Review: The Philosopher's Flight

The Philosopher's Flight by Tom Miller
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The comparisons to Deborah Harkness and especially to Lev Grossman make a lot of sense for Tom Miller's debut, for which I was lucky enough, in my duties as a Stanford Bookstore associate, to have acquired an ARC. Though less romantic than Harkness and (mercifully) less grimdark than Grossman, The Philosopher's Flight is a well-crafted piece of alternate history that nevertheless doesn't feel quite so alternate. More like reflecting the present day back to a hundred years ago, and showing a sorta post-steampunk world where gender and racial equality have made considerable strides, but still has too long a way to go. Because of course there are racists and sexists out there to crap on everyone else just because they feel inadequate (as they should.) Maybe the book doesn't deal with all these social ills as neatly as it could - in fact, it feels like it keeps the action going almost all the way to the end, but then the ending itself is very abrupt and fails to tie in well to the "recounting my past exploits to my child" framing device in the prologue. I'm hoping there'll be at least one sequel just because of how generally incomplete the resolution of this one feels.

But the social-commentary game is strong with this one, as is the use of magic that resembles a lot of 21st-century tech - like a sand-powered message board that basically sounds like Etch-a-Sketch text messages (right down to the frequent misspellings on the part of the user.) And the political game, with a few digs at the Republican Party (for in-universe straying away from being the Party of Lincoln, but it can so easily apply to today's Republicans as well.)

At the very least, it's more than a bit disconcerting to see all the characters refer to recent years as '04, '98, etc. and know that it's all supposed to be set 100 years ago, almost exactly. Which, I suppose, was Miller's point entirely.

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