From the Vault:

Not THAT Vault. And certainly not the Disney vaults. These are two reviews I did for Amazon on PA Books, which are two that I have at the bottom of the Fiction list marked with an X. Generally, when it comes to reviewing books on a major site like Amazon, if the book is good, I give it 5 stars and be done with it. I want to let people know that its good but discover their own reasons for liking or even loving the work. When a book is very bad, however, I like to state why I thought so, instead of being a simple-minded naysayer, and warn people away from truly horrible work. To that end, the reviews I leave behind tend to paint me as little more of a naysayer, which is entirely not the case. Here are the reviews:

DIES THE FIRE, by S.M. Stirling (Reviewed January 12, 2007)

I tend to agree with more of the negative commentary regarding this book. To reiterate the major points for consideration:

1) Why are all military-background protaganists in fiction from one of the elite groups? I served my country and I vouch wholeheartedly for the capability of the "normal" forces. Any Marine would be more than capable of possessing the needed survival skills, and could even instill discipline and order in civilians. There's no need, on this scale, to revert to the "Special Forces fallacy" that authors tend to lazily embrace to make their characters "special" or "exotic." Let's try "real" next time.

2) Related to the previous comment... I strongly suspect Mr. Stirling has had shallow or no experience with real Marines, elite forces or not. So much of Mike's character doesn't ring true to me and personally, I find him insulting and difficult to like as a protaganist. I could identify more easily with the character of Thomas Covenant in another novel...

3) Juniper is simply annoying. A good-hearted wiccan in the midst of evil Christians spouting Gaelic and spewing gooey songs. (Heavy-handedness will become my favorite phrase in this review; this time I think it was to impress some woman in Mr. Stirling's circle of real life friends). I see Julia Roberts in this role, using the "prostitute with the heart of gold" approach, such as in Pretty Woman. Another character who is difficult to like.

4) The author's prejudices seeped into the work, and the heavy-handedness shows. There is a difference between using it as a character flaw and an extreme pervasiveness throughout the work. Did someone comment that this was the political/theological antithesis of Left Behind? I would vote that as accurate, especially on the positive coincidence aspect (see comment 6).

5) This book has science on the order of Star Trek: "We use what works and what doesn't, we change the laws of physics to make it fit." Simple machines and solutions are ignored, or receive horrible treatment because letting them creep into his post-Change world would tip the balance of his authoring capability of actually having to research and deal with it. Another example of heavy-handedness.

6) So much coincidence! I am a Jane-of-all-Trades, and possess many and varied skills that would be useful for surviving this kind of aftermath. However, for as many years as I have or had been involved in Renaissance Faires and the SCA, I have yet to encounter as few people who comprise the vast majority of skillsets a mere handful of these folks cover. Heavy-handed, anyone?

7) Overall, I got the impression this was either A) written with the intention that it would be a TV Series or B) snippets of ideas badly stitched together. There were a lot of unnecessary TV-show filler interludes (like the inanely placed "love" scenes that do little or nothing for character development and are too demure to titillate readers who must have their erotica wedged in otherwise decent fiction). Too much chronological jumping also. Time tags can be overused in fiction, but here they would have worked throughout instead of at the beginning.

8) I WILL give Mr. Stirling kudos for the concept of a new way of turning society upside down. Personally, my favorite genre is "ye olde post-nuclear-attack" world, but I do enjoy something new, and I give it the two stars for that at the very least. (Edit, I changed my mind. Down to one star).

I'm done ranting. Where's my tea?

Edit: I'm revisiting this review two years later, and I wonder why I even gave it two stars? Maybe because I hoped somewhere along the way someone would come along and be inspired enough by Stirling's drivel to say to themselves "I can do better than that" and write another sci-fi novel in this same vein with plausible characters and rationale for the startling loss during this SHTF type scenario. I won't lie; it inspired me to start writing a PA novel. If this excrement can get published, then I have a more than decent chance of getting my own work printed and on the shelves.

THROUGH DARKEST AMERICA, by Neal Barrett (Reviewed 21 JAN 2004)

This novel began to flesh out a "real world" of a post-apocalyptic nature, but so much is left dangling that I have to wonder if a series of novels was intended. Even if one feels a little pity for the protaganist in the beginning, in the end there was no genuine justification for the reasons and the methods he used to get even with the murderers. The ending was more of a punchline to one long and horrific joke -if you read the first few chapters and the last few pages, that's all that is really necessary for understanding the world Barrett created.

I added a comment to this review that I found out later there was indeed a sequel, but a story needs to be self-contained in a single volume with very few threads left dangling, otherwise the intention of it becoming an obvious "buy the next book to find out what happens" publishing scam. Even comic books, while they may have a single unifying story arc throughout the series, contains a complete story in an issue or two. It is inexcusable in a novel.