The City in the Autumn Stars by Michael Moorcock

I read this novel, like its predecessor, long ago. I recall snatches and images- not least the balloon and the Diderot-worshipping fox- but I recall not liking the novel as much as I did this time round. Nor do I recall enjoying the subtext.

As with the previous Von Bek novel, with its hope that the horrors of the Thirty Years war would yield to an age of Reason, this novel again mixes historical and philosophical themes, this time from the other side of the Enlightenment, with fantasy which owes much to Christian mythology but which, I suspect, would be best understood in terms of Moorcock’s multiverse if I had more awareness of that backstory than I do.

However, this is a rollicking novel, at once a gripping adventure story, a fascinating novel of ideas and an exercise in world building that gradually adds increasing elements of fantasy to a very recognisable Europe of 1794, as in Paris the Terror proceeds apace while the capitals of Europe shudder. It mimics, enough to delight but not enough to confuse, the stylings of a novel of the late eighteenth century and is crammed with delightfully vivid characters, from the charmingly deceitful balloonist St Odhran to the mysterious and alluring Libussa, Duchess of Crete, whose fate is at once horrifying and symbolic of the appalling lot of women throughout history.

The subtext is rich, yet resistant to being reduced to some simple summary. The results of the concluding ritual are left sensibly ambiguous, although we are clearly ending an age of Alchemy and entering one of Industry. The protagonist, another Von Bek, is perhaps rather more passive than his war hound ancestor. But that is, perhaps, the point.

A gloriously weird, philosophical and exciting novel. I shall briefly read something else to cleanse the palate, then it will be more Moorcock for me.