Reviews

The Blazing World by Margaret Cavendish

grayjay's review

2.0

Somethings about this were interesting and others were tedious. I found it interesting as one of the earliest examples of what became "scientific romance". I was interesting as a window into what an upper class woman of the Enlightenment would have been thinking about and what kind of reading and education she had access to, although I don't think she is probably a representative case considering the freedom her situation allowed. As far as scientific romances so, it is pretty primitive. It doesn't have much of a plot or developed characters. It's more of a fantastical daydream. A large middle part of the book is taken up with pretty tedious "philosophical" arguments that she has with the various societies in the world she visits. The end has a very fantastical part where she dresses up in diamonds and returns to Earth to take it over on behalf of her home Kingdom.

rwxtd's review

3.0

I didn't like it much for the same reasons I didn't like New Atlantis much- it's basically a philosophy book masquerading as speculative fiction. I do think this one is a little closer to the modern day idea of science fiction than New Atlantis was, and it also seemed a little less racist/misogynistic, so I liked it better. Also, I found her direct self-insert character, and the transparency of "everything would be better if people just listened to me and I was in charge", is incredibly funny to me. It is a lot of lists and just things randomly happening, it's not really a narrative story. There are some really cool and beautiful descriptions in there, but the writing style can be difficult because it's a lot of really long run-on sentences. I do feel a little bad criticizing it for that- I know I use run-on sentences constantly- but this is significantly worse than any crimes I myself may or may not have committed. Also, too much talk of worm-men. Stop making me think about what that means. 

asha1891's review against another edition

adventurous challenging funny informative reflective fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

5.0

camdailey's review

3.0

Read this for a class and it wasn't wonderful but it wasn't bad either. Some of the prose was very beautiful, the story just wasn't for me.

mariafernandagama's review

2.0

While I praise the author for her innovative skills, I feel this book was really hard to enjoy. She claims in the prologue she wanted to create a fantasy so that people could learn while being entertained but this is just not entertaining. I know the idea of entertainment is probably very different today than it was in the 1600s, but I never felt this huge gap of ideias in Shakespeare, for instance, and he predates her by a century (although I do feel it's very unfair to compare anyone to Shakespeare). But, that being said, I think there are some interesting ideas in this, mainly her strong belief that we are all able to create worlds in our minds that are not less important or complex than the real ones. If she had only tried to write fantasy for the sake of writing fantasy, and not with the underlying intention of analysing and explaining her views in politics, science and religion, I fell this would have been a much better book.

genevieveelizz's review

fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

2.5

jarichan's review

adventurous informative slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

2.75

fluffernutter's review against another edition

Didn't finish.

theravenqueen's review against another edition

4.0

I can't really properly review this without stripping it away and touching on it's smaller parts which would be a great disservice to Margaret Cavendish who created such an amazing world in this Blazing World. She sought to fix the problems with her own world as "The Lady" later deemed "The Empress" learns from her many subjects the workings on their world, some drawn from our own.

The Blazing World is inhabited by fishman and other fish-like men (sirens) with satyrs and giants along with a bevy of other creatures which looked like themselves but walked upright like men (fox-men, bear-men, bird-men). There are ships of gold and ships of leather, each with two seemingly wind powered engines that propelled them forward (one which went against the waves). It's stuff like this and the extravagant cities filled with gold and diamonds and garnets that make this story unique.

I can see other parts where people might feel that Margaret Cavendish made The Empress a bit of a Mary Sue with a literal self insert character, but it was all about self reflection and more a witty take on her own life and the life of her friend The Empress. In something that is written in such a conversational manner, you being told a recount of the story instead of reading the events yourself, you can still relate and admire the characters which I found was fairly surprising and interesting.

I mainly picked this up from a meme that said Mary Shelley was the mother of science fiction, but everyone touted Margaret Cavendish's The Blazing World as the true source. I didn't think I would enjoy it as much, but I did. I will say you should listen to the audiobook instead of reading it. I found a great copy on LibriVox thanks to my friend.

mariellep's review against another edition

2.0

very and and and vibes… little to no structure so difficult to read. there was some action is the last third but overall not worth the time spent on it