Helpful Score: 1
I first read McAuley's cyberpunk-meets-fantasy-epic trilogy 'Confluence,' liked it a lot, so I got his novel 'Fairyland.' That didn't really do it for me - to the extent that I considered not reading 'Pasquale's Angel' - but I am now very glad that I did read it!
'Pasquale's Angel' is Renaissance-meets-steampunk: in an alternate-history, industrialized Italy, plots and murder are afoot. Pasquale, a young artists' apprentice, is dragged into events when an apprentice of the visiting master Raphael is found murdered. Journalist-cum-private-investigator Niccolo Machiavegli hires him to help with etchings for broadsheets, and next thing he knows, he's at the heart of things. Could the guilty party be Raphael's rival, Michaelangelo? Or possibly the cuckolded husband of the fascinating Lady Lisa Giacondo? Or could a trail lead back to the secretive hermit known as the Great Engineer (Leonardo DaVinci) or the artificer Copernicus?
The novel starts out as if it will be a fairly straightforward murder mystery, but things rapidly get more complicated than that... the murder was just the top layer of plots that may lead to the city of Florence's downfall.
Weird, steam-driven machines, a trained ape, the Pope, satanic rituals, and more figure in before all is said and done...
I don't usually enjoy books which insert historical figures into fiction - but this was definitely an exception, probably because the characters really bore so little actual resemblance to the historical figures bearing their names that there was absolutely no conflict with historical truth going on at all... I found it very entertaining.
'Pasquale's Angel' is Renaissance-meets-steampunk: in an alternate-history, industrialized Italy, plots and murder are afoot. Pasquale, a young artists' apprentice, is dragged into events when an apprentice of the visiting master Raphael is found murdered. Journalist-cum-private-investigator Niccolo Machiavegli hires him to help with etchings for broadsheets, and next thing he knows, he's at the heart of things. Could the guilty party be Raphael's rival, Michaelangelo? Or possibly the cuckolded husband of the fascinating Lady Lisa Giacondo? Or could a trail lead back to the secretive hermit known as the Great Engineer (Leonardo DaVinci) or the artificer Copernicus?
The novel starts out as if it will be a fairly straightforward murder mystery, but things rapidly get more complicated than that... the murder was just the top layer of plots that may lead to the city of Florence's downfall.
Weird, steam-driven machines, a trained ape, the Pope, satanic rituals, and more figure in before all is said and done...
I don't usually enjoy books which insert historical figures into fiction - but this was definitely an exception, probably because the characters really bore so little actual resemblance to the historical figures bearing their names that there was absolutely no conflict with historical truth going on at all... I found it very entertaining.
