Positive reviews for Adam Browne’s Pyrotechnicon are flowing in.
Lucy Sussex in The Age and The Sun-Herald 28 October 2012:
Pyrotechnicon might be the most imaginative novel published in Australia for some years. The source matter is Cyrano de Bergerac’s own scientific romances. Browne extends these fancies in his own wild ride around the solar system, with the writer-swordsman as hero. The style and setting draw on the baroque, creating a word feast. It fits neatly into no literary category.
Jason Nahrung on the Australian Speculative Fiction in Focus website:One can’t help feeling Cyrano’s translator, Mr Adam Browne, has done him proud, retaining the author’s vision, verbosity and personality. Bravo, or perhaps more accurately, touché?Read more: http://aussiespecficinfocus.wordpress.com/2012/10/23/pyrotechnicon/And there’s a growing number of positive reviews from readers on Goodreads.
About PYROTECHNICON by Cyrano de Bergerac
By his nose you may know him.
Cyrano de Bergerac: lover, poet, inventor, swordsman — man of ferocious blade and pretty talent.
In the Seventeenth Century, M. de Bergerac gave account of his fantastical First Voyage to the Moon and his Second Voyage to the Sun. How fortunate that publication of his Third Voyage has been so long delayed and that only now are we afforded the delicious anticipation of knowing the finest, the most fabulous tale of all is yet to come.
What matter any doubts as to the authenticity of the text (purportedly found during the United States’ MER-V mission to Mars, its rover robot famously rolling aside a small boulder to discover the pages you are about to read)? What care we who offers the riches; let us but accept the gift!
Let us dive nose first into this salty welter, effervescent with wordplay, tossed with wonders, a Voyage that takes Renaissance science to abyssal deeps and rarefied heights — trekking among the square roots of a mathematical forest; travelling across time in a rose-sailed ship; battling animalcules in a microscope-shaped zoo…
Above all, let us keep pace with M. de Bergerac on his most challenging quest — the inward quest; the test of the soul — for not until this fiercest swordsman in all France casts aside his blade will he have the might to defeat his deadliest foe, the dread Master of Secrets.
Adam Browne is available for interview — contact keith@coeurdelion.com.au.
Praise for PYROTECHNICON
‘A rich dessert of a novel, filled with finely crafted wit and adventure — Adam Browne has resurrected Cyrano in fine form. Delightful!’
Greg Bear — Hugo and Nebula Award-winning science fiction author.
‘Cyrano de Bergerac returns to science fiction after far too long an absence. PYROTECHNICON is a shadow play of clockwork whimsy, strange invention, and baroque puns. Browne zestfully steers his lighter-than-air word-balloons through a vast and improbable universe of plot. Sit back and enjoy the ride.’
Michael Swanwick — bestselling author of The Dragons of Babel.
‘It is three centuries before Apollo 11, and there are half-angel-power spaceships, angst engines, and even perfumed cannons. PYROTECHNICON is a fantastically surreal and entertaining tale of improbable sciences, unheard-of technologies, and very original adventures.’
Sean McMullen — Aurealis and Ditmar Award-winning author of the Greatwinter and The Moonworlds Saga series.
‘When his fiancée, Roxane, is kidnapped by the Master of Secrets, a man who smokes gum derived from other people’s dreams, Cyrano de Bergerac, connoisseur of dawns, must give chase across the stars in a vessel shaped into the likeness of an elephant, trunk arching to spout a fountain of grass and flowering weeds. The title does not mislead. PYROTECHNICON is a literary cabinet of curiosities filled with lush imagery and exotic notions. A delicious concoction of swashbucklery and delight. Highly recommended.’
Jeff Vandermeer — World Fantasy Award-winning author of Finch.
‘Simply dazzling. PYROTECHNICON is an audacious triumph of the imagination.’
James Maxey — author of the Bitterwood Series.