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A review by thewallflower00
Fata Morgana by Ken Mitchroney, Steven R. Boyett
4.0
It's a marathon, but a good one. The story is a basic portal fantasy (a B-52 crew flies into another dimension), but you feel like you're there: all the detail about the plane, the crew's lives, how they interact with each other, the equipment, and the war. It got me excited about World War II (there is a lot more detail about World War II stuff than the fantasy world) and balances description with plot.
The fantasy elements are underwhelming. It's a standard domed city, a flying mechano-dragon, bad guys in the other domed city across the wasteland, the man from the past falls in love with the woman from the future, and so on. It's all very sixties Star Trek or H.G. Wells "The Time Machine". Nothing exceptional. Mundane even. I kept waiting for the thing that made the world extra-special and unique.
And I have a hard time believing that any of the crew could help with anything mechanical in this world. It would be like a watchmaker fixing my iPhone. Besides that, some threads don't go anywhere (like the whole chapter dedicated to the new crewmember's "story" of his haunted plane), making the book unnecessarily long. I hate when that happens.
The magic comes from the plausible character development. It's a satisfying read and entertaining, but make sure you can handle some World War II history and mechanics.
The fantasy elements are underwhelming. It's a standard domed city, a flying mechano-dragon, bad guys in the other domed city across the wasteland, the man from the past falls in love with the woman from the future, and so on. It's all very sixties Star Trek or H.G. Wells "The Time Machine". Nothing exceptional. Mundane even. I kept waiting for the thing that made the world extra-special and unique.
And I have a hard time believing that any of the crew could help with anything mechanical in this world. It would be like a watchmaker fixing my iPhone. Besides that, some threads don't go anywhere (like the whole chapter dedicated to the new crewmember's "story" of his haunted plane), making the book unnecessarily long. I hate when that happens.
The magic comes from the plausible character development. It's a satisfying read and entertaining, but make sure you can handle some World War II history and mechanics.