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When I picked up Stephen Fry's Making History on a whim, I have to admit, I did not expect to find myself in the middle of a novelistic game of Chrononauts, but there I was. The plot of the book centers around history student Michael Young, who, after a chance encounter with a physics professor tormented by ancestral guilt, decides to play about with Changing History Forever. There are chapters set in the past, detailing both real and alternate history, and other chapters written in script format when Fry decides he wants to fast-forward into action movie mode, and some chapters that are in fact meant to be part of the main character's thesis, making the whole thing kind of meta in places.
I have mixed feelings about the book as a whole. Parts of it were very good and very funny - those were the bits where as I read I could actually hear Stephen Fry's voice in my head, drawing out the comic timing. The srs bsns bits, especially some of the early historical chapters, were often not as interesting; also, as someone who's read and seen lots of works dealing with the "AUGH NO DON'T" of messing about with history, when characters wander blithely into it without pondering the consequences it makes me start facepalming repeatedly. (I also spent a lot of time thinking about that conversation a few of us had in NY about common alternate history tropes.) The book did pick up a lot about halfway through, once Michael stopped meandering around in typical literary self-centered grad student land and started having to deal with the unexpected (to him, at least, if not to anyone who's read a Meddling With History book before) consequences of his actions, not to mention American-English culture clash.
And, oh dear, "Hey, what if we eliminated Hitler?"/"What if the Nazis won?" really is the most popular alternate history plot ever, isn't it. The AU that Fry sets up is interesting - and Rudy Gloder, AlternaHitler, entertains me just because he's basically Gabriel from the Lymond Chronicles transplanted - but it would be nice to see something else for a change.
The love story between Michael and Steve would also have been very sweet if Steve had not been STALKING MICHAEL WHUT. That is not cute, Fry, that is creepy! Props for the hilarious calm withwhich Michael figures out he's probably gay, though.
Overall, I probably would have liked this book a lot more if I was less of a jaded geek. Sorry, Stephen Fry, I still love you!
I have mixed feelings about the book as a whole. Parts of it were very good and very funny - those were the bits where as I read I could actually hear Stephen Fry's voice in my head, drawing out the comic timing. The srs bsns bits, especially some of the early historical chapters, were often not as interesting; also, as someone who's read and seen lots of works dealing with the "AUGH NO DON'T" of messing about with history, when characters wander blithely into it without pondering the consequences it makes me start facepalming repeatedly. (I also spent a lot of time thinking about that conversation a few of us had in NY about common alternate history tropes.) The book did pick up a lot about halfway through, once Michael stopped meandering around in typical literary self-centered grad student land and started having to deal with the unexpected (to him, at least, if not to anyone who's read a Meddling With History book before) consequences of his actions, not to mention American-English culture clash.
And, oh dear, "Hey, what if we eliminated Hitler?"/"What if the Nazis won?" really is the most popular alternate history plot ever, isn't it. The AU that Fry sets up is interesting - and Rudy Gloder, AlternaHitler, entertains me just because he's basically Gabriel from the Lymond Chronicles transplanted - but it would be nice to see something else for a change.
The love story between Michael and Steve would also have been very sweet if Steve had not been STALKING MICHAEL WHUT. That is not cute, Fry, that is creepy! Props for the hilarious calm withwhich Michael figures out he's probably gay, though.
Overall, I probably would have liked this book a lot more if I was less of a jaded geek. Sorry, Stephen Fry, I still love you!
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(There are a lot of characters, there are a lot of bits where DD shows off her foreign language quotes knowledge - especially in Game of Kings, she gets better about it after that - but there are also a lot of bits that are utterly brilliant. In my humble opinion etc.)
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. . . the epic scale and politics are also not dissimilar, but Dorothy Dunnett is more witty. And also the series is already completed. A PLUS.
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*wistful* Just once, I want to read a book where they go back in time to assassinate - I don't know, Ivan the Terrible. Or Ann Boleyn!
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(Poor Lady Jane Grey never gets enough love.)
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I too hit them at an impressionable age, and now find that they're sort of irredeemably overwrought and melodramatic... but so, so beautiful and with such a gleefully spectacular excess of detail. I'm always delighted to find that some other author I admire (Kelly Link, Mary Doria Russell) has a similar soft spot. And in turn to discover the ways in which Dunnett seems to have been influenced by other authors/figures-- Dorothy Sayers or Lawrence of Arabia, for example.
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And yes. That's it exactly. When I was fourteen, I ate up the melodrama; now I can reread, and pat the melodrama gently on its head, and still dive headfirst into the wit and the detail and the characterizations and Danny Hislop.
I was so very excited to trace the chain back of Scarlet Pimpernel ----> Lord Peter Wimsey ---> Francis Lymond. (I keep meaning to read Mary Doria Russell - I've heard very good things, so I have to figure out if they stock her at our university library, which is oddly arranged and erratic. But I am newly excited to find she's a Dunnet reader!)
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