Trafalgar has got to be one of the weirdest books I have read in quite some time and it's one that is difficult to describe in a way that really does it justice. It's a series of short stories recounting the spacewide adventures of Trafalgar Medrano, yes, but without much in the way of technical information that would characterise a science fiction novel these days. Trafalgar flies between various worlds in his Clunker spaceship, but we never get to find out how it works or, indeed, how he can travel such vast distances in the short periods of time his travels last. No one else, it seems, has ever seen the Clunker, but the Rosario locals enjoy sitting back with a whiskey to listen to his latest unbelievable adventure. I suppose I can best evoke Trafalgar by saying it's a blend of the The Old Man in the Corner by Baroness Emmuska Orczy, The More Known World by Tiffany Tsao and The Blazing World by Margaret Cavendish.

Trafalgar Medrano himself is quite irritating as a character and I think this is probably deliberate on the part of Gorodischer to make him so. I loved his coffee obsession though and appreciated the device of having most of his storytelling taking place in the elegant Burgundy club. Marcos the waiter is an amusing diversion and elderly Aunt Josefina is a brilliant creation. It's a shame she only gets the one interlude. By the end of the book, I felt Trafalgar had pretty much outstayed his welcome. There's a lot of scene-setting repetition between each of Trafalgar's flights of fancy which would work better if the stories were read maybe one a day, or performed individually on a weekly radio play or podcast. Overall, I'm glad to have had this opportunity to read Gorodischer although I probably won't rush to search out more of her work.