The Astronomer

March 8, 2010
Set in 1534, Goldstone's uneven novel of historical suspense, his second after The Anatomy of Deception
, finds the Inquisition taking corrective measures against the unremitting attacks on Catholic orthodoxy: namely the rack, the stake, and that old crowd pleaser, the gibbet. But there are other, equally pernicious forms of heresy. Consider a dangerous free-thinker like the much too famous astronomer Copernicus, for instance, and his bizarre insistence that the sun, not the earth, is the center of the universe. In Paris, young Amaury de Faverges is getting unsettling whiffs of the heady aroma of intellectual ferment. Though successfully recruited by the Inquisition, Amaury eventually turns against his draconian masters, giving the beset Copernicus reason to thank his lucky stars. Goldstone brings the sights, sounds, and furious politics of 16th-century France to vivid life, but his major characters are under-imagined—stick figures out of historical fiction central casting.