Sundials: History, Art, People, Science

Book Description

A beautifully illustrated book that charts the evolution of sundials around the world as shown through photographs of important historical examples from the earliest Neolithic designs stone circles, such as Stonehenge, to the present day.

Customer Reviews:

HIstory, Art, People and Science.......2007-01-09

This is an excellent book for the layman as well as for an accomplished sundial expert. It shows the evolution of humankind's interest in the passage and the marking of time. And if you look on page 123 you will see photographs of Kate Pond's contemporary sun-aligned public sculptures.

Sundials, Ancient and Modern, Useful and Beautiful.......2006-04-19

You are used to seeing a sundial in the middle of a garden, and if you are like me, you look at the shadow, then compare the time to a wrist-borne chronometer, and note that the sundial is off by however many minutes. In _Sundials: History, Art, People, Science_ by Mark Lennox-Boyd I learned that this is at least doubly wrong. The author quotes Hilaire Belloc: "I am a sundial and I make a botch / Of what is done much better by a watch." He complements the wit of the couplet, and shows the errors. Firstly, he points out, sundials tell time perfectly well; they simply measure time differently than watches do, but neither of them is objectively "right". Secondly, sundials are not merely garden ornaments, and only one in this profusely illustrated and colorful book is from that category. The dials shown here are often scientific instruments and elaborate works of art that sometimes do not look like sundials at all. Not only are many styles of sundial illustrated here, but the science and history of making them is summarized; the reader will come away with a much better idea of how the solar system runs from the contemplation of these not-so-humble instruments.

Lennox-Boyd (or actually Sir Mark, since he has been, besides a Patron of the British Sundial Society, a Member of Parliament and a Foreign Office Minister), says that the association of the dial with the garden began in the Renaissance, not because the dials were ornaments, but because teachers of the time often used the garden as a place where lessons of science could be delivered. There are pictures here of artwork and architecture that one would not expect to be sundials at all. The Sundial Bridge across the Sacramento River in California is a suspension bridge, suspended on one side of the river from a huge, slanted support. The support just happens to be slanted at the correct angle to make it a gnomon, and its huge shadow sweeps along the ground beneath. The huge sundial at Jaipur in India has a gnomon that is big enough to walk up, fifty steep stairs. A Dutchman has designed beer glasses that you turn until the sunbeam through a circle on one side of the glass hits the date line on the other side; you can then tell if the time is after 5 p.m., the time when the inventor says the glass ought to be filled. There is a picture of a spherical sundial invented by Thomas Jefferson. The Disney World offices in Florida are "entertainment architecture", and part of the fun is that a central room is shaped like a truncated cone and has gigantic sundials visible on the outside and the inside, with quotations about time on marble plaques from such notables as Albert Einstein and Donald Duck. Sir Mark himself designs sundials, some of which are shown here. The most ambitious is one in Oliveto, Italy, within the stair tower of a house; a system of mirrors sends a sunbeam during different times of the day to different walls of the stairwell, each intricately crisscrossed with lines to read time, date, times of sunrise and sunset, and more.

Sir Mark points out that since we now have clocks accurate to more than one second in fifteen million years, sundials ought to be obsolete, but they are not. There has been a resurgence of interest in them, both in the historical forms and the modern ones which come in strange and undial-like shapes. "There is a particular symbolism in an object that does something helpful but requires no power and performs indefinitely," he writes. He is clearly fascinated with his subject, and this lovely and colorful book conveys the fascination perfectly.

Average customer rating:

For the dial-builder
Overall the best available sundial text.
Definitely a classic...
Best book on sundials I've ever seen
The all-time classic work on dialing.

Sundials: Their Theory and Construction
Albert Waugh
Manufacturer: Dover Publications
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0486229475

Book Description

This fascinating approach to sundials offers a rigorous appraisal of the science of sundials, including mathematical treatment and pertinent astronomical background. It also provides a nontechnical treatment simple enough that several of the dials can be built by children. 106 illustrations.

Customer Reviews:

For the dial-builder.......2004-03-29

No other book, as far as I know, gives such clear detail about making your own sundials. That word seems so narrow; Waugh covers much more of solar time-telling than just dials. One thing that amazes me is his passion. He writes with clear pride about his own sundials, good to within (he says) ten seconds!

This book covers graphical or analytic techniques for laying out sundials on just about any surface that doesn't move, horizontal, vertical (facing any direction), slanted, or even the ceiling. He also discusses the movable kind, like a "shepherd's dial". It has nothing inherently to do with sheep, but can be used anywhere, even without knowing true north.

The historian may be disappointed. This is not a catalogue of sundials through the ages, although bits of history are scattered throughout. In one sense, though, this is a view into the time of its writing (1973). A modern reader, with access to modern calculators and computers, will be amused if not puzzled by some of tricks used to make hand computation more feasible. I don't know anyone any more who multiplies by adding logs, and the circumlocutions around negative logarithms look positively quaint. The only real flaw in this book is its systematic omission of half the world: the southern hemispehere. It wouldn't have been so hard to add just a paragraph or two about sundials that work "backwards".

Although this book celebrates the craft and art that can go into a sundial, its real value is technical. This book gives the essential methods for the functional side of a solar time-piece; bring your own artistry.

Overall the best available sundial text........2002-03-19

I have read and viewed the major English language texts on Sundials. These being 1.Waugh, 2. Mayall & Mayall, and 3. Rohr.

The Waugh text has good, mostly clear, intructions and gives both graphical and equation based methods of constructions. Mayall and Mayall perhaps has better graphical constuctions but Waugh excells in the variety of tables in the appendix. Waugh also has the clearest explanation of determining the declination of a wall. This is very important as many buildings are aligned along magnetic north (& south & east &west) rather than true north ( south etc...).

A shortcoming of the almost every book including Waugh, is the lack of clear instruction on how to draw other types of hours. Most importantly of these interesting alternatives types of hours are babylonian and Italian hours. These hours are still useful today. So far I've only found the Rohr text to have any attempt of explaining how to draw these lines. However the Rohr text simply doesn't match the clarity and breadth of Waugh and Mayall and Wayall.

Waugh (and Mayall and Mayall) both could do with an update on trigonometry. With the easy availability of scientific calculators, the need for log versions of equations and the use of things like "cot" functions is not needed and simply makes the calculations clumsy to perform on a key pad.

The book by Cousins is an excellent higly detailed text if you can get it, but it seems to be out of print. It is useful if you really want to get into the maths of spherical geometry and it wouldn't be the best book you'd want to read first. It makes you appreciate the wonderful elegance of the graphical solutions but it may convince you that it is all too hard when it actually isn't in a practical sense. Just about anyone can make a simple sundial.

The text by Rohr also has a good section on how to do hour lines on just about any shaped surface (bowl, sphere, plane etc..) if you have a rod for a gnomen. This is about the only strength of this text over the others.

So to conclude Waugh would be the best first text, very closely followed by Mayall and Mayall, then Rohr. The text by Cousins is excellent but at a much higher level that isn't needed for the construction for the standard types of dials.

Definitely a classic..........2002-01-07

I agree with the other reviewers...This is a very clear and concise treatment of the theory and practice of sundial construction. It is a very easy read, (anyone over the age of around 12-13 should have no difficulty with it at all,) and entertaining to boot! It has a few items that some of the other 'classics' on sundials do not. (Rene Rohr,s book "Sundials:History, Theory and Practice" and Mayall & Mayall's "Sundial's:Their Construction and Use".) The only thing this book really misses, (and the same holds true for virtually every book on sundials!) is the link between sundials telling time, and their potential use for navigation. Apart from that, this is a great book, and I highly recommend it.

Best book on sundials I've ever seen.......1998-08-30

This book not only covers everything from time itself to noon marks to fancy sundials, it is well written and fun to read - a rare combination in a "technical" book.

The all-time classic work on dialing........1998-07-25

Albert Waugh's "Sundials: Their Theory and Construction" is a veritable treasure-house of information on the ancient science of gnomonics. As a dedicated dialist of several years, I never could have achieved such wonderful results without Waugh's classic book. The work presents the art of building sundials from two perspectives: for the advanced dialist, Waugh's book approaches the theory from a highly complex, mathematical viewpoint, including some aspects of celestial mechanics; for the average "do-it-yourself-er", Waugh presents several projects that are simple and well-explained. Accompanying this fine work is a collection of solar tables, astronomical information, and various data of inestimable value that would alone justify the purchase price of the book. So whether your purpose is to further your technical interest in the fascinating science of gnomonics, or merely to build an attractive sundial for your garden over the weekend, "Sundial! s: Their Theory and Construction" should be in your collection. It is considered the very "bible" of dialmaking. I couldn't brag about it more had I written it myself!

Sundial of the Seasons, a Selection of Outdoor Editorials from the New York Times

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Sundial of the Seasons, a Selection of Outdoor Editorials from the New York Times
Hal Borland
Manufacturer: Lippincott
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000H5D384

Time's Pendulum: From Sundials to Atomic Clocks, the Fascinating History of Timekeeping and How Our Discoveries Changed the World

Average customer rating:

Good overview
Two books in one, both interesting!
If I could keep time in a bottle....
An interesting book
A compelling introduction to the history of clockmaking

Time's Pendulum: From Sundials to Atomic Clocks, the Fascinating History of Timekeeping and How Our Discoveries Changed the World
Jo Ellen Barnett
Manufacturer: Harvest Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0156006499

Amazon.com

Likely you've heard that the mechanical clock is one of humanity's most significant inventions, comparable to the printing press, or electricity, or the automobile. But first-time author Jo Ellen Barnett admits that most of us, if we're honest, don't quite see why. Our perception of time, and our artificial division of it into little, repeatable pieces, is so ingrained in us that we forget it's an invention.

Barnett, who admits to having been fascinated by time all her life, seems the perfect person to clear up this conceptual blind spot. Drawing from many disciplines, she's conducted a sweeping survey of our relationship with time, from our earliest attempts to measure and understand it to our more recent breakthroughs with carbon dating and atomic clocks. Time's Pendulum never skimps on the science, with its detailed explanations and unapologetic technical discussions. But what makes the book so very likable (and readable) is Barnett's passion for meditating on time's cultural and even spiritual mysteries. If you're already intrigued by time, Time's Pendulum makes for a satisfying, meaty read, rich in insights and historical anecdotes; if you aren't already intrigued, you will be. --Paul Hughes

Book Description

A perfect balance of science, history, and sociology, Time's Pendulum traces the important developments in humankind's epic quest to measure the hours, days, and years with accuracy, and how our concept of time has changed with each new technological breakthrough. Written in an easy-to-follow chronological format and illustrated with entertaining anecdotes, author Jo Ellen Barnett's history of timekeeping covers everything from the earliest sundials and water clocks, to the pendulum and the more recent advances of battery-powered, quartz-regulated wrist watches and the powerful radioactive "clock," which loses only a few billionths of a second per day, making it nearly ten billion times more accurate than the pendulum clock. A tour of the discoveries and the inventors who endeavored to chart and understand time, Time's Pendulum also explains how each new advance gradually transformed our perception of the world.

Customer Reviews:

Good overview.......2007-06-15

I've already had some interest in the topic, but wanted to pickup another book and see what else I could learn, so got this one based on the reviews. A very good book, would highly recommend for someone who wants to learn about the history of keeping time.

Two books in one, both interesting!.......2004-03-10

Jo Ellen Barnett has written two books here, hidden between one set of covers. The first part goes over the history of how we have measured (and, truly, how we have defined) the time of day, starting with the "temporary hours" of a sundial (longer in summer, shorter in winter, and not even counted during the night), and transitioning to equal (but still based on the sun) hours (local apparent time), then to local mean time, to standard (time-zone) time, and ending up with the current Coordinated Universal Time, based on atomic phenomena. The story is absorbing and well written, and would be an enjoyable book all by itself.

Then she has a second part, concerned with the way we have determined the age of the earth. This could be said to start with the speculations of the Babylonians and Greeks, but really took off in earnest with medievals' attempts to build everything on a Biblical basis, reading into the Biblical account whatever they needed to build their chronology. When the geologists tried to account for their own observations, however, it was clear that the few thousand years the Bible literalists derived for the age of the earth was far too small, but physicists like Lord Kelvin (while arriving at a longer time than the Bible provided) still reached an age of the earth too brief to mesh with the geological evidence. Only with the discovery of radioasctivity and the refinement of the techniques of deriving chronological data from radioactivity measurements could the physicists and geologists be reconciled.

Both parts make it clear that ultimately time has become defined in terms of atomic phenomena (though different parts of the atom) and only through our measurement of these can accuracy be attained (whether in the case of the time of day or the time the earth has taken to evolve since its origin).

Unlike some other two-part books I have reviewed, this one puts them both together successfully. It is a very interesting book.

If I could keep time in a bottle...........2002-10-27

How many times a day do we unconsciously look at our watches, or the clock on the stove or the VCR (provided it's not permanently blinking 12:00)? Yet for many years, the capture of time to a clock was at best around the right hour of the day. Bernett takes us through the refinement of clock technology and clock making, and how this more exact time changed our lives, some would argue with the idea of a change for the better. She takes us on a simple and entertaining sweep of time from sundials to measuring the beats of an atom in order to tell what time it really is. Along the way there are arguments about the prime meridian and time zones as we are forced to go from telling time by the sun above each of us, to entire time zones on a single time, irregardless of where the sun exactly is. At least the trains could run on time.

Then Barnett pulls back and looks at the greatest clock around - the planet Earth itself. The question of how old the Earth is was a question that kept pushing the answer back and back further in time. Of course the Earth was only 6,000 years old, according to biblical interpreters. That is until the strata and fossils began to be understood, and then half life of radioactive elements could fix time ever more exactly. Now that we are able to "read" a good part of the clock that is the Earth, our placement of ourselves in time has also settled. So now we have a concept of where we are in time, and how to find it. At least until the earth slows some more due to friction in the tides. An interesting book that doesn't delve too deep and pulls you along on an interesting, everyday subject.

An interesting book.......2001-06-15

Time's Pendulum is a book not only about time and how time is measured, but also about our perception of time -- from the moment we as a species started worrying about it right up to today. Barnett does not only discuss clocks and how clocks work but the importance of time in daily life. Also excellent is her discussion of 'deep time' -- thinking about time on astronomical scales. I was also pleased by the more subtle connections. For example, the influence of the railroads on not only synchronizing watches over extending longitutes (i.e., time zones), but also their contribution to geologic time through uncovering the fossiliferous rocks during their construction.

A compelling introduction to the history of clockmaking.......1999-05-08

This is really two books--the first is a chronological history of time measurement devices, and the second is a history of humankind's perception of the age of humanity, the earth, and the universe. The first book is fascinating and well written. Writing for a general readership, Barnett explores the development of clockmaking and how the existence of ever more accurate clocks has irrevocably changed everyday life for us all. Her detailed explanation of the verge-and-foliot escapement was especially fascinating, as was her discussion of "the equation of time" and how it gives rise to the Mean in Greenwich Mean Time. Overall, the first half of her book is a wonderful introduction to an underappreciated portion of humanity's history. The second half of Barnett's book, however, is a rehash of material that Isaac Asimov explored fully in his nonfiction writings in the 1960s and 1970s. It may hold the interest of readers unfamiliar with Asimov, but for me it was a real disappointment, especially after such a compelling introduction to the history of clocks and clockmaking.

Average customer rating:

Very comprehensive
Excellent how-to
If you want to know how to make a sundial...

Sundials: Their Construction and Use
R. Newton Mayall , and Margaret W. Mayall
Manufacturer: Dover Publications
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 048641146X

Book Description

Clearly written, easy-to-follow instructions for constructing a sundial on almost any surface and in virtually any position, with information on selecting appropriate materials, making Standard Time dials, and laying out hour lines. Dial furniture, portable sundials, constructing a heliochronometer (a highly precise solar timekeeper) and other subjects also covered. Over 60 illustrations provide examples of scale models and actual dials from around the world.

Customer Reviews:

Very comprehensive.......2006-11-03

An excellent read. Very comprehensive.
Suitable for the novice or experienced Sundialler.
Unfortunately most of the photographs
have not been very well reproduced.

Excellent how-to.......2006-03-04

The Mayalls start this book with a fanciful Mrs. Caveman (this was written in 1934, remember) reminding Mr. to bring his shadow-stick so he'd be home from the hunt in time for chores. That gets the first aspect of the book off to good start, desribing the incredible variety of sundials known through history. The menagerie includes everything from pocket-sized "shepherd's" dials to major pieces of architecture. It includes dials that show only morning hours (on an east wall of a building), a garden laid out like a sundial with topiary gnomon, and even a moon-dial for night-time hours.

The other major feature of this book, interleaved with the first, gives detailed directions for making many kinds of sundial: wall-mounted, horizontal, and many more. The instructions show how to adapt dials to any northern longitude or latitude, giving time accurate to the minute. I imagine the dedicated reader could adapt the directions to the southern hemisphere, where the shadow's direction is reversed. The intermediate latitudes, between the tropics of cancer and capricorn, present interesting problems that I did not see addressed, however. In that equatorial band, the sun acts "northern" for part of the year and "southern" for the rest. I would have liked to see examples of how this challenge is overcome.

That's nit-picking, though. It's an approachable book with fascinating examples and clear instruction without daunting math. I recommend it to anyone interested in making sundials of their own, or who just want to know more about their history.

//wiredweird

If you want to know how to make a sundial..........2002-01-07

This is a great book to learn about the various types of sundials & how to make them. It is a little weak on the 'how it works' side of things, but is great on the 'how to do it' side. It thoroughly describes how to construct each of the main types of dials, including how to make a verier for more accurate measurement of the shadow's position on the dial. This, together with Albert Waugh & Rene Rohr's book's can give you a good understanding of both the theory and practice of sundial construction. (There is overlap in each of the books, but this book pre-dates the other two somewhat.) I would recommend this book as a worthwhile purchase for anyone interested in understanding and/or construction of sundials.

Sundials: An Illustrated History of Portable Dials

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Sundials: An Illustrated History of Portable Dials
Hester Higton
Manufacturer: Philip Wilson Publishers
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0856675237

Book Description

Sundials: An Illustrated History of Portable Dials fills a major gap i the published works on the subject. Most books previously printed have concentrated on notable fixed sundials or on the mathematics involved in their contruction. This work focuses on the portable sundials used as timekeepers for three millenia before being superseded by the watch.

While the emphasis is on the sundials themselves, much reference is made to the contemporary social, political and economic history, so that the subject matter is set firmly in context. In each chapter one or two detailed examples have been selected as a focus for the wider field; all are of particular interest in their own right. Most of the sundials come from the collections of the National Maritime Museum, and dials from all major manufacturing countries throughout the world are added.

The illustrations form an essential part of the book, both as an aid to explaining how the dials work, and because many are functional works of art of extremely high visual quality. The detailed examples in each chapter are fully illustrated. Diagrams have also been provided to explain in easy terms some of the complicated mathematics involved in the construction and use of dials. Other illustrations complement the background of historical material.

Making a Clock-Accurate Sundial Customized to Your Location (for the Northern Hemisphere)

Average customer rating:

NOT clock-accurate sundials

Making a Clock-Accurate Sundial Customized to Your Location (for the Northern Hemisphere)
Sam Muller
Manufacturer: Naturegraph Publishers
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0879612460

Book Description

Customized to Your Location. Easy directions and detailed diagrams for making your own sundial.

Customer Reviews:

NOT clock-accurate sundials.......2002-09-13

This book describes making a simple horizontal sun-dial with
a angled gnomon (the shadow casting thingy). For
"clock-accuracy" you have to look up an error offset in
a chart. The "equation of time" is not built into the
the design.
The book intentionally skips over the mathematics involved.
I found more information by searching the internet for
"analemmic sundial" than I found in this book.

The secret of the sundial (The Madge Sterling series)

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The secret of the sundial (The Madge Sterling series)
Ann Wirt
Manufacturer: Goldsmith Publishing Company
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: B000877MXI

Average customer rating:

A great book for sundial lovers
One of the better short sundial books

Easy-to-Make Wooden Sundials
Milton Stoneman
Manufacturer: Dover Publications
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0486241416

Book Description

Excellent manual for the beginner explains how to make five different sundials. Includes templates pre-calculated for latitude. Few tools are needed to make dial more accurate locally than standard time.

Customer Reviews:

A great book for sundial lovers.......2005-10-01

The book arrived in a timely fashion in excellent condition.

One of the better short sundial books.......2000-08-20

This is not an advanced or comprehensive sundial theory book, but it does have a good mix of simple, practical projects mixed with a little theory. I would give this as a first book to anyone who is interested in Sundials. If I had only three Sundial books then this would be one of them. My other two favorites are "Sundials History, Theory, and Practice" by Rene R. J. Rohr published by Dover and "Sundials: their theory and constructions" by "Albert E. Waugh" published by Dover.

Average customer rating:

A complex mix of swords, romance and conspiracy
Not as good as I was expecting.
careful the small type!
very strong chord, very fast reading
Waste of paper. Look for a good book elsewhere.

A Sundial in a Grave: 1610: A Novel
Mary Gentle
Manufacturer: Harper Paperbacks
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0380820412
Release Date: 2005-05-03

Book Description

"It's about sex, and cruelty, and forgiveness."

Thus begins a sweeping historical adventure about two dueling swordsmen and the plot to kill a king in the grand tradition of Dorothy Dunnett and Alexander Dumas.

The year is 1610. Continental Europe is briefly at peace after years of war, but Henri IV of France is planning to invade the German principalities. In England, only five years earlier, conspirators nearly succeeded in blowing up King James I and his Parliament. The seeds of the English Civil War and the Thirty Years War are visibly being sown, and the possibility for both enlightenment and disaster abounds.

But Valentin Rochefort, duelist and spy for France's powerful financial minister, could not care less. Until he is drawn into the glittering palaces, bawdy back streets, and stunning theatrics of Renaissance France and Shakespearean London in a deadly plot both to kill King James I and to save him. For this swordsman without a conscience is about to find himself caught between loyalty, love, and blackmail, between kings, queens, politicians, and Rosicrucians -- and the woman he has, unknowingly, crossed land and sea to meet.

Customer Reviews:

A complex mix of swords, romance and conspiracy.......2007-02-27

Stylistically remininscent of the stories of Alexander Dumas, this is vast, entangled story of romance entwined with conspiracy that takes the reader from Paris to London to Japan and back again. The story opens with Valentin Rochefort, duelist and spy in the employ of one the most loyal supporters of France's King Henri IV, finds himself blackmailed by the Queen into plotting Henri's assassination. When, in spite of his best efforts, the plan succeeds, Rochefort finds himself running for his life. From this opening, we follow Rochefort and his band of mismatched companions as they find themselves deeply involved with a group that believes they can mathematically predict the future, and aim to kill another king.

Full of colorful characters and complex plot twists, this book is full of surprises, even if the idea of using math to predict the future was almost too much of a stretch for this reader (after all, even today our mathematical models can barely predict the weather more than a few days out!). The romantic subplot provides moments of great levity, even if its resolution is utterly predictable. The various components come together in a compelling story that sheds some light on the politics of Europe in the ealy years of the seventeenth century.

Not as good as I was expecting........2007-01-25

Unlike what several other reivews have said, I found this book rather boring and somewhat difficult to follow at times. The first hundred pages are slow which makes it hard to get into. The entire story is bogged down with way too many details, it's almost like reading a text book at points. There is also a lot of unnecessary vulgarity (language and sex) which does not enhance the story in any way. The general story is interesting, if you're able to get past all of the book's flaws. If I had it to do over, I wouldn't have read this book, and I certainly won't read it again.

careful the small type!.......2006-08-08

I want to echo what Alan Naftalin says -- if this edition is only 688 pages long, the type has to be too small. The British edition is nearly 1200 pages long, and the type is a decent size, so go for that if your eyes don't want the strain. As for Gentle's other epic, Ash, I found the type in the one-volume British edition too small for comfort: in this case, one had to go for the American edition, which is available in four separate volumes. Worth getting the edition you can most comfortably read, because Gentle is a fascinating writer and once you've started a book of hers you won't want to put it down, even if your eyes are hurting!

very strong chord, very fast reading.......2005-12-25

I also picked up the book because the jacket referred to Dunnett - but I liked it more than the reader before me who gave it 1 star. The history is quite good, taking place in the time after Henri IV's assasination in France. A trio of interesting characters fleeing repercussions of the assasination travels to the England of James I (shortly after Queen Elizabeth's reign). They get involved in plots by the mathematical wizard Dr. Robert Fludd who hopes to save the world from a comet that he's predicted will destroy the world 500 years in the future. Fludd's calculations of how current events will influence the future is quite well done - there are lots of veiled references to historical events that we are quite familiar with, like dropping atomic bombs on Japan. The time covered by the novel covered is only 2 years, and the author uses broad brush strokes, so the historical time and events are very easy to follow.

The story is quite simple - mostly a love story between the narrator Rochefort the spy and Dariole the duellist. The only other substantial character is a Japanese samurai who provides a great foil, entertainment and an outsider's view on the smelly European gaijin. What makes the novel most interesting and different is the complex characterization of Rochefort - although his life has not been above reproach, he is loyal and wise, and capable of great love and sacrifice. It's a nice touch, and well handled, and he's a great character.

That being said, the elements of the story are simple enough that they are repeated again and again in the nearly 700 pages. Maybe it could have been a great book if it were half the size. And then, I suppose some of us are always looking for the next Dunnett, hoping to plunge for months into complex histories and gargantuan casts of fully realized characters - Mary Gentle's not in the same league, but she's very good.

Waste of paper. Look for a good book elsewhere........2005-10-30

Combine a meandering plot, unlikeable and uninteresting characters and a lot of thoughts on sex, and you got this bore of a book.

I tried to read Mary Gentle's "A Sundial in the Grave," largely partle because on the back it said "in the tradition of Alexandre Dumas and Dorothy Dunnett."

Well, unless Dumas and Dunnett were obssessed with graphic and pointless instances of [love sessions] and some weird humiliation sex games and had protagonists that weren't likeable OR too bright, then I am afraid it's false advertising. Of course, I could have been reading wrong Dumas or Dunnett? Right? Right????

Nothing can save this wreck of a book, which has one of my least favorite cliches ever: girl crossdresses as a boy and the man is aroused but straight because his body or subconscious recognizes she's a girl. The main characters are repulsive? Fine. But at last they could be interesting. I see nothing of quick wits or charm in either, which makes them utterly boring to read about. Well, if the plot was entertaining, at least I could cope. But the plot of this book? The word "half-baked" comes to mind.

Setting the book in 1610 does not make it like Dumas. Giving a hero a shady past makes it nothing like Dunnett (Valentin and Lymond? Separate universes). Making the hero 25 years older than the heroine does not Heyer's "These Old Shades" make, which is the vibe the author was going for the most, as she even mentioned Heyer in her intro. Leonie is brave and lovable and fun. Avon is ruthless and charming and clever and haughty. Neither of the two "heroes" of this sorry tale are anything of the sort. Makes it nothing but tripe, if the book is this particular one.

Spare me.

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