One day the world is normal, the next the very laws of nature change. Electricity and gunpowder no longer work, leaving humanity without their CDs, guns, or computers along with cars and agricultural machinery. The world then regresses to the state of the middle ages, power measured in organization, leaders, metal armor, and archaic weapons. The two most prominent characters are Mike Havel, leader of a band that comes to be known as the "Bearkillers", and Juniper, leader of Clan MacKenzie. The two, strong and honest leaders in a land where honesty is being forgotten, manage to throw together a life for their respective groups. Even so, their neighbor, The Protector, has less peaceful plans in mind...

Without fail, apocalypse and world-wide destruction and the degeneration/rebuilding of society presses an interest button for me. And I was very intrigued by the idea of a world without electricity or gunpowder. What a drastic shift! What opportunity for imagination...

Dies the Fire has both good and bad elements--and it's very difficult for me to say which of those wins out at the end. At any given point in the novel, either Juniper's group or Havel's group is interesting, but rarely will both groups be interesting at the same time. Also, every character pales in comparison with these two characters, the rest being underdeveloped and often ignored. This is, perhaps, the most disappointing quality about the book: the characters are so very predictable and flat. The Protector fills the role of Undeserving Bad Guy, doing dastardly deeds; Havel is the ex-Marine hero with women falling at his feet; Juniper the mystical, kind witch. And it's a bad sign when a few words sum up the entire main characters--everyone else needs even less explanation. Especially, the portrayal of the women characters irritates me: Signe or Astrid are given little attention and often reduced to plot devices or damsels in distress. And then there's the fact every woman character is getting pregnant because no one can be bothered to find new birth control devices after the condoms and pills run out. I worry that by the second book, the women will be nothing but baby-making devices while the men become warriors. (As for the argument that Stirling was going for the Middle Age feel--what's the point of alternative history if you're going to minimize one entire gender without reason? And as for the argument of Juniper's strength--well, yes, she is, but what other woman is at all?) To an extent, Stirling has marginalized all characters that are not Juniper or Mike. It's irritating that every event with a minor character leads to the development of those two...

Another disappointing aspect of Dies the Fire was how very random the plot can be. Though Stirling attempts to write it as a "luck" plot device, the abnormal luck of the two main protagonists just doesn't jive for me. Add on to that random acts of violence and random happenings and Dies the Fire comes off laughable.

Additionally, the end of the novel makes an uncomfortable switch from attempting realistic fantasy into the mystical. I don't mind religion in my novels, but when I feel as if I'm reading a handbook for initiates...

That isn't to say Dies the Fire is dull. Rather, the story is quite readable, if one ignores those hiccups. I plan on continuing the series to see how everything develops, although it's not high on my list of priorities. ( )

I liked it enough to buy the sequel, but it's no pantheon of apocalyptic fantasy. ( )

Great story line had a blast reading it. Went out the next day and got the next 3 books. ( )

I read this after the Nantucket series and frankly he seems to be a formula writer. The book has potential but again too many characters, little character developement and you often get confused as to which group a character belongs to. The book just marches on from one battle to the next and I for one get tired of the battles. I was hoping for more detail on the survival of an aftermath to an apocalypse. The villians are almost cartoonish in nature. A quick unsatisfying read...I probably won't continue the series. ( )

A post-apocalyptic TV series called "Jericho", as well as the unstable state of the world got me interested in this genre. This is the first of a 3-part trilogy; I felt it was worthwhile to complete the trilogy though I was ready to be done with it by the end. certainly this 1st book was the best. ( )