Political plots. Murder and poison. Steam powered engines. Florentine catamites. Men on stilts. Pasquale's Angel is a break from McCauley's usual fayre of hard SF, and is instead set in an alternate 16th century Florence, one in which the Great Engineer Leonardo da Vinci's innovations in steam technology have made Florence the most powerful of the Italian City States. The story follows the exploits of Pasquale, a young painter who becomes embroiled in a plot between Italy and Spain. Throughout the book Pasquale interacts with both fictional characters and historical ones such as da Vinci, Raphael, Copernicus, and Machiavelli, all the while maintaining his quest for the inspiration to paint an angel.
McCauley's prose is superb, and his dialogue is crisp yet fluid and natural. His scene-setting is similarly good and the whole book has the sense of pace of a political thriller and a mystery novel. On the whole, the book is very enjoyable. If I were to level one or two criticisms they would be that the constant stream of walk-on parts for famous characters is perhaps a little forced (but on the other hand, not without some humour) and as a result not many of the characters are developed. In some cases it left me feeling a bit stupid and wondering if some of the characters were historical personages that I should have recognised. The narration is also at times somewhat oratory, reading a bit like a text book, but all the same it is still great to read. Nevertheless, the focus on Pasquale's character is good and one gains a sense of him as a well-rounded character, who is always interesting if not deserving of sympathy. He feels guilt and anger, he gets things right and he messes up in equal quantities, and his recurring angel motif works nicely.
The book is well worth a read if you are into a bit of history and plotting. It's also not overlong, in that the plot is just the right amount to fill the novel. It's not The Name of the Rose, but then the Name of the Rose doesn't have a barbary ape called Ferdinand in it.
