The Scourge of God: A Novel of the Change (Change Series) (Hardcover)

~ (Author)
Key Phrases: three bears, swine feathers, edged metal, Red Leaf, Father Ignatius, Rudi Mackenzie (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. This vivid sequel to 2007's The Sunrise Lands opens in 2021, a generation after the Change that brought magic back into the world and made electric and explosive power inoperative. New post-industrial societies have risen, some seeking to restore technology and some celebrating its demise. One of the latter is the Church Universal and Triumphant, a group of genocidal Luddites with a prophetic theology that is more Dark Ages than New Age. Clan leader Rudi MacKenzie frequently butts heads with the Cutters and their Prophet as he struggles to cross the devastated Eastern Death Zones and reach Nantucket Island, birthplace of the Change, where he hopes to understand and perhaps reverse the replacement of technology with myth and magic. Stirling (The Sunrise Lands) eloquently describes a devastated, mystical world that will appeal to fans of traditional fantasy as well as post-apocalyptic SF. (Sept.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

*Starred Review* The Change saga (Dies the Fire, 2004; The Protector’s War, 2005; A Meeting at Corvallis, 2006) and its current protagonist, Rudi Mackenzie, march on, with Stirling showing his usual high skill at sucking the reader in. Rudi is continuing his exploration of post-Change America and finding more and more evidence that somebody is manifesting as supernatural beings out of various mythologies. Is/are it/they god/gods from outer space, or somewhere closer to home? Rudi faces more mundane problems, too, such as whether he is in the process of becoming a father. The pacing of the opening is breakneck, and no concessions whatsoever are made to readers unfamiliar with the series’ backstory and characters (so perhaps this isn’t the book to start reading the saga with; then, again . . .). After awhile, things slow down somewhat, but never too much. Stirling is a perfect master of keep-them-up-all-night pacing, possibly the best in American sf, quite capable of sweeping readers all the way to the end, with a galley going under a bridge in Dubuque in the Provisional Republic of Iowa, and leaving them crying for more. Fortunately, Stirling’s plans include at least four more Change novels. --Roland Green

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 464 pages
• Publisher: Roc Hardcover; First Edition edition (September 2, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0451462289
• ISBN-13: 978-0451462282
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.1 x 1.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (44 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #74,132 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

  Popular in this category: (What's this?)

  #16 in

  Books > Science Fiction & Fantasy > Authors, A-Z > ( S ) > Stirling, S.M.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

28 of 32 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A deeper descent into fantasy, September 28, 2008

By	J. L. Gillaspy "Gillaspy" (Atlanta) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

From chapter nine:
"Long tables were set out buffet-style, with chefs in white hats waiting to carve the roasts and hams; whole yearling steers and pigs and lamb roasted over firepits behind them, the attendants slathering them with fiery sauce wielding their long-handled brushes like the forks of devils in the Christian hell."

The writing is flowery, with long, complex sentences hiding much ado about little, as our heroes, who call themselves such, make their way, mostly on horseback, across a vast continent once peopled by a homogeneous citizenry, but now inhabited by cannibals, remnants calling themselves the United States government, local dictators, religious fanatics, devils and gods.

That's enough of that. This series started, years ago in real time, as science fiction. It is now irretrievably fantasy. Or if it's not, the author has me completely fooled. The protagonists are on their way to Nantucket Island (remember that original series?) and, at the rate they are going based on the map in the front of the book, there are at least one or two more travelogs masquerading as novels to go before they get there. And then they have to find their way back.

Sterling's imagination is almost without living peer, I'll give him that, but things used to happen in his novels.

16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Great Addition to Stirlings Change Series, October 10, 2008

By	Scott Masterton (Blaine, MN USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

S.M. Stirling hooked me with his first novel of the Change series "Dies the Fire". Stirling does an outstanding job of describing what might happen should all of our technology cease to function; no electricity, gasoline powered engines, and more importantly gun powder no longer functions. In the earlier novels he skates around the "why's" and goes right to the "How do we function now"? How do his characters survive; and what type of government will function in a world without technology? The answer is simple. Man returns to his tribal roots and a feudal system of governance fills the void.

While the first novels were about survival and war and the Earth's rise of the nerds (Witches with pretend Irish/Scot accents, people that believe they're elves from a Tolkien novel and recreationists are the new leaders), "The Scourge of God" is about Spiritual beliefs, prophets and messiah's. Stirling seems to be taking a page right from Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Now that man can again feed himself, he is searching for spirit and a reason for being. The world is beginning to change into a place of magic. Does the magic create the new beliefs and Gods, or does the belief itself create the magic? We don't know yet, but it will be interesting to find Stirlings views on this in his upcoming novels.

I found the "Scourge of God" to be a great read with plenty of action and hints at things to come. I anxiously await Stirlings next novel of the change.

20 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars A touch of the George R R Martins? , September 30, 2008

By	Ian S. Mccarthy (Myersville, MD United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Amazon Verified Purchase

I am a great fan of S M Stirling but he has fallen into the same trap as George R R Martin and Robert Jordan. The Nantucket series ran to three books and was not a page too long. This series is on its FIFTH book and the hero has reached Indiana on his cross country trek. In Martin's case it has become so ridiculous that I have stopped reading him. Stirling is still worth reading, barely, but needs a good editor to rein in some of his purple prose and get the series moving.
P.S. I now see from his website that there will be SEVEN books in the series (and possibly two more after that). I have now given up on him.