Fiction, Fiction Subjects

Freedom and Necessity

Name: Freedom and Necessity
Author: Steven Brust
ISBN: 9780765316806

by Steven Brust, Emma Bull

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Overview

It is 1849. James Cobham, young man about London, has tragically drowned in a boating accident. Or has he? Two months after his disappearance, his cousin receives a letter. James is in hiding, with no memory of the last two months. His cousin responds that he probably ought to continue in hiding, and the adventures begin. Told through letters, diaries, and real contemporary documents, this unique novel by two of today's freshest and most popular fantasists leads the reader through every corner of mid-nineteenth-century Britain, from the parlors of the elite to the dens of the underclass. Not since Wilkie Collins or Conan Doyle has there been such a profusion of guns, swordfights, family intrigues, women disguised as men, secret societies, occult pursuits, philosophical discussions, and passionate romance. And not since the historical romps of George MacDonald Fraser has there been such a complex, satisfying array of historical characters and startling events.

Synopsis

If you liked Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell—or Christopher Priest's The Prestige—or Iain Pears' An Instance of the Fingerpost—here is a classic of magic-tinged adventure you may have missed.

Locus

One of the most impressive novels I've read in a long time.

About the Author, Steven Brust

Born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and raised in a family of Hungarian labor organizers, Steven Brust worked as a musician and a computer programmer before coming to prominence as a writer in 1983 with Jhereg, the first of his novels about Vlad Taltos, a human professional assassin in a world dominated by long-lived, magically-empowered human-like "Dragaerans."

Over the next several years, several more "Taltos" novels followed, interspersed with other work, including To Reign in Hell, a fantasy re-working of Milton's war in Heaven; The Sun, the Moon, and the Stars, a contemporary fantasy based on Hungarian folktales; and a science fiction novel, Cowboy Feng's Space Bar and Grille. The most recent "Taltos" novels are Dragon and Issola. In 1991, with The Phoenix Guards, Brust began another series, set a thousand years earlier than the Taltos books; its sequels are Five Hundred Years After and the three volumes of "The Viscount of Adrilankha": The Paths of the Dead, The Lord of Castle Black, and Sethra Lavode.

While writing, Brust has continued to work as a musician, playing drums for the legendary band Cats Laughing and recording an album of his own work, A Rose for Iconoclastes. He lives in Las Vegas, Nevada where he pursues an ongoing interest in stochastics.

Emma Bull was born in 1954 in Torrance, California. She now lives in Minneapolis and is also the author of War for the Oaks and Bone Dance.

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Editorials

Locus

One of the most impressive novels I've read in a long time.

Kirkus Reviews

Victorian sleuthing, though billed as fantasy, from Brust (Five Hundred Years Later, 1994, etc.) and Bull (Finder, 1994). The story of James Cobham, Chartist, revolutionary, and confidant of Friedrich Engels, one of the founders of Communism, emerges through a series of letters and journal entries. In 1849, Cobham finds himself at an inn near Portsmouth, having supposedly perished in a boating accident two months before; he has no memory of the interval, though he bears suggestive scars and injuries. He then writes to his brother, at their ancestral Melrose Hall, where Cobham's independently wealthy cousin and bold amateur detective, Susan Voight, determines to discover why someone tried to murder him and why he was held capture and deprived of his memory. Some of the answers lie in Cobham's past activities as a daring revolutionary, as Susan's sleuthing and his own returning recollections attest. Behind all the strange goings-on is a bunch of sinister occultists allied with rich foreign power-brokers, whose objectives are to disinherit Cobham in favor of old rival Alan Tournier, and to discredit the entire revolutionary movement by manipulating Cobham.

Very difficult to approach, top-heavy with philosophizing, and not particularly rewarding—although characterizing it as a humdrum Victorian adventure is, ironically enough, some measure of the author's success.