A different sort of SF
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The Light Ages is a bit like an alternative Victorian-era story, with "aether" mined from the ground much like coal to cast spells and control engineering problems, among many other uses. For example, while a long bridge would in the real world require sturdy engineering to ensure it remains standing, in this novel an aether spell can ensure even a poorly designed bridge will not fall down. The story is quite dense at time, but the characters and their lives particularly well drawn. I look forward to reading this author's other works.
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Highly inventive
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The first part is best because he pitches you right in to his imagined world, and keeping up is heady and stimulating. Then it becomes an adventure in the world - good fun, but the challenge of understanding this parallel world inevitably falls away. Themes to ponder, though, and a page turning yarn.
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An impressive, readable parallel history fantasy
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The Light Ages is excellent, highly recommended, and I thoroughly enjoyed every page. It's a fantasy novel with a twist, set in a technologically advanced Victorian era where the wheels of industry are fueled by magic. Our working class hero comes from the grimly cliched North of England where the miracle-working fuel Aether is mined, and grows up to mix with the London based upper class whose fortunes are made by exploiting the need for the magical energy to flow. The writing has a period flavour which suits the material, and the characters and their world are fully enough fleshed and detailed to satisfy the imagination and hold your attention. There is something for everyone here. There is a nuts and bolts science fiction premise, there are two love stories, secret lives, conspiracies, witches and mutants. Fantasy fans will find enough more than enough romance and magic to satisfy. If you don't like fantasy, the cod-scientific logic of Aether power puts this on the borders of steam-punk. If you don't normally like period drama, this is the prose equivalent of Jeremy Brett as Sherlock Holmes, something that puts the rule to proof.
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All-time classic
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Having written brilliant shorter fiction, Ian R MacLeod really comes of age in this massive novel which mixes Dickens and Peake. The author's intelligence can't have been in question for anyone who has read his work over the years. His ability to create characters and plotlines which work at book-length - and above all a wonderful, awe-ful, fascinating world - are now beyond question. From the lords and ladies to the Poor Bloody Infantry of this skewed Victorian Britain, MacLeod has birthed a list of magnificent characters. The all-pervading influence of Aether insinuates its way through every page. A masterpiece.
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Light Ages from his shorter fiction
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Ian R. MacLeod is a terribly exciting writer as anyone know who has waited for a new story of his to hit the newsstands. Still his metier is short stories and not novels as I discovered reading the Light Ages. Macleod strength lies in his brilliant prose, amazing color and intense poetic emotions. These qualities find the perfect vessel in shorter fiction where the poetic invention can stay in the realm of suggestion and metaphor, and where Macleods stunning prose never needs the dilution of the extended novel. Plot, character development, dialogue, and a kind of internal realism/logic a novel must have-- even a fantasy novel-- are not Macleods strengths. Unfortunately his ambitions seem toward novels lately as a sequel to the Light Ages is planned. I hope he will embrace his strengths and return to short stories soon (a loose story cycle if he wishes something longer to kaleidoscopically expand his poetic explorations and break new ground) and leave the novel for the less inventive. Still, I am glad I purchased this novel. Macleod is serious writer worth following. Still, I hope he realizes one Dickens is enough.
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