I don't know why magic - "aether" - had to be added to this political bildungsroman, which was otherwise like Nicholas Nickleby with a taste for To the Finland Station. Perhaps the magic exaggerated the moral of historical inertia? or because we use the Victorian age as a bridge to fantasy, the way they used the medieval ages? I never did think the fantasy was necessary, but it was consistent enough that I soon stopped worrying about it.
The other incongruity is that the plot is full of adventure, but the pace is leisurely by mondern standards, more like a family saga. It does have as much briskness as a thriller, in which the excitement of reading about a shocking event directly is never as valuable as finding out later what happened, and who tried to conceal it.
As semi-Victorianism goes, I was fond of Hallam Tower, and sorry not to get a reference to Michelson & Morley.
ISBN: 0441010555
So wrote clew in SF&F. | TrackBack