Test of Fire [Hardcover]

Ben Bova (Author)

Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Severn House Publishers (November 29, 1984)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0727810839
• ISBN-13: 978-0727810830
• Average Customer Review: 2.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars A Great Disappointment, April 14, 2005

By 

Johnnie B. (Dallas, Texas) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Test of Fire (Hardcover)

I tend to agree with Dennis Duncan on this book. It starts off great but then crashes and burns horribly by the end.

Here's the basic story. A solar flare destroys everything in the Eastern hemisphere. The rest of civilization goes under when Soviet military leaders assume the flare is a nuke attack and unleash their ICBMs. A small community survives at a moon base but faces serious survival problems. The biggest one being that lack of fissionable material forces them to preiodically go back to Earth and forage for reactor rods. On one foray Daniel Morgan, the unofficial moonbase leader, refuses to come back and hoards up the available fissionables in an attempt to force the moon people to make a permanent connection with Earth. After 20 or so years, his wife (the official leader) sends her son Alec back with a quasi-military unit to get the rods.....and to get back at dear old dad for walking out on everyone.

Like I already said, the novel starts out great. Bova walks us through the destruction of Earth very well and shows us how the moon base people cope. The Reath/Moon tension is pretty interesting too. This is all very well thought out and plausible. But once Alec Morgan sets foot on Earth, the story collapses into a bad post apocalypse type thriller.

To make things worse, the author does some bizarre things that really harm the book. There are three items that particularly annoyed me.

First off is wasting time on one refugee. Ben Bova put significant resources into developing a New England college professor who survives and cons his way to the moon by convincing moon raiders looking for fuel rods he has the secret to predicting the next solar flare. Okay, pretty neat. But what does he do with this guy? Nothing! The last we see this guy hes talking with Alec Morgan about fairly irrelevant stuff! Why did you bother, Ben??

Then there is Morgan's wife. Bova presents her as a manipulative and scheming shrew until about 2/3 of the way throught the story where she just disappears. He tees up a great villaness and then seems to just forget about her. Not good.

Finally there is Alec Morgan. He is the closest we get to a character we can sympathize with. But then the author ruins him. How? Well, first off he rapes a medical technician that makes him angry. Oh yeah, that was really necessary to the plot. Then he has an incestuous relationship with a girl who is essentially his adopted sister. I have no idea what the author thought he was doing with this little romance.

That all said I feel compelled to give the book two stars. First, the beginning chapters are really good. Also, its pretty simple to read. My basic opinion is that there are certainly worse novels of this sort. Unfortunately, there are numerous ones that are much MUCH better!

5 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Great beginning but falls flat after that, April 7, 2004

By 

Dennis Duncan (Greenfield, Tennessee United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Test of Fire (Mass Market Paperback)

I found this book at my local library and it caught my eye. I started on it and I was completely engrossed for about halfway through it, but then it fell completely apart. It seemed like the writer just ran out of ideas which is sad because this could have been a 5 star book.

The concept is original and the story starts off fast, but after about page 150 it just gets very boring. The ending is completely dumb and every character is cold and shallow to a point were you really don't care who lives or dies.

I still have to give it 2 stars though because the concept was cool and the beginning was great.

2.0 out of 5 stars Not Bova's Best Moment, January 15, 2007

By 

Wildness (Colorado Plateau) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Test of Fire (Mass Market Paperback)

In "Test of Fire", Ben Bova has visualized a very interesting plot: a solar flare wipes out the eastern hemisphere and the Soviet Union think it is a preemptive strike and they launch all of their nuclear weapons at the west. Now, this sounds like a pretty standard Cold War era storyline that will just be another post-apocalyptic survival story; but, Bova has a better idea - most of the survivors are on the moon. This makes for a very interesting setup as the moonbase needs supplies from Earth, especially nuclear material for their power plant.

Daniel Morgan, the people's hero of moonbase leads treks to the surface for these materials, but one day he decides that the people of the moon are getting too detached from their origins and stays...hiding all of the nuclear material they have been raiding until the people of the moon reconnect with Earth.

Unfortunately, after this great setup, the book turns into a post-apocalyptic survival story replete with all of the horrors of said story type. But worse...Morgan's sun, sent by mom (the leader of the moonbase) to take back the nuclear materials, turns out to be a complete creep and a rapist. Important characters are left hanging in the middle of the story; and characters are created that turn out to have no purpose other than to fill pages with unnecessary text.

If you are Bova fan, pass...If you are not yet a Bova fan, forget that this one exists.

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A Guide to my Book Rating System:

1 star = The wood pulp would have been better utilized as toilet paper.

2 stars = Don't bother, clean your bathroom instead.

3 stars = Wasn't a waste of time, but it was time wasted.

4 stars = Good book, but not life altering.

5 stars = This book changed my world in at least some small way.