Virginia Hamilton: Cousins; The House of...

I hadn’t read this one and I felt like it was important to read at least one book by Virginia Hamilton. If you want to sum up the story in one word: atmospheric. It’s a pretty tight third person narration, focusing on Thomas Small, who is a sensitive kind of person and conveys the eeriness of house and town quite well. I appreciated the way Hamilton draws on the idea of history, and more specifically the history of slavery, as present and important to the story and the characters. It underlies everything in this book, and she never lets us forget it.

The ending of Kafka's The Castle: 

She held out her trembling hand to K. and had him sit down beside her, she spoke with great difficulty, it was difficult to understand her, but what she said

That's just one of twelve books in this Publisher's Weekly blog post about novels that end in the middle of a sentence. The reasons for each abrupt ending are given, but Kafka has the best excuse--he died. 

The books are the nine above and these three below:

Link

The book revolves around an interesting question; What if technology and gunpowder stopped working? Well of course the obvious answer is all hell would break loose. Dies the Fire sets up the world that will continue through several titles and introduces us to the 2 groups the series will be following, the Bearkillers and Clan Mackenzie.

It is the story that is the real high point of this book. I will say that some of the rules about what happens seem a bit weird and unconnected. However once you get past that the rest of the world evolves in a very believable way. The way groups form, who goes where, how areas of society break down all seem very well thought out. The story jumps back and forth between the Bearkillers and Clan Mackenzie, but it is the Bearkiller half of the story that really makes this book such a joy.

As with most books of the genre the characters can be a bit clichéd at times. Stirling does manage to have them rise above that for the majority of the book however. Most of the time when reading Dies the Fire the characters come off as well balanced and interesting. Anything that has to do with following Havel and his group around is completely engaging. The supporting Bearkillers are nearly as well written and interesting as Havel. I can almost not say enough how much I enjoyed reading about this group.

On the flip side you have the characters following Mackenzie. My praise for the Bearkillers should not lead you to believe the Mackenzie’s are completely uninteresting. My only real complaint about them was that the constant Wicca refrain that hurt any section of the book it showed up in, or at least made it more annoying. It is clear the author has a fondness towards the religion but it began feeling very preachy in parts. Unfortunately Stirling’s passion has overshadowed what could have been an otherwise equally interesting group to read about.

Of course what is any book without a villain? Arminger is a superb antagonist and comes off as incredible smart, ruthless, and only slightly flawed. Having read so many sci-fi titles with incompetent or completely outmatched bad guys, this depiction of a villain who is the equal of the heroes was a fresh change of pace.