Saved From The Fire by Mark Gallacher

(Ringwood Publishing, 2022)

Reviewed by Finn Dempster

Mark Gallacher’s debut, for all its flaws, never lacks ambition. We begin in a small village community, but the scale of the story is quickly set. This is a society rebuilding from the ashes of our own, having been knocked back to a second Neolithic era by a variety of disasters: the Culling, The Fire, and some dark era where knowledge in general and books in particular were blamed for humanity’s woes and destroyed in The Fire. But the written word is still alive, with the few surviving books carefully horded and protected by those who recognize their value. In an inviting twist, the narrator tells us we’re about to read some of the titular saved books—a history of those dark times.

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Review from BSFA Review 18 - Download your copy here.