Saturday, December 19, 2009

The Scourge of God, by S.M. Stirling

The Scourge of God, by S.M. Stirling

The second book of the series is another 500+ page brick which takes our intrepid heroes only as far as Des Moines in their trek to Nantucket. The action and adventure are still there, and I’ll pick up the third volume when it is out, but at the rate things are moving the last entry of the trilogy will either be a whirlwind or require yet another book (or trilogy!) to wrap things up. Stirling takes an unfortunate turn from science-fiction into fantasy here: the “big bad” is able to send psychic messages and mentally control others. The original appeal of this series was seeing how normal people react to massive change, but this development of magic hurts the premise. I’m definitely losing my enthrallment with this particular universe.

First Sentence:
“We’d be a lot farther east if we’d gone the southern route,” Edain Aylward Mackenzie grumbled quietly.

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