Praise for License to Quill:
"della Quercia...turns the Gunpowder Plot into a stage for Will Shakespeare to assume the role of a 17th-century James Bond. The premise is simple: Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe are drawn into Guy Fawkes' revolutionary schemes...Add bull-baiting, human sacrifice, gruesome executions, and an epic London street battle, and what results is an erudite tour de force." - Kirkus Reviews
“Jacopo is an insight machine. His mind contains museums of fascinating history, and his writing never fails to change the way you look at the world around you.” —Jack O'Brien, Founder, Editor in Chief and General Manager of Cracked.com, on The Great Abraham Lincoln Pocket Watch Conspiracy
“High concept and high adventure collide in a dizzying and thoroughly riveting adventure. Insanely entertaining.” —Jonathan Maberry, New York Times bestselling author of CODE ZERO, on The Great Abraham Lincoln Pocket Watch Conspiracy
“A cleverly composed and daring steampunk adventure.” —G.D. Falksen, author and historian, on The Great Abraham Lincoln Pocket Watch Conspiracy
“Amazing…. skillfully weaves together one of the best reads of the year as he combines "real" history with his vivid and somewhat off-beat imagination. I know of no one else who has merged Martians, speeding blimps, comets, mysterious pocket watches, accurate historical references and international intrigue into one awesome and unique read! Believe it or Not!” —Tim O'Brien, VP Communications, Ripley's Believe It or Not! on The Great Abraham Lincoln Pocket Watch Conspiracy
“With the sweep and scope of a Jules Verne adventure, The Great Abraham Lincoln Pocket Watch Conspiracy not only charts its own fantastic course through a dizzying alternate history of the United States presidency—it takes on literary history itself, turning anachronism into action, politics into pop, and a handful of America’s Commanders-in-Chief into the stuff of potent yet poignantly humanized myth. If you think Honest Abe and his brethren have been resurrected to death (so to speak), think again; Jacopo della Quercia has brought the speculative presidential yarn to another level.” —Jason Heller, Hugo Award-Winning author of Taft 2012, on The Great Abraham Lincoln Pocket Watch Conspiracy
2015-10-08
Once more into the breech with quirky historical fiction: della Quercia (The Great Abraham Lincoln Pocket Watch Conspiracy, 2014) turns the Gunpowder Plot into a stage for Will Shakespeare to assume the role of a 17th-century James Bond. The premise is simple: Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe are drawn into Guy Fawkes' revolutionary schemes. With Spanish-English-Ottoman conspiracies and Roman Catholic attempts to subvert Protestant expansionism, brilliant young Marlowe becomes the Venetian eyes and ears of Sir Thomas Walsingham, the realm's spymaster. In London, Guy Fawkes persuades—threatens?—Will into writing a special play. Opening night will ignite a rebellious spark when Double, double, toile and trouble is declaimed, a line somehow related to "cunning folk" (Celtic witches) Fawkes' conspirators have recruited into their rebellious plot. Loyal Will informs Walsingham, who dispatches him to Sir Francis Bacon, irascible genius chief of the Ordnance Office. The narrative is dotted with footnotes identifying historical gems—for example, the way Venice was a refuge for Europe's persecuted Jews. But it's the characters, real and imagined, who race into memory—Will, wily and loyal; Marlowe, courageous and hedonistic; Bianca, the Dark Lady, peasant-born Jewish converso-turned-nun, then spy and assassin, then Shakespeare's lover. Della Quercia beautifully describes a plague-riven London ripe with "horses, hagglers, beggars, thieves, prostitutes, clowns, jugglers, jargon, gossip, and swearing" and the sorcerer's dark lair in Warkwickshire's Forest of Arden. Full of puns—"Bless my sole "—and wordplay—"woad warriors"—this historical thriller is also an homage to Ian Fleming's James Bond-ian world: Will becomes a "Double OO operative" and reports to Sir Thomas Walsingham, who's known as "W" and has a secretary named Penny, who fancies the agent. Add bull-baiting, human sacrifice, gruesome executions, and an epic London street battle, and what results is an erudite tour de force.
