Book review: Pavane

And oldie from Keith Roberts. I liked it enough that I've just ordered The Grain Kings, which I also read oh so many years ago. These are not super high quality stuff, but they have a flavour which modern stuff lacks.

This is an alternate-history "novel" constructed from some loosely-connected short stories: Queen Elizabeth was assasinated, the Armada succeeded, the Catholic Church controls the world; edicts such as Petroleum Veto restrict progress. But in a way it is really about the Isle of Purbeck and Corfe Castle. I think I'd like to visit there in the spring. Let's see if I remember.

Mixed into the stories of traction-engine folk, with their lovingly-described tending, and the signalling, and the lords and ladies, there is the Faery folk as an edge presence, nicely handled, almost as a ghost story when first introduced. Possibly not quite consistently - this is fixup after all - because the Seneschal turns out to be one. Trivia: in the end, the Seneschal turns out to have a primitive radio; but it doesn't do much and it isn't clear how he got it, or who he talks to. This seems to be an oddity. I think this is part of a not-quite-realised plan to have tech start creeping in.

Wiki says "The location and flavour, nostalgic yet tragic in outlook..." which fits fairly well; tragic is too strong though. As everyone say, the coda - "explaining" the Church's cunning plan to restrict science just long enough that humanity has time to mature and not to nuke ourselves to death - jars; I recommend not reading it.

Trivia: given the detail about headers and duplex and routing protocol from the semaphore chains, I'd expected him to have some kind of technical background, but it seems not.