{"id":18,"date":"2013-01-31T05:03:00","date_gmt":"2013-01-31T05:03:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/ruby-serenades-the-creative-fire-home\/"},"modified":"2013-01-31T05:03:00","modified_gmt":"2013-01-31T05:03:00","slug":"ruby-serenades-the-creative-fire-home","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/ruby-serenades-the-creative-fire-home\/","title":{"rendered":"Ruby Serenades the Creative Fire Home"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
<\/a><\/div>\n

The Creative Fire:\u00a0 Book 1 of Ruby’s Song<\/i><\/a>
Brenda Cooper<\/a>
Pyr Books<\/a>
Trade paperback<\/a>, 351 pg $17.95
ebook $11.99 Kindle<\/a> Nook<\/a>
Cover art by John Picacio<\/a><\/p>\n

Every now and then events conspire to keep you from accomplishing simple tasks, such as reading a book.\u00a0 This one took me exactly a month.\u00a0 Normally, I could finish a book like this in days.\u00a0 But it’s been one of those months.\u00a0 Days have gone by when I haven’t been able to get any reading done, and much of it was due to pesky little stuff that had to be dealt with so it would go away.<\/p>\n

It wasn’t because I didn’t enjoy the book.\u00a0 I did.\u00a0 Revolutions on generation ships are a staple going back to Heinlein’s Orphans of the Sky<\/i>.\u00a0 It’s a narrow subgenre, but one I enjoy.<\/p>\n

The basic set up is this:\u00a0 The Creative Fire<\/i> is a generation ship that is heading home to the planet Adiamo.\u00a0 The crew has grown into a caste society in which the castes are delineated by color of uniform.\u00a0 Ruby Martin is a grey, one of the workers on the lowest levels of the ship.\u00a0 One of the disenfranchised.\u00a0 She and her friends Onor and Marcelle are about to graduate from school and become adults.<\/p>\n

Ruby is in a garden when the sky literally opens and a man falls down from an upper level.\u00a0 The Creative Fire is beginning to show the strain of centuries in space.\u00a0 This particular pod on the ship is breaking apart.\u00a0 The man, Fox, is a blue.\u00a0 Ruby knows they exist, but until now the only other color she’s seen are the Reds, security forces which are junior league gestapo.<\/p>\n

Her conversation with Fox makes her want more than a life of drudgery enough to challenge the status quo.\u00a0 Although much of the ship’s history has been deliberately hidden from the greys, Ruby knows she won’t be the first to fight for freedom.\u00a0 She hopes unlike some of her predecessors, she lives to enjoy that freedom.
<\/a>
At first, Ruby’s actions and intentions are peaceful.\u00a0 Ruby has an exceptional voice, one that can move people on large and small scales.\u00a0 She starts out by singing songs that are rather subversive.\u00a0 Unfortunately, those she’s challenging won’t hesitate to use force and violence to preserve their positions.\u00a0 I don’t have to tell you that things escalate.<\/p>\n

This book is essentially YA, although I’ve not seen anything marketing it as such.\u00a0 Don’t let that stop you from reading it.\u00a0 It’s a well told tale.\u00a0 The cast of characters is broad, and because I kept getting interrupted there were a few times I had trouble keeping track of them.\u00a0 In addition to Ruby, her friend Onor is also a viewpoint character.\u00a0 He’s an effective foil and provides a different perspective on what happens.\u00a0 Cooper does a good job of crafting the characters as individuals, and most of them have their roles to play in the resistance and revolution.<\/p>\n

The promotional material says this book was based on the life of Evita Peron<\/a>, a woman about whom I know very little other than the basic facts.\u00a0 Because of this, I’m sure there are a number of aspects to the story I missed.\u00a0 Even though I’m unfamiliar with the inspiration for this book, Cooper\u00a0 made the story entertaining and engaging for me.<\/p>\n

And there are enough unanswered questions to make me want to read the next book.\u00a0 Such as, if the home planet of Adiamo isn’t Earth (and nothing was stated to make me think it is), then how was that planet settled.\u00a0 The Creative Fire<\/i> is a generation ship.\u00a0 Was Adiamo settled by generation ships?\u00a0 Or was FTL technology lost at some point?\u00a0 What are things like on Adiamo, and what will the crew of\u00a0 The Creative Fire<\/i> find when they arrive home?<\/p>\n

And isn’t the cover by John Picacio outstanding.\u00a0 Picacio is a fantastic artist, and I think this is one of his best pieces. <\/p>\n

I’d like to thank Jill Maxick at Pyr Books for sending me the review copy and offer my apologies for having taken so long to finish it.\u00a0 Unfortunately this delay has thrown me behind on some other Pyr titles I have in the stack.\u00a0 I’ll get them read and reviewed, I promise.<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Creative Fire:\u00a0 Book 1 of Ruby’s SongBrenda CooperPyr BooksTrade paperback, 351 pg $17.95ebook $11.99 Kindle NookCover art by John Picacio Every now and then events conspire to keep you from accomplishing simple tasks, such as reading a book.\u00a0 This one took me exactly a month.\u00a0 Normally, I could finish a book like this in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[19,21,20,18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-brenda-cooper","category-evita-peron","category-john-picacio","category-pyr-books"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3P5pJ-i","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}