So I come across John Whitbourn’s A Dangerous Energy via Twitter…
Those of you who did not tell me about the weird alternate-history magic novels of John Whitbourn are fired.
— Kenneth Hite (@kennethhite) January 4, 2015
…and ‘weird alternate-history magic novel’ sums it up. In spades, and with a special emphasis on ‘weird.’ Wikipedia calls it the ‘first Counter-Reformation science fiction novel;’ I would say that the magic system is barely explained well enough to qualify as weird science rather than straight-out fantasy, but the Counter-Reformation bit is spot-on. I found the book entertaining, fascinating, and remarkably (and cheerfully) alien to our currently secularist society: I suspect that many of my more socially conservative readers will find the protagonist’s (he’s not even remotely a ‘hero’) eventual end both satisfying, and starkly inevitable to boot.