The Scourge of God: A Novel of the Change (Change Series) - Hardcover

Stirling, S. M.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0451462289 ISBN 13: 9780451462282

Publisher: Roc Hardcover, 2008

Synopsis

To forge new allies in the battle against The Prophet, who seeks the destruction of the remnants of all technology, Rudi Mackenzie makes his way across the country to Nantucket, unaware that a fanatical officer in the Sword of The Prophet has been sent to stop him.

About this title

About the Author

S. M. Stirling is the author of numerous novels, both on his own and in collaboration. A former lawyer and an amateur historian, he lives in the Southwest with his wife, Jan.

Reviews

Starred Review. This vivid sequel to 2007's The Sunrise Lands opens in 2021, a generation after the Change that brought magic back into the world and made electric and explosive power inoperative. New post-industrial societies have risen, some seeking to restore technology and some celebrating its demise. One of the latter is the Church Universal and Triumphant, a group of genocidal Luddites with a prophetic theology that is more Dark Ages than New Age. Clan leader Rudi MacKenzie frequently butts heads with the Cutters and their Prophet as he struggles to cross the devastated Eastern Death Zones and reach Nantucket Island, birthplace of the Change, where he hopes to understand and perhaps reverse the replacement of technology with myth and magic. Stirling (The Sunrise Lands) eloquently describes a devastated, mystical world that will appeal to fans of traditional fantasy as well as post-apocalyptic SF. (Sept.)
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*Starred Review* The Change saga (Dies the Fire, 2004; The Protector’s War, 2005; A Meeting at Corvallis, 2006) and its current protagonist, Rudi Mackenzie, march on, with Stirling showing his usual high skill at sucking the reader in. Rudi is continuing his exploration of post-Change America and finding more and more evidence that somebody is manifesting as supernatural beings out of various mythologies. Is/are it/they god/gods from outer space, or somewhere closer to home? Rudi faces more mundane problems, too, such as whether he is in the process of becoming a father. The pacing of the opening is breakneck, and no concessions whatsoever are made to readers unfamiliar with the series’ backstory and characters (so perhaps this isn’t the book to start reading the saga with; then, again . . .). After awhile, things slow down somewhat, but never too much. Stirling is a perfect master of keep-them-up-all-night pacing, possibly the best in American sf, quite capable of sweeping readers all the way to the end, with a galley going under a bridge in Dubuque in the Provisional Republic of Iowa, and leaving them crying for more. Fortunately, Stirling’s plans include at least four more Change novels. --Roland Green

Edition details

• Publisher: Roc Hardcover
• Publication date: 2008
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0451462289
• ISBN 13: 9780451462282
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 464