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Laddar... Popes and Phantomsav John Whitbourn
  
Det finns inga diskussioner på LibraryThing om den här boken.   ) DinadansFriend | Feb 27, 2014 |  'We aim to change all that, Admiral,' said the condottiere with quiet confidence. 'We may ally ourselves with atheists and Elves, radical humanists and Roman-Empire nostalgists - in fact anyone who rests uneasy under the present dispensation. However, we never for one moment lose sight of our ancient objective.' Usually I prefer alternate history to be realistic, but this one is definitely on the fantasy side, featuring revenants, elves, vengeful ghosts, and a new regime in hell, as well as both past and future gods (in the manner of Neil Gaiman's "American Gods"). It's the story of Admiral Slovo, a former pirate turned papal troubleshooter, who is really working for a far-reaching and highly-connected secret society called the Vehme (i.e. the Illuminati). When I read "The Dragon Waiting", an alternate history that is set at a similar date, I found the vampires and magic irritating and off-putting, but strangely the fantasy elements didn't jar at all this time. "Popes and Phantoms" reminded me of Julian Rathbone's historical novel "Kings of Albion", as both authors seemed to be playing games with the text to amuse themselves. There was a similar use of anachronism, and a lot of wordplay, including a particularly good pun on Te Deum/tedium, and the author also slipped in some film titles; I noticed "Death in Venice" and "Apocalypse Now" but there may well have been others. Maybe that's why the fantasy elements didn't jar - the sheer amount of puns and anachronisms meant that there was no way you could kid yourself that this was an account of events that could have actually happened. (  ) isabelx | Feb 6, 2011 | tamaranth | Mar 20, 2006 | inga recensioner | lägg till en recension
Admiral Slovo was a man of his time, but of more than one dimension..In "his" sixteenth century, a pirate might be followed by the corpse of his victim, walking across the ocean, until putrescence claimed it. Or an interview with the Pope might be mirrored, exactly, by one with the Devil. Reality shifts could cause a King to see his capital city shimmer into another Realm entirely. Through such scenes of macabre hallucination, mayhem and murder, Slovo is a man alone, set apart by his stoic beliefs from the rigours of human fears and passions. As such, he was a valuable find for the Vehme, a clandestine, subversive society that ensnared its members from an early age, securing loyalties by the expedient methods of blackmail, bribery and barbarism. But Slovo is more than a Vehmist puppet, and whether as a brigand on the high seas, or emissary to the Borgias, or as the Pope's Machiavellian Mr Fix-it, he plots a course that suits his own ends as much as those of his paymasters. He knows that, in the words of his mentor Marcus Aurelius, "in a brief while you will be ashes of bare bones; a name, or perhaps not even a name." And there are few things that cannot be solved by a stiletto in the eye. Inga biblioteksbeskrivningar kunde hittas. |
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 Google Books — Laddar...GenrerMelvil Decimal System (DDC)823.914Literature English & Old English literatures English fiction Modern Period 1901-1999 1945-1999Klassifikation enligt LCBetygMedelbetyg: (3.44)
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