The Memory Cathedral: A Secret History of Leonardo Da Vinci [Paperback]

Jack Dann (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 1, 1996

This unforgettable, magical novel takes for its premise an inspired bit of speculation based firmly in history: Leonardo da Vinci's conception of a marvelous flying machine. Set against the colorful backdrop of Italy and Persia in the 1400s, The Memory Cathedral masterfully calls forth a dazzling era when magic and science were one and the same.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Taking as his premise an actual "lost year" in the life of Leonardo, Dann has his genius protagonist actually create his flying machine.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Scientific American

Leonardo is MAGNIFICENT, and Jack Dann is a major writer, one of the few of our generation who has a solid sense of novelistic structure and architecture.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 508 pages
• Publisher: Bantam (November 1, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0553378570
• ISBN-13: 978-0553378573
• Product Dimensions: 6 x 1.2 x 9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 2.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,454,805 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Leonardo, the hidden years, January 13, 2001

By 

The Sanity Inspector (USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Memory Cathedral: A Secret History of Leonardo Da Vinci (Paperback)

The Memory Cathedral is a fantasy disguised as a historical novel. The disguise is very convincing--author Jack Dann has done a great job setting the scenes of his story. In Italy we have torchlight processions, raving mobs, daggers and poisons, sunny Tuscan uplands, cluttered artists' studios, decadent nobility, and etc. In the Levantine lands, we have double- and triple-crosses, parades of cavalry, sumptuous banquets of whole beasts on rice, scheming slavegirls, wholesale slaughter of innocents, and so on.

We also have an improbably gifted hero, only our belief is willingly suspended because Leonardo really was improbably gifted. In this novel, he is not the emotionless man of impersonal genius we think of today. Rather, he is very like his fellows: a man of hot italianate passions, excelling in many fields like most of his colleagues did. One feels upon reflection that the real Leonardo must have seemed thus to people around him--maybe more single-minded in his work, maybe a few shades more accomplished in his art, but not seeming out of place in the Renaissance, a time when "a man may do all things if he will." It was only later that Leonardo was esteemed as a genius practically from another world.

There is plenty of action, lust, and intrigue, some of it bumping up against many readers' comfort threshold. These, and the marvelous scene setting, carry the novel's entertainment value. The character development is strictly standard fantasy fare. The bonds between the characters are shown mainly by having one group set off somewhere, and another character demanding to be allowed to go along. Suspense is achieved by having Leonardo demand to know where somebody is, or where he himself is being taken. He also, despite receiving frequent veiled and unveiled death threats from the powerful, becomes their trusted confidant.

So if this sounds interesting, go ahead and enjoy it. The weaknesses were not apparent to me until second reading, so strong were the book's strengths. I shall remember this feat of imagination for a long time.

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Glorious and disturbing--squeamish steer clear!, October 25, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: The Memory Cathedral: A Secret History of Leonardo Da Vinci (Paperback)

"The Memory Cathedral" joins the small but distinguished company of "Lord of the Flies" and Katherine Dunn's "Geek Love" as one of those books I could neither put down nor bear to read any further. I must concur with the previous reviewer, this is a truly brilliant novel, but the squeamish and sensitive would be best advised to steer clear. If you are more inured to sex, violence and general darkness than we more delicate souls, give this book a try. It is a glorious and disturbing masterpiece, all the more powerful for the author's obviously painstaking research into the people and environment of Leonardo's Italy and the Middle East, not to mention the life and works of the protagonist himself.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars I prefer something less dark, like dante's inferno., June 26, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: The Memory Cathedral: A Secret History of Leonardo Da Vinci (Paperback)

I bought this cause a book review segment in Asimov's made it sound good. To be honest it is brilliant, but not to my taste. The graphic violence, explicit sex, & general darkness of the story turned me off. It is well written & well researched, but my tolerance for darkness, death, & depravity is low.