An enjoyable historical yarn, with a good sense of humour and an underlying message or two. Jennet sees her beloved aunt a tutor burnt at the stake by her witchfinder father and vows to end the practice by persuading the public that their misfortunes are due to nature not magic.

While Morrow does not exactly wear his learning lightly, he never lets it interfere with the story whcih takes our heroine from England to North America with a somewhat pointless sojourn marooned in the Caribbean.

The melding of 17th century natural philosophy with an adventurous romp is similar to Neal Stephenson's Baroque trilogy but at several levels below that masterpiece. It is marred a little by padding and by the use of a frame. The latter device seems increasingly prevalent but rarely seems to be necessary and to me at least is annoying. ( )

(Amy) I'm going to stop asking, in these entries, why it takes me so long to get around to some books. Usually, the answer is "because I have a giant backlog of Stuff To Read". Sometimes, the answer is "because I'm an idiot". This time, it's a little of both, I think. I was less than fully enchanted with the last few Morrow books I read (despite having been totally blown away by the first few I encountered), and so I was really not in any hurry to bring this one to the top of my list.

Silly me.

The concept of this book is interesting in itself - which is to say, while it might be about the downfall of the profession of witchfinders, and have a contemporary woman as a protagonist, it is narrated by none other than Isaac Newton's Principia Mathematica. Yes, the book. And Morrow's ability to wow me with language is back (if indeed it was ever gone and was not just me being in a persnickety mood when I read those - I'll re-read and find out someday). Witness:

The precise metaphysical procedures by which a book goes about writing another book need not concern us here. Suffice it to say that our human scribes remain entirely ignorant of their possession by bibliographic forces; the agent in question never doubts that his authorship is authentic. A bit of literary history may clarify matters. Unlike Charles Dickens's other novels, Little Dorrit was in fact written by The Fairie Queene. It is fortunate that Jane Austen's reputation does not rest on Northanger Abbey, for the author of that admirable satire was Paradise Regained in a frivolous mood. The twentieth century offers abundant examples, from The Pilgrim's Progress cranking out Atlas Shrugged, to Les Miserables composing The Jungle, to The Memoirs of Casanova penning Portnoy's Complaint.

I was predisposed to like the book anyway purely for its setting, but with that paragraph, I fell headlong in love with the thing, and could hardly stop reading until it was done. Wholeheartedly and enthusiastically recommended to fans of any of: Gorgeous prose, the late 1600s/early 1700s, witchhunt stories, Isaac Newton, natural philosophy, or, indeed, books in general.
( http://weblog.siliconcerebrate.com/ze... ) ( )

Unfortunately I gave up on this book about halfway through. The story is reasonably compelling - the sister of the last witchfinder is herself a daughter of the enlightenment and masters newtonian physics to write a proof that witches don't exist - but then one gets the periodic riffs of Morrow interspersed in the story. His style is polished and some of what he writes is entertaining, but not nearly enough to justify interrupting the story line so often. A review on the back cover says Morrow is what Salman Rusdie might write like if he had a sense of humor. ( )

I did not like this one as much as I thought I would. I could not get into the author's style. ( )

Historical fiction that begins in 1680’s England and then moves to America, this is a book ‘written’ by a book and is the story of Jennet, the daughter of a witchfinder. The father is a zealot and seeks to be the first in an office called the Witchfinder Royal, and does all he can to put forth his case to the king and other government officials, but the tides are changing and witch trials are no longer so popular as they once were so he finds it rough going, eventually exiled to America with a supposedly grand title but in reality being thrown to the wolves. The daughter, on the other hand, is very interested in science, the teachings of Galileo, Sir Isaac Newton, etc., and is aghast when her father accuses her aunt (sister to her father’s long-dead wife) of being a witch, as Isobel is the one who has been her tutor for several years. The story is interesting and it’s written with a background of dry humor that makes it all the more appealing; it’s easy sometimes to miss the bits of humor dropped into the book at first, as I was expecting more of a ‘straight’ historical fiction but was delighted with the voice of ‘the book’ who authored this book once I figured out that he/she/it was trying to be funny and slip one by me. LOL It was interesting how the author incorporated real historical figures into the story; he certainly took a lot of liberties there—but as I always say, it IS historical FICTION after all, but he did make some real leaps out into “far out!” land. LOL It also got rather slow and draggy in spots and took me almost 2 weeks to finish—yeah, it was a long book, but it felt much longer, and there were times I just wanted it to be done with. And finally, it was. ( )