Review: The Typo

William Lower, The Typo: In the Name of God (Ink and Pixel Publishers 2025)

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/241284986-the-typo

Florentine Antonio Strozzi is illuminating a manuscript for Abbot Fransisco, he takes especial care with his expensive ultramarine pigment. The abbot is preparing for the following day’s viewing, which Cosimo de’ Medici will attend, of the monastery’s new Gutenberg Bible.

In Mainz, Johannes Gutenberg is bankrupt.

Antonio attends the viewing and on page 149 spots a shocking mistake. A ‘deus’ is not capitalised. Blasphemy! He has discovered the world’s first typo. He is commissioned as the world’s first proofreader to check the rest of the book, then to travel Mainz to demand correction, with guard Gabriele to protect him.

The abbot wants to hush up the heresy, but Prior Lorenzo wants to hush up the travelers. The discovery of Guglielmo’s horse where it should not be sparks a suspicion of the intrigue at play. So, who is going to poison whom? Many trips between Florence and Bologna and much changing of horses will reveal. The chase between Antonio and Gabriele, and Lorenzo and the band of thieves, from town to town, from monastery to tavern, gets a bit long after a while, but it is punctuated by some humorous scenes and dialogues.

Then, there’s a twist in the intrigue. Lorenzo tries to woo Antonio onto his side. And there’s an interesting twist in the rapport between Antonio and Gabriele. Lorenzo does not acquiesce easily.

We’re introduced to all the POV characters in the first chapter, which I don’t think is the best way, as it doesn’t allow us time to get to know them, so that as we start chapter 2, we’ve already forgotten them.

Though otherwise the tale is told chronologically, one-third of the way into the journey, it inexplicably flashes back, which confuses the story.

It’s a lovely tale, humorous in places, but there’s a tendency to repeat the jokes too many times.

I didn’t get the Epilogue.