Dies the Fire (Novel of the Change, #1) (Emberverse, #1)

by S M Stirling

S. M. Stirling presents his first Novel of the Change, the start of the New York Times bestselling postapocalyptic saga set in a world where all technology has been rendered useless.

The Change occurred when an electrical storm centered over the island of Nantucket produced a blinding white flash that rendered all electronic devices and fuels inoperable—and plunged the world into a dark age humanity was unprepared to face... 
 
Michael Pound was flying over Idaho en route to the holiday home of his passengers when the plane’s engines inexplicably died, forcing a less than perfect landing in the wilderness. And as Michael leads his charges to safety, he begins to realize that the engine failure was not an isolated incident.

Juniper McKenzie was singing and playing guitar in a pub when her small Oregon town was thrust into darkness. Now, taking refuge in her family’s cabin with her daughter and a growing circle of friends, Juniper is determined to create a farming community to benefit the survivors of this crisis.
 
But even as people band together to help one another, others are building armies for conquest...

• ISBN10: 0451460413
• ISBN13: 9780451460417
• Publish Date: 6 September 2005 (first published 1 August 2004)
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: US
• Publisher: Penguin Putnam Inc
• Imprint: Ace Books
• Format: Paperback (US Mass Market)
• Pages: 592
• Language: English
• URL: https://penguinrandomhouse.com/books/isbn/9780451460417

Reviews

[flybymoonlight]

While I'm usually a fan of the post apocalypse genre, I found Dies the Fire really difficult to get into. The plot centralizes around The Change - a mysterious event that renders all technology and firearms inoperable. In the book there seems to be two types of characters that come out of the change well - survivalist types, which I can get behind, and renaissance fair enthusiasts, which I found to be a joke. The main villain in the novel is an ex history teacher that took up sword fighting for fun which leads him to control all the gangs of the east coast. The shear number of coincidences that got the characters to where they were in the end was just mind boggling. The writing was descent but the book got boring and seemed to drag in a lot of places. It wasn't the worst book I've ever read, but I don't think I'll be reading the next book.