Reviews

This complex work by the author of The Sword and The Grail ( LJ 9/15/92), as well as ten other novels published in Great Britain, is a blending of historical fact and ancient fancy. George ``Gog'' Griffin is writing his thesis at Cambridge in the mid-1930s on the Luddite movement of the 19th century. A putative descendant of the original King Ludd (likely a myth), Gog considers himself a reincarnation of the ancient legendary British giant, Gog. Sinclair uses the Luddites to comment upon the increasing mechanization and computerization of the modern world. Gog's history of the Luddites becomes inextricably bound with his fanciful re-creation of his own family history; the novel presents the progress of Gog's life through World War II and after in a nonlinear fashion. Those unfamiliar with British history will find this novel tough reading, though devout Anglophiles may find much to absorb them.-- Dean James, Houston Acad. of Medicine/Texas Medical Ctr. Lib.

The final part of Sinclair's ( Gog ) Albion Triptych will be intelligible only to readers familiar with England's history and mythology, and diverting to only a handful of these. George ``Gog'' Griffin, a student at Cambridge in the 1930s, is polishing his thesis in praise of the Luddites and studying Druidic runes. When he is sent down from Oxford for his ``New Modest Proposal'' (suggesting England eat its unemployed workers), he goes on a journey along a Druid ``ley line,'' learning ``what went wrong in the land of Magog so that Gog and his brothers are not able to . . . earn their bread in plenty and peace.'' He has encounters (some in dreams) with Robin Hood and the Pardoner, among others. Then, through Colin Graveling, a mathematician who is developing a ``computing machine,'' Gog is asked to take some ``perforated cards'' into Europe in 1937, and the war finds Gog at Bletchley, musing on similarities between runes and Enigma code. The tale closes years later with Gog's son, who blithely fuses the work's myth and computer strains by asserting that computer games ``are the myths of today--our Odyssey, our Beowulf.'' It makes one wonder: If that's all there is to myth, why write a trilogy on it? (May)