Dies the Fire

A Novel of the Change

Michael Havel was flying over Idaho en route to the holiday home of his passengers when the plane's engines inexplicably died, forcing a less than perfect landing in the wilderness. And, as Michael leads his charges to safety, he begins to realize that the engine failure was not an isolated incident.

Juniper Mackenzie was singing and playing guitar in a pub when her small Oregon town was thrust into darkness. Cars refused to start. Phones were silent. And when an airliner crashed, no sirens sounded and no fire trucks arrived. Now, taking refuge in her family's cabin with her daughter and a growing circle of friends, Juniper is determined to create a farming community to benefit the survivors of this crisis.

But even as people band together to help one another, others are building armies for conquest.

©2004 Stirling (P)2008 Tantor

Reseñas de la Crítica

"The novel's dual themes - myth and technology -should appeal to both fantasy and hard SF readers as well as to techno-thriller fans." ( Publishers Weekly)

I had high hopes but should have left it at book 1

It starts in the real world and slowly loses the plot. It is just another twist on the galloping 'Thrones' machine and it really doesn't get there.

Returned It

Just too ridiculous. Had potential to be entertaining, but far too much distracting corny nonsense. Knew I should stop when I found myself rolling my eyes in annoyance or thinking about how ridiculous that last scene was, instead of paying attention to the story. I could give examples but there are so many, so quickly, that anyone listening could find plenty of their own within the first hours.

I dont like using expressions like Mary Sue but this thing digs so deep into that it cannot be helped. Like the author was going for the Mary Sue award or something.

And the pacing… clumsy and absurdly fast. Sure many of us rightfully complain when a story takes too long to get started… but thats not even what Im talking about. Portland conquered roughly 3 days after the event by a history teacher with an SCA fetish? Not only was it way too fast, way too easy, and missing a great chance to tell an interesting part of the overall tale… no…Portland, the land of ANTIFA morons who love to smash things and set fires? Like that place isn’t ready for a riot with no apocalypse needed. One molotov cocktail or acid bomb and Mr History Knight is in a world of hurt (thats the problem with armor… you are trapped in your protection). Stable, high quality glass bottles and a wide variety of accelerants and acids would be readily available… unlike the true olden days when the former was hard to make and the latter rare and not well understood (even if gasoline is a magical fail now there are many other options - but Im not sure gasoline wont work, since i stopped reading… combustion engines themselves are dead, but that in itself doesn't mean gasoline, oils, alcohols, other chems wont burn, and The Protector in his first appearance makes a comment about dousing someone in gasoline and burning them alive). Would be difficult for the “event” to make acids inert since that would result in a host of biological and natural world problems. Just because you are knocked back to medieval times, does not mean you have to limit your thinking to what a medieval brain assumed and accepted about the world and warfare, even with magical limitations. But my point isnt to label flaws in world design… its how quick a major city fell to what is suggested to be an instantaneously organized and equipped unstoppable force, which it wouldnt be. Within the chaos of a large city falling apart… various kinds of molotovs are just one of many ways to ruin an SCA day. The real threat wouldn't be individual attackers but the mass of chaotic violence itself and the difficulty traveling, communicating and organizing that fast in the middle of such a mess.

Im not going to get into the Irish brogue goddess… other than to say in a life of reading many books, she ranks very high on “the most cringe-worthy” list. Doesn't take much to make Wicca look ridiculous, just like if there was a Christian commune in the story where the leader went around saying things like - “Thou shalt planteth thy corn or I shall smote thee!” Yeah thats a group Id join… long term success stamped all over it and its prioritization of linguistic affectations. I can see putting on a fake Irish brogue when performing on stage at bars as a minstrel… but doing it as a “goddess” while also reverting to made up “wicca speak” to create the illusion of mystical being… ends up coming off like someone trying too hard and too obviously to be something they are not. Like a religious charlatan rather than someone to be taken seriously. But the busker high priestess / massive track of land owner (yeah, that’s a convenient inheritance to move the plot along fast), talks like that all the time, everywhere, before and after. In the real world someone like that would get laughed at behind their back, if not to their face - “oh, here comes Miss Pretendabrogue.” And more importantly in terms of an audio book - it gets really, really annoying to listen to. I stopped before the wicca speak half of it got too out of hand, but it was starting… and I could feel “annoying” ready to turn fast into “grating.”

And the coven gleefully going along with her faux celtic priestess routine, while taking up similar “wiccan speak” themselves as their new normal - as if “coming out of the closet” to throw away the banality of everyday common English and finally embrace their “merry be” true linguistic selves… yeah, right in the middle of a near world ending event… im sure if I was surrounded by an apocalypse that was knocking civilization back hundreds of years, killing most of the population in a variety of terrible ways, leaving me with a list of very difficult problems to handle in a desperate struggle to survive, first on my mind would be making sure to use the proper anachronistic phrasings of group acceptance to achieve an air of historical credibility / authenticity. Because once you got that, all else will just fall into place. “Do the words right and be serious about it, or it wont look real!” Yeah, that and dress up are always the most important things when it comes to true belief, let alone survival.

Im not saying in such a situation faith would not be something people would turn to… of course they would. Its all the readily assumed affectations and posturing in the middle of an extreme catastrophe - like its “just another happy weekend at the Renfaire! Pocky-clypse, what pocky-clypse? So long as the goddess provides, all is blessed as blessed could be.” No, thats not just unrealistic, its creepy delusional. Besides too… people who have lived their entire lives in our modern world simply do not and cannot shrug that all off with no sense of shock or need for serious adjustment. No matter your beliefs or hobbies, you do not possess the mindset of a distant time period you have never truly lived in. You are / were immersed in a totally different reality (that of the real present day) no matter how much you may wish to reject it due to being unhappy with modern society. Even with “the event” limiting technology, your memory isnt wiped nor is the influence of your life long exposure.

But perhaps such immersion in style can effectively overcome widespread PTSD brought on by experiencing the horrors of an apocalypse… mass delusion combating mass trauma… maybe that as a more realistic explanation of behaviour lol.

Besides too… Wicca does not confer any greater connection to nature or ability to farm. If you are a farmer or naturalist, and a Wiccan, sure, because you are already a farmer or naturalist. But reading some books on magical herbalism, playing dress up, and saying “merry be” isnt going to make you skilled in animal husbandry or the use of medieval farming equipment. Funny that the book even comments on how many of their covens Wiccans are from the computer industry… yeah, thats a skill set and environment that equals rapidly achieved 12th century farm life success.

I should add… I do not dislike Wicca or SCA. Quite the contrary, I have an MA in History, and love the subject and its wide range of topics and time periods. I also have a deep interest in anthropology, folklore, and pagan religious systems. So I have no aversion to such being present in a story (though Wicca really isnt True Pagan or Ethnic Pagan, its more of a Nu-Paganish “best of the past” that was created 70 years ago, just in time for the Sixties to embrace it). My issue is more with how its presented… how things fall together even easier and faster than they would have if no apocalypse had happened… and how the psychological impact of the world collapsing apparently has little psychological impact.

I hate doing this but… little miss master archer? A 25 pound draw weight bow is not enough to effectively hunt deer, let alone elk. For elk you’d need at least twice that. Hers is a target bow or small game at best. An inexperienced (at hunting) 13 to 14 year old teenage girl with a 25 pound bow that’s based on a flashy mix of ancient / fantasy design, is not going to one shot an elk (and no, it wasn’t a super lucky shot through the eye… it was a bleed out that magically went deep enough from very short range, at that low draw weight, on a snap shot). Oh and I almost forgot… she is using fantasy character correct bone tipped arrows. Guess they’re not growing elk hide like they used to. Goodluck.

And… I have no affection for would be rapists so her next one shot a chapter or so later I was glad for… even though a traumatized, naked, bitten and bloody teenage girl who just watched her mom be butchered, would likely not pull off a snap shot against a fleeing target at night, shot through a broken window, half blocked by an adult male friend, who is jumping through that window, at the same time as her arrow passes by, to hit her fleeing target that is outside in the dark. But a dead rapist is a good rapist so we can let that one slide. I can only imagine what would have been next on the trick shot list though.

Too… the survivalist / prepper crowd would do a lot better than the comic book groups promoted here… no matter how much the author tries to dismiss them as looney backwoods militia types.

Imma stop there, because the list could get a whole lot longer.

Yes, its fiction. And even if over the top, fiction can be entertaining. Which is why I stayed with it as long as I did. But like I said at the start of this review… I soon found myself “arguing” in my head with the author as one ridiculous or corny scene piled on top of another. This became too distracting to immerse in the tale. There is only so much belief a sensible person can suspend. Even for someone who loves fiction lol. Unless the tale is a comic farce to begin with, which this is not… or wait, maybe it was… hmm, Wicca vs SCA death-match to rule the world… maybe I approached the story wrong lol.

The basis of the story isnt bad… and the Wicca / SCA angle would work much better if the author had taken the time to try to more realistically fit and adapt the idea into the world he was suggesting. Such would require reconciling Wicca / SCA with the reality of that world… not just taking the easy route of mashing the square peg into the round hole as fast as possible to quickly rush in a world that comes off too silly to connect with… when it could have been great.

A review of the Change

I have nothing critical to say of the performance given by Todd McLaren in the rendition of the story; this review's opinion towards flaws is specifically of a story perspective. Todd McLaren does a solid job in his performance.

That being said Stirling is as a wordsmith good at what he does. The writing of this book is solid work, and hence a solid three stars despite certain flaws. Dies the Fire, the book being reviewed, is book one in a series and I'm loath to grade for flaws that became more pronounced in the latter novels. However it is also true that bluntly put Stirling's world building suffers some, but more than that his 'wicca fetish', and that such treatment overshadows the dealings of the MacKenzies in the novel detracts from what is otherwise a good opener to a world turned upside down.

It is in my opinion that this book is best taken by itself. That it is a solid story, and should not be weakened by the mishaps and silly prophetic things and railroading of the Change that occur in the latter books of the series.

Great Story

I really enjoyed this story. I found myself sitting in the car just to hear more. When i finished this book I raced online to buy the second title.

I felt like I was there. A Good Book

No more electricity? I can see it. Can we survive if suddenly were are thrown back in time to where we have to plant food by hand and fight off the gangs and thugs with swards and crossbows? I found myself in the struggle with them fighting off evil people and protecting the good ones. I enjoyed this and look forward to the next one.