Mary Gentle at Tangled Web UK

Page Updated: 28/01/2008

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Mary Gentle - Page 1

Ilario: The Lion's Eye

pbk 13 Dec 07

Cartomancy

1610: A Sundial in a Grave

White Crow

Orthe

About the Author

Bibliography

Paperback - Gollancz (2007)

First British Edition Gollancz (2006)

Ilario: The Lion's Eye
Return to the world of ASH
The First History
It’s AD 1428 and history is different.
Born a true hermaphrodite, Ilario has lived as the King’s Freak in a minor Iberian kingdom. All Ilario wants is to be one of the first - and best - painters of the age, not to paint symbols, or metaphors, but - shockingly - to paint things as they really are. But the universe has other ideas.
The mother who gave birth to llario will kill to keep that secret. So, it seems, will the rest of Ilario’s family ... so Death pursues llario across the Mediterranean - as do ghost ships, golems, assassins, artists, printers and spies.
Along the way, llario meets new friends, like the retired mercenary general Honorius, and Rekhmire, a less-than-scholarly eunuch book-buyer for the Library of Alexandria. Which is just as well, because llario is going to need all the friends available: Videric, the King’s councillor, is a lasting enemy, and empires may fall before his revenge is complete ...
In North Africa, Visigoth-ruled Carthage lies under the eternal darkness of the Penitence. Rome’s papal chair has stood empty for centuries. The Turks loom threateningly in the east. Constantinople is held by the last scions of an ancient race. Ilario: The Lion’s Eye is a stand-alone novel set in the universe of Ash: A Secret History.
‘There’s no beating Mary Gentle’ Rhianna Pratchett, SFX
`A welcome and enigmatic addition to a writer with vision who still has the power to shock and amaze’ SFF World
‘Action-packed, deeply intelligent’ Time Out
‘ASH ... A thoughtful swashbuckler in which history and myth and the evidence that divides them constantly melt and crumble under our feet’ Good Book Guide

British Pbk Original - Gollancz (2004)

Cartomancy
Mary Gentle’s extraordinary epic novel Ash: A Secret History, winner of the British Science Fiction Award, and the Sidewise Award for Alternate History, shortlisted for W. H. Smith’s Thumping Good Read Award, the Arthur C. Clarke Award, the World Fantasy Award, and runner-up for the Tiptree and John W. Campbell awards, marked her out as a unique writer.
Her ability to blend adventure, history, science fiction and fantasy has made Mary Gentle one of Britain’s most outstanding writers of imaginative fiction.
Cartomancy is her definitive collection of stories and novellas, many previously uncollected or published in book form until now. It includes the long novella `The Logistics of Carthage’, a new story from the Ash universe, Step into these worlds, and be absorbed, entertained and astounded.
‘The writing is as intricate as filigree but as tough as wrought iron’ The Times
`Gentle is a fine writer and world builder and her alien societies are instantly, absorbing’ SFX
`Ash is an outstanding achievement’ Interzone
`Excellent ... a history of early renaissance Europe as it didn’t happen’ Jon Courtney Grimwood in the Guardian
`The kind of book you can lose yourself in for days. Quite simply, it’s stunning’ Starburst

British Pbk Original - Gollancz (2003)

1610: A Sundial in a Grave
Four hundred years ago, Hermetic magic is about to transform into science: 1610 is the year when everything could change.
Robert Fludd, English physician and astrologer, wields the heritage of Doctor John Dee and Giordano Bruno: he uses their method of foretelling the future. It appears to work. Fludd doesn’t like the centuries that he is predicting. So some one will have to change the future ...
Valentin Rochefort, duellist, down-at-heels aristocrat and spy for the Duc de Sully, France’s powerful finance minister, has troubles of his own, thank you very much - not the least of which is Dariole, a young man of his acquaintance who is (in Rochefort’s opinion) lust walking on two legs, and as irresponsible as an alley cat. The last thing Rochefort needs is a mad English astrologer in his life.
Continental Europe is briefly at peace - but Henri IV is planning to invade the German principalities. In England, only five years earlier, conspirators nearly succeeded in blowing up King James and his Parliament. The seeds of the English Civil War and the Thirty Years War are visibly being sown ...
For a man of no conscience, Rochefort is about to find himself caught between loyalty, love - and blackmail - between kings, queens, politicians and Rosicrucians - and all this before he encounters the woman he has, unknowing crossed land and sea to meet.
Robert Fludd is pulling the strings. And Rochefort is not a man who takes kindly to being someone’s puppet
As many will remember, the famous Edwardian historical novel The Sons of Sword and Hazard was based on what survived of the Rochefort Memoirs. Now, with the fire-damaged manuscript reconstructed using modern computer techniques, this full translation is finally available: 1610:A Sundial in a Grave.
`Mary Gentle’s skill is such that she makes the miraculous seem totally plausible’ Starburst
`Her subtlety in depicting the supernatural events of her world is well-nigh miraculous’ Washington Post Book World

British Pbk Original - Gollancz (2003)

White Crow
The worlds of the White Crow
The White Crow, one-time Soldier-Scholar of the Invisible College and a practitioner of Hermetic science and magic, and Baltazar Casaubon, architect and lover, a man not too particular about his personal hygiene, are two of Mary Gentle’s finest creations. The worlds they stride across range from the Renaissance city where aristocratic rats rule the human servant class, to a near-future London where chaos is come again. They are two of the most powerful players in the games of magic and politics, and the most colourful.
This volume brings together three brilliantly imaginative, powerful and disturbing tales - Rats and Gargoyles, The Architecture of Desire and Left to His Own Devices - and the linked short fiction, and confirms Mary Gentle as one of the foremost writers of dark and visionary fantasy.
`Wonderful ... once you’ve entered you will never want to leave’ Michael Moorcock
`Her subtlety in depicting the supernatural events of her world is well nigh miraculous’ Washington Post Book World
`The writing is as intricate as filigree but as tough as wrought iron’ The Tines
`Such command of the language and historical detail, and such superlative characterisation’ Chicago Sun-Times

British Pbk Original - Gollancz Millenium (2002)

Orthe
Chronicles of Carrick V
Together for the first time: Mary Gentle’s classic tales of Orthe: Golden Witchbreed and Ancient Light, and the short story The Crystal Sunlight, the Bright Air.
The distant world of Orthe is littered with spectacular remnants of the Golden Empire, an ancient and technologically advanced civilisation extinct for two thousand years.
Now their Orthean descendants have turned away from the technology which nearly destroyed them, and from anything that links them with their past, and with their ancestors, the Golden Witchbreed.
`A splendid novel . . . So magnificently realised! So complex! So gloriously alien! Wow!’ Anne McCaffrey
`Spectacular and wonderfully evocative . . . she is a writer who knows politics and human nature’ Julian May
`Lovingly conceived and beautifully written’ Amazon.com

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Bibliography
N.B. dates and publishers in dark red indicate British First Editions. Dates and publishers in black indicate recent reprints.

Ilario: The Lion's Eye (Gollancz, 2006) Gollancz Jul 06 Gollancz Pbk Dec 07

Cartomancy (Gollancz Pbk, 2004)

1610: A Sundial in a Grave (Gollancz Pbk, 2003)

White Crow (Gollancz Pbk, 2003)

Orthe (Gollancz Millenium Pbk, 2002)

Ash: A Secret History (Gollancz, 2001) Gollancz Millenium Pbk Feb 01