This is a fantasy novel with a difference. We are not heading off into a medieval or dark ages world. We are not venturing out into a world spanning quest, and we are not about to send time with tall muscular swordsmen, wizards or dwarves.

We do however have magic.

This is an alternate England, one in which magic was discovered at the time of the Industrial Revolution. The result of this discovery is to impair the progress of technology, reduce it to a snail's pace when compared against the history we are all aware of. After all if you have magic that you can use to make a machine work better or last longer, why would you risk the dangers of experimentation to build a better device.

Hence in the three hundred years since the substance of magick was discovered we've barely entered the equivalent of the Victorian age.

This is a world of secrets too, the Guilds control the country and the aether (the substance that enables people to affect the world around them), and they keep their methods and practices very close to their chests. Aether is also a dangerous commodity in itself, its ability to change reality one that can often backfire on the person using it. It's a known danger to the users, and some people do get changed (physically).

The Guilds try to hide this side of the magicks away from the population. They have a mechanism set up to remove the changed and to imprison them away from the common folk who work in their factories and mines.

Aether is mined and extracted with heavy dangerous machines, it's a dirty process not unlike the coal mining and steel working of the 18th and 19th centuries, and the communities that exist around the mines resemble the Victorian mining towns of England's past.

It's into one of these aether mining towns that Robert Borrows is born. His family live in a terraced house in a grimy part of the town. His parents work for Mawdingsley and Clawtson at the factory where machines create the steady noise that invades all parts of the town.

Robert Borrows has his life set out for him before he was born. His place in society is set in stone as his world is controlled by the Guilds. This is a world where social divides between the classes are vast and insurmountable, as the upper guildsmen strive constantly to maintain their positions of privilege and wealth.

This is more a series of short stories telling of episodes in Robert's life than a single narrative novel. We get to read of several episodes in his life. His early life in his hometown and his encounter with the young lady Analise, a woman living outside the Guild structure of England; his escape to London and his life outside the Guild system campaigning for social reform; through his return to his hometown and his finding his place in the world he inhabits.

The book does not follow the pattern of a standard novel. There's no good vs evil struggle. It's more a view of what England might have been like if...

It's a wordy book. It takes a lot of reading, but that effort is rewarded. This is a richly realised world that Ian MacLeod has given us. But whereas there are many folks who will find this a book they would enjoy, I would imagine that traditional fantasy fans might not find too great an appeal here.

Strangely enough this is a fantasy novel that might well find most of it's appeal more to sf fans. This is largely due it's structure, for when it comes down to it, this is an alternate history novel. The difference here might be magick rather than a traditional sf device to vary the created world from our own, but the result is essentially the same.