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Shadows in the Stone: A Book of Transformations
The author of The Age #1 bestselling novel The Memory Cathedral returns to Renaissance Italy with a transcendent vision of the ultimate battle between good and evil.
In Shadows in the Stone Jack Dann creates a fully-realized, living, breathing universe, a universe where the Vatican is in Venice, Jehovah is really a lesser god known as the Demiurge, and the magus John Dee's experiments with angels are true and repeatable. Here you'll discover a nun who has the expertise and agility of a Ninja warrior, the reincarnated snake goddess known as the Daughter of Light, the famed Florentine magician Pico Della Mirandola, a young magus who is part stone, the Knights Templar of the Crimson Cross, the sapphire tablet: the most secret of the Dead Sea scrolls, and a 15th Century dirigible kept aloft by imprisoned souls. Here you'll find wild adventure and Machiavellian subtlety, treason and heroism, love and carnality, joy and loss, magic, machines, the cosmic machinations of angels, demons, gods, and half-gods; and the absolutely breathtaking vistas that are their battle grounds.
New York Times bestselling author Kim Stanley Robinson has compared Shadows in the Stone with Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, calling it "such a complete world that Italian history no longer seems comprehensible without [Dann's] cosmic battle of spiritual entities behind and within every historical actor and event."
Join Jack Dann's protagonists--Louisa Morgan and Lucian Ben-Hananiah--and the fellowship of The Dark Companions in their apocalyptic battle against the Demiurge--described in the forbidden Gnostic texts as the demon god Yaldabaoth... and known to us as Jehovah.
In Shadows in the Stone Jack Dann creates a fully-realized, living, breathing universe, a universe where the Vatican is in Venice, Jehovah is really a lesser god known as the Demiurge, and the magus John Dee's experiments with angels are true and repeatable. Here you'll discover a nun who has the expertise and agility of a Ninja warrior, the reincarnated snake goddess known as the Daughter of Light, the famed Florentine magician Pico Della Mirandola, a young magus who is part stone, the Knights Templar of the Crimson Cross, the sapphire tablet: the most secret of the Dead Sea scrolls, and a 15th Century dirigible kept aloft by imprisoned souls. Here you'll find wild adventure and Machiavellian subtlety, treason and heroism, love and carnality, joy and loss, magic, machines, the cosmic machinations of angels, demons, gods, and half-gods; and the absolutely breathtaking vistas that are their battle grounds.
New York Times bestselling author Kim Stanley Robinson has compared Shadows in the Stone with Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, calling it "such a complete world that Italian history no longer seems comprehensible without [Dann's] cosmic battle of spiritual entities behind and within every historical actor and event."
Join Jack Dann's protagonists--Louisa Morgan and Lucian Ben-Hananiah--and the fellowship of The Dark Companions in their apocalyptic battle against the Demiurge--described in the forbidden Gnostic texts as the demon god Yaldabaoth... and known to us as Jehovah.
- GenresHistorical Fiction
362 pages, Paperback
Published November 1, 2019
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31 people want to read
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November 22, 2020
My review of this book appears in Historical Novels Review issue 92 (May 2020):
Dann is a well-regarded editor of many science fiction and fantasy anthologies. In this historical fantasy based on Renaissance hermetic mysticism, he imagines an apocalyptic war between the demiurges Yaldabaoth (known in our world as Jehovah) and the archangel Gabriel, over no less than the fate of the universe itself.
Unfortunately, this audacious concept is basically a video game in book form, as Renaissance Italian luminaries like Pico della Mirandola and various Borgias scramble to do the supernatural bidding of these mythic divinities. The protagonists (Mirandola’s apprentice, Lucien, and the Hermione-Grangerish Louisa, a time-traveling refugee from the 19th century who is also an avatar of the benevolent demiurge Sophia, goddess of wisdom) are teenagers who enjoy the superhuman endurance of video game figures, with not much more character development. They are aided in their complicated and repetitive battles and escapes by Gabriel’s reality-shifting “sapphire tablet,” a glorified (literally) iPad that controls the universe and provides mysterious, convenient portals from one overdescribed level of reality to another.
The reader soon becomes hopelessly confused as alliances and universes shift and new characters are added with nearly every chapter. Dann’s knowledge of Renaissance Neoplatonic mysticism and Biblical exegesis is truly impressive, but this dense, formless narrative is almost impossible to get through.
Dann is a well-regarded editor of many science fiction and fantasy anthologies. In this historical fantasy based on Renaissance hermetic mysticism, he imagines an apocalyptic war between the demiurges Yaldabaoth (known in our world as Jehovah) and the archangel Gabriel, over no less than the fate of the universe itself.
Unfortunately, this audacious concept is basically a video game in book form, as Renaissance Italian luminaries like Pico della Mirandola and various Borgias scramble to do the supernatural bidding of these mythic divinities. The protagonists (Mirandola’s apprentice, Lucien, and the Hermione-Grangerish Louisa, a time-traveling refugee from the 19th century who is also an avatar of the benevolent demiurge Sophia, goddess of wisdom) are teenagers who enjoy the superhuman endurance of video game figures, with not much more character development. They are aided in their complicated and repetitive battles and escapes by Gabriel’s reality-shifting “sapphire tablet,” a glorified (literally) iPad that controls the universe and provides mysterious, convenient portals from one overdescribed level of reality to another.
The reader soon becomes hopelessly confused as alliances and universes shift and new characters are added with nearly every chapter. Dann’s knowledge of Renaissance Neoplatonic mysticism and Biblical exegesis is truly impressive, but this dense, formless narrative is almost impossible to get through.
Displaying 1 of 1 review