{"id":3166,"date":"2023-04-16T17:09:17","date_gmt":"2023-04-17T01:09:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/?p=3166"},"modified":"2023-04-16T17:09:17","modified_gmt":"2023-04-17T01:09:17","slug":"review-holy-fire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/?p=3166","title":{"rendered":"Review: Holy Fire"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>I&#8217;m charmed by the idea of a reader coming to <em>Holy Fire<\/em> and experiencing the reverse of my encounter with <a href=\"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/?p=3160\"><em>Portrait of a Thief<\/em><\/a>.  You could imagine coming on <em>Holy Fire<\/em> expecting a SF actioner and being surprised to have hit a more literary meditation on art and immortality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>That&#8217;s too tight a box to fit the work into, though.  Bruce Sterling has a way of shifting tone easily.  He&#8217;s also never only looking at the surface of an idea, even when he&#8217;s cracking wise.  He&#8217;s got &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/catb.org\/jargon\/html\/H\/ha-ha-only-serious.html\">ha-ha only serious<\/a>&#8221; down to an art form.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Holy Fire<\/em>&#8216;s plot centers on an old woman in a near-future world where life extension has become a societal priority and success.  For some.  Our protagonist has a couple moments that shake her perception of her place in the world and throws herself onto a new path.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Her old path was that of a conventional professional who has played by the rules and is having a long life.  Her new path is a young person trying to find her place in the world. How that&#8217;s possible does the job of getting the reader into the world Sterling&#8217;s built.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>That world is plausible enough that I bought it, but I suspect there are places where hard SF folks will question the math.  I kept my eye on the characters and quite enjoyed how they lit up themes.  I suspect this is a book that folks at least in their 40s will directly resonate with, but who can tell?  I can only see from where I am.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>There were twists and turns, interesting characters, intrigue and thoughts on immortality in here.  And I quite like Sterling&#8217;s prose as a rule.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Strongly Recommended.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m charmed by the idea of a reader coming to Holy Fire and experiencing the reverse of my encounter with Portrait of a Thief. You could imagine coming on Holy Fire expecting a SF actioner and being surprised to have hit a more literary meditation on art and immortality. That&#8217;s too tight a box to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3166","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3166","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3166"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3166\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3167,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3166\/revisions\/3167"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3166"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3166"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3166"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}