Customer Reviews

Strange Fire: A Novel

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Melvin Bukeit is a talented writer, no questions on that score. In "Strange Fire" what bothered me was Bukiet's cavalier attitude towards his locale: the mideast. His agility and cleverness with languge miss the beat here. He's not a writer who creates caring toward his bizarre (in good and bad sense) characters, nor about their situations. I think he needs to amplify his ability with words with heart. That is just one man's honest opinion. Because, without heart and soul, for lack of better words, the plot isn't intimately gripping.

Bukiet writes well about blindness, conveying a keen sense of his protagonists' reliance upon others and his other senses in order to stay alive. This could have been worked well into a parable about the Middle East-- how the religious ecosystem, with one holy place on top of another, demands a forever-uncertain reliance on others. This seems to have been completely ignored, however, in favor of a roller-coaster political thriller. It was an enjoyable book, but one that a) only revealed a superficial understanding of the religious depths of conflict in the Middle East and often resorted to caraciatures rather than true examination and b) seemed to dumb itself down to find a more common-ground audience.

Bukiet is a very good writer and is capable of more.

So many books that are out there contain the same plot over and over again. It was refreshing to come across a book with an unusual protagonist and an original plot. The writing was also quite good. My only complaint is that the book seemed to go downhill a bit towards the end. There's a rape scene which just doesn't make any sense, and we lose our compassion for what had been a sympathetic character. Finally, the end (you notice that I didn't give away any plot points at all) boils down to a hackneyed action sequence with the hero saving the day.

All in all, however, it was nice to read a book that didn't fit the usual mode.