The Falling Torch

This is the only book I can ever remember reading which, immediately after finishing it, I felt the need to go back and reread the book from page one. Budrys gives us a story which includes much more psychological rumination than action sequence, a book filled with surprises (despite the fact that the prologue more or less tells us how it's going to end), a book in which each chapter seems to head off in a completely new direction. I can see that The Falling Torch wouldn’t be everyone’s cup of tea, but I liked it quite a bit.

At first glance the novel seems to promise straightforward adolescent wish fulfillment (along the lines of “Earth has been conquered by evil aliens, and it’s time for heroic young freedom fighters to kick show more some alien butt”), but we almost immediately begin to run up against evidence that life is not so simple, that the bad guys are not so bad and the good guys are not so good. Our protagonist ends up spending much of the book trying to come to grips with the apparent reality that the simple moral code of right and wrong which he has previously accepted at face value is neither true nor perhaps more importantly particularly practical. In the end we’re given a not particularly comforting view of the world, and the sense that it’s up to each of us to make of it what we will. show less

Michael Wireman, son of a president-in-exile, returns to a conquered Earth to lead a resistance movement. He discovers a contented, passive population and a fractured underground, leading him to question the need for liberation and ultimately surrender to the humanoid Invaders.

Dismal, ridiculous guerilla warfare, annoying main character. BUT, still interesting as a reflection of Budry's angst and experiences.