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[bryant]

A Sundial In A Grave: 1610 is what the Kushiel books wanted to be, but less gilded. Late Renaissance, swordplay, espionage, desperate adventure, and dominance/submission games? Check. It's possible there's even a Mary Sue character, depending on how you look at things.

And yet A Sundial In A Grave does not over-enthuse about the joys of pain in the bedroom, it does not linger endlessly on the prowess of the hero, and it is not a morass of angst. It swashbuckles, all the while aware of the contradictions that lie at the heart of the protagonist. He is a duellist: he is a man who desires -- but that would be telling.

It doesn't quite so much beat the living crap out of Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle, but if you were wanting plot with your mock historical, well, this would be the appropriate port of call. The territory is similar, if more mystical. Where one plot is driven by the wisdom of Isaac Newton, the other is driven by Giordano Bruno.

I loved it.

Comments

[jeregenest.livejournal.com]

Is that finally out in the states?

I'll let you borrow the John Wright books if I can borrow it.

[mgrasso.livejournal.com]

Sounds... interesting for my Restoration game at any rate.

[bneuensc.livejournal.com]

Have you read her Book of Ash quartet?

[bryant]

Yes indeed. This isn't set in the same history, but it shares the playfulness about history.

[bryant]

Deal.

[bryant]

You should definitely read it.

[jeregenest.livejournal.com]

I'm rather hoping it will be more in line with her White Crow books. They are my favorite Mary Gentle books.

[bneuensc.livejournal.com]

Oh, good. I was going to recommend them if you hadn't. I've been meaning to track down more of her stuff and read it; so far, all I've unearthed other than Ash are Golden Witchbreed and Hawk in Silver, neither of which entertained me nearly as much.

[jeregenest.livejournal.com]

I find Rats and Gargoyles (1990), The Architecture of Desire (1991) and Left to His Own Devices (1994) which I call her White Crow stories (I've seen them called Rat Lords) to be some of her finest material. (there's a British omnibus I wished I owned that also has the short stories). I'm not a big fan of the Ash stories, not because of content (love the world, I even bought the chapbook Under the Pentience -- which seems to be coming out/has come out expanded as a novel, Ilario) but mainly because I find military fantasy so incredibly boring.

[bneuensc.livejournal.com]

Whereas the warfare geek in me loved the military aspect. (Although my inner archaeologist tsked over the "carbon dating" of one of the things they dug up, that then produced a date from about 50 years ago. Thermoluminescence would have been more range- and material-appropriate. End tsking.)

I intend to read the White Crow stuff just as soon as I can track and snare a copy. :-)

[princejvstin.livejournal.com]

Ah, good, I'm three fourths the way through Ash and I like it a lot.

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

Sounds like you nailed exactly the things i didn't like about Kushiel's Dart (although i did, overall, enjoy the book). I will have to check this out, although i'm always leery of mock historical fiction.

[ratmmjess.livejournal.com]

I got this a couple of years ago in London and raved about it in my LJ. It wasn't available here in the States yet, which is why nobody on my FList was aware of it. Glad you're plugging it now, since all the people who should be reading it (looking at you, mgrasso) will now be aware of it.

It's significant that she namedrops the divine Stanley Weyman in her faux-introduction, since she's writing pretty much the sort of thing he wrote--the historical romance--but with more freedom than Weyman had in the 1890s.