"Eighteen-year-old
Robert Weekes is a practitioner of empirical philosophy—an arcane,
female-dominated branch of science used to summon the wind, shape clouds of
smoke, heal the injured, and even fly. Though he dreams of fighting in the
Great War as the first male in the elite US Sigilry Corps Rescue and Evacuation
Service—a team of flying medics—Robert is resigned to mixing batches of philosophical
chemicals and keeping the books for the family business in rural Montana, where
his mother, a former soldier and vigilante, aids the locals. When a deadly
accident puts his philosophical abilities to the test, Robert rises to the
occasion and wins a scholarship to study at Radcliffe College, an all-women’s
school. At Radcliffe, Robert hones his skills and strives to win the respect of
his classmates, a host of formidable, unruly women"
Tom Miller’s genre-bending The Philosopher’s
Flight is well written, but falls short for me in a few ways. Many writers of
fantasy and science fiction, in hopes of finding a broader audience, have taken
real-life historical settings and added some sort fantastical element to them.
This gives the reader a chance to read this genre, but because it’s set in the
real world, or alternative history version of it, non-fantasy readers can enjoy
them because they can identify with the setting. Harry Turtledove has made a
career out doing this.
In this world, witches or wizards
are philosophers and all the best ones are female. In spite of their amazing
prowess in military campaigns, philosophers are feared. Trenchers, a sort of
evangelical set comprised largely of men who fear and despise these powerful
women, continually oppose and threaten the philosophers in ways both physical
and legal. The harrowing opening passages evoke lynchings and the witch trials,
while throughout the book we see Trenchers attack these women for everything
from their use of birth control to their refusal to bow to the patriarchy.
Set during World War I, the story
follows a rare male philosopher, Robert Weekes, as he is taken on as a contingency
student at Radcliffe College, one of only a few token men training with women.
Most of the men are merely theoretical philosophers, but Robert, or Boober, as
his Montana family lovingly calls him, is an empirical philosopher, raised to
fly. Encouraged and cajoled into his skills by his mother and older sisters, he
is a truly unusual man and not just because he's an expert sigilist.
Some obvious social commentary runs through this first book in a series, giving us the experience of role reversal, with a sole male prodigy among women who encounters derision, discrimination, and abuse that was usually heaped on women entering largely male educational settings during this era.
Some obvious social commentary runs through this first book in a series, giving us the experience of role reversal, with a sole male prodigy among women who encounters derision, discrimination, and abuse that was usually heaped on women entering largely male educational settings during this era.
I will say the book is not that
complex, which made the book somewhat easy to read. Still, nothing seems to
happen in all of it’s 400 pages. It’s like Harry Potter without the threat of
Voldemort. The book is so focused on world building, so focused on teaching
Robert to fly, that the threat from the Trenchers is never truly explored –they
become lost in Miller’s attempt to point out how bad women have had for years.
For fans of steampunk (yeah, that’s
here as well), they might find the devices used to make the Philosophers fly
cool, but book is way too long, and way too anti-climatic to be worth
continuing on to book two.
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