Books noted

Loredana : A Venetian Tale, by Lauro Martines. Machiavellian maneuvers, sensuality and skulduggery in early-Renaissance Venice. I skimmed all but the first few chapters, I'm afraid. The titular heroine was just too much of a prattling ninny to keep my attention.

Marvel 1602 -- by Neil Gaiman, Andy Kubert, et al. This was a fun excursion, not only from reality, but from the canonical other-reality of the Marvel comic-book universe. What if the mutant powers of Marvel's comic-book characters had arisen several centuries earlier, in the Elizabethan era?

I probably missed some of the insider allusions, since I have only a minimal familiarity with the mythos of the Fantastic Four, the X-Men, et al. I'm completely unfamiliar with the character of Nick Fury, for example, who in this excursion into counterreality is cast as Queen Elizabeth's spymaster, a role seemingly modeled on the historical Sir Francis Walsingham and charged with foiling the plots of the dastardly Inquisition and others who seek to harm Good Queen Bess. Some of those enemies seek power for its own sake; others, like James of Scotland, the Queen's nearest relative, fear and hate the so-called "witchbreeds" and seek to eradicate them.

The story and the characters are vivid enough that I had no trouble following the story, despite my unfamiliarity with the prototypes for certain characters. The artwork is excellent, dark and moody, and there's plenty of action and surprises and tragedy as well as occasional humor. (There's an amusing running joke about a young apprentice named Peter "Parquaugh", for example.)

Very nice. I did have one unanswered question by the time I reached the end of the story. There's a ship in the story that bears the name of "The Eagle's Shadow". Is this another example of Gaiman playing homage to James Branch Cabell, or is he making the same point as the author of this book?