The Scourge of God [Mass Market Paperback]

S.M. Stirling hooked me with his first novel of the Change series "Dies the Fire". Stirling does an outstanding job of describing what might happen should all of our technology cease to function; no electricity, gasoline powered engines, and more importantly gun powder no longer functions. In the earlier novels he skates around the "why's" and goes right to the "How do we function now"? How do his characters survive; and what type of government will function in a world without technology? The answer is simple. Man returns to his tribal roots and a feudal system of governance fills the void.

While the first novels were about survival and war and the Earth's rise of the nerds (Witches with pretend Irish/Scot accents, people that believe they're elves from a Tolkien novel and recreationists are the new leaders), "The Scourge of God" is about Spiritual beliefs, prophets and messiah's. Stirling seems to be taking a page right from Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Now that man can again feed himself, he is searching for spirit and a reason for being. The world is beginning to change into a place of magic. Does the magic create the new beliefs and Gods, or does the belief itself create the magic? We don't know yet, but it will be interesting to find Stirlings views on this in his upcoming novels.

I found the "Scourge of God" to be a great read with plenty of action and hints at things to come. I anxiously await Stirlings next novel of the change.

From chapter nine:
"Long tables were set out buffet-style, with chefs in white hats waiting to carve the roasts and hams; whole yearling steers and pigs and lamb roasted over firepits behind them, the attendants slathering them with fiery sauce wielding their long-handled brushes like the forks of devils in the Christian hell."

The writing is flowery, with long, complex sentences hiding much ado about little, as our heroes, who call themselves such, make their way, mostly on horseback, across a vast continent once peopled by a homogeneous citizenry, but now inhabited by cannibals, remnants calling themselves the United States government, local dictators, religious fanatics, devils and gods.

That's enough of that. This series started, years ago in real time, as science fiction. It is now irretrievably fantasy. Or if it's not, the author has me completely fooled. The protagonists are on their way to Nantucket Island (remember that original series?) and, at the rate they are going based on the map in the front of the book, there are at least one or two more travelogs masquerading as novels to go before they get there. And then they have to find their way back.

Sterling's imagination is almost without living peer, I'll give him that, but things used to happen in his novels.

If you were to take out all of the songs, hymns, prayers, and poems that are quoted in the text, the book would slim down by a good 20%. Now, such things can give context and texture to a story, but enough already. A 7 or 8 verse song/poem (and there's more than one) is a sign that a heavier-handed editor is needed. Also, if you have been reading the entire series thus far, a good bit of the descriptions of bow making & so on have been covered at length in previous volumes.

The story seems unevenly paced; there will be a LONG description of, say, the craft of scouting (similar to a number of passages we've already read in previous books) and then a dramatic plot event will be all but skipped over. For example, a character is killed while in the care of one group of our story's protagonists. Yet, when the protagonists rejoin the family of the dead character (whose death causes a good bit of anguish on the part of a main character), presumably there is a dramatic interchange between these two - the sad telling of the news, the family's reaction, etc. But as far as the text is concerned, the two groups merely reassemble, serenely spend a little more time together, and then part ways again.

While Stirling has clearly thought out what a post-technological society might become, I have a quibble with a few of the conclusions he has reached - namely, that all morally good, intelligent people will come to the same conclusions. All the splinter groups - the people who take on the trappings of Ancient Greece, the Wiccans, etc - they fall deeply into these identities, even those who were adults at the time of the Change. I just don't see how this would be natural - for a modern, contemporary person to become, in 22 years, a peplos-wearing person who swears by Minerva and Jupiter, or a plaid-wearing person who thinks of the Lady and devoutly follows Wiccan practices. Maybe the attire makes sense, and I can see how the people born after the Change, or those who were kids, would buy completely into the splinter society's identity, but for those who were adults and became adults in our contemporary society? I don't see that kind of thing being so fluid. Also, I find it odd that people everywhere in this new, splintered remnant of our current world - where there is no real long distance communication, and no more common society (what with all the tribal identity stuff) use the same terms to refer to certain things - 'the Change', 'the Eaters'. Common sense says that there would be different terms for these. Even today, with mass worldwide communication, the events of Sept. 11 are referred to in a number of different ways - '9-11', 'the WTC bombing', 'September 11th', '911', etc. But in Changeverse, everybody everywhere uses the same terms.

The author does have a boundless imagination. This IS an interesting series, but I give Scourge of God 3 stars as it feels like a place holder to me. I don't mind the fantasy elements (the demonic possession, the hint of extraterrestrial interest in Earth as a cause of the Change, etc). I will almost certainly read the rest of the books, but am keenly hoping that this series isn't stretched out much more than it has been already.

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