After the Fire
I like reading a book that gives me several things to think about at the same time. John Lockley's After the Fire
, a book I picked up while rummaging through the "cheap offers" bin at a book sale some years back, turned out to be that sort of book for me.
, a book I picked up while rummaging through the "cheap offers" bin at a book sale some years back, turned out to be that sort of book for me.Crises of faith and thoughts about war, crime, and punishment were just some of the things that I enjoyed thinking about while reading the book. Essentially it is a tale of survival. What I like is how the book focuses on accumulated knowledge as a key to survival. Several times, the characters mention that "we can't go back to the Dark Ages if we keep the knowledge alive." I liked the tenacity that this showed. Not giving up, I suppose, is a big value with me.
It was fun seeing how some of the characters didn't want to "fit in" with this sort of thinking, and preferred to live in the moment. I liked how the book didn't give an easy answer to this problem, and how the issue was treated with a sense of complexity.
It was by no means a perfect novel, but it was a thought-provoking one. And that was good enough for me.
