Winter Fire

WINTER FIRE is an absolute wonder of a book. I've really never read anything quite like it. On the one hand, the author writes authoritatively on the harsh realities of warfare during WWII on the Russo-Finnish border, and yet he envelopes the narrative with a convincing patina of fantasy. I've read other novels that attempted to achieve this with various levels of effectiveness, but no one in my experience has illustrated such a merging of the real and the fantastic as well as Trotter has with this novel. WINTER FIRE has an appeal to the reader of 20th Century history, and for folk who are interested in a good fiction. Trotter's familiarity with the historical figures in the novel, with the details of warfare between the Finns and their Nazi allies against the Soviet Armies, and with the stark beauty of the landscape of this far northern latititude. Trotter makes it all magical and wonderful and frightening. I heartily recommend WINTER FIRE as one of my all-time favorite tales.

Disclaimer: I'm an old friend and room mate of Mr. Bill and my objectivity is - and should be - suspect from the git-go. But, having said that, I will also say that I have no known level of either loyalty or bribe-ability which would allow me to say a whole bunch of flattering s__t about a work of fiction if I truly thought it was a festering crock of the aforementioned. Having admitted that, I have to give the highest praise I can muster for a work of fiction-cum-biography to this extended, left-handed paen to Jean Sibelius and his quasi-mystical connection with the cultural mythos of Finland and Scandanavian music in general. In the Trotter universe, Sibelius occupies a rune-strewn plane with Odin, Thor, and the rest of the Nordic pantheon and he doesn't make any clear deliniation between their diverse Scandanavian origins, except to set "Winter Fire" squarely in Finland and give his protagonist an unusual amount of time (for an aggressor's minion engaged in desperate warfare for the survival of his ideology's validity) at liberty in the ghost-ridden forests of rural Finland. Erich Ziegler, a budding symphony conductor in pre-war Germany, is assigned a commander's rank and shuffled off to Finland, where the ghost of his musical muse inhabits the very ground upon which he must fight. Ziegler is keenly aware of this frisson but doesn't appreciate how literal is his connection to the Finnish genius until a chance meeting in the forest draws him, literally, into the orbit of the fabled composer. For anyone whose knowledge of Sibelius and/or Scandanavian classical music runs beyond the cursory, this book offers a delightfully-creepy glimpse into the psyche of Sibelius; a feat made all the more dazzling by virtue of the fact that Trotter was no more personally acquainted with Sibelius than you or me but his characterization of the legendary auteur rings so eerily true that it will probably never occur to you, as it did not to me, that it might not be dead-accurate. Bill Trotter has, and has always had, an uncanny gift for setting a scene in such a way that you awake from the throes of the reading convinced that you were, in some strange way, present for the events. It is one of the highest and most laudatory of gifts that a novelist can possess and Trotter's work drips with it in luxuriant excess. A lady friend of mine in Greece ordered this book on a whim and wound up, a year later, wandering sans proper guides or supervision, in the forests of Finland, searching vainly for the sort of mystical encounter that Erich Ziegler found in the shrouded mists of the Northern pines. THAT'S the power of great writing, folks. If your imagination isn't bound by the mundane and readily plausible, "Winter Fire" is a book that can kindle such an exploratory romance in you. I urge you to try it.

this is a very well written book if you buy it you will not be disappointed. i'm suprised this is not on the new york times bestseller list.if you buy it you are in for a great read.

What do you get if you mix Finland, World War II, the composer Sibelius, human frailty, and mythology together? If you are an extremely talented and sensitive writer and you've done your homework thoroughly, you get this novel. I'm going to avoid spoilers in this review, since the strange twists in the plot (twists that seem inevitable after the fact) are so important to it, but here's the basic plot line: Young (a little spoiled) German musician, on the verge of a promising conducting career, is drafted into World War II and winds up in Finland. He eventually meets and becomes friendly with Jean Sibelius the iconic Finnish composer whose music helped define the country's identity. One of the talked-about mysteries of 20th-century music is whether Sibelius ever wrote an Eighth Symphony to finish his output of seven masterpieces and one tone poem that is practically a symphony in scale and shape. Trotter posits that he did and that there are both obvious and hidden reasons why it never reached the outside world. This book takes us into the Finnish (and, briefly, the Russian) fronts of WW II from the German and Finnish points of view, to Sibelius's rustic home in exile, and into the deep [really deep] Finnish forest, the nightmare of war, the consciousness of the Finns, and the far reaches of the human personality under stress. I write about music regularly and was quite impressed with how fluently Trotter makes the musical side of his book into something that a layman can read with understanding and a musician can read with deep appreciation. The book took a while to hook me, but once it did - after about 100 pages - I could scarcely put it down. I think it will haunt me for some time. Certainly, I will never hear the bell part in Sibelius's Fourth Symphony quite the same way again. I have seldom finished a novel thinking "Wow, this is a wonderful story". That's how I felt when I finished this. I also felt moved and as if I had been on a voyage into a strange and fascinating world. Don't miss this one.

I picked up this book on an oil tanker I was working on. I had nothing else to read. For several days I was captivated. The settings in wartime Finland and Russia are outstanding, the perfectly flawed protagonist is wonderfully done. The premise is strange, but immensely appealing. I've recommended this book to others, including my father, an English teacher, (and he's a hard sell) and each person has acclaimed it. I cannot believe that this is out of print. The combination of war and intrigue, myth and mysticism, music and death, is superb. If you can get a copy, you'll love it. A tale of obsession, war, and love. You can't get much better than this. What I want to know is this: where is this author, and what else has he got?!