What I said earlier about the iteration format is holding true so far. With each “iteration,” it’s getting clearer what this book is about. In addition to the iterations, this book is also told in three parts, each with a different character taking a turn at narrating. However, this is not a first-person book—it’s more like the narrator picked a character to follow around and narrate their action.
The first section was the most cryptic. Sybil Gerard is the focal point for that section and she appears to be just a pawn who gets carried away with the action. The second section is more illuminating and its focal character is a paleontologist named Edward Mallory. Mallory is a pawn to some extent in that he gets swept along in the action, too. But Mallory gets more of the puzzle pieces to the mystery than Sybil did. The last section, the second I just started a few minutes ago, has Laurence Oliphant as its main character. I have high hopes for getting information out of this character because in the second third of the book in particular, Oliphant seems to be a character who is more in the cloak-and-dagger end of things than out of it. Hopefully, Oliphant’s third will tie up loose ends—especially what happened to the MacGuffin in the gap between the first and second thirds of the book.
What I liked most about the Mallory section of The Difference Engine is that the socialists finally showed up. I was waiting for them. Before the Manhattan Communards (can you believe the idea of New York City turning itself into a commune? Brilliant!) showed up, the only political factions in this world’s Britain were the meritocracy of the Radical Industrialists and the Luddites–who were mostly defunct anyway. But out of left field, here come the American Communists. 🙂
Before they showed up, I felt their lack. What is an industrialized world without socialists? In our reality, Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto was published in 1848—not too many years after the Industrial Revolution started to (excuse the pun) really gear up. After all, the lower classes will only put up with so much before they start to talk about revolution.
I’m a little afraid to say more about what happens to the socialists in this scenario, for fear of ruining the book for anyone who wants to read it after reading what I’ve written about it. I think that the only safe comment that I can make is, “Huh, that didn’t go as far as I thought/hoped it would go.”