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A review by sarahetc
Arcadia by Iain Pears
5.0
Go read this book right now. Do not pass Go. Do not collect $200. READ IT. RIGHT NOW.
So, now that we have the commands out of the way, on with the exhortations. Usually you want to describe a book, give a sense of something it is like to orient others to its similarities or differences. So let me lay this on you. Arcadia is the story of a bush-league Inkling, post-Tolkien/Lewis split, whose little fantasy universe gets psychomathematiced into an Anathem style parallel universe quest that both causes and effects a Cloud Atlas style time travel story.
Are you in or are you in?!
There's Henry Lytten, professor and former spy and translator. He's befriended Rosie, a young lady that comes round to help him with his cat. He also has a friend, Angela, who is very strange and wants to store a metal sculpture in his cellar. There's Jay, a young man, student of the scholars at Ossenfud. He is learning to study The Story, while mastering his part in perpetuating the oral traditions of Anterworld. Catherine, Lord and Lady of Willdon, is about to undertake a quest of her own, which will be fraught, because her nephew-in-law, Pamarchon, a bandit, is ready and willing to lead a takeover of her kingdom, which would have been lawfully his if he had not killed her husband, his uncle. Meanwhile, Hanslip is on the Island of Mull and is under orders from Oldmanter to get Angela's machines and her data! So he sends Grange, who mysterious disappears off the face of the earth. And they would know, so far in the future, they can track every one of 30 billion people. Then Angela disappears in a power surge that wipes out electric resources to all of Europe. So they send Jack to find Emily who might know a little something about a strange script called The Devil's Handwriting, which both Hanslip and Oldmanter think is the key to the machine which will create parallel universes. Except Angela and Chang's experiments have recently been discovered in France, dated to three hundred years ago. So when the professor's cat goes missing and Rosie sees a strange light coming out of the sculpture in the cellar, she decides to take a look. When she does, Jay sees a fairy!
Do I have you? If that's not enough, the language is amazing. The pacing is perfect. The motifs stack up and down on one another and just when you think you've really figured it out, he drops another one that has you lying in bed in the middle of the night trying not to hoot. Go read it right now. You're welcome!
So, now that we have the commands out of the way, on with the exhortations. Usually you want to describe a book, give a sense of something it is like to orient others to its similarities or differences. So let me lay this on you. Arcadia is the story of a bush-league Inkling, post-Tolkien/Lewis split, whose little fantasy universe gets psychomathematiced into an Anathem style parallel universe quest that both causes and effects a Cloud Atlas style time travel story.
Are you in or are you in?!
There's Henry Lytten, professor and former spy and translator. He's befriended Rosie, a young lady that comes round to help him with his cat. He also has a friend, Angela, who is very strange and wants to store a metal sculpture in his cellar. There's Jay, a young man, student of the scholars at Ossenfud. He is learning to study The Story, while mastering his part in perpetuating the oral traditions of Anterworld. Catherine, Lord and Lady of Willdon, is about to undertake a quest of her own, which will be fraught, because her nephew-in-law, Pamarchon, a bandit, is ready and willing to lead a takeover of her kingdom, which would have been lawfully his if he had not killed her husband, his uncle. Meanwhile, Hanslip is on the Island of Mull and is under orders from Oldmanter to get Angela's machines and her data! So he sends Grange, who mysterious disappears off the face of the earth. And they would know, so far in the future, they can track every one of 30 billion people. Then Angela disappears in a power surge that wipes out electric resources to all of Europe. So they send Jack to find Emily who might know a little something about a strange script called The Devil's Handwriting, which both Hanslip and Oldmanter think is the key to the machine which will create parallel universes. Except Angela and Chang's experiments have recently been discovered in France, dated to three hundred years ago. So when the professor's cat goes missing and Rosie sees a strange light coming out of the sculpture in the cellar, she decides to take a look. When she does, Jay sees a fairy!
Do I have you? If that's not enough, the language is amazing. The pacing is perfect. The motifs stack up and down on one another and just when you think you've really figured it out, he drops another one that has you lying in bed in the middle of the night trying not to hoot. Go read it right now. You're welcome!