Read by Dean Sluyter
Duration: 10 hours, 46 minutes
Published by Blackstone Audio in 2013
Unabridged
Sci-fi legend Ben Bova’s 1982 book Test of Fire
is a look at a near-future Earth struck by a giant solar flare that literally
destroys all life in Europe, Asia and Africa because that half of the planet
that was facing the sun at the time. North America is partially devastated by a
limited strike of nuclear missiles from Soviet Union. Central America and South
America do not figure in the story.
The near future Earth has a lunar base (for mining) and a fleet of space
shuttles that regularly take off and land on earth from very long runways. The
lunar base survived the solar flare unscathed but faces the difficult challenge
of how to provide for all of its needs with little or no support from Earth.
The lunar base is led by a council and that council is led by Daniel Morgan and
his scheming wife. Morgan leads an expedition to Cape Canaveral for supplies
and to look for survivors. He returns with both but is struck by the pitiful
condition of the people he left behind. Civilization has all but ended for them
and he wants to make sure that thousands of years of art, philosophy and
science are not lost. He wants to work with the people on Earth but is overruled
by the council due to the behind the scenes machinations of his wife. They want
to write off the Earth and focus on keeping the lunar base alive.
While Morgan’s wife schemes and sleeps with powerful members of the council to
get her way and betray her husband, Morgan decides to return to Earth on a
mission to retrieve fissionable fuel to power the base’s nuclear plants (the
moon lacks those elements). Morgan retrieves the fuel and refuses to return to
the moon, even though his wife is pregnant. He is considered a traitor and for
twenty years his son, Alec, is taught that his father betrayed the base.
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| Photo by Gregory H. Revera |
Alec is trained to lead a mission to Earth to retrieve the
fuel and to get even with his father who is believed to have set up a kingdom
among the “barbarians,” as the survivors are called. Alec brings superior technology, including laser cannons, but far
inferior numbers, including a member of the council who may want to kill him
and marry his mother. Even though the earth soldiers are at a disadvantage when
it comes to weapons, they have the advantage when it comes earth’s gravity,
heat, humidity and viruses.
While this book is based on a tremendous premise and is
filled with characters that feel as though they belong in a Greek or even a
Shakespearean tragedy, it never lives up to its promise, which is odd
considering that the book is basically a revision of a book he wrote in the
early 1970s called When the Sky Burned, making this the second
draft of the same story. Despite the revision, too many characters, such as
Alec’s mother (who dominates the first half of the book), just disappear from
the story as it goes along. Also, very few of the characters are even likable.
Daniel Morgan is presumed honorable, but he is inscrutable. His wife is plain evil.
At first Alec is a sympathetic character, but early on in the book he rapes a
female doctor while on a dinner date in her apartment. Personally, I found it
hard to root for rapists. In the end, I just listened to see how Bova was going
to end the book all the while wondering what David Weber would have done with
it.
Dean Sluyter’s reading of Test of Fire
certainly did not help my enjoyment of the book. It is not that Sluyter has a
poor reading voice – to the contrary, he has excellent diction and a nice deep
tone. But, he reads slowly and tends to get a little William Shatner-esque in
long passages with odd pauses and breaks. There was not much differentiation
between the male and female characters and most of the male characters sounded
very similar. It may be that his reading style is better suited for non-fiction
rather than fiction where listeners (at least this one listener) place a
premium on a more dramatic reading performance.
Note: I received a download copy of this audiobook from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.
I rate this audiobook 2 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: TEST of FIRE by Ben Bova.
Reviewed on July 24, 2013.
