What do you get when you mix a post-apocalyptic world with Middle Earth, toss in a few cannibals,
Wiccans, gang members, an ex-history professor-cum-despot who uses the Eye of
Sauron as his standard, some guys in kilts, and outfit them all with medieval weaponry? Apparently you get the decidedly
unsubtle pseudo-fantasy world created by author S.M. Sterling in his novel
Dies the Fire.
Okay, now you're probably wondering what this novel is really about, and I assure that I'm not making any of the above up. From the back of the book:
The Change occurred when an electrical storm centered over the island of Nantucket produced a blinding white flash that rendered all electronic devices and firearms inoperable--and plunged the world into a dark age humanity was unprepared to face...
I wanted to like this book. I really did. It was recommended to me by a friend whom I had given
In the Courts of the Crimson Kings by Stirling. In fact, I didn't know a thing about Stirling's work when I gave the book as a gift, but the friend (Andy) took to the author's style and set about reading his other works, which included
Dies the Fire and all the other books in the
Emberverse Series. Frankly, I was dreading reviewing this book, because I haven't the slightest idea where to even start. So let me put forth an apology for what will almost certainly be the scattered diatribe to follow.
But let me start with a very simple three letter English word: Bad.
This book is just
bad in so many ways. There are occasional bursts of pretty language, but these are almost always overshadowed by the terribly confusing sentences surrounding them. So many times I had to stop and backtrack because I had lost track of the main point that the author was trying to make. I often wondered if he was being purposefully vague so as to not spoil some as yet unseen future plot point, but that never ended up being the case. The prose is just that muddied and terrible.
Aside from the confusing nature of the storytelling, there are just too many unrealistic hurdles within the context of this strange new world that Stirling has created I sometimes didn't know whether to laugh or cry upon reading them. The time line of the book spans barely a year, and within that year we are expected to believe that groups of people have organized themselves into communities, covens (trying not to roll my eyes), armies, and even independent city states. In this one year, these groups have been able to sow and harvest fruitful crops, build up live stocks, build palisades, fortified structures and siege engines. Not to mention the fact that they had to teach themselves how to do most of this stuff including learning how to make and use medieval weaponry and armor like swords, bows, pikes, chain mail, and helmets.
Does any of this sound ridiculous to anyone else? Did I mention that the bad guy in this tale is an ex-history professor and
SCA geek and that he uses the Eye of
Sauron as his banner? Oh, I did, didn't I? Well, that's stupid enough to warrant being said twice.
Before the book is finished (and remember, this is all in the span of one year), one group called Clan
Mackenzie will have organized themselves into a Scottish style clan under the leadership of the clan's namesake Juniper
Mackenzie, a red headed, fair skinned,
Wiccan High Priestess of Scots-Irish descent who just happens to speak Gaelic fluently. You find those types every day don't you? Yeah, she throws these little nuggets of Gaelic wisdom out often enough that it becomes very annoying. And it becomes doubly annoying every time she translates what she's said for those listening. It comes across as pretentious and down right fake. By the time the one year mark has passed, the clan will come to commonly refer to her as Lady Juniper, and most of them (women included) will have donned kilts and traditional Scottish dress as their ordinary, everyday attire. Trust me; it's as ludicrous as it sounds.
The other main groups are nearly as bad and I'll spare you the details.
After a while I started to develop an idea of why Sterling made some of the choices that he made. What I came up with you may take with a grain of salt. I think that Stirling was a geek in school. I think he lived in fantasy books, especially Tolkien's, and I think that his interest in those stories prompted his interest in all of the things that influenced them. And so one day, he became a successful writer and realized that he could make a world where people like himself would thrive, and where all others would have a very hard time of it.
And so he set about creating his world and his own mythology by sprinkling it with references to
LOTR, Scandinavian and Celtic culture, the Dark Ages and the Middle Ages, medieval combat, and paganism. The problem lies not in these influences, but in the way he handles them with all the deftness of a
paraplegic painter. The mythology he tries to create is rushed, clumsy, and ill conceived.
In the end, it was just too much for me to buy into. If Stirling had set this story a few generations after the Change, I could have gotten on board with some of these ideas. People need myths and legends and rites and rituals to cling to. But in the first year after a cataclysmic, world-changing disaster I hardly think anyone would have time to worry all that much about making kilts and figuring out what sort of cutesy names to call their leaders.
No, my common sense tells me that they'd barely have enough time and wherewithal to just mete out some sort of existence. Survival isn't always easy or pretty.
For better examples of this, look to David
Brin's The Postman and
Cormac McCarthy's
The Road. Steer clear of
Dies the Fire unless you are either able to suspend great amounts of disbelief, or have a great deal more patience for the absurd than I.
Kirk out.
Just thought it worth mentioning that casting for The Hobbit is under weigh and has a shooting schedule that should begin in June of 2010, with a tentative release date of December 2011 for the first film (the Lord of the Rings prequel will be broken into two movies).
