Lest Darkness Fall
Some of my reading of late has been shaped by Jo Walton's reviews on Tor.com; she has frequently picked things I've had on my shelf and meant to get to for a long time. So I finally read Lest Darkness Fall.
For no adequately explained reason, our hero, Martin Padway, an archaeologist in Rome in 1938, finds himself transported to 535. The Roman Empire has fallen, and Italy's ruled by the Ostrogoths. His knowledge of classical Latin and modern Italian allow him to communicate far too easily, and he has equally suspicious ease selling decimal arithmetic and double-entry bookkeeping to a money lender, who stakes him in a scheme to distill brandy from wine.
An advantage he has over a moderner is that the change in his pocket is specie, and he's able to convert it to local money.
Spoilers follow:
His creations, tangible and not, go on to include a printing press, a newspaper, the limited liability corporation, and a semaphore telegraph system. When he realizes it's necessary to save Italy, he restores a weak king to the throne (before he was executed, as in our history) and acts as the power behind the throne.
Padway borders on being a Mary Sue. But if some things are too easy, he also has his share of failures. He knows the constituents of gunpowder, but not their proportion, and his cannon project ends up on a scrap heap alongside his clock project. There's no paper for his printing press, and the second time he tries to place an order for vellum, he's told it'll be some time before he can -- the first order used up all the available hide.
He's briefly the functional ruler of Italy, but by the end of the book, he has helped an ally become the new king. He'd continue to wield influence, but the new king wasn't weak, and wouldn't simply let him run things.
It seems like every woman wants him, but in all cases, it goes horribly wrong. In one case, this is due only to snobbishness on his part -- after sleeping with a servant, he's horrified to see she had a louse, and shuns her. Later, when he meets a nice, educated young woman, he thinks of his disgust that he'd allowed the servant to sully his bed.
At the end, he's warning Justinian to conquer Arabia before a prophet arise to unite it (he's ceased making a secret of his ability to prophesy), and organizing an expedition to the Americas. His stated purpose for the latter is that he really wants some tobacco. He doesn't express any concerns for the American natives, and the diseases he'll be exporting to them, just for how much he wants a cigarette.
At seventy years remove, I don't find Padway an especially likable character, though I think he was clearly intended as such. But, overall, an entertaining read.
Leonard Richardson recently commented on his reading of it, too.
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