Wondrous

I'm reading The Light Ages by Ian R MacLeod, and a marvelous thing it is.

I've read a couple of his things before, like the novella The Summer Isles. He does alternate history things, which I love. The Summer Isles is about how, when the National Socialists come to power in the UK, the UK Jewish community is "encouraged" to move to islands off the coast of Scotland (still a solution for immigrants you often see proposed by Daily Mail readers) - which are, in effect, concentration camps.

The Light Ages starts from the premise that, in the 17th Century, enlightenment scientists actually discovered that thing they were all looking for: Aether. So we have an industrial revolution driven by Aether and magic, so that buildings, bridges, and engines are poorly engineered, but held together beyond their capabilities by Aether, which is mined from the earth in much the same way as coal.

So, 300 years later, anyone who suggests that Aether is holding back progress, and that electricity and better engineering is the future, are seen as lone crazies. Meanwhile Aether itself can have terrible side effects - changing people into otherworldly creatures... and what happens when it runs out?

Reviews of this book compare it to Dickens, Mervyn Peake etc., but I haven't, and wouldn't read any of these people (yes I know them, they're quite lame). MacLeod is a good writer, who takes his time to create a complete world which you can totally immerse yourself in. He's more like the brilliant Tim Powers than those "literary" guys.