By: Tom Miller
Genre: Fantasy, Revisionist History
Rating: 5 stars
Reader Advisory: For my more gentle readers, this does have many instances of four letter language and sexual encounters
Summary:
Eighteen-year-old Robert Weekes is a practitioner of empirical philosophy—an arcane, female-dominated branch of science used to summon the wind, shape clouds of smoke, heal the injured, and even fly. Though he dreams of fighting in the Great War as the first male in the elite US Sigilry Corps Rescue and Evacuation Service—a team of flying medics—Robert is resigned to mixing batches of philosophical chemicals and keeping the books for the family business in rural Montana, where his mother, a former soldier and vigilante, aids the locals.
When a deadly accident puts his philosophical abilities to the test, Robert rises to the occasion and wins a scholarship to study at Radcliffe College, an all-women’s school. At Radcliffe, Robert hones his skills and strives to win the respect of his classmates, a host of formidable, unruly women.
Robert falls hard for Danielle Hardin, a disillusioned young war hero turned political radical. However, Danielle’s activism and Robert’s recklessness attract the attention of the same fanatical anti-philosophical group that Robert’s mother fought years before. With their lives in mounting danger, Robert and Danielle band together with a team of unlikely heroes to fight for Robert’s place among the next generation of empirical philosophers—and for philosophy’s very survival against the men who would destroy it.
My Thoughts:
I read this book too early. I can’t believe that the sequel
isn’t coming out until next year! Faster please Mr. Miller!
I rarely win things in my life. This is one of the things
that I won from a Goodreads Drawing and I’m supremely glad that I did. The
cover art is wonderful and fits in with the period of the piece and I loved the
revisionist/alternative history this story presents. This of course is a free
and honest review – thank you goodreads for giving me the chance to read this.
Ok, now that disclaimers are over:
This was fascinating. I feel sorry for my coworkers because
I started it during a quiet moment at work (should I have been reading…probably
not but it was the end of the day and I was tired of dealing with the ins and
outs of account maintenance) and after the prologue I was already telling me
reading buddies “YOU HAVE TO READ THIS!”
What a wonderful concept, to have a sort of magic, it of
course is science/alchemy, that allows you to fly, to transport, make things
grow or to utterly destroy. Then take that one step further from our views of
the world by making it a power that typically only women can wield. Sure, there
are men who can do it with a bit of success, but the true power lies with the
ladies. This sets up a lot of politics that is an interesting contrast to the
world at the time (this takes place at the beginning of the 20th
century) and can be a study in contrasts with certain cultures and industries
that are around even until today. And because it’s looked at through a lens
that is so incredibly alien to what we see today it is made that much more
striking.
Robert does not have
an easy go of it at Radcliffe. He faces harassment, misandry and all sorts of
terrible actions done to him simply because he is a man who has the nerve to
enter into a woman’s world. The
Radcliffe women are an eclectic bunch. Robert though lucks out into finding
some other fliers who instantly take him under their proverbial wing, and while
it doesn’t stop the attacks on his person and his progress, he does have friends
who stand up for him. It was a good School type of book, these are young
students who are coming into their powers as sigilists and who are still growing up themselves.
With all that going on there is also the Trencher movement
that has become more active and more deadly. Trenchers are the Anti-Philosophers.
A group that wants women back where they belong and to know they have full
control again. (I imagine it’s hard to put a woman down in a world where she
could, with almost no effort at all dissolve your bones where you stand so that
you die in a puddle of your own organs) This group has been pressing for more
and more Anti-Philosopher Legislation at DC, has been doing random lynching’s
of women and their families. Robert’s mother has been known to pick of more
than one Trencher in her time and Robert needs to determine how he is going to
face the political battles of his parents generation that are now a part of his
own.
And there is a lovely and, in my opinion, real story of a
relationship that blooms between him and Danielle Hardin. A heroine
transporter who had saved the lives of countless men at war overseas. She is
also African American and not at all what one would imagine a leading lady to
look like nor act like. I loved them. Their story wasn’t first and foremost in
the plot. It wasn’t the end goal, it simply happened, and the story was richer
for it.
This just recently came out. I recommend it highly. It
presents an interesting look at class warfare, gender warfare and the next book
I am fairly certain will be looking into the actions taken in war and their
consequences.
Read it, tell me what you thought. Let’s chat about it
because I thought there is much that can be discussed.
