Hrbek sets [b:Not on Fire, but Burning|24869879|Not on Fire, but Burning|Greg Hrbek|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1428087955s/24869879.jpg|44518566] in an alternate reality in which 9/11 did not happen but a similar attack is perpetrated in San Francisco in another year. From its first page, this novel has a gripping squeeze on your heart and your mind. The fears it exposes are so visceral and relevant that you are almost standing in the room with Skyler as she witnesses the 9/11 style attack on the Golden Gate Bridge. And then you are somewhere else.

The strength of this novel for me was in the believablity of its characters. I understood and felt with Skyler, Dorian, Karim, Mitch and Will Banfelder. Hrbek did a great job of showing both sides of a complex situation in very human terms. He did what we always hope an author will do, he made me look at something I have contemplated before and see it in a new light.

If life is a series of decisions and choices, how many possibilities are there that any event might never happen or that any life might be lead in a different direction? Might we ourselves change something major by making some different decision ourselves. When we are faced with the most horrible situation, when we have gone down the wrong path, is there still always a good choice we can yet make?

I highly recommend this novel as one that will leave you thinking long after you have put it down.

My thanks to Melville House Publishing and the very talented author, Greg Hrbek, for providing me with the opportunity to read and review this book. ( )

Really beautifully written in parts despite its occasionally disturbing subject matter. I wish Hrbek had a lighter hand with some of the more out-there elements (and the characters' inner voices weren't all the same voice) but overall I enjoyed this. ( )

There is a theory that multiple universes are created every time one makes a choice to do something or not to do something. This book explores that theory through the experience of one family. I’m still not sure if the author was completely successful but it is an interesting idea for a plot.
The book starts with Skyler Wakefield, a twenty-year-old college student on summer break, looking after a little boy, Noah, in San Francisco. Noah calls out to her to look out the window and she sees an object near the Golden Gate Bridge slicing the supporting cables as if they were made of string. Then there is a bright explosion which turns out to be nuclear. Noah is blinded and cut by flying glass. As Skyler tries to get him to safety a tarry rain starts to fall from the sky. One hundred miles away Skyler’s family is safe from the fallout but have no way to reach her. Eight years later the Wakefield’s are living in Albany, New York. On a school trip to a mosque eleven year old Dorian went into the washroom and wrote hate graffiti on the toilet door. The Muslims have been blamed for the attack on San Francisco and many have been rounded up and placed in the western territories of Dakota, Montana and Wyoming. So Dorian is not alone in his feelings. He tells his parents that he had a dream about his sister and they were very upset. In this world, Dorian never had a sister. Dorian is confused and upset because he clearly remembers her, even her name, but he can find no record of her existence. When the Wakefield’s neighbour decides to adopt an orphan from the Muslim reservation it brings even more confusion to Dorian’s life. The orphan, Karim, has been inducted as a terrorist and he is supposed to contact his cell leader to learn about the action in which he will wear an explosives vest. He knows he will die but has been told he will go directly to Paradise and be reunited with his family. Dorian and Karim manage to become friends of a sort and in so doing perhaps change this reality.
There are several things that just didn’t work for me but I would have to give some major spoilers to talk about them. Suffice it to say that I think the author could have left some things out and explained others better. ( )

Not on Fire, but Burning by Greg Hrbek is a highly recommended genre twisting novel. It is part sci-fi, part thriller, part speculative dystopia and opens with a bang that should capture every reader's attention.

Skylar, a 20 year old college student, is babysitting when the incident happens. When she looks out of the picture window she sees a bright metallic object hit the Golden Gate Bridge. A mushroom cloud forms above San Francisco and radioactive fallout is everywhere. Skylar starts walking to try and get out and to her parents where she knows her beloved little brother, Dorian, is safe. No one knows what the object was, but some say the words "Air Arabia" could be seen on the object.

Years later Dorian is 12 and knows two things: he misses his sister and hates all Muslims. He is having dreams about a sister that seemingly never existed. She is not in photos. His parents say she didn't exist. Dorian knows she did because his dreams/visions about her are so real. He also dreams about killing Muslims.

In this future America, the country is divided into territories and all Muslims have been interned in the Dakotas, where the former inhabitants have been relocated. When the neighbor, a veteran from Gulf War III adopts Karim, a Muslim orphan from the internment camps and brings him to the neighborhood, introducing him to the neighborhood boys, trouble is bound to happen. Racial slurs slip out and prejudices are revealed, on both sides. Fear and grievances continue to multiply and build up between the Arab and Americans. Is the hatred and fear the two groups hold for each other real or the result of prejudices or incomplete information?

In Not on Fire, but Burning Hrbek has penned a well-written, thoughtful novel with a social conscious. The prose and insight into the psyche of each character is carefully crafted as each of them struggle with societal expectations, their own emotions, and the reality. The result is a multilayered novel that transcends genre. The one drawback for me is the switch between first and third person in the narrative. I found it disconcerting and this threw me off kilter for a good portion of the book. Since I had an advanced reading copy the transitions may be better noted or delineated in the final version.

Disclosure: My Kindle edition was courtesy of Melville House for review purposes.
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Hrbek employs a decidedly linear art form (the novel) to tell a fractal story, or stories rather, of a handful of characters who become dimly aware of their existence in one strand of the Multiverse, and aware as well of some of the infinite decision points and possibilities and outcomes that are happening to their other selves, in other strands of reality. It's a very ballsy book in that it begins with a character and outcome that are both highly dramatic, and charged with pathos...and yet this character doesn't even exist in most of the other realities depicted throughout the book. I enjoyed the novel a great deal for both its intellectual playfulness as well as its faith in the power of loving human connections, some of which remain powerfully fixed from one universe to the next. There is a lot of moral feeling here, and much to ponder about love, hate, obligation, and atonement. In some cases bitter enemies are close friends in other realities; in one case, a character atones in every possible universe for his wrongs, without exception; even though he is a good person his personal life choices come to an irrevocable decision point of knotty irrevocable guilt in every universe in which he appears. These narrative choices don't always reduce to completely logical outcomes but that didn't matter, it felt entirely ok when so much is unknowable about personal fate that some things would be left unexplained in the end. ( )