A fantasy novel of English Magic set during the Napoleonic wars, written in a nineteenth century style. Lovely prose, a bit melancholy, character driven, about the claustrophobia and loneliness of scholars, ambition, mentorship, the pain of living under enchantment. Reminds me of Neil Gaiman in themes and tone.
A fine time travel adventure to the early 19th c. with Ancient Egyptian magic thrown in. Fast paced, tense and compelling.
The orchestra and the staging overshadowed the voices. Juan Diego Flórez as Ory, Joyce DiDonato as Isolier, and Stéphane Degout were fine; Michele Pertusi as the Tutor was a little dull. The production is slapstick, which worked in the first act but was overdone in the second.
I liked the framing effect of showing the backstage and technical work: costumed crew operate fluttering butterfly puppets and dance the trees and doorframes around as though a movie camera were following the action; a crooked window descends from above and Ragonde delivers her aria through it from a stepladder. It created a fairy-tale feeling that I thought suited a light comedy about a rogue trickster, and the stage business between the hermit and the page competing for the countess was precisely timed and fun.
The flawed second act makes the countess' peaceful retreat look like a bordello, the tippling knights disguised as nuns was well sung but unimaginatively staged, and Ory in nun’s habit, wooing the countess in the dark, while unknowingly holding Isolier’s hand, is turned into a tumbling threesome that doesn’t come off, since it isn’t at all clear which characters are aware of whom they are mis-grappling. But the first act was good enough to make up for the second.
A late Victorian writer of gothic horror and science fiction, something of a precursor to Lovecraft. A mystic who believes in a great unknown spiritual world behind or alongside the mundane, to penetrate which brings great delight and horror and death. Start with The Great God Pan. Subtly thrilling.
Arthur Machen at Wikipedia
A very good introduction to the history of the cards, their role in various occult societies, games, a Jungian interpretation of the Major Arcana, and methods of meditation and divination.
An homage to Jerome K. Jerome’s Three Men in a Boat, a comedy of Victorian manners, a time travel romp, a mystery and a romance.
Lady Schrapnell, a wealthy eccentric obsessed with rebuilding Coventry Cathedral, under the guise of an enormous donation to the Oxford History Department of the mid 21st century, co-opts the department’s entire staff of time traveling historians to go back in time to research the details of the construction of the Cathedral and its furnishings. On one such jaunt to the Victorian era an historian rescues from drowning Princess Arjumand, a little black and white cat, who plays a key role in a Temporal Crisis that our hero, a much put-upon and dreadfully time-lagged historian, must sort out.
There are several mysteries and several romances and a great many plot twists. And we actually meet Jerome K. Jerome boating down the Thames…
Utterly charming.
First class research, first class recreation of an alien culture. Her Caesar is a super-man, whose passions, intellect and temperament are quite unbelievable. She describes him as possessing terrific charm, and her character does possess that charm, so that you do believe in him, and sympathize with him, and cheer for him.
Part of the Masters of Rome series, which cover the end of the republic from Marius to Antony, 110 BC to the Battle of Actium in 31.