A Meeting at Corvallis

Mr. S.M. Stirling, has finally with his third novel in the "Emberverse" series A Meeting At Corvallis, written a novel of the apocalyptic end of the world that no longer holds the faint roasted turkey leg whiff of a Medieval Renaissance festival gone horribly wrong. The setting of this current novel occurs almost 10 years after "The Change".

Mr. Stirling finally delivered the war promised by his second novel The Protector's War. He handles this war with a tone much more serious and with a tone much more focused, and it works somehow. The Almost unnatural luck of the characters from this series finally comes to an end with the death of two of the major characters. But beyond that, this novel truly feels like the end of the story for the survivors of "The Change". I suspect that from this point on the focus of the novels will be on the younger generations, those born after the change or who were too young to remember life from before.

I have to admit that I did not take the first couple of novels in this highly entertaining, but to be frank "light weight" series too seriously. The premise, that some unknown entity, be it aliens or God, both of which have been mentioned in the series as possible causes, in a flash of painful light caused all internal combustion to cease working. Now I am not a Physicist and I don't need all the amateur and professional Physicists out there trying to explain to me why this premise is not possible. It is called "Suspension of Belief". Get on board people! But even I found all the "Middle Earth", Renaissance nonsense was just too much. How could anyone take seriously an evil villain who takes "The Littlest Eye" from The Lord Of The Rings as his symbol of power?

All that changed with this third book. The tone gets more serious, and with the onset of real war among the survivors the action feels more "real" and life-threatening. Not to say that these novels will ever win awards or be anything more than an entertaining distraction, but when I read A Meeting at Corvallis, I did not feel like I should be putting on my "One Ring to Rule Them" tee-shirt and my hobbit feet from four Halloweens ago!

A solid 3.5 stars of 5