cyphomandra

And, 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.

( Mary Gentle, Ilario: The Lion’s Eye. )