A Meeting at Corvallis: A Novel of the Change

DONT READ THIS IF YOU HAVE NOT READ THE BOOK YET. MILD SPOILERSThis book, not to mention this series, was compelling. after every chapter i definitely wanted to know what happened next, that being said that is basically the only reason i read all the books(makes sense huh?). There are so many things about this series(Dies the Fire, The Protectors war, A Meeting at Corvallis) and this book that annoy me. Im gonna go ahead and rattle them off so...you were warned.1, Every time i read the word "Alskling" i want to jump into the book and throttle Havel, i dont know if its just me but that annoys me to no end.2,Women cannot and would not fight in medieval battles no matter how progressive society was when they were reverted back to live in the dark ages. its as simple as genetics. take the meanest toughest women you can find, take an average sized man, let them fight,out of 10 fights the man would win nine. in this book small/regular sized women beat up on men...its ridiculous. other than a bunch of female main charectors about 1/4th of the good guys armies are made up of women. i dont know if Sterling really thinks that that would happen or if he is just trying to draw the female audience but..its stupid in my opinion.(google "womens battalion of death" if you dont agree with me)3,there is a fine line between "thats SO dumb" and "thats SO awesome"(wicked awesome if i may).Getting it right is admittedly pretty hard. Its the difference between Jason Bourne(awesome)and the shooter(dumb)....(just as an example). its the difference between, using a gillie suit in battles(awesome)and being able to cut a dragon fly in half(dumb). it is the difference between being able to pick off enemies at long range with a bow(awesome)and inexplicably being able to move a giant log up a hill to drop on your enemies in a short amount of time(dumb). Mr.Stirling you walked the fine line between incredibly awesome and incredibly dumb...and unfortunately you couldent keep to the awesome side as much as i would have liked.4, the charectors are infallible,im reading a story about people so i want the people in the story to be like real people!5,if you are a Christian this book will probably annoy you as it did me. i understand "the church" has done some bad things, but apparently that means basically all Christians are just pretending to be, dare i say, good people. if you want piety in this storyline you have to look to wickens(ya, i dont think thats spelled right either). im not saying i think wickens are bad people i just dident like how Christians were portrayed,its definitely not out and out against Christianity it just had some negative undertones toward Christianity. I.E Christians arent accepting of others/Christians are easily corrupted. honestly now that i am writing it i cant think of many examples mabey its not as bad as i thought in that regard, if you are Christian you will probably notice it (its like the movie "Kingdom of Heaven" its basically saying the church are just all bad people, the only good people in the world are just that, good people.) i guess that breaches into worldview and Mr. Sterling definitely has a right to his opinion, but so do I, so im just saying if your a Christian you may notice that....oh, also if you are a Christian(or anything else for that matter,athiest included) all the other wicken stuff may annoy you too. learning about other people/religions isent bad, but it get to be a little much. its a big part of the series for seemingly no reason...how many people are really interested in wicken culture?...like i said it was interesting but it got to be a little much(like this review perhaps?)all that being said Sterling does do some things quite well, the world he builds is as interesting as it is unbelievable(if you havent gotten past the suspension of disbelief by the first chapter of the first book...why are you trying to read this one? lol) all the info on the different facets of medieval life/technology/buildings/clothing/ect.., is interesting if your into history. the battles are pretty cool, and i think the way the different factions governments are structured is interesting. i enjoyed the read but found it quite annoying at the same time. if the premise interests you and you can deal with suspending your disbelief , get it, you will probably like it through its faults . if not then pass it up. Random Parting comments:if you want to talk to or argue with me about anytopic i brought up, send me a comment. im game for respectful discussion/argument.sorry for all the commas, and (parenthesis). Kudos to Mr. Sterling for putting the song Donal mcgillavry in your book! check it out on youtube its by silly wizard. if you like it try the Twa Brithers also by Silly wizard. for all my complaints i have alot of respect for you Mr. Sterling it must have taken tons of research to craft this story and i did like it. im sorry that some of your writing conventions rubbed me the wrong way but it is what it is. Cheers!

With the first two volumes of S.M. Stirling's trilogy of The Change - Dies the Fire and The Protector's War - I felt something of an analogy to an NFL football season. Dies the Fire was like the regular season: really interesting, but with nothing fully settled. The Protector's War, sadly was like the Super Bowl pre-game show: lots of talk and very little action, all building towards the big game, namely the final volume, A Meeting at Corvallis. And, to complete the analogy, this third book is like the Super Bowl; unfortunately, as NFL fans know, while all Super Bowls are decisive, they are not all equally good or exciting.This third book begins in Year Nine after the Change, the unexplained event that made almost all technology unusable, most particularly electronics and firearms. The result is a sort of medieval world, except its filled with people with know-how and historical perspective that wasn't available in earlier times. In the area that the story takes place - in and around Oregon - the communities have divided into two loose factions. On one side is a feudal monarchy based out of Portland and run by the scholar-turned-warlord, Norman Arminger. On the other side is a looser confederation of more egalitarian communities, most notably the Bearkillers led by Mike Havel and the Clan Mackenzie led by Lady Juniper. There is also a group of guerilla fighters called the Dunedain or Rangers who are led by Juniper's daughter Eilir and Mike's sister-in-law Astrid. The Dunedain may use the language of Astrid's favorite Tolkien books, but they are also very effective fighters.During the first quarter of the book, not much happens as the two sides jockey for position in the one more-or-less neutral town of Corvallis, where former university professors have built a prosperous community. Finally, for the first time since Dies the Fire, we get some real action as war begins between Arminger's Protectorate and the Bearkillers, Mackenzies and others. These battles, and related intrigues, occupy most of the rest of the book.In Sterling's universe, the geeks inherit the Earth. Actually, that's an overstatement, but he does seem to find that society's outcasts - Wiccans, sci-fi fans and Renaissance Faire fanatics, among others - will be better suited for this new world, while establishment figures - particularly associated with Christianity - seem evil or at least backwards-thinking.While certainly an improvement over the middle volume of the trilogy, A Meeting at Corvallis is by no means perfect and is a less rewarding conclusion than I would have liked. The final confrontation is not nearly as exciting as it could have been, almost as if Stirling got bored and wanted to move on to something new. It's not a bad ending, and it certainly follows logically from previous events, but it lacks any real oomph.Stirling does a good job describing this strange new/old world, but at time this gets in the way of the action. Also, like many other writers, he cannot write children well: there are some pivotal characters around age ten in this story, but they all typically talk and act more like adults than kids. While A Meeting at Corvallis is reasonably entertaining, it also has too many flaws to make this a truly great book (or trilogy).

I ordered the first three of the Change books on the basis of enthusiastic reviews hoping for a fresh voice in the genre of alternative history. I found the first clunky, full of typos and poorly paced but persevered hoping that the author would hit his stride and develop his interesting vision better.However the same faults recurred in the second book plus possibly the worst depiction of the UK and its inhabitants I have ever encountered since Dick Van Dyke in" Mary Poppins" which I found excruciating but trudged through.I was repelled by page 2 finding "the first spray of refugees" used to describe an influx. Worse still this was supposed to be set in Britain but seems to be written by someone who has never met one. I found this book painful so approached the third book of the trilogy with a certain amount of trepidation.Unfortunately this feeling proved to be correct. There are factual errors from the start and the editor, if there was one, seems to have given up completely and absconded leaving a book so riddled with bad grammar and poor writing as to be virtually unreadable. This was so bad that I gave up on it after several tries and don't recommend that you read this.

This is the final book in the "Dies the Fire" trilogy. The free communities of the Williamette valley have to unite against the psychotic medieval historian turned Warlord, Norman Arminger. But even if they do, they are still badly outnumbered. The Mackenzies and Bearkillers are old friends from the previous books. However we finally meet the trading city of Corvallis, which sees itself as the last bastion of civilisation and the warrior monks of Mount Angel, who must protect the lives and homes of their flock, as well as their souls. And lastly, we finally see inside Arminger's so called Protectorate, which even at its best is not a nice place. You also meet more characters, most notably the coniving Lady Sandra, Arminger's wife and her hatchetwoman, the ruthless and vengeful but honorable Tiphaine. As the story moves towards its climax the question remains, what will the free communites have to sacrifice to retain their freedom? I can't describe the ending, without spoiling things, but it is very well written and very powerful.

A thrilling end to by far the most immersive, well written series of books I have read in quite a while.

Excellent series.

It was hard to put down, which is always a good yardstick. There were a few good surprises, and the only negative is the excessive recapping of the two previous volumes of the series. I presume that the publisher/editor asked/compelled him to do this, and it is a shame that there was so much of it. Nevertheless, you get past that, and the story unfolds in a quite a satisfying way.Highly recommended, but do start from the first book: "Dies the fire".