This book review was part of a podcast discussion.
Listen to the episode here.
Mary Gentle’s The Black Opera grabbed me from the beginning in a way it might not grab everyone. Protagonist Conrad Scalese is, despite living in eighteen-twenty-something Naples, an enthusiastic, incorrigible, and unapologetic atheist. Even when arrested by the local Inquisition, his pride and dedication to reason over blind faith eclipse his fear. It is rare and refreshing to see an open and loud atheist protagonist, and it made me love this book before I truly knew it.
Perhaps an atheist protagonist isn’t enough of a selling point. The premise of The Black Opera is that of the world we know, but the Catholic Mass is known to sometimes evoke miracles and the dead sometimes living on in various forms. The story opens the night after dear atheist Conrad, by vocation an operatic librettist, celebrates after the successful opening of an opera he wrote. He has a hit on his hands, and any artist knows (or imagines) that feeling of smashing success after so long in the mines.
Except lightning struck the theater after the performance, burning it to the ground and drawing the attention of the Inquisition. They arrest Conrad for blasphemy, and only the interest of King Ferdinand saves him… because the king believes a secret group are harnessing the power of opera in a fashion similar to the sung Mass to create some sort of apocalypse. Conrad’s job, if he can manage it, is to write a counter-opera with an antagonistic composer and whatever performers he can scrounge together, and in only six weeks.
The Black Opera draws you into Conrad’s fears, confidences, prides, and doubts. It teaches you things about opera you never realized you could pay enough attention to learn, and it slowly reveals that the book itself has the form of an opera, and that realization is rewarding. Despite a few annoying contrivances in the end, it is an enjoyable book I can comfortably recommend to anyone.
Seattle, WA
Sometimes, Peter Schaefer conceals a puzzle in his bio. Little do lovers of the cryptic know that Peter is an encryption system given life, a cipher grown so complex it attained consciousness, along with a love of games, books, and improv. Everyone who believes they meet Peter only meet its proxy, a husk employed only for its wit. Has anyone seen beyond www.paschaefer.com or www.shoelesspetegames.com in spite of his esoteric calculi? Sadly no. Not a single person, and not any group of people.
