| ||||||||||||||||||
Did you know you can trade in your old books for an Amazon.co.uk Gift Card to spend on the things you want? Visit the Amazon.co.uk Trade-In Store for more details. |
Frequently Bought Together
Product details
|
More About the Author
Product Description
Product Description
The age of aether still reigns; its pale glow illuminating the land. All bear the mark of aether's extraordinary influence, except the changelings, banished to Einfell, that strange land untouched by the Age of Industry, that lay at England's troubled heart. When Great Grandmistress Alice Meynell, ruthless matriarch of the Great Guild of Telegraphers, brings her son to Invercombe, west of Bristol, she expects him to die there. Though her power and grace are legendary, not even she can halt her son's disease. In desperation she travels to Einfell, to seek favour from one who once trusted her. And Ralph is cured. Far away from the filth of industrial London, he is drawn away from his family responsibilities to the world of nature and to a fisherman's daughter Marion Price. Together they plan to run away, to defy the rule of the Guilds, even to change the world and how it sees itself. But Alice will not let love stand in the way of her in her insatiable lust for power - nor the very land she professes to love - even if it means plunging England into a long and bloody civil war. An astonishing work of imagination, Ian R. Macleod has created a truly original world, one that is strangely recognizable and yet utterly new, an England made of magic, but set amongst familiar hills and cities.
About the Author
Ian R. MacLeod is the author of THE GREAT WHEEL, and his short fiction has appeared in INTERZONE, ASIMOV'S and FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION, and has been shortlisted for almost every major science fiction and fantasy award including the Hugo and the Nebula. He is twice winner of the World Fantasy Award for his alternate history novella, THE SUMMER ISLES, and his short story, THE CHOP GIRL.
Inside This Book
(Learn More)
Tags Customers Associate with This Product(What's this?)Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
|
Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store
If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store.
Learn more
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Customer Reviews
|
Share your thoughts with other customers:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Fantastic - almost Dickensian, a powerful writer!,
By
This review is from: The House of Storms (Hardcover)
House of Storms is an immensely moving novel. Macleod is clearly an excellent writer, both in skill, and in terms of plot. Without giving too much away, the story seems almost conventional - set in a Victorian England, about young love fighting against almost insurmountable forces. However, there is a great deal of complexity and depth in the novel - England is different from what we know, suffused with a mysterious substance called aether which is both magical and corrupting. The character of Alice Meynell is both dark and compelling, and unlike many fantasies, Macleod manages to portray everything in an original and fresh way, without resorting to cliches. If you like great descriptive writing and detailed characterisation, without a plot moving at 100 miles an hour, I would recommend this book. ie not like Eddings or Brooks or Feists more recent works. More like a Dicken's novel, with a hint of Peake.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Magic,
By
This review is from: The House of Storms (Paperback)
Macleod writes wonderfully to create a credible alternative history, convincingly persuasive of the power of "aether" as the fuel that energises an imagined age. His characters, the three main ones, are powerful figures individually and in their relationship to eachother. I loved the landscape settings of the West of England,giving it a localised and distinctive particularity.The sense of reality fading to magic and then seamlessly returnig to the natural world is mesmerizing. An underlying theme of the laws of Natural Selection forming our outlook makes for an intriguing philosophical theme. A great story , beautifully told by a great storyteller.
Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta) Amazon.com:
3.8 out of 5 stars (8 customer reviews) 6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Part social critique, part adventure,
By Matthieu Hausig - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: The House of Storms (Hardcover)
House of Storms is the loose sequel to The Light Ages. Loose, because it takes place chronologically after the first book but with a different cast of characters. At the core of the novel is a bizarre love triangle between Alice Maynell, the mother who ruthlessly climbed her way to the top of the social ladder, Ralph, her son who is thrust into a position of power, and Marion Price, a fisherman's daughter who steals Ralph's heart. As events progress, Ralph and Marion go their separate ways and find themselves on either side of a class war brought about in part through Alice's political maneuvering.
The book is split into two parts, dealing with Ralph's youth and relationship with Marion, and years later the final stages of the war enveloping the East and West of Ian MacLeod's fictional Britain. I felt that the first half of the story was the stronger of the two as there was more development of the characters and better dialogue. The second half was more disjointed and lacked some of the charm of the first half. It may be my lack of a British perspective but alot of the social themes were not clear to me. As with Light Ages, the overarching message was that despite changes the status quo stays the same. Perhaps someone with more experience with the British class system will take more away from the novel. That said, the story stands on its own and is an enjoyable if slightly overlong read. As a final note, magic or aether as it is referred to in the novel plays a central role here as it did in The Light Ages and is creatively integrated into the storyline. 3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
somewhat weak 4 due to weaker second half,
By B. Capossere - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: The House of Storms (Hardcover)
The House of Storms takes place roughly a century or so and in the same world as MacLeod's The Light Ages. Though it could therefore be called a sequel, one needn't have read The Light Ages to jump into House of Storms, as the characters and the culture aren't quite the same. House of Storms is not as strong as the first book, though like Light Ages it has fully developed vivid characters; a slow, methodical pace; a complex plot, a balanced look at the "good" and "bad" guys; and lush, poetic language. It didn't, however, maintain these strengths quite as consistently as Light Ages did, creating I thought a noticeable flagging in the second half of the book.
The novel is set in a sort of late-Victorian era England where magic (in the form of aether) and technology work side by side. England is controlled by a small group of guilds, the most dominant one of which is the Telegraphers' Guild. Alice Meynell is the current Greatgrandmistress of the Guild, a position she's achieved despite her low background through using sex (her husband is the Grandmaster), magic (she's a darkly proficient adept of aether), and the not-so-infrequent murder. At the book's start, neither her magic nor social position however can do anything to save her consumptive son Ralph, who stands to inherit control of the Guild. To save him she makes a bargain with a group of Changed (names so for the effect of a too-great exposure to magical aether). With his recovery she returns to plotting Ralph's (and thus her) rise to power, along with increasing the fortunes of the Telegraphers' Guild, refusing to be deterred by Ralph's love for a common "shoregirl" named Marion Price or his increasing interest in natural science and his burgeoning theory of evolution. The first half of the book deals with these plot points and more, while the second half swerves into a civil war between England's East and West (partly economic, partly over slavery, along with other reasons--including some directly tied to Alice). In the war, Ralph as head of his Guild becomes a general while Marion turns into the Florence Nightingale of the other side. Armies march, society is turned over, the countryside razed, all while Alice continues to plot and manipulate and Ralph and Marion move closer and closer to a reconnection. As mentioned, I thought the book's first half stronger than its second. The war sections seemed more diffuse and disjointed, less solidly set up and fleshed out. New characters were introduced, but not as successfully. And the ending seemed somewhat anticlimactic. That said, though Storms didn't match the brilliance of Light Ages (a tough task anyway), there's quite a lot to like here, beginning with the list of shared strengths listed in the first paragraph of this review. And the book is almost worth reading for Alice herself, a character you almost can't help reveling in despite (or perhaps because of) her murderous single-minded drive. Recommended therefore for Alice, along with its many other strengths of character and prose, though with a wisp of disappointment. 5 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
special blending of sorcery and alternate history,
By Harriet Klausner - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: The House of Storms (Hardcover)
On an alternate earth, the fifth form of matter, aether is discovered. This element is used in magic spells to run machinery and electricity and just about anything else one can think of. The guilds control the supply of aether and no one is more powerful than Alice Meynell, the Greatgrandmistress of the Telegrapher's Guild. Her only son Ralph is dying and she takes him to Invercombe on the west coast of England in the hopes that exercise and clear air will cure his consumption.
While there she visits Einfell where people are no longer human because they were changed by the overuse of magic. When she returns, her son Ralph is cured so she leaves him at Invercombe while she returns to London to set in motion plans that will give more power to her and her son. The result of her scheming leads to a civil war that will affect the lives of everyone living in Victorian England. This is a thick and juicy alternate history novel that is set in a Victorian England where everyone is dependant on magic like oil is in our world. Alice does what she must to get and keep her position no matter who she hurts. Her only weakness is her son who turns out to be under his mother's thumb when he takes over the position of Greatguildmaster once held by his dead father. Ian R. Macleod continues to fascinate readers with his special blending of sorcery and alternate history. Harriet Klausner |
|
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
Listmania!
Look for similar items by category
- Books > Fantasy > Contemporary
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
- I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
- I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.
|
