This was a five star book for me, right up until the end. I'll only talk about the ending in very general terms to avoid spoilers, but I'm still not sure whether I liked the ending or not. On one level, I can see why Mary Gentle wrote it that way. It fit with the structure of the operas within th...
There Is More Than One History Of The World...In the mid-fifteenth century there was Burgundy, the jewel of Europe - opulant and powerful, the undisputed center of an uncivilized world.In an epoch of war and madness there was Ash. A girl born in mud and dung, she slew her first men while only eig...
I give up. I can't go on. I couldn't even make it to page one hundred. I slogged through the first 85 pages, which should have been a stand-alone novella (had it been a novella, it would have been a vast improvement, and I may have sped through it had I not been daunted and confused by the presen...
Very rarely do I completely pan any book. Author, Mary Gentle left me no choice, however, in this particular case. I didn't feel it was bad enough to get a 1 star rating, however, I am someone who has also spent a considerable amount of time researching the historical figures behind the famous D...
Hi guys...happy new year!!!Ash: A Secret History by Mary GentleI feel I have to recommend this book with table pounding intensity to all of you. It's long, epic length...in fact the American version was spread out over 4 books, I read the British version which was one long, almost 1200 page brick...
It is a nameless city somewhere between past and future, a mythic realm at the "heart of the world," where wicked Rat Lords have reduced all humankind to slaves, and god-daemons make the decision to end all existence. This energizes a compelling quest for survival, and prompts the powerful White ...
Valentine White Crow scratched through tangled hair and caught up the trailing edge of her nightrobe. Bed’s warmth clung. The bright-haired baby, half-asleep in the crook of her arm, nuzzled at her shoulder; and she put her free hand across the child’s back, nudging the sixth-floor bedroom door o...
The sun began to burn off the fog. Heated and damp, he brushed at the lapels and breast of his cutaway coat, flicking away droplets of rain. That gave him the excuse to pick up spare clean clothing from his lodgings, and to check the rooms, since they were now deserted much of the time. It’s too ...
The myriad other war-junks of Zheng He’s fleet kept station astern across the Gulf of Gades – impossibly large under the brilliant sun; impossibly and spikily graceful. At least a dozen European and North African ships out of Carthage were, out of apparent sheer curiosity, attempting to keep up w...