Author: Gillian Anderson and Jeff Rovin Title: A Vision of Fire Genre: metaphysical science fiction
I had to look twice, but yep – her trademark mysterious half smile is right there on the author photograph: A Vision of Fire is, indeed, co-authored by Dana Scully. By “Dana Scully,” of course, I mean Gillian Anderson, who played the skeptical Scully opposite David Duchovny’s Fox Mulder on The X-Files. In the literary world, Anderson teams up with Jeff Rovin. He ain’t married to Tea Leoni, though, so who cares?
Apparently geeks do: the back-cover blurbs intone. “This is basically the dream of nerds everywhere” (Flavorwire); “Gillian Anderson is returning to the genre that made her a cultural icon” (Entertainment Weekly); “[W]e’re quivering with anticipation for Gillian Anderson’s debut science fiction novel” (Tor.com); “Gillian Anderson delighted for years as the skeptical Agent Scully on The X-Files, and now she wants to return to the genre that made her famous, this time as an author.”
Wait a minute, people – what about the friggin’ book? Well, I’ll tell you: on a scale of five stars, it would have to struggle to reach two. I don’t care that Rovin claims to have written more than 150 books (including such winners as How to Win at Nintendo Games (and its sequel). The book still sucks.
Child psychiatrist Caitlin O’Hara has been asked to consult in the case of a UN diplomat’s daughter after she suddenly began speaking in tongues and entered some weird fugue state. O’Hara (somehow) learns of a second young woman with similar symptoms in Haiti and jumps on a plane to interview her. Lo and behold, there’s a third teen – this one in Iran – afflicted with the same syndrome. O’Hara’s BFF happens to be a polyglot who just happens to recognize Mongolian and Old Norse in the utterings of the diplomat’s daughter.
Long story short, something has made these three people conduits to ancient peoples who lived thousands of years ago in an ice-free Antarctica. And the process of learning that is, frankly, so boring that I nearly put the book down permanently with twenty pages unread.
If you like pseudo-metaphysical twaddle, characters with murky back stories, bad science¹, plots built on non sequiturs and senseless jumps, hackneyed secret societies, and all the other trappings of bad fiction, then you might like A Vision of Fire. If you like your fiction to make some sort of sense, skip it.
The worst line in the book is on the front cover: “Book One of the Earthend Saga.” Oh, damn: another crappy series to clutter up library shelves.
¹ e.g., no matter that the author(s) wrote, silver is not lighter than iron: iron is element 26, mean atomic weight ~56; silver is element 47, mean atomic weight ~108