Test of Fire

By: Ben Bova

Narrated by: Dean Sluyter

Earth has been devastated by a massive solar flare. Now a small group of survivors fights to rebuild civilization.

Cities became ovens, grasslands seas of flame. As the touch of dawn swept westward across the spinning planet, its fiery finger killed everything in its path. Glaciers in Switzerland began to melt; floodwaters poured down on burning Alpine villages. Paris became a torch, then London. North of the Arctic Circle, Laplanders in their summer furs burst into flame as their reindeer collapsed and roasted on the smoking tundra.

The line of dawn raced westward across the Atlantic, but as it did, the sun dimmed as quickly as it had flared.

The Americas escaped the sun’s wrath … almost.

©Ben Bova (P)2013 Blackstone Audio, Inc.

Critic reviews

“A hard, dark book, the story of mankind after the fall…Compulsive reading…The battle to rebuild Earth after its almost total destruction by a gigantic solar flare.” (Harry Harrison)

ok story, sub par narrator

the story was good, but the narrator always seemed to put a strange emphasis on the wrong words and made it hard to get comfortable.

rather bla.

Is there anything you would change about this book?

plane and mild. but ok and short

Would you ever listen to anything by Ben Bova again?

sure

Do you think Test of Fire needs a follow-up book? Why or why not?

no

Any additional comments?

it was ok. not any amazing thing but i got through it all right.

This Review Needed a Title

A cataclysmic plot, part of the earth is wiped out by a solar flare and the moon settlement must extract needed resources from it. This book is all about people working together--I kept saying: " just work together and it will be a win-win". However, "Test of Fire" is just as much Bova's testament to the opposite--that conflict must occur before peace can reign--a recurring theme of human kind. While some of the testosterone enriched strategies seemed far-fetched, the theme remains.