This just came out, maybe the last book in the Dies The Fire universe?
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Well, there were some good parts and some bad parts. I did enjoy reading most of it, basically finished it in one day. But the pacing was weeeeeird. The Prophet’s War has been going on for like 3 books now, very very slowly, and the first half of the book continues at about that pace. And then, hey, all of a sudden, the war is over, Rudy kills the prophet, hurray! Then there’s a fair bit of zooming forward through time. Then Rudy dies and there’s a tease of something involving Japan. The end.
I’m not sure how deliberate that all was… maybe trying to convey the idea that often the end of a war is kind of anticlimactic. Instead of the war ending with a decisive battle, the war kind of peters down as one side just gets inescapably powerful and slowly and uneventfully grinds the other side down. But it was a bit weird to read.
There’s also something that I was sure was going to happen that then didn’t happen. There’s a discussion early on between Sandra and Juniper about later generations not believing The Change was real at all, or something along those lines. I was sure they were going to work together to build a Museum of the Change, or something… some kind of witnessed and explicit oral histories along with artifacts and so forth so that hundreds of years in the future people would still be able to understand and believe in The Change rather than just having it fall into legend. But nothing happened with that at all. I’ve also been wondering this whole time if at some point The Change will change back. That would be interesting given that at this point in the story clearly all the infrastructure for just turning back on the lights and so forth is loooong gone. But, people being people, there’s going to be a race to start building guns and so forth again.
Anyone else read it?
Oh, sod it, Max – seems that for 24 hours or so, no-one’s replied to this post of yours. I’m kind-of thinking, karma – I’ve lately started one on “Cafe Society”, about a couple of very different authors, with no replies so far. If I answer you – even if not in a way that you’d like – I might get answers on mine – even if not in a way that I’d like.
I was a Stirling fan for some years – loved his “middle period” – the “Island” trilogy, “Peshawar Lancers”, “Conquistador”. Read, and appreciated, the first “Dies The Fire” few novels – while feeling, in the words of a fellow-mostly-fan, “call me Mr. Fussyboots, but the death of 95% of the human race is a bit rich for my blood”. But when the “Emberverse” came to be (after approx. the third book in the series) about various-and-assorted divinities governing and directing humans’ doings on planet Earth – that turned me off, big-time. Please, let my sci-fi / fantasy be basically this-worldly / rational – not magical / mystical / mythological. Many Stirling fans have made the transition, and revel in the “three M’s” re the Emberverse – fine, more power to them – but it doesn’t do it for me. I struggled as far as the end of the fifth book in the cycle, then thought – for me, this is enough – and dropped the whole thing. I can’t recall how many books on, “The Given Sacrifice” is; and personally couldn’t care less, whether it’s the last in the series, or whether – assuming SMS stays alive and well and creating – there are “forty-eleven” more planned in the series, to take it to the year 2562. Sorry; but I’m totally done with the Emberverse.
I loved the series but then he went all Robert Jordan/GRR Martin on us and started d…r…a…g…g…i…n…g it out, so I stopped. I guess I’ll pick the last three up for a buck each on Amazon someday and read them.
Publishers and author of Fanasty series have to stop doing this crap and we have to stop buying it. :mad:
Myself, I just stopped reading Jordan and I only pick up Martin after used copies are cheap- unless I get sent a review copy, of course.
I just finished it…mostly because I’d stuck it through the whole series and wanted to get to the end.
It was disappointing. Stirling built an incredibly varied and fascinating world, came up with an incredibly evil and powerful villain…and then let the whole thing fizzle out and had the hero die in a meaningless scuffle on a beach with some pirates.
This, loved those late 90’s early 2000 books. Read the first two Emberverse books. Didn’t like the first one. Gave the second a try, nope. Haven’t read a word of his since.
Well, bear in mind that there was that scene in one of the Nantucket books where a blimp gets blown off course and ends up in the middle of Asia, and there’s no way that THAT is not a lead in to some book or side adventure or something and… nothing.
I really wanted to like these books. I loved the premise, loved the alternate history, just loved the whole IDEA of the books. But I found them really poorly written and I found myself skipping paragraphs and pages, just trying to figure out what happened. They characters lacked personality and soul.
So I read them and found that I no longer cared to finish the series. I wish someone else would start with the same premise and write really GOOD books about The Change.
I got just one further – baled out for ever, after The Scourge of God. And his other recent series, has been about vampires – OK, this is “my issue for me to deal with”, but I personally happen to find vampire stuff, anaesthetically boring and a turn-off; even when by an able writer. I figure that – barring some new and utterly unforeseeable change of direction – I’m finished as a reader of Stirling.
It would really seem, that it was basically his “middle period” that I liked – was in that era of his writing, that I discovered him. Subsequently tried his earlier “Draka” books; to my surprise (having heard so much from fans, about how over-the-top cruel and sadistic and generally nasty, the Draka folk were), I found the books very competently written, but essentially a bit dull – read the first two, was not inspired to go further. At least, though, the “Drakaverse” scene is fully and unashamedly a human one – no hauling-in of assorted gods and demons from “the Beyond”, to pull the strings.
I do still follow the “Yahoo” S.M. Stirling discussion board; as well as the Master’s books, it copiously discusses – rather a la TSD – “most things in heaven and earth” – a lot of interesting participants there, contributing interesting stuff.
I do gather, inter alia from the SMS “Yahoo” discussion board, that the author has been somewhat constrained in recent years, by what his publishers do and don’t want. This including that, for whatever reasons, the publishers are not keen on publishing further “Island / Nantucket” material; but have been mad-keen on book after book after book in the “Emberverse” series, and on Stirling’s latest stuff about vampires. Obviously, people need to eat, and folk are liable to be subject to real-world constraints which all of them may not like; nonetheless, I find it difficult to disagree with the – perhaps harsh – judgement by a TSD poster a while ago: “basically, Stirling has turned into a hack writer”.
To be likened there maybe, to his compeer and, I gather, personal friend Harry Turtledove; who IMO has produced both a lot of high-quality, original fiction; and a lot of “hack bilge”, much of the latter involving a seemingly endless variety of “rehashings and retreadings” of World War 2. It appears that Turtledove’s publishers very much want the unending WW2 shtick; but have less wish to publish, or continue publishing, various more original material by HT.
World war 2 with Aliens, with Fantasy Analogues, starting slightly earlier, in an alternative history; you’d think he’d be bored with writing takes on WW2 by now, never mind his readers.
Oh gawd, you’re not kidding. I liked Dies the Fire even though it was ridiculous. The next two got worse and worse but were still fun.
Then I picked up #4. Rudi and pals decided to travel across the country, from Oregon to the East Coast. Cool. Should be interesting to see what the rest of the country looks like. So they start their trip.
And they travel. And they travel. And they travel. And they travel. And the book and I start book 5. And they travel. And they travel. And they travel…I’ve just read something like 8,000 pages and they’ve barely cleared the Rocky Mountains.
I tried reading the most recent series, the first “War that came Early” book, nothing of any interest happens in it. You’d think it’d be hard to write a dull WW2 novel but he manages it.
I kept expecting a twist, some interesting alternate timeline spiraling off. Nope, the title is at least honest. WW2 starts early, there are 350’odd pages of barely skeched out viewpoint characters failing to be interesting and one of them dies at the end.
Apparently he’s up to book 4 of this series with no end in sight.
I loved the Nantucket trilogy and Conquistador; both ended with obvious hooks for sequels, and I’d really like to see sequels for both. I also enjoyed the original DtF trilogy, but the follow-on books seemed to drag on and on and on… I gave up on them after The Sunrise Lands (actually, I’m not sure if I even finished that one). As for the vampire series, I read the sample chapters posted online but that was it.
There are some truly fascinating conversations (and people) on the Stirling board, but I don’t read it very often now he’s not writing anything I like, and I haven’t posted there in a couple of years.
Same with Turtledove - I pretty much gave up on him four or five books into the Confederate WWI series, though I did really enjoy The Man with the Iron Heart (an Xmas present from my sister-in-law). I wish he’d write more Greek Traders books…
Things like that often really bother me… for instance, the movie Sphere which presented itself as sci fi and then ended up with some basically supernatural bogeyman (I’ve forgotten the details). But in this case, the entire series begins with a basically magical event. I actually thought that the idea of the world slowly transitioning from a world of science to a world of magic was interesting, and I generally enjoyed that aspect of things.
Indeed. In fact, I got the impression that the reason Stirling seemed to rush through the ending of this part of the story was because he was impatient to get to setting up the next part; where, presumably, the Montivalans will ally with the Japanese, build up a navy, and sail across the Pacific to make war on those Koreans, or whatever they are, who appear to have fallen under the influence of the same Powers who controlled the Cutters.