I’ve been buried in my studies for the last week, no time to really read nor write. Anyways, I started reading Mary Gentle‘s Ilario: Book One. It tells the tale of Ilario, a hermaphrodite artist, former King’s freak in the secret history world Gentle visited first in Ash. After the first third of the book I can recommend it to anyone who enjoys alternate history stories or previous works of Mary Gentle.
The world in the book is Europe in 1100s, however there are quite a few major differences including no Pope in Vatican and no Sun in North Africa. I just love the way Gentle doesn’t tell everything or go out of her way to point out all the quirks of the world in which his characters live. Everything that you get to know is relevant, but not forced. I get the feeling that this is going to make some things behind Ash a lot clearer.
I think that it is quite curious that the main character is hermaphrodite and I think it’ll be interesting to see how Gentle approaches sexuality later in the book as after 100 or so pages it hasn’t come into play that much.
On another note, I heartily recommend Ash to everyone, it is really, really good alternate history about female mercenary company leader in Middle Ages. It is very good adventure story, but also has a lot of subtle critique of making history and science.