God's Fires (original 1997; edition 1997)

It has been years since I've read Patricia Anthony's masterpiece God's Fires. I am not one to read books a second time. But to this day I remember being stunned by Anthony's amazing vision of another world. It will always be one of my favorites.

Anthony weaves disparate, seemingly incompatible elements. First, she takes her reader back to the world of Realpolitik and religious warfare tearing apart Portugal during the Inquisition. Then, she submerges them in a dreamy Never Neverland Close Encounter of the Third Kind with the Grays of Whitley Strieber's Communion. To attempt such a feat is an imaginative and ballsy play for an author. To have pulled that marriage off flawlessly is an achievement worthy of the best of the best literary talents. This book ranks up on my list of speculative and science fiction with Frank Herbert's Dune and William Gibson's Neuromancer.

God's Fires is perfect in both the beauty of its sentences and paragraphs, and its humor and poignancy. But most stunning is the story's depth of characterization and plot detail that render the unbelievable, absurd even, believable. Were aliens to crash their spacecraft in Portugal during the Inquisition rather than Roswell, New Mexico during the Cold War, Anthony shows us what likely would have happened - surely must have happened. Yet while the intricacies of the plot and insight into the psychology of the characters are thorough, still the author moves the story along. The pacing too is perfect.

Patricia Anthony's other books I've read - Flanders, and another foray into alien-human worlds colliding, Brother Termite - were interesting, imaginative, and certainly decent enough reads. But God's Fires is special. It is a great, ambitious, wonderful, and haunting tale. ( )

A 'first contact' story set in medievel Europe. I think I liked this story better when it was called "Eifelheim".

Excellent sad ending. It's a tragedy. Good writing, good setting. Could have been funnier or more serious. Nothing like I thought it would be. ( )