S. M. Stirling presents his first Novel of the Change, the start of the New York Times bestselling postapocalyptic saga set in a world where all technology has been rendered useless.The Change occurred when an electrical storm centered over the island of Nantucket produced a blinding white flash that rendered all electronic devices and fuels inoperable—and plunged the world into a dark age … world into a dark age humanity was unprepared to face…
Michael Pound was flying over Idaho en route to the holiday home of his passengers when the plane’s engines inexplicably died, forcing a less than perfect landing in the wilderness. And as Michael leads his charges to safety, he begins to realize that the engine failure was not an isolated incident.
Juniper McKenzie was singing and playing guitar in a pub when her small Oregon town was thrust into darkness. Now, taking refuge in her family’s cabin with her daughter and a growing circle of friends, Juniper is determined to create a farming community to benefit the survivors of this crisis.
But even as people band together to help one another, others are building armies for conquest…
more
First book in a great series (through Sword of the Lady… it goes off the rails in High Kind of Montival). But I’m getting ahead of myself… great book, very interesting premise, and well thought out and developed characters. If you like speculating on what might happen if civilization falls, these books are for you.
Fantastic story of survival in a world where electricity, steam power and explosives no longer work
I read the entire series. After a total collapse of combustion mechanisms and the resulting breakdown of the modern world, bands form to rebuild. I Found interesting and logical how different peoples and groups draw inspiration from different historical periods and literary sources, to structure their communities and governments . Some basis are spiritual, magical, feudalistic, religious, military, farming, tribal, cooperative associations, primitive, some systems that evolve as compelling leaders find solutions. Some stall. Full of interesting characters to admire, cheer on, follow in love and creation dynasties, fight for survival, create arts, etc. Loved it all.
Fascinating post-apocalyptic novel. If internal combustion and gunpowder no longer work, how will we survive? Will we survive? Some of us will, but not always who you think. The opposite side of “Earth Abides” and first in a series of alternate-future books with a leaven of supernatural.
Actually, I love this entire series. It can get weird and strange at times, but there’s something new to be discovered on each reading.
One of the best books off all time. First of an amazing series.
A series of poor writing
This is the start of a remarkable series that I have read several times.
I really enjoyed this book. I probably read it 35 years ago in hardcover. I have also read about 10 of the books in this series. If you like science fiction/fantasy you will like this book. The world as we know it comes to a tragic end, and the survivors revert to the feudal times.
Dies the Fire by S.M. Stirling is book one in the Emberverse series and this review relates to the audiobook version and for the whole series in general (as I’ve listened to them all). A catastrophic event results in all electrical equipment, anything battery run and guns etc not working. (The physics theory of this is explained in the latter novels and kind of makes sense, but for the story’s purpose it doesn’t really matter how or why.) Naturally chaos ensues and civilisation breaks down. Once rebuilding occurs much of society reemerges along medieval lines, or clan structures. Reading this you will think that it sounds fairly stereotypical and it is, BUT it’s a very well told story! The level of research Stirling has done into historic tools / crafts and how people would cope and rebuild is excellent and detailed. The narration by Todd McLaren is supurb. McLaren is capable of a wide range of character voices an even performs the women’s voices well. I found the main villain to be a bit one dimensional, but enjoyed the other characters. The combination of this detailed world building, fast paced story and McLaren’s excellent narration make for highly entertaining listening.
One of the best Post Apocalyptic books I’ve ever read!
I’ve read through several of the other reviews. I will say, pretty much everything described in the 1-star reviews is absolutely true, it just bothered me less than it bothered the people who gave the book 1 stars. So I suggest reading those reviews to see if this book is for you. Biggest negative of the book….it’s downright boring. There is very little action until the end and only a couple of chapters end with anything remotely resembling a cliff-hanger. Suspense in the book is almost non-existent, and the amount of fortunate coincidences boggles the imagation. The characters are very interchangeable which made it difficult to keep them apart. The author’s lack of consistency in referring to the characters contributed to the difficulty in keeping them straight (he would go back and forth between their first names, last names, and cutesy pet names he had for them.) By half-way through the book, I realized it didn’t matter which character was which, since they were so interchangeable, so I quit even trying to keep them straight. I found the writing hard to follow & unclear (for example, at the beginning of the book 2 teenage girls (main characters) appear, they are each described, but we aren’t told their names. The author then writes “Signe Larson sniffed and turned away…”, and the reader is left wondering who is Signe the older or the younger girl. Or maybe “signe” is some arcane title like Mrs and its the mother being referred to. Who knows? I eventually figured it out, but so much of the book was like that, the reader was left trying to figure out what in the world the author is talking about. The book is heavily pro-Wiccan, which would be fine, except its not connected in a meaningful way with the characters. We know that Junie is a true Wiccan believer & believes the Goddess is helping her, but why? We are never told how Junie became a Wiccan (other than hints of it being from teenage rebellion), or what led her to have such a deep faith in it. Without that connection, the Wiccan rituals and talk feel like they are randomly thrown in to promote the author’s personal beliefs. This was the first book I’ve read by the author, and I do not intend to read any other books by him. Still, the book was not completely unreadable, and the ending was slightly better than I had expected it to be based on the rest of the book. It’s just sad that such an interesting premise for a book was written so boringly.
We, self, husband and daughter, liked the two viewpoints of survival. I bought the two sequels also, it was that good. We’ve had some interesting discussions on it.
Good post-apocalyptic novel.
The best post-Apocalyptic novel I’ve ever read. The whole series is awesome!
This first volume of the series was an original, entertaining read…..the rest of the series got kind of old quickly, but this one was the best.
I liked it – the characters were different, but I’ve read better “ prepper” books. Try “Eden Rising” by Andrew Cunningham.
This is the start of a dystopic trilogy set in current times with a single ‘magic’ premise to accept: that electrical and high power reactions [gun powder, gasoline, steam] can be cut off instantly: planes fall from the sky, city dwellers starve to death and the main characters band together into four groups to survive at a medieval level including one where a medieval academic expert thinks he can be king.
This is an engrossing and fascinating series of books. Well researched and all too believable in the event of a post nuclear loss of communication and electrical power. Interesting twists regarding loss of explosives as well.
SM Stirling is a great author, writing gripping novels. Great characters, a story line that is hard to put down. Great first read, also great 2nd, 3rd, 4th time!