I received a free copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

2.5 stars (rounded up to 3)

This was a weird book. I don't really know how to categorize it. The book is set during WWII and follows a group of men that crew a B-17 bomber. They are flying a mission over Germany when the plane is sucked into another dimension. The crew is stuck in a decaying world between two groups of last survivors. Their plane is confiscated by one group and the men are rescued by the other. Then there's the problem of a huge machine guarding the portal that seems to be alive. The rest of the book covers the crew's experience with this strange world and their attempt to recover their plane and return to the world they know.

The first third of the book is bogged down by far too much detail about planes and their mechanics and operation. I'm sure that some people would enjoy these details, but I feel that they dragged the story down considerably. I found myself skimming huge sections of the book during this part of the story. Once the plane enters the new dimension, it picks up a bit, but still found myself skimming sections that got bogged down in too much detail. Some of the crew members were entertaining, but overall I found the story blah. I liked the interaction between Farley and one of the females from the other dimension, but I didn't really buy their instant love connection and undying love for each other. It just seemed forced and out of place.

I guess this book is historical science fiction (Is that a thing?) because I can't think of any other way to describe it. It was just meh, and honestly, I couldn't wait to finish the book to just get it over with. All things considered, I'd pass on this book.

This was a nicely put together sci fi read, but it was far too technical and military in terms of genre for me.

Although it's sn alternate history novel, don't let the dread about digging up old graves keep you away. Fata Morgana is filled with adventure, a great plot, and scenes you'd most probably want to reread just for the fun of it.

I received this book free from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and honest review.

Even though the first 20% or so reads like a WWII war story set in the air battle and bombing of Germany, this book is a science fiction novel. “Fata Morgana” is the name of a brand-new B-17 bomber that the crew of a bomber named “Voice of America” receives after that plane is shot down on a mission, and crash lands on a beach in northern England. The novel was written by Steven R. Boyett and Ken Mitchroney, and it was published by Blackstone Publishing in 2016. The first part of the story reads like a straight WWII war story, but then the sci-fi begins.

Fata Morgana is defined (at the beginning of the book, just before the Prologue) as “noun: an unusual form of mirage involving almost any kind of distant object, often distorted unrecognizably, and visible from land or sea, polar regions or deserts, at any altitude, including from airplanes.” Such mirages were believed to be “fairy castles in the air or false land created by witchcraft to lure sailors to their death.” The name is taken from the legends of King Arthur and the sorceress Morgan le Fay. And so, the name of the plane gives us a sort of premonition as to what is about to happen to the bomber and its crew.

The book starts out (almost literally) with a bang as the “Voice of America” is struck by anti-aircraft fire over Brunswick, Germany while on a bombing mission. One crew-member is killed, and the plane is subsequently destroyed, setting the stage for the story of the “Fata Morgana.” A new crew member arrives to replace the one who was lost, and the new nose art, with the plane’s new name, is painted on the plane. The new crew member is a Lakota Sioux Indian who has, incredibly, survived the shootdown of his previous bomber, the “Ill Wind.” Most of his Indian lore was learned by watching Western movies, but he carries a medicine bag that was made for him by his grandfather. He had given the medicine bag to the co-pilot of “Ill Wind” shortly before it crashed, and it was found in the dead pilot’s hand and returned to him. The medics tell him that the pilot had been dead for several hours before that could possibly have happened. The stage for the unexplained is now set.

After being struck by anti-aircraft shrapnel on its very first mission over Germany, “Fata Morgana” flies into a strange vortex and emerges in a different place. Far different, in fact. Despite severe damage to the plane, Captain Farley and his crew are able to make an emergency landing with only one engine running. They have no idea where they are, but it certainly isn’t Germany. They will, however, soon learn just where, and when, they really are. Even though it is 1943, the men soon learn about the advanced technologies we take for granted today: cell phones, infrared and night vision googles, computers, and much, much more. This is the “meat” of the story. Will Farley and his men ever get back home? Can they defeat the forces arrayed against them?
Farley meets Wennda, a woman who looks exactly like the one painted on the nose of his B-17. Romance sparks, but Wennda’s father is the military commander of a small group of people who have taken the crew in and provided a safe haven for them, and he has little use for the crew and the burden they have placed on his already-stretched resources. No surprise, then, that conflict ensues.

A few aviation inconsistencies were noted, such as the assertion that, the first time the “Fata Morgana” took off, the pilot applied “rear elevator” to lift the tail. Pilots would tell you that it would be “down” elevator that would be applied to lift the tail, and that the only two directions an elevator could possibly be moved to were “up” and “down.” Also, the aircraft supposedly suffered a complete electrical failure after entering the vortex. Yet, one of the engines, an engine that is totally reliant on electrically-fired spark plugs, continues to run. Then, at 26% into the book, and even though there is no electricity in the aircraft, “Farley switched off the interior lights.” How does that work? At 30%, we are told that the plane has “deadsticked down into some Moon Man version of the Grand Canyon . . .”, but a deadstick landing would imply that all four engines had died, even though one of them is apparently still running.

There is also a reference to Edmund Hillary at one point, even though it is unlikely that some American bomber crewmen in 1943 would know who Edmund Hillary was. Hillary was a young man from New Zealand in 1943, and had not, yet, become famous for climbing Mount Everest.

You are, of course, thinking that the Fata Morgana and her crew certainly got back, but did they? Did they really? If you think you will be able to predict what happens next, you are probably wrong. There are some plot twists coming that I certainly did not foresee, and you probably won’t, either. Prepare for some surprises.

All in all, this is an easy, entertaining read. The WWII scenes are vivid and gripping. The dialogue is realistic for the time-period. Loose ends are tied up at the conclusion. I enjoyed reading it, and would not hesitate to recommend it to sci-fi fans who appreciate a little twist in their fiction, now and then.

Unfortunately I felt the plot lost its way once it moved into the future.
This just was not for me.

I don't know why.... but this drew me in. At first I couldn't get a handle on it, and it wasn't at all how I imagined this was going to be with the language of it and things, but once it settled into the characters it did draw me in. I was torn between 3 and 4 stars, because I was lost in some stages, but overall I ended up giving it 4 because it was so different, unique, and I enjoyed that element of it.

I couldn't get into the book, the narrative was too dry for me to care about the characters.

Loved this book! What starts out as a well written WWII story with compelling believable characters turns into an adventure sci-fi story. What keeps it going is the authors ability to make the characters so likable, and the plot interesting and believable without straying over into fantasy as so much sci-fi does. Read Fata Morgana, you won't be disappointed!

An action-packed story that is part World War Two action adventure and part post-apocalyptic future sci-fi.

Right from the start this book reads a lot like a film script and had what I felt was quite a young adult vibe to it. I’m certain that I would’ve enjoyed this a whole lot more as a 13 or 14 year-old, but this isn’t meant as negative criticism, merely observation because the dialogue (aside from the very occasional profanity) did seem quite “youthy”. The WWII Europe backdrop is authentic and the characters are quite believable with a good measure of humor and banter among the central cast members. The more technical aspects such as the workings of the aircraft, weapons and other machinery seem very well researched. All of these things combine to set up a story that promises to be great fun.

The book title itself is a fine clue as to the flavor of the story, the term Fata Morgana describes a mirage consisting of multiple images often seen suspended above the horizon, like parallel versions of the material world. The true central character is a Boeing B-17 bomber which carries this as her name, along with the image of a woman from the mind of her captain, as was the custom of naming and decorating one’s aircraft. She becomes the vessel in which the story flies, but it’s in no way a straight forward flight.

The book starts off really well, and the opening chapters are easily my favorite part, joining a USAAF B-17 bomber crew leading up to a fateful daylight bombing raid over Germany. In the lead up to the mission we get introduced to the central cast and the previously mentioned banter here is great fun. We learn of the challenges faced by these brave fliers during the course of their work, and the scene is set of battle-filled skies over Europe where things sometimes tend to get a little weird. On the mission itself, the bomber encounters trouble and this leads to them being completely transferred to another world. It is here where things get super strange, and also the part of the book there I had to fight to keep up. I attribute most of this to my advance reader copy being quite poorly formatted, thus the text didn’t flow well. After backtracking numerous times (which became frustrating) I gleaned enough to know what was going on, but the story gets quite “trippy” in places and it was especially in these spots where I struggled. There’s a bit of a love story woven in among the action as well, and while I thought that this would put me off, it actually didn’t and it’s place is very necessary to the overall plot of the book. The scenes are filled with future technology and gadgets, and another fun part is seeing how early 20th century characters react to and interact with these things. Events unfold at a fair old rate and the book comes to a generally satisfactory conclusion.

I was particularly taken by the overall plot, due to my fascination with WWII-era German technology, which was often hugely speculative and many years ahead of anything else at that time. That idea is central to this story, the Nazis developing technology that would change the course of history and mankind’s ultimate destiny. It took me a longer than normal period of reflection after finishing this to fully embrace the full extent of the story, again because of my difficulty in following the words for a large chunk of the book. But after I had thought about things for a while, I found myself more satisfied than I was immediately after finishing.

Overall, Fata Morgana is a fun speculative story with lots of cool elements and action scenes, the entertainment value only let down by what I thought was a confusing delivery, which would probably be fixed by editing. It would make an incredible and visually stimulating movie, which is what I think it could be destined to become.

5/5 for concept
2/5 for delivery
3/5 for entertainment
= 3.3 out of 5

Oh my gosh! This book was soooo good. It maybe cry a few times, and others had me laughing out loud. I really must read more by this author. It was about a WWII bomber, the Fata Morganna, that went through a vortex into the future. He met a girl and fell in love. This crossed a few genres-- historical fiction, sci-fi, romance... I liked the ending too, not what I expected, but now that I am done, I can see nothing else would have really worked. I received this book as an ARC from Netgalley. My thanks to the publisher, the author and Netgalley for this book.

This book made me a little sad in spots because my grandfather was a gunner on a B-17. He didn’t serve in Europe, though, he served in the South Pacific. It wasn’t until my son, then 5, started expressing an interest in airplanes, that he started talking about the war. Of course, he didn’t tell my son everything, just the names of the planes he flew on and he had pictures of “the ladies” as he called the planes. My son was fascinated that planes had people painted on them and was fascinated that Papa shot guns out of the back at the bad guys. He didn’t understand why Papa got weepy eyed when talking about people he served with who were KIA.

When he passed in 2015, we found his medals as we were cleaning his apartment. Among them was a Purple Heart….that was buried in the bottom of a draw. My mother wasn’t surprised and said he was injured during the war. We also found the pictures he had hidden away of his squadron with the dates of death and names written on the back. Everything was saved, I believe my mother has the pictures and the Purple Heart in a bank deposit box.

What I liked about Fata Morgana is that it was on point with everything that my grandfather had told my son and myself. From what the crews wore, to how the gunners were strapped in to the shortwave radio operator to the people who handled the bombs, 100% accurate.

The science fiction aspect of the book was well written too. I liked that the Fata Morgana was taken 200 years into the future. A very bleak future, might I add, where the remnants of human society is forced to live in two domes in a crater. They are also fighting each other in a war that is as old as the domes themselves. Very surreal.

The B17 crew had to be my favorite characters to read. The personalities of each one comes across the pages and makes you smile. What I also liked is that the authors stayed true to how men from that era acted and their views on women and people of nationalities/color. I also like that they all smoked like chimneys.

I did like the romance between Captain Farley and Wennda. It was innocent, with only a kiss but it was real and I liked it.

There are a couple of twists that are thrown into the book that took me by surprise as I read it. One of the twists was big and it changed how I viewed the world that Wennda lived in. There was so much action and at one point, I was on the edge of my seat chanting “You are going to make. You are going to make it”. Want to know why I was chanting that? Read the book!!

The end was very bittersweet. I have a theory about what happened at the end of the book but I refuse to ruin the book for people. It is best that you read the book for yourself. Because I feel that people will have the same theory as I do.

How many stars will I give Fata Morgana: 4

Why: This is a book that will go on my keep shelf. It was action packed with memorable characters who quickly got under your skin. The storyline was pretty good too. It did lag in a couple of spots but the authors did a great job of getting the book back on track.

Will I reread: Yes

Will I recommend to family and friends: Yes

Age range: Older teen (16+)

Why: Violence and some language

**I chose to leave this review after reading an advance reader copy**

This this is a slowly unfurling war story that turns into a futuristic, slightly old fashioned, alternate history story - a group of soldiers with all the cliches of their ribbing each other, accepting a new man, painting the picture of a girl on the nose of their new fighter plane ... brave loyalties to each other and then an unlikely love story with a woman from a future that they are saving the world from. The group are attacked by bugs they are surrounded and outgunned but always manage to survivie 0 the woman painted on their aircraft seems to be protective - and that's 'Fata Morgana' - at one point that image disassociates from its place and spares them from their plummeting flight path. I've read these characters before - the kind of future perfect conditional time frame that the crew manage to hide from the rest of the world is recounted in this novel as a final revelation by Farley who'd loved the other worldly girl - but which is the 'real' world - they are not sure while meanwhile any other human being in the story is not sure. More an enjoyable idea than in its execution for me - those who like the aerodynamics of airplanes and discussion of strategy will enjoy this ...

Not sure if it was just the copy I had or how my Kindle e-reader handled the file, but there was some formatting errors with my copy. There would be a couple words and then it would drop the to the next line and finish the sentence. Other than that formatting error occasionally the e-book was fine.

A story about a WW II bomber going into some sort of parallel universe, Wow! How can you go wrong with a synopsis like that. That is what originally drew me to this story. I really liked the sound of what the story was about. The cover art is nice, and to be honest, I've never heard of the authors, but the story description sounded awesome.

This book had some exciting sequences throughout the story. The opening scene is an in late out early type scenario and are tossed directly into battle. It is an exciting scene though and really got me into the mood of the story. I had a sense of being in the battle and what would be going on around me if I had been there. The description here was done very well.

The characters are introduced one by one, but that is where I ran into some issues. Many of the characters were introduced, but were called by different names all during the same scene. I had trouble keeping up with who was saying what because I couldn’t figure out whose name was whose from previous scenes. I think that the character tags could have been shored up and tightened up a bit and it would of helped the story flow a little bit smoother for me.

One minor thing that kind of bugged me was when a couple of the chapter breaks happened. I think that it would have been a good transition into a new scene, but the hard break left the story feeling weird for some reason. One example would be the backstory of Martin on the Ill Wind. There was a hard chapter break and then it went into the backstory. To me it would of felt more natural to just read a scene break and keep going.

Sometimes the description became too much for me. I would just start skimming through paragraphs that described in a lot of detail. There were also a lot of military terms used and thrown around that I didn't understand because I was never in the military. The use of so much military terminology kind of broke the flow of reading, sort of like a speed bump.

The first part of the book just went on too long for my tastes. It was a military story for the first 30% of the book. Then it started to delve into the fantasy aspect of the book. I was hoping this book would be much more fantasy from the get go. I understand having to build up to the scene where they cross over, but I think it could have been done with much less.

Overall, the story was ok. The writing was not bad, but wasn't great. It occupied some time for me, but didn't leave any lasting impressions on me.

The title of this book piqued my interest as I knew that a Fata Morgana was a very unusual form of a mirage and could not see how this definition went with the description of the book. AS I read I realised that it was so aptly titled. Not being a war buff I was concerned that this would take away my interest but I can only say what a magnificent book this turned out to be. Describing the story as surprising hardly does it justice..
.The book is essentially a love story that flows so well over the years, beginning in WWII going to Sci-Fi and culminating with a major twist that the reader does not expect. It is a very accurate portrayal of the period and the Sci-Fi section is certainly believable. I would certainly recommend this book to other readers for its stylistic approach and wide interest base.

Wonderful book. As a long time military aviation professional and sci-fi addict, this was the perfect book for me and would fit anyone with similar interests. The first part of the book grabbed ones interest as a detailed description of the story of a B-17 crew based in England during WWII. As my father flew fighters for the RAF and USAAF I have a personal connection to these events. Then, in the middle of a raid over Germany we are thrown into the future to a world where WWII created a dreadful future for mankind. The way this Segway developed was, in my mind, an excellent transition that maintained the level of detail of both worlds combining the subtle romance between the two main characters. The conclusion on the crews' return was particularly poignant and the ending brought the story to a fitting finale.

A very enjoyable read - thank you.