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The Historical Illuminatus Chronicles #2
The Widow's Son
Throughout history, secret societies have played a crucial role in shaping events that have created our world. Only an inner circle of power elite know the full extent of the influence of the conspiracy...It is Paris, 1772, and Sigismundo Celine knows he is destined to play an important part in this history-behind-history. The masons, the English nobility, the Jabobites, the Rosicrucians, the ruling clique of pre-Revolution these are but a few of the factions involved in the machinations and intrigue in which Sigismundo has become enmeshed.Thrown into the Bastille, shot at, assaulted by assassins, tortured, and brutally interrogated, he knows only what he is and what he must do to become the one spoken of in the old texts. But what he doesn't know could kill the secret powers of Maria, the Italian beauty who has become an English Lady; the Irish fisherman, Moon, who stumbles across the inner workings of an unsuspected cult; and the question they keep the identity of The Widow's Son.
382 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published November 1, 1985
10 people are currently reading
600 people want to read
About the author
Robert Anton Wilson
120 books1,703 followersRobert Anton Wilson was an American author, futurist, psychologist, and self-described agnostic mystic. Recognized within Discordianism as an Episkopos, pope and saint, Wilson helped publicize Discordianism through his writings and interviews. In 1999 he described his work as an "attempt to break down conditioned associations, to look at the world in a new way, with many models recognized as models or maps, and no one model elevated to the truth". Wilson's goal was "to try to get people into a state of generalized agnosticism, not agnosticism about God alone but agnosticism about everything."
In addition to writing several science-fiction novels, Wilson also wrote non-fiction books on extrasensory perception, mental telepathy, metaphysics, paranormal experiences, conspiracy theory, sex, drugs, and what Wilson called "quantum psychology".
Following a career in journalism and as an editor, notably for Playboy, Wilson emerged as a major countercultural figure in the mid-1970s, comparable to one of his coauthors, Timothy Leary, as well as Terence McKenna.
In addition to writing several science-fiction novels, Wilson also wrote non-fiction books on extrasensory perception, mental telepathy, metaphysics, paranormal experiences, conspiracy theory, sex, drugs, and what Wilson called "quantum psychology".
Following a career in journalism and as an editor, notably for Playboy, Wilson emerged as a major countercultural figure in the mid-1970s, comparable to one of his coauthors, Timothy Leary, as well as Terence McKenna.
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Displaying 1 - 23 of 23 reviews
April 7, 2012
The second book in Robert Anton Wilson's The Historical Illuninatus Chronicles was another great read. Once I had the proper time to read I couldn't put it down and read the biggest part of the book in 3 days. Wilson has a way of pulling you into the story, his way of writing is so easy but still very intelligent, which makes it very attractive. The story was engaging and it was interesting to see where the next part of Sigismundo's life went. I also enjoyed all the other characters parts thoroughly. The only thing I found a bit distracting was the massive amount of footnotes, that to me didn't often seem as real importance to the story, although these footnotes also gave interesting information, they didn't always seem to have much to do with what was going on. It was as if they were telling a separate story next to the main story.
On the whole though, like the first book, a very enjoyable read and I am looking forward to the last book in the trilogy but also other books by Wilson.
On the whole though, like the first book, a very enjoyable read and I am looking forward to the last book in the trilogy but also other books by Wilson.
July 28, 2011
Continuing the historical illuminatus chronicles, this time with reams of very funny footnotes in a direct steal from The Third Policeman.
March 26, 2024
He had spent his life, many lives, millions of lives trying to find something to make it better, but it never would get better. It was always the same, the identical gears turning, the puppets moving in jerky gestures trying to kill and maim each other, the eternal insanity of a blind universe where god had died of a broken heart.
February 24, 2015
Not as good as the first volume, hope it will pick up in the 3rd
June 6, 2019
This series has strong character development and some interesting characters, but plot is slow-moving and not particularly compelling. The author also attempts to use the footnotes as narrative devices, a sort of postmodern literary strategy a la David Foster Wallace, but this largely falls flat; the developments in the footnotes are only very obliquely related to the main narrative. One of the footnote threads relates Wilson's obsession with Vatican-centered conspiracy theories, which I suppose during the 80's was more compelling. In sum, it was a decent book (I used it for toilet reading); I will probably read the sequel.
December 29, 2022
There are many incidents where I’m thinking “Nah, that can’t be true” and yet actually are historically accurate, while there are other incidents (mostly de Selby quotes, as he is a fictional Joycean character) that are obviously tongue in cheek. Fictionalized history? Historical fiction? Fantasy? The genre defies all categorization. Keep your encyclopedia and Bible handy to sort out which is which. All sorts of stories lie dormant within these pages..:
October 17, 2020
Not nearly as good as the first book. The story about John Babcock was okay. The Sigusmundo story in the Bastille was fine, but mostly people trying to confuse him about who he was.
Didn't even read the footnotes this last time since its just another story that doesn't go anywhere. The end of the book is a giant summary of world events that isn't that interesting.
Didn't even read the footnotes this last time since its just another story that doesn't go anywhere. The end of the book is a giant summary of world events that isn't that interesting.
February 16, 2026
Second volume of the historical series; the characters still are of interest, but the author has made the decision to annotate the volume heavily to explain the references; some of the footnotes are genuine although I have no tried to determine whether all of them are. I personally found it a distraction, although still enjoyed the book.
January 15, 2020
RAW's best solo effort as a novelist. I chugged this thing down like lemonade. We'll never know what this series would have been like had it been completed, but I'd be willing to wager that this volume would have been the peak effort.
February 24, 2018
Perhaps RAW's best fiction writing.
March 11, 2018
The second Historical Illuminatus book, which are all prequels to the Illuminatus Trilogy. Okay, but I advise ignoring the footnotes, cince they're repetitive and don't add much to the story.
September 26, 2019
Great, entertaining and engaging time with RAW. Really a good novel from RAW, whom you might not really think of as primarily a novelist, as only a few of his books are novels.
August 11, 2013
In my review of The Earth Will Shake I referred to the later sequels in the series as inferior. Actually, this is the only one I ever read, because after it, I really didn't care about the story any more. You'd think that would earn it a lower star rating, but looking at it today, I see it as less of a failure and more of a strategic shift in storytelling, one which simply didn't work for me as an adolescent.
This book continues the story of Sigismundo Celine/Malatesta/Balsamo as he studies in Paris, is locked up in the Bastille, and tries to escape a conspiracy determined to recruit him during the years leading up to the explosion of the French Revolution. However, it also shifts perspective away from him, and much of the text is spent in Ireland with Sir John Babcock and his Italian wife Maria (who were characters in the original novel) and with Seamus Muadhen/Moon (who is a new character). By the time I read this novel, I had read The Illuminatus! Trilogy: The Eye in the Pyramid/The Golden Apple/Leviathan, so I knew that all of these characters were ancestors of the characters in Illuminatus! and I was looking for common traits and explanations of how those characters came to be. On one level, I think that weakens the story. As I read it, I became aware that Wilson wasn't creating characters, but mostly recycling them from his more successful work. This is also a rather darker novel than the first, which had its ominous elements, but still worked as an adventure story.
The bigger problem I had with it, however, was the experimental writing technique Wilson introduced with this novel. There are footnotes on almost every page, placed at the bottom of the paragraphs (not the bottom of the page) they refer to. At first, these are minor comments, generally to provide a bit of historical context to readers who hadn't read the first book, or who might want to know more about something going on in the story. Over time, however, they become a "second novel" of their own, about the theories, disputes and personal life of a fictitious scholar named "de Selby" and his various cohorts, admirers and detractors. I found it very distracting, although I admit that at the time I was much less used to reading books with footnotes, and I missed a lot of the humor that I get now out of these notes. I believe I only managed to finish the novel when I decided to skip any note that was over five lines. I'd sort of like to go back and read just the notes, now.
So, what seemed to be a failure now seems less so, although certainly where the first book worked well as a Young Adult novel with wide appeal, this is going to work only for a more specialized, probably more mature audience. I don't know what Wilson did with the third book, as I say, because I never read it, but I suspect that as the story developed, the style shifted again, possibly to something a bit more palatable. Some day perhaps I will give it a chance.
This book continues the story of Sigismundo Celine/Malatesta/Balsamo as he studies in Paris, is locked up in the Bastille, and tries to escape a conspiracy determined to recruit him during the years leading up to the explosion of the French Revolution. However, it also shifts perspective away from him, and much of the text is spent in Ireland with Sir John Babcock and his Italian wife Maria (who were characters in the original novel) and with Seamus Muadhen/Moon (who is a new character). By the time I read this novel, I had read The Illuminatus! Trilogy: The Eye in the Pyramid/The Golden Apple/Leviathan, so I knew that all of these characters were ancestors of the characters in Illuminatus! and I was looking for common traits and explanations of how those characters came to be. On one level, I think that weakens the story. As I read it, I became aware that Wilson wasn't creating characters, but mostly recycling them from his more successful work. This is also a rather darker novel than the first, which had its ominous elements, but still worked as an adventure story.
The bigger problem I had with it, however, was the experimental writing technique Wilson introduced with this novel. There are footnotes on almost every page, placed at the bottom of the paragraphs (not the bottom of the page) they refer to. At first, these are minor comments, generally to provide a bit of historical context to readers who hadn't read the first book, or who might want to know more about something going on in the story. Over time, however, they become a "second novel" of their own, about the theories, disputes and personal life of a fictitious scholar named "de Selby" and his various cohorts, admirers and detractors. I found it very distracting, although I admit that at the time I was much less used to reading books with footnotes, and I missed a lot of the humor that I get now out of these notes. I believe I only managed to finish the novel when I decided to skip any note that was over five lines. I'd sort of like to go back and read just the notes, now.
So, what seemed to be a failure now seems less so, although certainly where the first book worked well as a Young Adult novel with wide appeal, this is going to work only for a more specialized, probably more mature audience. I don't know what Wilson did with the third book, as I say, because I never read it, but I suspect that as the story developed, the style shifted again, possibly to something a bit more palatable. Some day perhaps I will give it a chance.
July 17, 2019
Too bad this was OCR'd and not proofread in some places. The Duc de Chartres is often referred too as the Due and 111 substituted for III in another. It is most apparent in one chapter at the start though and once you get past the annoyance the book is still brilliant. You _do_ have to be able to read two stories at the same time as in RAW fashion the footnotes form their own story
April 25, 2013
The second volume in Wilson's Historical Illuminatus Chronicles is a little slower going than the first. This is due almost exclusively to the "footnotes" Wilson scatters throughout the book. These seem to be clever jokes about people who did or did not really exist and what they did or said or thought about. Full disclosure: I started to skip them. I read some, one here, one there, but generally I found I wasn't taking anything away from those passages. I realize it's in homage to The Third Policeman and it's all terribly clever but... it's just not my thing.
The lengthy orations/monologues/diatribes are still present as characters wax philosophical on any number of topics. These I didn't skip (though I sometimes found them tedious) because they often prove fairly interesting. I began to wonder if Wilson's intent wasn't to pass on to the reader something of the ritual or repetition of Freemason ceremonies.
Still, what interests me most about this series is what happens to our protagonists. Approaching this as a novel, my expectations are of a certain kind and those expectations were occasionally disappointed.
Still, I enjoyed this book and it's likely because Wilson is a great writer who creates interesting characters who do interesting things. And, I suppose, if it makes me think and I take something away from it, well, that's what you call a bonus.
The lengthy orations/monologues/diatribes are still present as characters wax philosophical on any number of topics. These I didn't skip (though I sometimes found them tedious) because they often prove fairly interesting. I began to wonder if Wilson's intent wasn't to pass on to the reader something of the ritual or repetition of Freemason ceremonies.
Still, what interests me most about this series is what happens to our protagonists. Approaching this as a novel, my expectations are of a certain kind and those expectations were occasionally disappointed.
Still, I enjoyed this book and it's likely because Wilson is a great writer who creates interesting characters who do interesting things. And, I suppose, if it makes me think and I take something away from it, well, that's what you call a bonus.
April 20, 2025
In this, the second book of the trilogy, Wilson's quirky nature reasserts itself. Not content with a linear narrative that a rational reader can easily follow, he starts a crazy little subplot which takes place entirely in the footnotes. The footnotes refer to and quote several other books. Some of those other books exist, in the sense that you could look them up and read them somewhere else. Some exist in the mind of the author and some were allegedly written by characters in the footnotes, such as de Selby, who may actually turn out to be fictional characters in other novels. Let the reader beware. Wilson likes to toy with your sense of what is 'real'.
February 6, 2015
In the second book of the Historical Illuminatus Trilogy, Wilson satirizes just about everything about the secret society conspiracies: the people who believe they are the force behind history; the people who think dismiss them; the people affected by them; and above all, the people who are part of them.
Even the scholarly discussion of conspiracies gets mocked in the copious footnotes, supported by wholly imaginary citations.
Wilson departs from the usual conceit that secret societies are the puppet masters behind all world events. Their members, like all of humanity, are ridiculous and fallible fools. The real conspiracy is none other than the hard laws of nature and economics.
Even the scholarly discussion of conspiracies gets mocked in the copious footnotes, supported by wholly imaginary citations.
Wilson departs from the usual conceit that secret societies are the puppet masters behind all world events. Their members, like all of humanity, are ridiculous and fallible fools. The real conspiracy is none other than the hard laws of nature and economics.
March 10, 2024
crucial to my personal growth. & fun. miss you forever RAW.
March 23, 2011
Compelling story. Too goddamn many footnotes. Probably won't look up the last installment of the series, as much as I love RAW.
October 17, 2013
Yeah the footnotes get a bit much.
February 10, 2016
Terrific. All I wanted was more!
April 13, 2017
This was a spectacular series. Too bad RAW never got around to writing the last book.
Displaying 1 - 23 of 23 reviews