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Title: A Secret History : The Book Of Ash, #1 (Book of Ash) by Mary Gentle ISBN: 0-380-78869-1 Publisher: Eos Pub. Date: 05 October, 1999 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $6.99 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.81 (31 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Great fantasy
Comment: This book is really the first quarter of a complete novel. Be sure to pick up parts 2, 3, and 4 for a complete story. You won't regret it.
Ash skillfully intertwines the story of Ash in 1476-77 with the modern story of a man researching Ash's life and writing a book about her. Other readers complain about the email portions of the novel, but don't listen to them. The "modern story" is as important as the historical story, each one supporting the other. Mary Gentle manages, in her historical story, to create a world that is dirty, ugly, realistic, and extremely fascinating. Here, there's no off-stage indoor plumbing or laundry facilities. People live rugged, and often short, lives. Battles are messy and bloody, with little heroic action, only a desire to survive. And out of all of this, comes an absorbing story.
Skip that "Wheel of Neverending Boredom" stuff and read Ash instead.
Rating: 5
Summary: Very unusual alternate history
Comment: Ash is a compelling dual story about a (fictional) female warrior/general in medieval times and the academic who studies her life in the near future. The book we read is a combination of book that the academic *nearly* published about Ash, and the e-mails that pass between him and his editor (this works better than it sounds).
The Ash story is compiled from the academic's translation of medieval latin texts (rendered into modern English, so Ash's soldier cursing has been translated into modern strong cursing), and is written as an entertaining novel with some pseudo-academic footnotes.
At first, the story would appeal to any historical novel reader (as long as they're OK with strong language and violence), but later in the series it gets into fantasy and also explores the possible nature of time and space quite a bit.
The long chapter-less parts make for late night reading (while you wait for a good place to stop), but I had no regrets for the dark rings around my eyes in the morning.
If you can't wait for the final volume, the whole work is published as a huge trade paperback in Britain (although reading it like that in one go can send you around the bend!), available at Amazon UK.
Rating: 2
Summary: Don't buy it unless you're going to buy the others
Comment: I am less impressed with Mary Gentle's writing than other reviewers - I often found myself confused about what was going on and who the secondary characters were, and like at least one other reviewer, I found the device of inserting emails from the contemporary fictional translator distracting. There are interestingly detailed medieval battle scenes, but only a few. The main character's dreary reliance on profanity wore on me. But most disappointing was the utter lack of resolution in any of the plot lines at the end of the book. If you weren't planning on buying further books in the series, don't bother with this one, because the story just hangs in mid-air at the end. I would have preferred more candor about this - I'm not taken enough with the character or the writing to bother with more of this, so that truly made this partial tale a waste of time. However, if the character intrigues you, or you want to read every alternate history book ever written, by all means go for it.
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Title: Carthage Ascendant : The Book of Ash 2 by Mary Gentle ISBN: 0380805502 Publisher: Eos Pub. Date: 01 February, 2000 List Price(USD): $6.99 |
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Title: The Wild Machines: : The Book Of Ash, #3 (Book of Ash) by Mary Gentle ISBN: 0380811138 Publisher: Eos Pub. Date: 01 August, 2000 List Price(USD): $6.99 |
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Title: Lost Burgundy: : The Book Of Ash, #4 (Book of Ash, No 4) by Mary Gentle ISBN: 0380811146 Publisher: Eos Pub. Date: 01 December, 2000 List Price(USD): $6.99 |
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Title: Worlds That Weren't by S. M. Stirling, Mary Gentle, Walter Jon Williams, Harry Turtledove, Laura-Anne Gilman ISBN: 0451528980 Publisher: Roc Pub. Date: 02 September, 2003 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: Grunts!: A Fantasy With Attitude by Mary Gentle ISBN: 0451454537 Publisher: Roc Pub. Date: 01 August, 1997 List Price(USD): $6.99 |
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