Reviewer Praise for JUDGE OF AGES
Paul Di Filippo at Locus Online gives my book very high praise indeed.
In this installment of his far-future adventure, which blends flavors of Ed Hamilton, Stephen Baxter, Doc Smith, Jack Vance, E. R. Eddison, C. S. Lewis, Jack Williamson and A. E. van Vogt into a unique and generally tasty mélange…
I go must go on to affirm that the novel provides much pleasure. Wright marshals up a big backstory of human evolution that proves to have some secrets we had not known before. The titanic battle scenes are full of mind-boggling super science. The camaraderie among Montrose and his pals evokes Arthurian depths of feeling. Alien psychologies are plumbed, along with Montrose’s old-fashioned, native Texan, dogmatic pureness of intention. And the book’s surprise ending does represent a sea-change of sorts.
Paramount above all is Wright’s lofty fabulism of prose (with some contrasting down-home locutions from Montrose). When one recalls that Wright has recently issued a volume of his stories set in William Hope Hodgson’s baroque Night Land subcreation, some of the roots of Wright’s affinity for Homeric syntax and Shakespearean eloquence becomes more apparent.
There are moments when this book seems poised to fall into a kind of Henry Darger idiolect and private vision … But every time, at the last minute, Wright pulls back from mysticism and private symbology to show us startling philosophical vistas of futurity only he could deliver.
Read the whole thing (the review) here. You can also read the whole thing (the book) after you buy it, of course. It makes a great gift for the feast day of Our Lady of Fatima.
About John C Wright
John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.
