Take a photo of a barcode or cover
3.19 AVERAGE
3.19 AVERAGE
This book was hard to put down, but I think it aspires too much to be on some screen soon. Also, I think Scully would write something smarter, more literary. I have to remind myself that Scully is just a character. Like I said, I enjoyed the book and I plan to pick up the next installment of this series.
listening to this audiobook to relax, call that GilliASMR
I really enjoyed this book; it was like watching an episode (or rather a full movie) of the X-Files. The ending left me a bit lukewarm, and that’s why I haven’t given it 5*, but I have already bought the next two books in the trilogy, so I’ll be back for more soon :)
Initially I thought this book read like a Kathy Reichs novel -- a strong, intelligent woman as the main character with an unusual problem to solve. I felt like the book went in too many different directions and it just didn't keep me interested toward the end.
This story had a lot going for it, but ultimately feel short for me. I'm a fantasy and sci-fi guy, but there's something about the denouement of this one that was just too much of a stretch for me.
Updated November 2014: Let’s just get this first thing out in the open. For the rest of her life, Gillian Anderson will always first and foremost be Special Agent Dana Scully, FBI. And just so we’re clear, there are definitely worse things she could be associated with.
I was totally batshit obsessed with The X-Files back in the day. Like, ad-hoarding-under-the-bed, fanfic-reading, thinking-about-it-all-the-time, staying-up-until-3-AM-on-school-nights-to-watch-re-runs-obsessed*. It was My Show. So, as a caveat for the rest of this review, that lingering love for GA and her X-Files days is the only reason I read this book, when I normally would have read the blurb and been like either, a) NUCLEAR WAR NO THANKS, or b) Meh, thrillers??? Point being, not something I’d seek out on my own.
*Kids today are spoiled. They can just Netflix this shit up and finish it in weeks, if not days. I had to work HARD to make sure I’d seen every episode. I mean, my God, it was even before DVDs! And I started watching in season six! Keeping detailed spreadsheets, scouring the TV Guide every week for possible ones I’d missed, pretending to watch shows my mom approved of while secretly recording it on my VCR . . . and every episode was magical as a result. I mean, I don’t miss all the work I had to do to catch up on a TV show, not really, but I do miss that feeling. You know?
Second thing: this was not a bad book by any means, but it was very silly in points, and very new agey. This was pretty much exactly what I’d been expecting going in, because I’ve seen the episode GA wrote and directed for The X-Files (“all things”), and as much as I want to high-five her for pushing to get that M&S post-sex scene* in there, that episode was (and remains) one of the trippiest, new agiest things I’d seen on TV. And I watch a lot of TV.
*The thing that I love most about that scene in retrospect is that it’s just in there and no one ever mentions it again. And this was a at a time when us sad little shippers had to pick through every episode with a fine-toothed comb to get a fix for our UST. And somehow I completely missed the blow-up surrounding this episode. To be honest, I didn’t even pick up on its (now blatantly obvious) message in the slightest. Which was: M&S ARE BONING YOU FOOLS. I was just like, oh hey, why is Scully putting her shirt on in Mulder’s apartment while he’s naked in the bed? I have no idea what I was thinking. It’s not like I didn’t have sex on the brain when I was fifteen, because I way totally did. And then, whoops! She turns up preggers! How did that happen!? Um, spoilers?
In many ways, A Vision of Fire is a pretty standard sci-fi thriller, more akin to one of those ones you can buy in a grocery store than anything else. It’s pulpy and fast-paced and everything is written to be as extremely dramatic as possible. For the first half of the book, anyway. And then . . . well. It gets weird and scary and just weird. I liked GA’s conscious decision to make it a more global novel, even as her protagonist, Caitlin O’Hara, is a white American. Pretty much everyone else is a POC and of different nationalities, and they’re pretty well-rounded considering the type of story they’re inhabiting. I know from interviews that other cultures and religions have always been pretty interesting to her, so it doesn’t surprise me she’d choose to feature them so prominently in her debut novel (which she presumably had a lot of help with from writing partner Jeff Rovin).
My main issue with the book, aside from it being something that isn’t normally my cuppa, is that the main character starts believing in the weird stuff really, absurdly quickly. She basically goes from being a normal child psychologist (albeit a high profile one) to someone who makes intuitive leaps of faith and accepts stuff that is really frickin’ weird in almost no time at all, and with very little evidence for most of it. (I’m trying to be vague about the actual plot so as to retain the thrill of surprise for you–pretty much if you take that away from this type of book, you’re shooting it in the foot.)
In all honesty, the weirdness was part of the draw, so I can’t really complain about it too much. She pretty much sticks to your standard thriller formula, otherwise, including a love interest (who I of course pictured as David Duchovny). That part of the book wasn’t all that remarkable, but it was also pretty harmless as well. All in all, A Vision of Fire was a really quick popcorn read, so if you don’t end up liking it, you won’t have wasted much time on it. If you come in expecting GA weirdness, you won’t be disappointed.
This book is apparently the first in a series, as well, and with the way this one ended, it can only get more weird from here.
Updated October 2014: Actually finished this early this morning, but went off to cuddle a brand new baby and got distracted. The first half of this book was pretty normal. The second half got weird. It was pretty much exactly what I expected. Full review later.
May 2014: If "all things" is anything to go by, this book could be epically weird.
I was totally batshit obsessed with The X-Files back in the day. Like, ad-hoarding-under-the-bed, fanfic-reading, thinking-about-it-all-the-time, staying-up-until-3-AM-on-school-nights-to-watch-re-runs-obsessed*. It was My Show. So, as a caveat for the rest of this review, that lingering love for GA and her X-Files days is the only reason I read this book, when I normally would have read the blurb and been like either, a) NUCLEAR WAR NO THANKS, or b) Meh, thrillers??? Point being, not something I’d seek out on my own.
*Kids today are spoiled. They can just Netflix this shit up and finish it in weeks, if not days. I had to work HARD to make sure I’d seen every episode. I mean, my God, it was even before DVDs! And I started watching in season six! Keeping detailed spreadsheets, scouring the TV Guide every week for possible ones I’d missed, pretending to watch shows my mom approved of while secretly recording it on my VCR . . . and every episode was magical as a result. I mean, I don’t miss all the work I had to do to catch up on a TV show, not really, but I do miss that feeling. You know?
Second thing: this was not a bad book by any means, but it was very silly in points, and very new agey. This was pretty much exactly what I’d been expecting going in, because I’ve seen the episode GA wrote and directed for The X-Files (“all things”), and as much as I want to high-five her for pushing to get that M&S post-sex scene* in there, that episode was (and remains) one of the trippiest, new agiest things I’d seen on TV. And I watch a lot of TV.
*The thing that I love most about that scene in retrospect is that it’s just in there and no one ever mentions it again. And this was a at a time when us sad little shippers had to pick through every episode with a fine-toothed comb to get a fix for our UST. And somehow I completely missed the blow-up surrounding this episode. To be honest, I didn’t even pick up on its (now blatantly obvious) message in the slightest. Which was: M&S ARE BONING YOU FOOLS. I was just like, oh hey, why is Scully putting her shirt on in Mulder’s apartment while he’s naked in the bed? I have no idea what I was thinking. It’s not like I didn’t have sex on the brain when I was fifteen, because I way totally did. And then, whoops! She turns up preggers! How did that happen!? Um, spoilers?
In many ways, A Vision of Fire is a pretty standard sci-fi thriller, more akin to one of those ones you can buy in a grocery store than anything else. It’s pulpy and fast-paced and everything is written to be as extremely dramatic as possible. For the first half of the book, anyway. And then . . . well. It gets weird and scary and just weird. I liked GA’s conscious decision to make it a more global novel, even as her protagonist, Caitlin O’Hara, is a white American. Pretty much everyone else is a POC and of different nationalities, and they’re pretty well-rounded considering the type of story they’re inhabiting. I know from interviews that other cultures and religions have always been pretty interesting to her, so it doesn’t surprise me she’d choose to feature them so prominently in her debut novel (which she presumably had a lot of help with from writing partner Jeff Rovin).
My main issue with the book, aside from it being something that isn’t normally my cuppa, is that the main character starts believing in the weird stuff really, absurdly quickly. She basically goes from being a normal child psychologist (albeit a high profile one) to someone who makes intuitive leaps of faith and accepts stuff that is really frickin’ weird in almost no time at all, and with very little evidence for most of it. (I’m trying to be vague about the actual plot so as to retain the thrill of surprise for you–pretty much if you take that away from this type of book, you’re shooting it in the foot.)
In all honesty, the weirdness was part of the draw, so I can’t really complain about it too much. She pretty much sticks to your standard thriller formula, otherwise, including a love interest (who I of course pictured as David Duchovny). That part of the book wasn’t all that remarkable, but it was also pretty harmless as well. All in all, A Vision of Fire was a really quick popcorn read, so if you don’t end up liking it, you won’t have wasted much time on it. If you come in expecting GA weirdness, you won’t be disappointed.
This book is apparently the first in a series, as well, and with the way this one ended, it can only get more weird from here.
Updated October 2014: Actually finished this early this morning, but went off to cuddle a brand new baby and got distracted. The first half of this book was pretty normal. The second half got weird. It was pretty much exactly what I expected. Full review later.
May 2014: If "all things" is anything to go by, this book could be epically weird.
Started slow and a little boring, got really interesting, and then turned unintelligible. I won't be looking for any more in this series.
I really enjoyed this book. I admit I first picked it up because I'm a fan a Gillian Anderson, and I was curious as to what kind of novel she would write. I really like books that take the readers to places or realities that they would never have imagined, that present ideas that make you think, phrased in prose you want to hold onto and read again. This book takes the reader to a lot of different corners of the world, touches upon a variety of spiritual and religious beliefs, and delves into different realms of supernatural and science-fiction. It helps to go into it with an open mind, willing to accept other possibilities, beliefs, and realities. The book also has characters who are realistic, and who the reader can really get to know. Even the supporting characters, who play no major role in the plot, are given distinct personalities and depth (Caitlin's son, for example, is someone we get to know quite well even though he doesn't appear often and has no major role in the plot).
Creepy fact: As I finished the book and started to write this, 10-15 crows landed in the trees around my house and began cawing. You'll get the creepiness when you read the book.
I liked the writing style. I liked most of the characters - I was probably not meant to like the villains, though they were intriguing. I liked that I had to pause in places and look things up. I felt the book was well-done, and I will definitely read the second book in the trilogy when I get my copy.
Creepy fact: As I finished the book and started to write this, 10-15 crows landed in the trees around my house and began cawing. You'll get the creepiness when you read the book.
I liked the writing style. I liked most of the characters - I was probably not meant to like the villains, though they were intriguing. I liked that I had to pause in places and look things up. I felt the book was well-done, and I will definitely read the second book in the trilogy when I get my copy.
Not my usual genre, so don't really know how to rate it. I liked the first 2/3 of the book more than I thought I would, but was very much not a fan of where it ended up.
I’ll just say this straight away: A Vision Of Fire was a novel I really wanted to enjoy far more than I actually did. That’s not to say the book is all bad, but given Gillian Anderson’s creative pedigree I had expected a lot more. (She’s Dana Scully for cripe’s sake, of The X-Files fame, and was recently promoted to series regular for the next season of Hannibal, which, if you’re not watching, you really should be!)
What I discovered was a story that was more like brain candy. It was fun when I was reading it, even if the prose was pretty basic and unengaged, but it was also easy to put down. And when I wasn’t reading A Vision of Fire, I wasn’t thinking a lot about it either. There wasn’t enough meat in the execution of the premise for me to chew on in the off-hours, and the characters didn’t have enough depth to make them compelling enough for me to fully invest in them.
Despite the psychological trauma of Maanik, daughter of an ambassador seeking a truce over border rivalries between India, Pakistan, and Kashmir, and an assassination attempt on the ambassador, the sense of danger is minimal. Her psychiatrist, Caitlin, never feels too out of her element or threatened by the minimalistic forces against her, and nobody really questions her motivations too intensely, particularly at times when it seems like it should be well deserved. There’s a shadowy group, known conveniently enough as The Group, whose inclusion in the proceedings is negligible at best beyond the theft of a rock in the novel’s opening sequence. Even the rock itself feels like a rather inconsequential and disconnected MacGuffin for large swathes of the story. Even half-way through the book I was still hoping for some degree of clarity as to what one side of the story had to do with another, and the ending ultimately failed to clarify or provide satisfactory closure in even broad terms. Propping up the entire construct with fairly hollow characters did little to help.
One thing that I did like, though, were the moments of psychiatric care and the segments between patient and healer. Although some of the elements became too swamped in woo for my tastes, other points worked well, such as Caitlin’s observations of changes in behavior and posture of those around her, which caused her to adapt and change her own tactics in communication. Those types of shifts were handled well and struck me as being nicely thought out. Some of the symptoms that were being manifested by Maanik and others presented an intriguing mystery and some terrific scares.
While I didn’t find the central cast and ancillary characters to be particularly well-drawn or charismatic enough to merit much attention, I rather enjoyed Caitlin’s relationship with her son, Jacob, who is partially deaf and has a love of cooking. Their connectedness and sort-of shared telepathic (for lack of a better word) shorthand that can exist as a result of strong parental-child bonding was heartwarming, and helped speak to the strength of mental health and well-being that informs Caitlin’s role in both her life and her profession. This relationship was one of the book’s stronger aspects, in fact.
Although I give Anderson and Rovin plenty of credit for taking a rather interesting spin on the doomsday scenario, one that calls into question the when and where of their apocalypse at hand, the different elements they’ve strung together fail to merge successfully or provide a worthwhile resolution. A Vision of Fire is ultimately a science-fiction book that eschews science almost entirely, opting instead to present the story through nonsensical mysticism and kooky spirituality, while the plot is built atop at least two too many contrivances.
What I discovered was a story that was more like brain candy. It was fun when I was reading it, even if the prose was pretty basic and unengaged, but it was also easy to put down. And when I wasn’t reading A Vision of Fire, I wasn’t thinking a lot about it either. There wasn’t enough meat in the execution of the premise for me to chew on in the off-hours, and the characters didn’t have enough depth to make them compelling enough for me to fully invest in them.
Despite the psychological trauma of Maanik, daughter of an ambassador seeking a truce over border rivalries between India, Pakistan, and Kashmir, and an assassination attempt on the ambassador, the sense of danger is minimal. Her psychiatrist, Caitlin, never feels too out of her element or threatened by the minimalistic forces against her, and nobody really questions her motivations too intensely, particularly at times when it seems like it should be well deserved. There’s a shadowy group, known conveniently enough as The Group, whose inclusion in the proceedings is negligible at best beyond the theft of a rock in the novel’s opening sequence. Even the rock itself feels like a rather inconsequential and disconnected MacGuffin for large swathes of the story. Even half-way through the book I was still hoping for some degree of clarity as to what one side of the story had to do with another, and the ending ultimately failed to clarify or provide satisfactory closure in even broad terms. Propping up the entire construct with fairly hollow characters did little to help.
One thing that I did like, though, were the moments of psychiatric care and the segments between patient and healer. Although some of the elements became too swamped in woo for my tastes, other points worked well, such as Caitlin’s observations of changes in behavior and posture of those around her, which caused her to adapt and change her own tactics in communication. Those types of shifts were handled well and struck me as being nicely thought out. Some of the symptoms that were being manifested by Maanik and others presented an intriguing mystery and some terrific scares.
While I didn’t find the central cast and ancillary characters to be particularly well-drawn or charismatic enough to merit much attention, I rather enjoyed Caitlin’s relationship with her son, Jacob, who is partially deaf and has a love of cooking. Their connectedness and sort-of shared telepathic (for lack of a better word) shorthand that can exist as a result of strong parental-child bonding was heartwarming, and helped speak to the strength of mental health and well-being that informs Caitlin’s role in both her life and her profession. This relationship was one of the book’s stronger aspects, in fact.
Although I give Anderson and Rovin plenty of credit for taking a rather interesting spin on the doomsday scenario, one that calls into question the when and where of their apocalypse at hand, the different elements they’ve strung together fail to merge successfully or provide a worthwhile resolution. A Vision of Fire is ultimately a science-fiction book that eschews science almost entirely, opting instead to present the story through nonsensical mysticism and kooky spirituality, while the plot is built atop at least two too many contrivances.