I really liked this book. It was very well written. I love reading alternate history and was even more thrilled with the fantasy element. I was also interested in the presence of strong female characters in positions of power and it worked really well with the story. I hope the author continues writing!

The Philosopher's Flight is a tale of fantasy mixed with history. Robert Weekes wants to work in an predominately female occupation. He wants to do Rescue & Evacuation for the US Sigilry Corps. His mother is a legend in The Sigilry Corps and is now employed as a county philosopher. Robert ends up helping his mother one night and is rewarded for his heroism with a scholarship to Radcliffe. Over the course of the year Robert is called upon time and again to prove himself. He must not only rescue his friends but is called upon to rescue others as well and fight for his life. #Fantasy #Flight #Magical

I received a free copy of The Philosopher's Flight from Netgalley.

This book is fantastic, a solid 5-star novel, and amazingly enough it's Tom Miller's first book. I hope his day job of being an ER doc doesn't prevent him from writing many more.

Philosopher's Flight is an alternative history novel that allows that some people, mostly women, are able to draw sigils in a way that will affect them and their surroundings--kinda like magic. This ability is called empirical philosophy and Miller spins a world so real that I often got chills imagining the events in the book really happening.

We experience this world through the experiences of 18-year old Robert Weekes, a young man with an unusually strong skill at creating powerful sigils, as he leaves home and goes to college to work on his skills at empirical philosophy. The backdrop is a world at war in the early 1900s with recent conflicts in Cuba and the Philippines shaping the lives of the older characters. It's very convincing and a lot of fun to watch the drama unfold.

Trying to like this book, but finding it a bit challenging. I know, I know. The other reviews are great. And while I promise to come back when I've finished and layer more review on top of this brief one, I have some pet peeves for now. The main one is the use of unknown words that made me have to stop reading to go look them up. Emanuensis? Stasied? Never did find what that meant. Why not just say secretary? The other peeve was character development. I wasn't sure if I liked the mom or found her harsh. Maybe she is both. Need the development.

In "The Philosopher's Flight" Tom Miller combines historical fiction, action, and fantasy to create an alternate world of war, magic, danger, sexism, and religion. I enjoyed each minute of this story of a man trying to make it in a women's world. The characters are interesting, finely wrought, and compelling.

The setting of a world at war, at a cultural turning point, make the questions of ethics, personal choices and growth of the characters all the more real and drew me back to the book even after I finished.

I loved this book it was an interesting take and amazing alternative history. What if war was not the realm of men, what if magic existed and women had that power. This book explores this very interesting world where women hold power and men work within that society. Robert “Boober” Weekes is the only son of a war hero mom. A young man who has the ability to use the “philosophy” of magic to fly, he has few opportunities in his small town to make a career for himself. A chance to go to college changes his tragectory in life. College gives him the opportunity to learn, and grow and find himself a man in a woman dominated world. Finding love, growing up, and facing conflict from a radical “trencher” movement determined to subjugate women, with a war going on overseas Robert is facing much and his future is far from certain or easy.

Man, did I like this book.

You may go this story into expecting a straight up "person on the outside attempts to enter a world that has been traditionally closed off to them." And this book does cover that territory, and covers it well. It's fascinating to see a man grapple with the same B.S. women have historically dealt with in fields dominated with men. However, this book ALSO explores something else too.

In this fantasy world, even though women have great powers, they are still marginalized, discriminated against and even hunted. Not only must our hero deal with "fish out of water" issues on his quest, he also gets to experience the ugly side of womanhood too. It's a perspective I've never seen presented in a story before.

Overall I found this to be a great book for the times we are living in. It'll get you thinking about gender, race, and even some of the issues that come up with gun control (Should the women's great powers be regulated? What if those powers can be used to kill someone?)

But don't get me wrong, this isn't a preachy, heavy book. It's very "Harry Potter meets G.I. Jane." There's a lot of descriptions of magic and flying (so much flying). There's a love story. There are well rounded secondary characters that have interesting journeys. All of these elements made the book an unexpected delight to read.

Thanks to the author and NetGalley for granting me the opportunity to read this book in exchange for an honest review.

This was excellent, and I'm really glad I took the risk with it.

It was recommended by a fellow writer on a forum we both frequent, and when I saw it was on Netgalley I picked it up. My big concern was that the genderflip inherent in the premise - women are, for unexplained reasons, the best at magic, and a young man tries to establish himself among them during the period of the First World War - could so easily have gone terribly wrong. (I'm thinking of that awful raceflipped Pearls thing from a few years back.)

I'm relieved to report that for me - and you have to remember I'm male - it succeeded in not being horribly tone-deaf in its treatment of the genderflip. First of all, many of the female characters, including the protagonist's mother, sisters, colleagues, and friends, are the kind of pragmatic, competent women that my own mother, sisters, colleagues, and friends are. Secondly, they're not idealised; though they're fine people in all the ways that really count, they're often coarse, they make bad decisions at times, and they struggle with assorted character flaws and blind spots. Other female characters are petty, selfish, silly, shallow, manipulative, all the things that real people (of both genders) are. If you're going to portray people who are not like you, this is the way to do it: make them feel like real people.

Then the genderflip itself, the man struggling to succeed in a woman's world, is well done. I found Robert instantly relatable; he has a noble dream, to be part of the Rescue and Evacuation Corps who save wounded soldiers on the battlefield, using "sigilry" (the magic system) to fly them to safety. It looks like he can't have that dream. Even the women who support him becoming the best sigilrist he can be don't believe he can be accepted to the Corps; even his mother, his hero and inspiration, doesn't believe he should be accepted, even if he qualifies.

He'd be a distraction to the women. He wouldn't fit in. He'd be a curiosity. It would be an exercise in political point-scoring, not a merit-based appointment. He wouldn't be able to do the work as well as a woman. If he was accepted, he'd have to be called a Sigilwoman; that's the name of the rank, and you can't simultaneously ask for equal treatment and ask for special treatment, now can you? Women bully him, haze him, threaten to boycott a major sporting event if he takes part, mark him down unfairly, strip him of an honour he's won by tremendous effort. He has to be better than most women to even be considered. He has, in other words, the experience of any outsider trying to enter a social space that's traditionally been closed to people like them.

It's a story about family, and love, and friendship, and overcoming prejudice and injustice. Apart from a very early infodump, there's not a craft misstep in it; the author has both an MFA and an MD, which is an unusual combination, and draws on his knowledge of emergency medicine to make the multiple rescue scenes gripping and realistic. I loved Robert's competence in a crisis, demonstrated very early on and repeatedly after that, and so clearly learned from his mother.

Robert doesn't just have societal prejudice about gender roles to contend with, either. The Trenchers, a political/religious group opposed to sigilry of all kinds and willing to take extreme measures against those who practice it, are constant threats, with some terrifying encounters that test Robert's values and ideals severely. This, too, is established right out of the gate and persists as a strong thread throughout.

I enjoyed the epigraphs to the chapters, quotations from various invented documents which give intriguing glimpses into the characters' future and make me want to read more of their story - if I didn't already want to do so because of the excellent quality of this book. I very much do want to read more, and I will eagerly await a sequel.

In this alternate history set in the World War I era Philosophers, those with special powers, are all female, until Robert comes along and stirs things up. Their enemies, the Trenchers, seem vaguely reminiscent of unhinged Trump supporters. I am a fan of contemporary fantasy, and alternate history authors like Jasper Fforde, so I really wanted to like this novel. Sadly, I was disappointed. The plot was hard to follow, the majority of the characters unlikable, and by the “exciting” climax, I found that I just didn’t care at all.

Rewiew can be seen here:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2190722870

This is one of the most fun books I have read this year. A unique alternate history where "philosophers" use special combinations of chemical or compounds to do what we would consider magic. Smokecarving, hovering, transporting and lots more. Women are the lead sigilists with some men having badic abilities. Robert is the son of one such woman, but he ge5s the chance to show he is just as capable. Throw in their enemies, traditionalists men who want things fine the old way, and you have a terrific story layered with religious and gender debates which added to the story. Robert is easy to love, and the story unique and well told. A wonderful first novel.

Excellent history combined with magic. Strong characters, interesting POV of a male in a female profession.

A really fun read. I will definitely recommend this book to friends.

Tom Miller, who are you? This was an awesome book. I would love to crawl inside your mind and see what’s haooening there. It’s got to be like Willy Wonka’s factory. The Philosophers was such a unique and new storyline - I loved it. When an author goes as in depth as Miller to create a history, a language, a brand new concept that effort is totally apparent. It’s nice to read something so completely different, when everything else seems like the same story different day.

The Philosopher's Flight: A Novel was completely different from anything I've read in the past few years. The story takes place during an alternate World War I. A lot of the events are similar, but the big difference is philosophy. It's sort of like magic; sort of like science. Men aren't very good at it....at least that's the common assumption. Robert Weekes, the main character, is an exception. What follows is a coming of age story, a love story, a story about gender roles/relations, a story about prejudices, and a story about war. I enjoyed it.