The Revolutions

Interesting idea, novel setting, but not nearly as powerful as Half Made World or Rise of Ransom City. I enjoyed the book but expected more.

I have mixed feelings about this book, which seems to be a common theme for me and Gilman: some fascinating ideas, somewhat flawed in execution. It's a period piece set at the end of the 19th century in England, in a world where real magic is hidden behind a veneer of fakery and cheap charlatanism. Not wanting to recap the plot, I'll just say that the book intermingles that magic and science fiction with each other.

Looking back on the story now I quite like it. But as a reading experience it started to drag around the halfway mark. Not always – in fact, the last sections were gripping. I tend to think Gilman's pacing suffers from this problem generally. Some people seem to feel similarly but about different parts; I've seen more than one person complain that it was great once it got going but took too long to do so.

I found the ending more than a bit disappointing. Appropriate, perhaps, but disappointing.

As someone with a longstanding fascination with The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, the enormously influential 19th Century secret occult society, I enjoyed this novel enormously. Gilman captures the era and the historical material with just the right number of details then takes the story from London into the stratosphere and beyond (quite literally way beyond). It's a deft mashup of many genres and the author pulls it off with aplomb. An absolute treat—fast-paced, imaginative, and engaging.