I’m about half way through Dies the Fire now, and I am feeling divided as to whether or not this is a good book. There’s some serious negatives, and one serious positive. I am enjoying this book, but the negatives may just ruin the whole experience for me yet.
So, the negatives. First, you have to accept the premise of the story. In the world of this book, several fundamental laws of nature are altered. Electricity is gone. Explosives don’t work. And combustion engines are out, too. I could have accepted the electricity thing (EMP or something), but the rest just doesn’t make sense. What could make gunpowder stop exploding or stop gasoline from burning? Second, there are serious time issues here. There aren’t any dates in the book for the most part, so it’s hard to keep track of how long things are taking to do. But it seems to me that things (like starvation rates, animal and plant life recovery, collapse of civilization, food running out) are happening way faster than I would have expected. It could be that I think things are moving faster than Stirling intended them to. Or it could be that Stirling is ignoring the element of time in order to make his plot race along. Third, the Wiccans are bugging the crap out of me. They’re like Ueber-Wiccans. And, honestly, it’s just the language that’s driving me up the wall. The religion itself (the ceremonies and such) haven’t made much of an appearance. But if I read the words “Blessed be” much more, I may just have to wing this book across the room and then skip to the sections without witches.
But, there is a huge positive. The premise is interesting enough, and the plot is interesting enough, that I find myself thinking about this book when my neurons have a spare moment. I think about what my family and I might do if something like this happened to our world. I even dreamed about that senario last night. This only happens when I read books that just fascinate me.
There are a lot of negatives in the minus column. But the postives may outweigh them for now.
But if Juniper says “Blessed be” one more time….Gah!