Book Review: Empire of Unreason (Age of Unreason #3) by J. Gregory Keyes
Three Stars
“There is nothing logical about war.”
If you haven’t previously been reading the Age of Unreason series, don’t start here. It will yield little sense or enjoyment. This installation is a mere stepping stone to an increasingly inevitable conclusion. The storytelling is good. Cliffhangers abound.
“This is all an elaborate trap.” “What will you do about it?” “Walk into it, of course.”
As Keyes strays farther from actual history into the speculative, the tale becomes more fantasy. The “angelic” actors get more powerful with each volume, but the heroes manage to keep their heads above water.
“If I wore silk, I would still have all the same faults, with vanity added them, and would have gained nothing but the respect of fools.”
Keyes’ fictional Benjamin Franklin, aphorisms asides, sounds increasingly like John Adams. The other protagonists are sufficiently flawed to maintain reader interest, but Voltaire is thin soup compared to Edward Teach.
“Happiness is not so much the product of rare occurrence as it is of many small and everyday things”
As a Matter of Fancy 