Fire on the Mountain by Terry Bisson

A southern novel set in an alternate universe, where the Civil War never happened and America is a divided utopia, Fire on the Mountain gives a panoramic novel of political speculation and a personal story about the adjustment of one black woman to the tragic loss of her astronaut husband.

An often confusing book (it’s not always clear that there has been a time switch,) I also didn’t feel that it fully developed any of the situations. Much of that could be because, at less than 170 pages, the book isn’t long enough for there to be time, but the author could certainly have remedied that. But I guess it being so short is what made me able to finish it.

Because of its brevity, I could never come to really care about any of the characters. Nor was the world they lived in fully fleshed out. There was no Civil War, but the description of what happened instead, and how the new countries were formed, is sketchy at best.

The book has a really intriguing premise. I just wish it had been better executed.





Mount TBR 2017 Book Links

Links are to more information regarding each book or author, not to the review.

1. The Lost Girls
2. Hillbilly Elegy
3. Our Revolution
4. Requiem for Athens
5. Dark Angels
6. Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee
7. The Last Kingdom
8. The Lost Child of Philomena Lee: A Mother, Her Son and a 50 Year Search
9. And Then All Hell Broke Loose: Two Decades in the Middle East
10. Now Face to Face
11. Our Endless Numbered Days
12.Dean and Me: (A Love Story)
13. This Changes Everything
14. Richard III and the Murder in the Tower
15. The Apocalypse
16. The Old Neighborhood: What We Lost in the Great Suburban Migration, 1966-1999
17. The Snow Child
18. Stonehenge
19. Royal Blood: King Richard III and the Mystery of the Princes
20. To the Bright Edge of the World
21. How the Dog Became the Dog: From Wolves to Our Best Friends
22. The Hollow Man
23. The Invaders: How Humans and Their Dogs Drove Neanderthals to Extinction
24. Born a Crime: Stories From a South African Childhood
25. In Line Behind a Billion People: How Scarcity Will Define China's Ascent in the Next Decade
26. The Glorious Cause
27. The Motion of Puppets
28. Who Were the Early Israelites and Where Did They Come From?
29. Dead Pool: Lake Powell, Global Warming, and the Future of Water in the West
30. The Lodestar
31. The Greatest Knight
32. Rightful Heritage: FDR and the Land of America
33. Pandora's Star
34. Days Without End
35. In Search of the Dark Ages
36. Under the Hog
37. Dancing Bears
38. Troy: Lord of the Silver Bow
39. Fire On the Mountain