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ISBN ? (UK hbk),,, 0-575-05917-6 (UK pbk),,, 0-380-77820-3 (US pbk)
novel, science fiction, steampunk, detective, conspiracy, alternative history
An alternative version of early Renaissance Italy. Winner of the Sidewise Award, shortlisted for the Arthur C.Clarke Award.
"Florence, 1518. Da Vinci's astonishing machines work, and the Industrial Revolution has happened centuries early. When Pasquale, a young painter, teams up with the hard-drinking journalist Machiavegli to investigate a murder in a locked tower room, they stumble into a conspiracy of politics, necromancy and assassination -- and as they pursue the case through Florence's acetylene-lit streets the only certainty is that they could be next on the hit list." [jacket blurb, UK pbk, 1995]
"The merest nudge of Da Vinci's elbow, and everything flows with a delicious and lucid inevitability: photography, firearms, Chaos maths, Copernican particle physics and steam-truck chases through the streets of Florence... You look up, when you finish Pasquale's Angel , and wonder what reality is still doing in place." --Colin Greenland.
"Rich in textures, teeming with fascinating sights and sounds and situations... With this book, Paul McAuley proves he's an artist of uncommon depth and range." --Pat Cadigan.
"A brilliantly sustained and controlled flight of imagination written with a fluency and vividness I'd kill for. A real treat, and a major novel from a writer whose prose is a delight to read." --Ramsey Campbell.
"One of the best steampunk novels ever. Loved his portrait of a Florence transformed by the Great Engineer. The inventions are believable and accurately described. Fumes from the manufactories saturate the air. Steam-driven vaporetti ply the cobblestone streets, and paddlewheelers move cargo along the chemical-laden rivers. Artists have fallen in stature, their work second now to the wonders created by the artificers. And political intrigue is rife.
"Enlivened with wonderful words, the text conjures a modern antiquity, an anachronian time zone of great credibility. I thoroughly enjoyed this book." --Henry W.Targowski (in Mark/Space , December 1996).
Highly recommended.
Paul J.McAuley also wrote a short story, "The Temptation of Dr Stein" (see the collection The Invisible Country for publishing details), which features the character Dr Pretorious who appears in this novel (this short story was written after the novel, but the events in it take place ten years before those in Pasquale's Angel ). Another short story, "The True History of Doctor Pretorius" (see the collection The Invisible Country for publishing details), has Dr Septimus Pretorius living for 500 years and takes place in the late 20th century.
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