The book is short on action, and has a tendency to get just as bogged down as the endless, empty ramblings of those Bohemians. The shutter clicks, and we know Mia’s journey has just begun.

When she finally crosses the line from artisan to artist, it is in the presence of a man so ancient that he’s become almost a part of the earth. Her creative spark begins to brighten the moment she decides to run and take back her own existence. Mia doesn’t regain her creative spark by remodeling her tired body, but by shedding her tired life. But these young, aimless Bohemians have mistaken artifice for art, and it is only when Mia is taken in by an ancient photographer that her Holy Fire truly begins to burn.įrom there, it is a short trip for Sterling to make his point. She does manage to take up a camera, and begins her search feebly, by photographing the work a mad potter. Here, surely, she’ll find kindling for the creative fire within? Not realizing that she is really a part of the oppressive “gerontocracy”, they take her into their circle and immerse her in their own ideas of art. She lands in Europe, amidst a troupe of renegade Bohemians and artists. Emerging from a vat of regenerative soup like a fetus from a womb, Mia soon realizes that, although she’s regained the body of a twenty-year old, the same social expectations she’s lived with all her life still threaten to snuff whatever faint glimmer may remain of the Holy Fire.Īnd so she runs. But look deeper, and you’ll see that when Sterling’s 90 year-old protagonist, Mia, undergoes an extensive cellular remodeling, she’s really looking for the creative spark that she lost somewhere along the way. On the face of it, Holy Fire is about a woman’s quest for youth, for some small measure of immortality.

Holy Fire by Bruce Sterling