Father Inquisitor Manoel Pessoa arrives in the small Portuguese village of Quintas as is immediately confronted by strange confessions of abductions and fornication with angels, of pregnant virgins and lights in the sky. Pessoa, a man of tentative faith and even less respect for his priestly vows, attempts to quell the wild talk lest more zealous prosecutors of heresy take interest. To this point, Anthony plays coy with her setup, using writers' sleight-of-hand to offer teasing glimpses of the supposed "angels," and the books plods deliberately along. But then the aliens pull a Roswell, plowing their silver acorn of a space ship into the side of a mountain, and all bets are off.

Portugal's idiot King Afonso sees the fiery crash, takes it as a sign from God, and mounts a quest after the falling star from heaven. Inquisitor-General Gomes hears of the King's quest, mysterious grey "angels" and other heresies, prompting him to travel to Quintas to open a full inquiry of his own. Pessoa is caught in the middle, desperate to protect villagers--ignorant of their peril--who defy his protection; baffled by the strange, silent, grey "angels" within whose eyes some see paradise and others see damnation; and Inquisitor-General Gomes, who's hell-bent to burn the entire heretical village at the stake and none too discreet about his desire to consign the Jesuit-trained Pessoa to the flames as well.

As she has in previous books--Brother Termite, Cold Allies and Happy Policeman--Anthony uses her aliens as a catalyst, a mirror held up to the provide greater insight into the human condition. The aliens don't explain themselves--they don't have to, and if they did, it wouldn't matter. From Pessoa to Gomes to Afonso, everyone sees the aliens as they want to, and no amount of argument or evidence affects those beliefs in the slightest. The aliens remain enigmas to the end, their thoughts and motivations unknown, unknowable. The humans remain enigmas as well, despite the fact that their thoughts and motivations are naked and exposed.

With subject matter as serious as the Inquisition, there's a danger of portraying events as black-and-white melodrama. Fortunately, Anthony avoids this, without slighting the brutality and horror the Inquisition fostered. Pessoa and the other protagonists are not sainted, aren't even necessarily nice. Gomes and his ilk aren't baseless caricatures of evil--Gomes truly believes the burnings work to save the souls of the condemned--even though they bring untold suffering to Quintas.

Religious fiction is a tricky business, usually falling into the categories of satire or inspirational. Religious science fiction is an even rarer bird, given the genre's tendency to embrace atheism. Anthony manages to carve out a niche all her own with God's Fires. Rather than the irreverent lampoon of James Morrow's Towing Jehovah or Only Begotten Daughter, Anthony's God's Fires owes more to Poul Anderson's High Crusade and A Canticle for Liebowitz by Walter Miller, Jr., although it's more earthy and immediate than either of those two titles, as firmly grounded in reality as any work of speculative fiction can be. ( )

It has been years since I've read Patricia Anthony's masterpiece God's Fires. I am not one to read books a second time. But to this day I remember being stunned by Anthony's amazing vision of another world. It will always be one of my favorites.

Anthony weaves disparate, seemingly incompatible elements. First, she takes her reader back to the world of Realpolitik and religious warfare tearing apart Portugal during the Inquisition. Then, she submerges them in a dreamy Never Neverland Close Encounter of the Third Kind with the Grays of Whitley Strieber's Communion. To attempt such a feat is an imaginative and ballsy play for an author. To have pulled that marriage off flawlessly is an achievement worthy of the best of the best literary talents. This book ranks up on my list of speculative and science fiction with Frank Herbert's Dune and William Gibson's Neuromancer.

God's Fires is perfect in both the beauty of its sentences and paragraphs, and its humor and poignancy. But most stunning is the story's depth of characterization and plot detail that render the unbelievable, absurd even, believable. Were aliens to crash their spacecraft in Portugal during the Inquisition rather than Roswell, New Mexico during the Cold War, Anthony shows us what likely would have happened - surely must have happened. Yet while the intricacies of the plot and insight into the psychology of the characters are thorough, still the author moves the story along. The pacing too is perfect.

Patricia Anthony's other books I've read - Flanders, and another foray into alien-human worlds colliding, Brother Termite - were interesting, imaginative, and certainly decent enough reads. But God's Fires is special. It is a great, ambitious, wonderful, and haunting tale. ( )

A 'first contact' story set in medieval Europe. I think I liked this story better when it was called "Eifelheim".

Excellent sad ending. It's a tragedy. Good writing, good setting. Could have been funnier or more serious. Nothing like I thought it would be. ( )