A Midsummer Tempest – Poul Anderson

In this book’s world, Shakespeare was a historian, and a short time later, the English Civil War rages, but with more technology than we had in our world. Prince Rupert of the Rhine, fighting for his uncle, Charles I, is captured. His captor’s niece, Jennifer, helps him escape, and Oberon and Titania chose the two of them as their champions, sending them to find the magic left on Prospero’s island when Prospero left it.

I’m not quite sure what to think of this book. The idea is great, and some of the execution is interesting, but it can be surprisingly hard to follow. Adding technology like trains into the story doesn’t do anything, and some of the other interludes are non-scensical. It’s shame, because the bones of the story are good – it just ultimately didn’t do much for me.