Pavane

Pavane gathers seven interlinked stories, plus a coda, set across a 20th century that never happened: in this timeline, Elizabeth I was assassinated in 1588 as the Spanish Armada approached, English resistance collapsed, and the Catholic Church has ruled an officially unified, technologically stunted Europe ever since -- steam and semaphore standing in for electricity, which the Church banned centuries ago. Roberts follows different characters across generations in and around Dorset, from a semaphore signaller to the lords of the manor, tracing how control frays at the edges as the old feudal order nears its limit. Roberts's best-known work, structured like the stately dance it's named for.