Review of A Calculus Of Angels
In Book II of the Age of Unreason series, author Gregory Keyes takes the reader back to a fictional world from our past in which the distinction between science and magic has been blurred. Young Benjamin Franklin has brought together a Junto consisting of various factions from the American colonies and beyond in an effort to defeat the forces of evil preparing its way for the destruction of the human race. Unknown, however, is the fate of London, no word having been heard from that part of the world in many years. Blackbeard the erstwhile Pirate known as Edward Teach leads an armada to England to make a determination of London's status. What they find there horrifies them...
I found A Calculus of Angels to be a rather long, drawn-out novel with characters that didn't hold my attention as well as those in the first novel of this series, Newton's Cannon. Matters became confusing to this reader as more and more characters with various foreign and unpronounceable names are drawn into various plot-lines. There are a few moments in the novel which draw the reader's attention. And Keyes has a way of ending each chapter with a cliff-hanger which takes back up two or three chapters later. But by the time I have finished reading the intervening chapter(s), I have to try and remember what passed before, who these people are, why they are doing these things, etc.
All in all, the thesis of this sci-fi series has raised some interesting questions and created novel relationships between people from history who never met in our reality. It's rather fun to see Benjamin Franklin interacting with Sir Isaac Newton, and to watch their character arcs advance. But it creates an environment in the novel in which I'm wishing to get through the plot-line at present in order to get back to the more interesting one.