What I Am Reading: "A Sundial in a Grave: 1610" by Mary Gentle

This book, a pike-and-shot era historical fantasy/adventure novel, comes as another stray recommendation from the late and lamented Ferretbrain. Despite having the prediction of the future as a plot element, it is a fairly straightforward adventure story: a French spy, Valentin Rochefort, is framed for assisting in the murder of King Henri IV in 1610; and in order to keep his patron Duke safe from the scheming Queen must flee to England in an attempt to reveal the conspiracy. He is joined by a rival duelist, Dariole, who turns out to be a cross-dressing young noblewoman whom Rochefort has kinky feelings for; and Saburo Tanaka, a shipwrecked samurai sent to Europe as part of a diplomatic mission. Once in England, this trio is swept up in the machinations of Robert Fludd, an occultist who studied under Giordano Bruno to be able to use astrology to predict the future. Flood has predicted the impact of a comet 500 years hence, and is taking steps to assure the ascent of an absolutest technological power, under James I's eldest son Henry, to be able to stop the comet when the time comes. Many adventures across the English countryside, and to further destinations, ensue. This book brought to mind a favorite series of mine: The Baroque Cycle by Neal Stephenson. Both are adventures set in the seventeenth century; The Baroque Cycle is considerably more dense, and covers a longer timespan, but there are a couple of minor threads that both pick up. Both decide to loop Edo Japan into the story and have a samurai cross his katana with European rapiers; and both view history through the lens of the present, with a heavy emphasis on how the characters and their actions in the seventeenth century will affect subsequent centuries. This novel avoids the trap of predestination or fate by having Fludd's calculations be just that, calculations of probability, upset by the heroic unpredictability of love and human nature and such. I wasn't incredibly familiar with Jacobean England or with France at the time of the Wars of Religion, so I was held in a bit of suspense by not knowing if the actions that play out in the novel differ from those of actual history, and kept waiting to see if it would cross a point of divergence to become alternate history.