The Astronomer

The Astronomer

By Lawrence Goldstone

Extremely mild spoilers ahead, though if the spoiler I reveal ruins the book for you, I sincerely suggest you brush up on your history. Tsk tsk.

Historical fiction can be an unforgiving genre. Writers have to walk that fine line between historical accuracy and a good story. If the writer focuses too much on historical authenticity he/she tends to allow the pace of the novel to lag, alienating the reader from the actual narrative. To little attention to historical detail and the reader will view the novel with a degree of consternation. I tend to fall on the side of a good story and to hell with authenticity, but that's just me. But truly bad historical fiction is that which hold no regard for neither historical accuracy nor a good narrative. Lawrence Goldstone's novel The Astronomer is one such novel.

The Astronomer is set in the early days of the Reformation. Martin Luther is still alive and preaching in the German states. John Calvin is touring Europe making a name for himself and the ultra-corrupt Catholic Church under Pope Clement VII is ill-equipped to handle the burgeoning new heresies gaining popularity throughout Europe. Heady days indeed.

Amaury is the bastard son of the Duke of Savoy and a middling theology student at the College de Montaigu in Paris. He is more interested in the rapidly expanding field of science than the stifling study of scripture. This mildly-heretical behavior has not gone unnoticed by the school's faculty who recommend Amaury to the French Grand Inquisitor of France Mattieu Ory to spy on French Lutherans (they are not yet referred to as Protestants or Calvinists) as there are rumors that the Lutherans are in possession of a secret that will disprove Genesis itself (the (not so) secret information is Copernicus's heliocentric theory of the universe, if you are wondering. I fear that Gladstone was building a mystery here but it was so plainly obvious from the opening pages, much of the suspense was lost due to the transparency of said secret). Amaury has to decide between his dedication to the Church, his sympathies to the reformation and his love of scientific research.

What starts as a lumbering story that meanders all over the place ends up being an action film starring Nicholas Copernicus (no doubt played by a CGI enhanced Sean Connery).

While I don't really want to harp too much on Lawrence Goldstone since he has written far more books than I have, but I have some real problems with this book. First and foremost is the pace. Goldstone bogs the narrative down with loads of unnecessary descriptions of settings, clothing and weather as well as loads of unnecessary characters that have no emotional connection to the reader thus rendering them two-dimensional. The narrative seemed to slow to a crawl when it begged for a quick pace (i.e. the excruciatingly long overland trip from Paris to Nerac) and it would mysteriously speed up when attention to detail would have been appreciated (i.e. the riots in the streets of Paris).

Furthermore, story lines seemed to pop up out of nowhere, amble along for a while only to be discarded without sufficient closure. Characters appear as suddenly as they disappear and their motives are often opaque. Francois, the king of France is wholly unnecessary character who could have been replaced by a quick narrative update on the happenings in France. The secondary characters don't fair much better. At one point in the novel Amaury spends pages and pages trying acquire the necessary documentation from the cardinal to save his bookseller friend only to watch him burn at the stake for heresy over the course of a quarter page. All the while it is never really revealed why Amaury would risk his life for a bookseller friend.

And while I'm not adverse to a love interest, the fact that Amaury is able to bed not one but two decidedly un-medeival women (i.e. in possession of a full set of teeth, unblemished skin and uncommonly large vocabularies considering their stations in the social hierarchy) in the course of a few weeks seems implausible, even for someone like me who is fully prepared to suspend my disbelief. And not to labor the point, but the fact that Amaury doesn't trust a single person throughout the entire narrative but trusts both Vivienne and Helene unequivocally. The complete lack of sexual tension in this love triangle is simply icing on the proverbial turd.

Listen, Goldstone's not a terrible writer. I suspect he's got a good book out there, either in print or in the works. But The Astronomer is not it. This entire novel seems slapdash and careless, as if he ripped it off over a weekend or two between episodes of Game of Thrones. It fails spectacularly as both a piece of historical fiction and as compelling narrative. Tough break. And while I don't expect that every single narrative tangent must circle back to the main story line, but a few certainly must. And while this isn't the worst book I've ever read, if I have a hankering for historical fiction set in the medieval era I will stick with Bernard Cornwall and Ken Follett.

Cool cover, though.

Sex With Kings

Sex With Kings: 500 Years of Adultery, Power, Rivalry and Revenge

By Eleanor Herman

Sex With Kings is the sort of niche history that really gets me going. I love it when a historian bites off a little corner of history and chews on it for 200-300 pages, especially if it is a subject that has otherwise been left to rot on the side of the plate. Subjects such as the etymology and evolution of the word fuck or the history of the human fear of premature burial arouse in me a curiosity that must be satiated.

When I came across Sex With Kings: 500 Years of Adultery, Power, Rivalry and Revenge (via someone else's book blog, but I forget whose. If you read this and it was your blog let me know and I will edit in your credit) my insatiable curiosity was roused. How could a history of royal mistresses not fail to entertain as well as inform. So long as it didn't focus on the detritus one finds in the British tabloids, this should have been a fantastic read.

Well, it is.

And it isn't.

First, one must give Eleanor Herman her dues. This book is an exhaustive piece of research. One wonders whether she was able to get her hands on every single existing letter written by or about royal mistresses since the reign of Louis XIV and if it isn't the definitive work on the subject, it should be.

This book is stuffed with juicy details into the private lives of the kings and queens of Europe. From the sorcery that some mistresses performed to maintain their relations with the king to the knifing ways in which they batted off pretenders to their position to the manner in which each of them was cast aside upon the death of their royal benefactor. It is a veritable historical gossip rag full of exposes and scandals.

But it that was it, if the sole purpose of Herman's work was to satisfy the leering eyes of historical royal worshippers then this book would be pointless. Herman also examines the ways in which mistresses have shaped the history of Europe. How some wars were the direct result of the meddling and others were settled due to the soothing hand of a king's dangerous liaison. In the case of King Ludwig of Bavaria, his mistress Lola Montez directly caused the revolution of 1848 that eventually forced the King to abdicate his throne and move into exile.

But I did have some problems with this book. First and foremost is the title of the book. When I first heard about this title I was excited to read the way in which mistresses were kept and perceived in a wide variety of royal and imperial settings. Sex With Kings suffers from excessive Euro-centrism. This wouldn't have bothered me so much had it been mentioned in the title. something like Sex With Kings: 500 Years of Adultery, Power, Rivalry and Revenge in Europe, but it wasn't called that. I wanted to know about the Imperial courts in Japan and China, the harems of Middle Eastern kingdoms and the such. But it concentrated primarily on Europe (and if I'm being honest, it focused even more primarily on Western Europe, Russia and Serbia only factoring in on a couple of occasions).

I also didn't enjoy the organization of the book. I understand that this is always a problematic point for anyone writing history. Do you write your subject chronologically, thematically or do you write it as a character study. Here, Herman chooses a thematic organization with such chapter headings as Beyond the Bed - The Art of Pleasing a King and Loving Profitably - The Wages of Sin. I suppose this organization was as good as any other but I found it difficult to juggle the names of kings, queens and mistresses from chapter to chapter. When Herman refers to Madame du Pompadour for the umpteenth time in chapter 10 I was forever trying to remember whether she was the mistress of Louis XIV or Louis XV. I would have preferred a character study that was divided either by king or by mistress.

Nevertheless, Herman is forgiven any personal problems a reader might have with her work. As it stands, she has bitten off a chunk of history to call all her own. As of this moment, Eleanor Herman is the official authority on the history of royal mistresses in Europe.

The Great Mortality: An Intimate History of the Black Plague The Most Devastating Plague of All Time

The Great Mortality:

An Intimate History of the Black Plague

The Most Devastating Plague of All Time

By John Kelly

Before you read this blog post, I need to confess that I am both a nerd and a dork. I am also petty and vengeful. Trust me, it will help you understand.

I attended university in the mid-1990s. My major was history and my focus of interest was primarily nineteenth and early twentieth century European history. You know, the post-Napoleonic period, the Quadruple Alliance and the slow, painful march toward World War I. It's a fascinating period in history and perhaps my favorite. I read a lot of material on this period, even today.

I might favor nineteenth century history, but my true obsession are the Middle Ages. I have a twisted fascination with pre-modern Europe. Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that medieval Europe was a superstitious, shit-covered backwater. How does a population that bathed an average of once or twice a decade go on to dominate the planet? It baffles.

Anyhow, I took any course available to me on medieval history and read voraciously on the topic. You want to talk about William the Bastard's Norman Invasion of 1066? I'm your man. You want to wax intellectual about the Carolingians and Merovingians, I can do that. If you want to discuss the implications of the longbow on the history of warfare, I'm in. And if you want to talk the Black Death of 1348-1352, prepare for a long night.

Everyone has their little pet obsessions. Civil War reenactments, Dungeons and Dragons, conspiracy theories, fruity beer... whatever. From an early age, mine has been the bubonic plague that ravaged Europe in the 14th century and wiped out between a third and a half of the entire population of the continent. For as long as I can remember I've devoured books on the topic. I think a lot of it began with the visual representations of the plague. The ubiquitous angel of death reaping lives with impunity across the European countryside, scythe in hand, smiling its skeletal smile of death. they were the sorts of images that any kid would find both disturbing and ultimately fascinating.

The Great Mortality by John Kelly may not be the definitive scholarly work on the topic, but it comes damned close and has the added bonus of being completely readable, unlike so much non-fiction. But I don't want to simply review this work. I want to tell a story that is relevant to my reading of this book.

Back in my third year of university I wrote a paper on the Black Death for my third year medieval history class. Unlike papers for my other classes, I actually started this paper weeks in advance and finished it days prior to the due date (with everything else, I started two days before and finished mere minutes before the start of class). My thesis was essentially that the Black Death was a major catalyst in the emerging enlightenment in Europe. The depopulation of the continent directly caused many of the factors that would bring about events such as the Reformation, the re-discovery of America and the revolutions that would sweep Europe into the modern age.

I'm not going to rehash all my points but essentially I argued that demographics and the collective conscience of Europe fundamentally shifted in response to the sheer magnitude of death that occurred in such a short time (and would periodically reoccur over the next three centuries). The manner in which people died, with such indignation and indiscrimination rattled the faith of many Christians (and Muslims), sparking the doubt that would culminate with the 95 theses and the rise of Protestantism. The helplessness of the medical profession at the time spurned doctors into action over the proceeding centuries, forcing them out of the barber shops and into the laboratories in order to get on with the discovery of the scientific method. And the depopulation of the continent put manual labor at a premium, so much so that many serfs and vassals were able to demand more for their services, giving the under-privileged a lifestyle previously unknown to them and a tantalizing taste of a better life. One worth fighting for. Europe would never be its same pastoral self again.

It was a damned good paper and I was careful to back up my claims factually as best I could given that I was suggesting a fairly controversial idea.

On the day in which the papers were handed back the TA stood at the front of the room and derided the entire lecture hall full of students about the poor quality of the papers. He noted that only a handful of papers were of any substance and most were not acceptable from university level history students. If any of us had views toward post-graduate work, we'd best learn how to write a paper. Naturally, I didn't think he was talking about me. I had written the best damned paper I had ever written. Surely I was one of the handful with substance.

The TA continued: "One paper in particular tried to assert that the Black Death was the cause of the Enlightenment."

The class let out a muffled giggle.

My heart crept into my throat. I'm not sure if any noticed, but I turned seven shades of red, then green... then white. I didn't hear anything else the TA said. It was like the air of my entire university career had been let out of me. I recall my paper landing in my lap and noting the 52% scrawled on the top. I'm sure there were comments, but I don't recall reading them. I was simply devastated.

(Not to worry. I finished my degree and I still maintain my love for medieval history and the Black Death in particular)

Flash forward to this past week. Kelly deftly chronicles the history of Y. Pestis from its birth as a marmot disease on the central Eurasian steppe, it's journey west to the Crimea then into Europe via Genoese merchant vessels. I especially enjoyed the way in which Kelly personified the plague as an invading army akin to the Mongols who had ravaged their way through to Hungary a century prior and whose empire facilitated the spread of the disease. But something struck me about the book as I made my way through it. I couldn't help but notice that John Kelly skirted dangerously close to the same points that got me in so much trouble years ago.

In fact, by the time Kelly reached his conclusions, he was actively postulating all of the points that had been my scholastic de-pantsing and I was reading with my mouth agape. While he stopped just short of actually typing the words: "The Black Death was a major catalyst in the impending European Enlightenment," he may as well have wrote them. He linked the Black Death to the rise of the scientific method, the demand for the printing press, the end of serfdom, the rise of the middle class and the disillusionment with the Christian (soon to be Catholic) church.

This is exactly what I was saying, T.A. Guy! See that!?!? John Kelly wrote a book about it. A good one, too! And where are you now, T.A. Guy? You are probably a stuffy, know-it-all professor in some dusty office at the University of Who Cares surrounded by your antiquated medieval tomes dismissing the Black Death as a historical speed bump. You were wrong, T.A. Guy. I was onto something. Something big (in the world of medieval history, of course). Something important. Something ground-breaking.

A decade and a half later, I feel so very vindicated.

Fuck you, T.A. Guy.

(Great book. Read it.)