Mary Gentle - Ilario: The Lion's Eye
Feb. 19th, 2007 06:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cyphomandraAnd, speaking of Dunnett. Not for the emotional obliquity – Ilario is blunt and unsubtle, but capable of learning and change to a touching degree – but for the enthusiastic romp round the Mediterranean, through merchant houses and slave markets, shadowed cemeteries and Venetian canals. I loved this; it was exactly what I wanted to read, without expecting it at all, and I lost a Sunday to it when there were really a rather large number of things I should have been doing instead.
Ilario is a hermaphrodite and therefore much easier to write about in the first person, when gender pronouns become everyone else’s problem. Forging on despite this – Ilario is abandoned by noble (Spanish) parents, fostered and then taken into the King’s Court as a Freak. What Ilario wants is to paint, and ideally to paint in the New Art style becoming popularised by a great Italian artist, and, at the start of the book, Ilario is in Carthage, under the Penitence, trying to draw what is there rather than what everyone knows to be true. Things go wrong. There are conspiracies, international bickering, giant ships from an alternative Asia, murderous golems, a wonderful eunuch, explorations of parenthood, a cameo from Gutenberg (with a section on how the printing press could save the Library of Alexandria that nearly made me cry), mercenaries, Pharaoh-Queens, betrayals, and really, there were so many places where Gentle could have taken a step wrong (for example, making Ilario stunningly beautiful, rather than an ugly woman and an effeminate man) and made this book over-indulgent, wallowy and obvious, but it’s not. It’s great. Recommended.
As background, because I know I went off all her books for some time – the first book by Mary Gentle I read was A Hawk in Silver, which I liked a lot, and then Golden Witchbreed, which I also enjoyed, although I found some of the gender issues problematic. Ancient Light didn’t work for me, I couldn’t get into any of the White Crow books, and I hated Grunts with a deeply reasonable and viciously edged passion. It took a recommendation from someone I trust greatly to get me to pick up Ash, and I was completely surprised to love it. 1610, on the other hand, I have enjoyed a lot on the three times I’ve attempted to read it, and yet each time I get less far through it before giving up for inconsistent reasons (300 pages, 100, 50 – I had to stop before I ended up plotting geometric curves). I am embarrassed about this and do intend to read it, but feel now that I have to be locked in a small room on a desert island with no other distractions first. If you’ve tried anything other than Ash and disliked it, it’s still worth giving Ilario a go.
Ilario is a hermaphrodite and therefore much easier to write about in the first person, when gender pronouns become everyone else’s problem. Forging on despite this – Ilario is abandoned by noble (Spanish) parents, fostered and then taken into the King’s Court as a Freak. What Ilario wants is to paint, and ideally to paint in the New Art style becoming popularised by a great Italian artist, and, at the start of the book, Ilario is in Carthage, under the Penitence, trying to draw what is there rather than what everyone knows to be true. Things go wrong. There are conspiracies, international bickering, giant ships from an alternative Asia, murderous golems, a wonderful eunuch, explorations of parenthood, a cameo from Gutenberg (with a section on how the printing press could save the Library of Alexandria that nearly made me cry), mercenaries, Pharaoh-Queens, betrayals, and really, there were so many places where Gentle could have taken a step wrong (for example, making Ilario stunningly beautiful, rather than an ugly woman and an effeminate man) and made this book over-indulgent, wallowy and obvious, but it’s not. It’s great. Recommended.
As background, because I know I went off all her books for some time – the first book by Mary Gentle I read was A Hawk in Silver, which I liked a lot, and then Golden Witchbreed, which I also enjoyed, although I found some of the gender issues problematic. Ancient Light didn’t work for me, I couldn’t get into any of the White Crow books, and I hated Grunts with a deeply reasonable and viciously edged passion. It took a recommendation from someone I trust greatly to get me to pick up Ash, and I was completely surprised to love it. 1610, on the other hand, I have enjoyed a lot on the three times I’ve attempted to read it, and yet each time I get less far through it before giving up for inconsistent reasons (300 pages, 100, 50 – I had to stop before I ended up plotting geometric curves). I am embarrassed about this and do intend to read it, but feel now that I have to be locked in a small room on a desert island with no other distractions first. If you’ve tried anything other than Ash and disliked it, it’s still worth giving Ilario a go.
