To me, half the fun of writing is that I get the chance to say something new. However, I now need to reprise yet another of my prejudices. Lev Rosen showing Violet Adams how it should be done Those of you with a low boredom threshold should consider reading the Prologue to understand something of what’s going to happen, and then jumping forward to the start of Chapter VII. So, when I say this book is a triumph of style over substance, I’m not exaggerating. Indeed, absolutely nothing of any real interest happens until page 115 when the initiation in the cellar gets a bit spooky. But when a novel takes some 88 pages to make a start, there’s something seriously amiss. We all run a little short of something interesting to say and so must tread water until inspiration strikes. Now I will concede that the Man from Avon did occasionally have quite long moments of filler content as when Porters come only slowly to open the gate. Put another way, the characters spend 87 pages fossicking about in the hope of finding something interesting to occupy their time. The answer is that she and her friend Jack make it through the gates as students on page 88.
As a plot set-up, how many pages should it take for our young lady to get through the doors of the college? Remember nothing really exciting can happen until circumstances inside the College offer challenges both to her gender-identity and to her prowess as an engineer first-class. Fortunately, she has a twin brother who will lend his identity for the deception, and a childhood chum who will offer her protection once inside the ivory towers. The penalty for being detected as a male impersonator is severe.
In this version of reality, women are only good for having babies and then watching maids rear them. To get into Illyria College to study with the best, she has to cross-dress as a man. So here comes Violet Adams, a female who has the effrontery not only to be interested in science but rather above average at the practical side of it. I suppose I must formally declare it to be a form of mashup in that it conflates two sources into one and then rewrites it as a steampunk novel of the Illyrian, i.e. Yes, Ladies and Gentlemen, Boys and Girls, we’re off into Twelfth Night with a quick diversionary paragraph or two based on The Importance of Being Ernest by a slightly later author, Wilde by name and nature. What better source material, you may propose, than that of the old Bard himself. This is heralded as one of these rewrite jobs. Well, here comes All Men of Genius by Lev AC Rosen ( TOR, 2011). Get it wrong, no matter which way, and you’re in deep trouble. I have on other occasions rabbited on about the need for authors to strike a proper balance between style and substance.
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