Welcome to the blog tour of Stuart Clarks Dark Labyrinth
The cover
The lecture
The movie
Follow on Twitter @DrStuClark
I was not a great fan of historical novels until I was introduced to Stuart Clark at the Borders book Festival last year. We were attempting to look at the stars but it was absoloutely teeming down and Stuart was giving a tour de force lecture about his new book the The Sky's Dark Labyrinth.
It gripped me from there and I was so pleased to be allowed to review it for you as part of the 2011 blog tour to promote the book.
The book covers all of the great things that a novel should: wine, beer, food, sex, politics and religion (not neccesarily in that order) It follows the struggle by an ace mathmetician Johannes Kepler to prove that in actual fact the earth moves round the sun and not that the heavens were moved by angels. Keppler is a down at heel character who is often sickly, poor and really quite arrogant about his own superiority and never suffers fools gladly.
The man seems to believe that the world owes him a living and really is quite an objectionable guest to whom so ever offers him a leg up or even offers him a bed.
Keppler is always being pushed by his wife to make something of himself and at one stage resorts to telling peoples horoscopes to make some money so that his housekeeper can buy some food.
Alongside this arrogant mathmeticians minutiae of life, illness and the day to day grind, is interwoven political and religious intrigue with Cardinals, Jesuits and Lutherans at odds with each other, vying for power across a divided Europe. The Inquisition gets a mention, along with great descriptions of how earth shatteringly stupid religion can be if looked at through our distant eyes.
This is not just a novel but also a history of mathematics and how we eventually came to realise that the Earth is not the centre of the Universe.
A great read and I recommend that you go and buy it as soon as you can.
I cannot wait for installments 2 and 3
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