My weekends, and more than a few weekdays, have been been fairly busy the last month so it’s taken me a while to finish Ian R. MacLeod’s World Fantasy Award winning The Light Ages. On top of various distractions it’s a good-sized and dense novel – so I do have an excuse.

I’ve heard some people like to compare MacLeod with Miéville, which I can certainly see as being valid based on their lush descriptions and narrative styles. However, where Miéville is phantasmagoric, MacLeod is more intent on engaging the reader on a intimate level. I also think MacLeod tends not to be quite as overbearing (though that’s not quit the term I’m looking for) with his use of language.

I found MacLeod’s prose to have an almost dream like quality. Reading Ages was like experiencing its story through a dream. The story is written in the first person which heightens the dream-like experience. As befits a dream, the story moves slowly, but compellingly. I was able to put it down easily enough, but I was always drawn back to it.

The story is set in a Victorian England in which magic has been discovered in the form of aether which is mined from the earth. Aether is everywhere, it is infused into materials to make them stronger, used to clean laundry, and so on. All trades are run by guilds, and those who are not guildsmen are 2nd class citizens at best. The lower ranks of the guilds are overworked to say the least (12 day week with a day and a half off). Much like in Miéville’s Iron Council, it is a society in need of a revolution.

There are two main plots. The first, basically described, revolves around the end of the third age (each each being a century) since the discovery of aether and the beginning of the Age of Light. The other concerns the main character, Robbie, and his relationship with Anna, a girl from his childhood. Robbie is from Bracebridge which is the largest source of aether ore in England.

The ending of the story was surprisingly emotionally intense. The quality and style of MacLeod’s writing was such that I didn’t really notice how caught up in the characters I was, and toward the end it did become a page-turner for me.

Aside from being a big slow (which didn’t bother me much at all in this case), it was really a great novel, and I would recommend to anyone that’s not afraid of the pace.