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A review by ncrabb
Fata Morgana by Ken Mitchroney, Steven R. Boyett
4.0
This is the perfect book for me. World War II, time travel, and parallel worlds on Earth. It just doesn't get better. Add to that the fact that I love what I know of these characters. Even the ending touched my heart. This is easily the best book I've read in 2021 so far, but it's still early.
Captain Joe Farley is in charge of a B-17 bomber crew. These are 10 unique and mostly lovable men whose banter is snappy and whose wit is quick. They are a product of their time for sure. My favorite was Shorty, the radio guy. I could relate to him--the consummate ham operator trying to pull signals out of the ether with that massive old tube radio he doubtless had to use. He had a love for both the medium and the equipment, and what's not to appreciate about a guy like that.
Captain Farley had seen an image of a girl in his dreams--an image he could never explain, but one he wanted painted on the fuselage of his bomber. They christened the plane Fata Morgana, and one of the crew faithfully painted the woman's image on it.
Ere long, they get orders to bomb a munitions plant in East Germany. While they are en route, the mission goes bizarrely awry. The electrical equipment gets flaky, and they find themselves inexplicably in a world whose main feature is desolation.
The plane and crew land and find that they are guess of a warring group of people with each faction living in one of two cities. In that place, Farley finds Wennda, the girl he has seen in his dreams and whose image is on the plane.
This is a little reminiscent of the Destroyerman series where a ship goes into a squall and comes out in a different place, but this is a better book than those. I loved the discussions about the equipment--both the B-17 and the stuff they found in the new world where they landed. This is fast-action relatively light character development golden-age-type science fiction. On a personal, you might argue irrelevant note, I have a lifelong friend who died recently who would have thoroughly enjoyed this book. The only down side to reading it was that I have no way of convincing him to read it so we could discuss it in depth.
Captain Joe Farley is in charge of a B-17 bomber crew. These are 10 unique and mostly lovable men whose banter is snappy and whose wit is quick. They are a product of their time for sure. My favorite was Shorty, the radio guy. I could relate to him--the consummate ham operator trying to pull signals out of the ether with that massive old tube radio he doubtless had to use. He had a love for both the medium and the equipment, and what's not to appreciate about a guy like that.
Captain Farley had seen an image of a girl in his dreams--an image he could never explain, but one he wanted painted on the fuselage of his bomber. They christened the plane Fata Morgana, and one of the crew faithfully painted the woman's image on it.
Ere long, they get orders to bomb a munitions plant in East Germany. While they are en route, the mission goes bizarrely awry. The electrical equipment gets flaky, and they find themselves inexplicably in a world whose main feature is desolation.
The plane and crew land and find that they are guess of a warring group of people with each faction living in one of two cities. In that place, Farley finds Wennda, the girl he has seen in his dreams and whose image is on the plane.
This is a little reminiscent of the Destroyerman series where a ship goes into a squall and comes out in a different place, but this is a better book than those. I loved the discussions about the equipment--both the B-17 and the stuff they found in the new world where they landed. This is fast-action relatively light character development golden-age-type science fiction. On a personal, you might argue irrelevant note, I have a lifelong friend who died recently who would have thoroughly enjoyed this book. The only down side to reading it was that I have no way of convincing him to read it so we could discuss it in depth.