'Fire On the Mountain' review

[Gary Oswald]

Discuss this review by @SpanishSpy here

 

[Bruno]

This was the first AH novel I had ever bought. Was impressed by it.

 

[Hendryk]

Bisson’s firm conviction and utopian aspirations ensure that Fire on the Mountain avoids one of the common pitfalls of war-based alternate history: a sense of pointlessness in the action scenes, a feeling that everything is simply a dramatization of a wargame. Bisson’s narrative has a thundering morality under it; he believes what he’s saying, and it gives the whole enterprise an emotional depth that many novels in the genre simply lack.

At a time when a lot of commercial AH seems to wallow in dystopian misery, it's good to remind readers and writers alike how bracing it is to own one's aspirations for a better world. I wouldn't want all AH to be utopian because that would ultimately be as boring as the opposite, and the genre thrives best when it is diverse, but there is something uniquely exciting about showing how, to coin a phrase, another world is possible.

 

[ChrisNuttall]

At a time when a lot of commercial AH seems to wallow in dystopian misery, it's good to remind readers and writers alike how bracing it is to own one's aspirations for a better world. I wouldn't want all AH to be utopian because that would ultimately be as boring as the opposite, and the genre thrives best when it is diverse, but there is something uniquely exciting about showing how, to coin a phrase, another world is possible.

Agreed.

Chris

 

[MAC161]

Just finished reading this myself, and loved it! Only peeve was what it didn't go into more detail on, esp with regards to the war, the European angle(s) and the period between the war and the world it ultimately created.

 

[SpanishSpy]

At a time when a lot of commercial AH seems to wallow in dystopian misery, it's good to remind readers and writers alike how bracing it is to own one's aspirations for a better world. I wouldn't want all AH to be utopian because that would ultimately be as boring as the opposite, and the genre thrives best when it is diverse, but there is something uniquely exciting about showing how, to coin a phrase, another world is possible.

Agreed.

Chris

Frankly I'm now just surprised the two of you managed to agree on something.

 

[Hendryk]

Frankly I'm now just surprised the two of you managed to agree on something.

I take it that Chris no longer denies that the political views that pervade his stories are indeed reflective of his own.