The Witches of Chiswick - Robert Rankin

...lied to and that all the fantasy fiction of the Victorian era was in fact true. That 19th Century England was in fact full of airships and automata, where Oscar Wilde was a notorious ladies' man and Queen Victoria was the Empire Bike. Airships and automata are familiar enough to any reader of alternative histories. They crop up in anything where Rome didn't fall or the Nazis weren't defeated. To combine this kind of earnest but far-fetched academic ...
...people getting him confused with the man who created Rebus, Rankin is the slow-thinking man's Terry Pratchett. The author of a string of 'comedy' novels set around the London borough of Brentford, these books lure you in with admittedly brilliant punning titles such as '101 Damnations' and things. The contents are generally (I've read three or four over the years, hopefully I've learned my lesson now) meandering tales full of one-note characters, ...

Olly_Plimsoll 26.06.2006 · Read full review
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Review of The Witches of Chiswick - Robert Rankin

...not that I don’t understand The Witches of Chiswick- I just don’t “get” it. There are certain books, and I think this particularly applies to sci-fi and fantasy, that require you to be in a certain zone in your head. You have to inhabit them. That was easy with the previous Rankin offering (a first for me) The Hollow Chocolate Bunnies of the Apocalypse. There was a world- Toy City- that was easy to inhabit. And yet here in Witches, he’s painting ...
...world, and for at least the first third of the book I’m just not there. The plot is this. History as we know it is all fake. In fact, technologically we were so advanced in the Victorian age that there were Babbage computers in every household, and the British Empire encompassed the entire globe. But a cabal of witches, under cover of the Chiswick Townswomen’s Guild, have wiped out that history and are prepared to do anything to keep it that way- ...

ruth_cole 10.08.2003 · Read full review
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Review of The Witches of Chiswick - Robert Rankin

...I can't really comment on the ending. Rankin is probably my favourite author these days after becoming bored with Pratchet. This latest offering is great with the usual running gags and familiar characters cropping up again. You can't really appreciate these unless you're familiar with them. The plot centres around a technologically advanced Victorian England. Hugo Rune helps H.G. Wells with his time machine then uses it to summon his great-great-great-great-decendent ...
...trying to control history (or the future version of history... or the past version of the future). Unfortunately he misses Tim and ends up with Will Starling (best friend of his decendant). So Will finds himself back in the day before the day before yesterday (which is in the 19th century). With a few clues about the witches trying to change history provided by his job (he notices a digital watch on an old masterpiece while working for the museum). ...

cport80 19.05.2004 · Read full review
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Review of The Witches of Chiswick - Robert Rankin