The 'dead days' are the days between Christmas and New Year, when I started reading this. It's a YA novel, quite dark, and the first volume of a series. The protagonist ('Boy') is servant to a magician who's under a curse. The setting's a dark, Baroque city, rather Italianate and 18th-century but with elements of both fantasy and science -- electricity regarded as a dark art, etc. The writing's terse and choppy and quite well-paced, but I found the setting much more interesting than the events. A tendency to paint characters in black and white, too, though that leads to assumptions (by characters and readers) that are proved incorrect. Not desperate to read second volume.
reposted here from LJ in order to keep all my reviews in one place
Monday, January 31, 2005
#5: A Time of Angels -- Patricia Schonstein
Oddly reminiscent of The Vintner's Luck (Elizabeth Knox) which is one of my favourite novels. Another novel about cause and effect, really, and the interconnectedness of three generations of Italian emigrants in South Africa. On the way, it includes fine art, the Holocaust, religion, story-telling, plastic surgery, infidelity, clocks, Italian cooking and conscription. Quite a dark novel, and I read it twice in an attempt to make sense of the ending. Beautifully written, full of sensual impressions: not a book to read without good food to hand! It's likely to stay in my mind for a long while.
reposted here from LJ in order to keep all my reviews in one place
reposted here from LJ in order to keep all my reviews in one place
#4: The Time Traveller's Wife -- Audrey Niffenegger
Only finished this last night and am still thinking about it. Niffenegger explores all the classic time-travel themes: can a time-traveller change history? How does time travel work? What about cause and effect? Any profit in it? What happens when you know your fate? And a few others that I hadn't thought of but won't detail here. At least one scene feels very much like an afterthought and doesn't seem necessary for the story. The protagonists, Henry and Clare, are fascinating and three-dimensional, and the supporting cast isn't bad either. But the last few chapters seemed to lose focus.
reposted here from LJ in order to keep all my reviews in one place
reposted here from LJ in order to keep all my reviews in one place
#3: Long John Silver -- Bjorn Larsson (trans. Tom Geddes)
Pirates, arrrrr! I've had this for ages and only just got around to reading it. The translation is excellent, e.g. unnoticeable, though I did wonder how the pirate-speak read in the original Swedish. This novel tells the story of Long John Silver in suitably swashbuckling prose, yet there's more depth to it than that: plenty of philosophising on the nature of freedom, the evils of slavery etc, without the author imposing a modern mindset upon his characters. Presents Silver as a real-life pirate and gives a very credible and witty explanation as to why he never made it into Captain Johnson's A History of the Pirates: excellent cameo appearance from Defoe, who discusses literature. Also plenty of rum, treasure, plundering and misbehaviour.
reposted here from LJ in order to keep all my reviews in one place
reposted here from LJ in order to keep all my reviews in one place
#2: Earthly Joys -- Philippa Gregory
The fictionalised life of John Tradescant the Elder, gardener to Charles I, the Duke of Buckingham and Robert Cecil. A great deal of historical info-dumping here: the prose was rather dry. She does bring to life a whole outmoded -- almost feudal -- notion of service to one's lord, right or wrong. The characterisation of Tradescant is brilliant, but the backdrop felt two-dimensional, even when describing his travels to Russia and the Netherlands. Am tempted, though, to read the sequel (Virgin Soil) just for the historical aspects: Virginia in the early days.
reposted here from LJ in order to keep all my reviews in one place
reposted here from LJ in order to keep all my reviews in one place
#1: According to Queeney -- Beryl Bainbridge
Dr Johnson's later years, and his friendship with Hester Thrale. Bainbridge is an astute observer of the little details, and how they become altered in one's memory. The title's a misnomer though: it took me a while to figure out why I felt off-balance, but it may be to do with the way that point-of-view changes throughout: not just between chapters but even within the same paragraph. The sort of historical novel that I'll keep for reference but not for reading pleasure.
reposted here from LJ in order to keep all my reviews in one place
reposted here from LJ in order to keep all my reviews in one place
Thursday, December 11, 2003
Roma Eterna -- Robert Silverberg
This review originally appeared in Vector, the critical journal of the British Science Fiction Association, in January 2004.
In the Prologue of Robert Silverberg's latest novel, Roma Eterna, Celer - the Roman Empire's leading scholar of Eastern religions - speculates about alternate histories. He wonders what would have happened if the Hebrew Exodus from Egypt had succeeded, and imagines "a new religion under an invincible new prophet." "Well," (says his friend Aufidius, yawning) "all that is sheer fantasy. It never could have happened …"
If you haven't already spotted that the world (or at least the history) that Celer is speaking of is our own, then this novel may not be for you. Roma Eterna presents a world in which the exodus from Egypt failed, and Christianity never happened; and the Roman Empire did not fall.
The novel consists of ten chapters, most of which have previously appeared (in some form) as standalone stories. The chapters are dated AUC - ab urbe condita, 'from the founding of the city' (Rome, of course) in 753BC - and a little mental arithmetic will prove most useful, as will a working knowledge of the major events of our own world history.
Each chapter is a vignette, a slice of everyday life from a past which differs from our own so subtly that the distinctions are never explicitly stated. Silverberg's protagonists are the little people, the ordinary folk who are never mentioned in history books. They don't know about the latest technology, or the political machinations of the Senate, or the fate of the expedition to Mexico. Leontius Corbulo (AUC 1365) is far more concerned with the peccadillo for which he was exiled to Mecca than he is interested in the religious beliefs of the local tribes. Lady Eudoxia (AUC 2206) is bored by her lover's talk of Roma's 'divine right' and the burden of ruling the world, and cannot understand why he has to leave her to become Procurator of Constantinople.
Silverberg teases out the strands of history in a strange but recognisable world, and he packs his narrative with teasing allusions to (and reflections of) our own history. An unwilling heir becomes Emperor, and casts aside Faustus, the ageing buffoon who's been his companion in mischief; two children accidentally discover the last survivor of a murdered royal house, who fled the massacre as a child; a great adventurer's record is tarnished by rumours of cannibalism. Meanwhile, the greater issues - such as whether or not the Empire can expand indefinitely, and whether democracy is inevitable - are played out in the background, between the chapters, and between the lines.
It's like a massive game of Civilisation - except that Silverberg sketches in those little lives with loving attention, dwelling on detail and choosing a different voice and style for each protagonist so that these voices from an imaginary past ring true.
The final chapter of the novel, 'To The Promised Land' (AUC 2723) brings the novel firmly into the category of science fiction. I wondered, when I read it, how long ago it was written: was it a response to actual events in the real world, or did it spring entirely from Silverberg's fertile imagination? In either case, I found it a moving finale to this understated and thoughtful alternate history.
In the Prologue of Robert Silverberg's latest novel, Roma Eterna, Celer - the Roman Empire's leading scholar of Eastern religions - speculates about alternate histories. He wonders what would have happened if the Hebrew Exodus from Egypt had succeeded, and imagines "a new religion under an invincible new prophet." "Well," (says his friend Aufidius, yawning) "all that is sheer fantasy. It never could have happened …"
If you haven't already spotted that the world (or at least the history) that Celer is speaking of is our own, then this novel may not be for you. Roma Eterna presents a world in which the exodus from Egypt failed, and Christianity never happened; and the Roman Empire did not fall.
The novel consists of ten chapters, most of which have previously appeared (in some form) as standalone stories. The chapters are dated AUC - ab urbe condita, 'from the founding of the city' (Rome, of course) in 753BC - and a little mental arithmetic will prove most useful, as will a working knowledge of the major events of our own world history.
Each chapter is a vignette, a slice of everyday life from a past which differs from our own so subtly that the distinctions are never explicitly stated. Silverberg's protagonists are the little people, the ordinary folk who are never mentioned in history books. They don't know about the latest technology, or the political machinations of the Senate, or the fate of the expedition to Mexico. Leontius Corbulo (AUC 1365) is far more concerned with the peccadillo for which he was exiled to Mecca than he is interested in the religious beliefs of the local tribes. Lady Eudoxia (AUC 2206) is bored by her lover's talk of Roma's 'divine right' and the burden of ruling the world, and cannot understand why he has to leave her to become Procurator of Constantinople.
Silverberg teases out the strands of history in a strange but recognisable world, and he packs his narrative with teasing allusions to (and reflections of) our own history. An unwilling heir becomes Emperor, and casts aside Faustus, the ageing buffoon who's been his companion in mischief; two children accidentally discover the last survivor of a murdered royal house, who fled the massacre as a child; a great adventurer's record is tarnished by rumours of cannibalism. Meanwhile, the greater issues - such as whether or not the Empire can expand indefinitely, and whether democracy is inevitable - are played out in the background, between the chapters, and between the lines.
It's like a massive game of Civilisation - except that Silverberg sketches in those little lives with loving attention, dwelling on detail and choosing a different voice and style for each protagonist so that these voices from an imaginary past ring true.
The final chapter of the novel, 'To The Promised Land' (AUC 2723) brings the novel firmly into the category of science fiction. I wondered, when I read it, how long ago it was written: was it a response to actual events in the real world, or did it spring entirely from Silverberg's fertile imagination? In either case, I found it a moving finale to this understated and thoughtful alternate history.
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