Strange Fire

August 1, 2017
Religion and science clash in a post-apocalyptic adventure.Brothers Clive, 18, and Clover, 16, accompany their father, a traveling minister for the Descendancy, to the hinterlands. An encounter with people hiding "the anathema"--technology--leads to tragedy and death. What's left of the band travels home to the Anchor. Clover returns to his studies in the Library, the repository of all of humankind's knowledge from before the great Conflagration. Clive joins the church's Protectorate in a holy war against a scientific academy called Sophia and a tribe of women warriors. Wallach builds a plausible world with richly evocative descriptions of action: "And now the two silhouettes reappeared....One of them unfurled to human height and began hurtling pell-mell for the pumphouse, like an angry piece of night." But while individual scenes and characters come to life in beautiful writing that will send some readers to the dictionary ("She escaped into the fresh night air, into the tranquil chaos of the sylvan biome: arrhythmic clicking of crickets, plangent hoots of owls"), the real challenge of this series opener is its structure of multiple storylines. The rather thin main plot is likely to be expanded in future volumes, but here it's framed by a tantalizingly brief prologue, interlude, and epilogue, each with its own cast of characters. There are few indications as to the racial and ethnic makeup of this future American West save the occasional Spanish name sprinkled among the mostly English ones. A provocative novel of a society riven by subterfuge and zealotry. (Science fiction. 14-adult)

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December 1, 2017

Gr 9 Up-Mankind's taste for knowledge and power grew too great. It is said that the Lord sent his only Daughter to destroy the world with fire. In the generations that followed, the few survivors came together to form a pacifistic and deeply religious community called the Descendancy. Brothers Clive and Clover Hamill, the sons of an honored traveling Descendant minister, live happily by the rules of their community. However, when the brothers travel with their family to spread the gospel to nearby villages, a profound series of events is put into motion. The Hamill brothers, along with Clive's childhood sweetheart, Gemma, and an anti-Descendant revolutionary named Paz, will be forced to navigate a maze of love, religion, death, and betrayal. Readers will discover an unforgettable world where faith seems to be the enemy of knowledge, where violence sometimes opposes ignorance, and where people are neither inherently "good" nor "bad." Despite lacking definitive answers, Wallach's latest is a haunting exploration of our world's struggles with religion, war, and learning. His deliberate and graceful writing tells a striking story of humanity through the viewpoints of Clover, Clive, Gemma, and Paz. VERDICT While not a typical dystopian series opener, this will engage existing fans of Wallach's work as well as attract new ones. This beautiful and heartbreaking tale will have all readers eagerly anticipating the next installment.-Ariel Birdoff, New York Public Library

Copyright 2017 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

August 1, 2017
Grades 9-12 Wallach's third novel is a tale of two cities. One, the Anchor, is a postindustrial theocracy where technology is anathema. The other, Sophia (the Greek word for wisdom), is located many miles to the east and embraces all things technological. Two brothersClive, 18, and Clover, 16live in the Anchor, where their father is a circuit-riding minister. It is presumed that Clive will follow in his footsteps, while Clover, a scholar, will remain an apprentice in the Library, the city's source of knowledge. The boys' lives change dramatically when their parents are murdered by men from Sophia, an incident that sparks a potential invasion of that city by the Protectorate, the Anchor's army. This plot summary is only part of what promises to be a multivolume epic involving considerations of truth and lies, faithfulness and betrayal. The exposition-rich beginning of the story is rather rough sledding as Wallach establishes his world. The story, though, soon picks up and carries the reader along for a wild ride that will leave them anxious for the next volume.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)