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    Fata Morgana
    Fata Morgana
    Fata Morgana
    Ebook440 pages6 hours

    Fata Morgana

    By Steven R. Boyett and Ken Mitchroney

    3.5/5

    ()

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    About this ebook

    An epic novel of love and duty at war across the reach of time.

    At the height of the air war in Europe, Captain Joe Farley and the baseball-loving, wisecracking crew of the B-17 Flying Fortress Fata Morgana are in the middle of a harrowing bombing mission over eastern Germany when everything goes sideways. The bombs are still falling and flak is still exploding all around the 20-ton bomber as it is knocked like a bathtub duck into another world.

    Suddenly stranded with the final outcasts of a desolated world, Captain Farley navigates a maze of treachery and wonder—and finds a love seemingly decreed by fate—as his bomber becomes a pawn in a centuries-old conflict between remnants of advanced but decaying civilizations. Caught among these bitter enemies, a vast power that has brought them here for its own purposes, and a terrifying living weapon bent on their destruction, the crew must use every bit of their formidable inventiveness and courage to survive.

    Fata Morgana—the epic novel of love and duty at war across the reach of time.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBlackstone Publishing
    Release dateMar 12, 2018
    ISBN9781470852658
    Fata Morgana
    Author

    Steven R. Boyett

    Steven R. Boyett was born in Atlanta, Georgia, grew up all over Florida, and attended the University of Tampa on a writing scholarship before quitting to write his first novel, Ariel, when he was nineteen. Soon after Ariel was published he moved from Florida to Los Angeles, California, where he continued to write fiction and screenplays as well as teach college writing courses, seminars, and workshops. He has published stories in literary, science fiction, fantasy, and horror anthologies and magazines, as well as publishing articles and comic books. In the early nineties his imprint Sneaker Press published chapbooks by the poets Carrie Etter and the late Nancy Lambert. Steve has also been a martial arts instructor, professional paper marbler, advertising copywriter, proofreader, typesetter, writing teacher, and website designer and editor. In 2000, Steve took some time off from writing. He learned to play the didgeridoo and began composing and DJing electronic music. As a DJ he has played clubs, conventions, parties, Burning Man, and sporting events. He produces three of the world's most popular music podcasts: Podrunner, Podrunner: Intervals, and Groovelectric.

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    Reviews for Fata Morgana

    3.5/5

    19 ratings3 reviews

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    • 4/5
      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.
    • 2/5
      I've gone back and forth with the rating on this one. I think technically, it should be a one star (I didn't like it) because I didn't like it. But there were parts of it that were ok. It could have been a really good book but the execution of the idea was awful. To me. I disliked all of the Fata Morgana crew, I disliked who the main female Wenda (?- I listened to the audio and that's what it sounded like) became when she was around Joe. "You make me feel like a woman!" Pffft.

      The narrator did a great job. So I'll bump it up to two stars for that. But I definitely don't recommend this one.
    • 4/5
      I think what drew me to Fata Morgana was the promise of an old-fashioned adventure with a bit of romance: a WW2 bomber plane flies through a portal to another world and the crew has to learn how to deal with extreme culture shock while their captain falls in love with a mysterious woman. However, I wasn’t expecting that it would also include an obsessive attention to detail about the intricacies of flying and crewing a bomber.

      Fata Morgana does deliver on that initial promise of adventure, but I have to admit that it required a bit of patience on my part to get invested in the story. I don’t generally enjoy it when an author has clearly gone out of their way to get every little detail right and wants to make for damn sure that you know about it. If you want to read an exhaustive catalog of the US Army Air Force bomber crew experience during WW2, you’ll probably love this book, but if you aren’t into that level of minutiae, you might have to give it some room to grow on you.

      It doesn’t help that the characters are all fairly one-dimensional archetypes and they never rise above their first impressions. They wisecrack, they make earnest speeches, they sacrifice for the good of the crew, they’re generally stand-up guys. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing, per se, because the story well-executed and there isn’t a false note throughout, but I can barely remember any of their names.

      There is one interesting sequence late in the book where reality comes unstuck and things get a little surreal, but it goes on for long enough that it started feeling repetitive. The best parts of the book are when the crew has to do their job and fight back against their enemies, be they Nazis or otherwise. These sequences are thrilling and evocative, and are part of what brought the book home for me. There are a few action sequences full of heart-pounding moments and thrills, especially late in the book.

      I did like Fata Morgana, but it feels like this review landed a bit more on the negative side than I intended. I think this a book for a certain type of reader laser-focused on verisimilitude, even in their science fiction. I don’t generally fall into that category, but I can still appreciate a story well-told.

      Originally posted at Full of Words

    Book preview

    Fata Morgana - Steven R. Boyett

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