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Ash: A Secret History
Mary Gentle wrote her first published novel, A Hawk in Silver, at the age of 18, though it took her some time to find a publisher. Her first adult science fiction work, Golden Witchbreed, suffered a similar hiatus. Her subsequent writing career has been informed by her late decision to embrace academia, exploring areas such as militarism, feminism, Plato and the Renaissance world view. She wraps these potentially dry subjects, though, with a delight in imparting (possibly twisted) information and an energy for entertaining. Her eclectic approach has carried her across genre boundaries; her latest work displays this characteristic and the richness such cross-fertilisation can bring.
Ash: A Secret History has been released in the UK as a single volume of over 1100 tightly packed pages, while the book's American publishers are putting it out in four parts, with the last part due before year's end (The Book of Ash: #1 A Secret History, #2 Carthage Ascendant, #3 The Wild Machines, #4 Lost Burgundy). At heart, this is the story of a female mercenary commander in Europe and North Africa in the late 1470s. Ash, who grew up in the baggage train of assorted mercenary companies, is a survivor of harsh conditions. As the book proper opens, she leads a company of 800 fighting men (and women), aided by an apparently miraculous inner voice which offers her explicit tactical combat instructions. Ash is an incredibly well-realised character. She is a soldier by training and inclination, but she is also a well-rounded human being. Her skills as a leader of people match her battle prowess and her ability to take quick advantage of a changing situation. This Demoiselle-Captain is a strong character, utterly convincing in her tone, her inner life and its visible expression in the text. She is the cornerstone of the novel, present in almost every page.
Ash's story is presented as an academic work, originally published by a University Press in 2001. This fictional outer story is described as a translation of medieval Latin manuscripts (the work of Dr. Pierce Ratcliff, professor of War Studies), a major revision and modernisation of the "Lost History of Burgundy." The book also includes correspondence between Ratcliff and his editor annotated by another hand and inserted in differing typeface within the main body of the text. These affectations are easy to overlook early on in the book as Ash leads her company on the battlefields of Europe and is rewarded with court intrigue. However, the unsettling differences between the history in the main text and our own history are increasingly the subject of Ratcliff's correspondence. This fancy of commentary allows modern academia to creep into the interstices of the book without unbalancing the unscientific world of miracles, acting as a regulator when the plot seems to wander off into the realms of fantasy or alternate history. The concreteness of Gentle's writing carries the story in incredible directions without ever challenging the suspension of disbelief. Looking back on the early chapters from the perspective of the book's end there is a sense of astonishment at how far the story has travelled. As sunny summer fades to horrific winter the tone becomes heavier, reflecting a growing seriousness, but the writing never loses its sense of balance between light and shade.
The solidity of the book comes from a combination of detail and character. Throughout, the reality of medieval life is clear. The characters live in a world where armour rusts and rain runs down inside every knight's plating; ice and bad luck are as dangerous as lances and arrows. The mercenaries' life is displayed through reference to the polyglot of languages they speak and the language they use. (Ratcliff confesses early on that Ash swears "rather a lot" and explains that he has used modern equivalents rather than medieval blasphemies). There is a wonderful precision in the terminology also; a generic word for the tools of war is never used where a specific one is available -- artillery includes cannon, arquebus (or hackbutt), trebuchet, bombard, mangonel, ballista and catapult -- and where necessary, Dr. Pierce Ratcliff provides a footnote to explain the term. Ratcliff and his correspondents gradually become just as real as the mercenary company, though they do not leap out of the first page; it is a wrench to recall that this may not be a translation and that Ratcliff is not really toiling away on it at a North African archaeological site.
Any attempt to provide a full precis of a plot as long and gloriously complex as that Ash: A Secret History has to offer must fail in the attempt, while revealing details which ought to be allowed to delight the reader firsthand. That plot includes perhaps a touch of sentiment, but this is no more than a balance for the harshness, holding the book in a dynamic tension rather than allowing it to slide into the unremitting horror of war. While the book may appear in the disguise of the BCF (Big Commercial Fantasy), it is not really so easy to pigeonhole. Neither is it the simple historical romance it first appears to be, or the alternate history it shows signs of becoming. Though the scientific roots of this work are well hidden in the first few hundred pages, Ratcliff develops theories which owe a great deal to high physics and hard science fiction. High drama and rich plotting in both time frames draw the book to an intense climax. The ending is shattered, splintered, hugely open to re-interpretation -- and the last revelations don't become clear until some time after the final pages are turned. Though I feel that Ash: A Secret History is science fiction, this book is so good at blurring genre boundaries, and is such an excellent work, that every genre will try to claim it as its own.
Readers intrigued by this book may be interested in this recent interview with Gentle.
Upon closer inspection, it was found that the only difference was that the Americanized book was hundreds of pages shorter to do translations such as colour->color.
Other sources claimed that Americans would rather be seen with a smaller book so as to appear more environmentally friendly.
--
Liberty uber alles.
Gads, I missed a whole paragraph of the article. Caffeine time.
Never heard of Joan Of Arc?
Heard of Joan of Arc? Sure. Can I be positive about how much I've heard is accurate? No. Even if it is, does one exception change the fact that combat has historically been a male domain?
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
At first glance I thought it was about the mighty Ash from the Evil Dead movies. Now, there would be a secret history worth reading, but I doubt it would fill 1K of sheets of dead tree.
On the other hand, it could have been worse, it could have been a secret history of Ash, the Pokemon trainer....
My boyfriend is about halfway through the second book of THE SECRET HISTORY right now; he seems to enjoy it, but I won't go near the books for a different reason. Some months ago I picked up an earlier Mary Gentle book, GRUNTS. So ugly a book is GRUNTS, so much "in the spirit of Mordor" to quote a friend of mine, that I wasn't able to read more than a page or two of THE SECRET HISTORY before my simmering antipathy towards Gentle came to the surface.
GRUNTS, for those not in the know, is Gentle's answer to LORD OF THE RINGS. It would be a better answer if Gentle had managed to create real characters and an original story. Instead, GRUNTS reads like Gentle had watched FULL METAL JACKET one too many times. She seems to think that, merely because her characters talk and swear like Marines, in a fantasy setting, she's accomplishing something new and original.
hyacinthus
I concur, what fiction needs is not realism, but believability.
A real life example. A friend of mine in high school had one of those weird old Chevrolet's with the engine in the back (Chevelle?). While out and about one evening, he was driving over a bridge with a marvelous sunset and decided to stop and watch, so he stopped and put the hood up in back of the car so that the people stuck behind him would think he had car trouble while he was busy watching the sunset. His friend who was with him said that maybe he should open up the trunk as not many people would think they were having car trouble while what looks like the trunk is open.
Or consider the Matrix. If the Matrix would have been 'realistic' to most of us geeks, it would not have been 'believable' to the average movie viewer.
Fiction needs to be believable, which in some but not all cases is also realistic.
And you explain the success of Robert Jordan's godawful shit how?
Hey, the first book was excellent. The next two or three were pretty good as well.
They really have become quite pathetic since, I agree. It's just a collection of short stories now rather than any kind of compelling narrative.
Female Merc in the 1470's? Bullshit!
:) Viking lines of battle were often anchored by lines of shieldmaidens. Stabbing spears poking out from shieldwalls aren't particularly valiant or odeworthy, and don't require a particularly notable amount of strength ... but they are very effective.
:) The Amazons were foot archers, as much as what Amazons actually were can be pulled out of the myths; many of the Central Asian steppe tribes used women (and children) as horse archers, Samartians most notably; Chinese had women crossbow regiments; it seems the Incans had women sling corps, but we don't really know enough about them to be sure of that. Et cetera.
:)
No, just unusual. Perhaps you have heard of a little teenybopper named "Joan of Arc" for instance?
Women didn't do combat. Why? Women were not strong enough.
You should go through the Norse sagas to find some striking counterexamples. However, Teutonic women are a special case, as any of you who have visited Nordic countries probably know already
Valkryies aside, effective women warriors have historically been archers, as any reasonably strong woman can pull a bow of the rather pathetic draws that historical bows were capable of handling. Also, being a good archer requires a lot more training and discipline than a footsoldier while being less individually glorious, which traits are more often to be found acceptable by women than macho male warriors, oddly enough
The reason there aren't more examples to draw from is that historically most cultures were not on a constant war footing and thus women could be relegated to babymaking and surplus male population to warmaking. In cultures where everyone had to fight, women were vital components of the order of battle in some position where their average lack of upper body strength wasn't particularly relevant.
And, to step away from direct combat, female ninjas were actually more prevalent and dreaded than male ninjas, contrary to current movie mythology; there are several recorded instances of ninja geishas with their koshigatanas taking out multiple samurai. Ninja geishas. Mmmmmm. Mmmmm.
For anyone who is interested in a most excellent mediaval / technology book, you really should check out Timeline by Michael Crichton. It has some very VERY cool concepts in it. It revolves around the idea that the universe is not really a universe but rather a multiverse. That is, each potential path that could be taken, is taken, thus creating infinte amounts of universes. A company has developed away of "jumping" these universes thus sort of in a way allowing for time travel. Within the first 60 or so pages of the book the characters end up in medieval france, where one immediately gets his head chopped off by a knight riding by. A truly excellent read and as usualy with his books, full of scientific references and novel ideas.
S.t.e.v.e.
This novel sounds to me to be a little too much of a re-write of the life and times of Joan Of Arc, whimsically mixed in with a little fantasy.
hmmm....a woman that leads an army around. she hears voices...and it all takes place during the time of the hundred years war...
a major revision and modernisation of the "Lost History of Burgundy."
who else do we know who fought for france's control of burgundy? anyone? anyone?
it would be wise to point out, additionally, that Joan of Arc was clearly Scyzophrenic
FluX
After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its deevolution into the shiny things network
"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." -David Hume
I thought this was going to have something to do with the shell, ash, maybe it's time for me to go schedule some vacation time, somewhere without electricity . . . .
This is just like television, only you can see much further.
I think Ash is the best thing Mary Gentle has done since the excellent Rats and Gargoyles (Not got info on me - look it up).
Curiously, though I'm British, I've been buying it in the US format set of four normal-sized paperbacks rather than the incredibly large UK single edition. (You may think Cryptonomicon was a large book. Ash dwarfs it!) I have to wait longer to get to the end - but the smaller books are more manageable to carry around. And the US saw parts 1 and 2 months before the UK edition was announced.
When it comes to medieval battle, Mary Gentle knows her stuff - and she used to put on displays of swordfighting at SF cons which were excellent. (None of your poncy rapiers - big swords, and even though these were blunted, they'd still hurt if you hit someone with them...)
This is an excellent book, and I think is probably the best thing Mary Gentle has ever written.
"Information wants to be paid"
i mean, sure, /bin/ash is not the best known application out there, but I don't think it's *that* obscure either.... or does it have some dark origins than 'they' don't want us to know of?
Look at William of Wallace (the subject of Mel Gibson's Braveheart). Despite Mel wanting the title role, the real William of Wallace was somewhere around 6 foot 10 inches tall and weighed more than 300 pounds. When King Edward the Great had poor old William hung, they built a special gallows to make certain it would not break under his weight.
My point? Memorable events in history typically surround exceptional people and events. History is chock full of events that are improbable and not very likely to happen at all, the sorts of events that intelligent people immediately right off as urban legends when they hear a modern day equivalent.
So, given that today there exist women who are into body building that could likely kick the tush of some of the best mercenaries around in the 15th century, it is not all that unbelievable that a woman could have existed back then that had more or less the same physique as William of Wallace. Heck, compare the women's weight lifting world records today with the men's world records from fifty years ago. Which means, that the genotype is there for women to develop into mighty warriors, if they are exposed to the proper environmental condiditions.
Here, I think you show your ignorance of history. While women may have been regarded as baby-factories throughout large portions of medeival Europe, that did not mean that they did not also engage in physical labor.
As an example, in Industrial Era Britain, women were expected to work 12 and 14 hour days in factories, even when pregnant. Many women would work, go over to a corner to give birth and a mid-wife would take care of the child while the mother went back to work on the assembly line
And as a final point, I suppose that Joan of Arc couldn't fight worth or lead troops worth anything?
Is available at chapters
The difference between Canada and the USA is that in Canada healthcare is a right and gun ownership is a privilege.
...check out the latest issue of the excellent Infinity Plus (which should be on any SF-loving /.er's favourites list anyway.) There is an interview with Mary and a short story of hers, also with Burgundian overtones but not directly related to ASH.
(As an aside, I concur with this article. ASH is an excellent book and well worth the effort if you have the attention span and upper body strength to handle it.)
Titanium is lighter than steel, that's why eyeglass frames are often made from it. My frames are Titanium and they're lighter than the steel+plastic ones that I wore as a kid. Granted, modern plastics are lighter than those of 10/15 years ago, but even the empty frames of my old glasses were heaver than the titanium ones that I have now.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Frame stories are somewhat overused in movies these days but can be an interesting addition to a solid plot.
-Kahuna Burger
...will work for Chick tracts...
As far as Jordan goes, I won't argue that there's been a rather large decline in quality over the last 2-3 books.
But goddammit, he's still got the best-realized world I've seen in a long, long time, the best political landscape, and the most logical backstory.
I personally think the poor man's getting bogged down under the weight of his own complexity.
I just hope George RR Martin's "A Song of Ice and Fire" series doesn't fall into the same trap.
Redhawk
The ones I can think of off the top of my head are:
How many more do you need?
FYI, Mick is an American slang derogatory term for a person of Irish descent. IIRC, its usage goes back the influx of Irish immigrants into the US during the Irish potato famine.
Mirriam-Webster's online dictionary says this about the word:
The Hammer and the Cross, a trilogy written by Harry Harrison and John Holm, has the following similarities with Ash:
Alternate history (vikings, 10th century).
Warfare and tactics (and trebuchets!)
An inner, supernatural voice guides the protagonist.
Interest in science.
All in all, a great read and a rare treat, although by no means perfect. I'll have to check out Ash to see if it is even better.
Is this a common occurence, editing books for the US market? I once purchased an American edition of 'Vurt' by Jeff Noon...
I believe so. FWIW, another notable "Yanks can't handle an ending like this" case is the omission of the last chapter of Anthony Burgess's A Clockwork Orange. Apparently the chapter was seen at the time as being too "warm and fuzzy" for a jaded America who had just survived Nixon and Watergate, and so the publisher nixed the ending where the protagonist, now no longer young, has become socialized at long last. This chapter changes one's entire outlook on the book, imo.
And, well, saying that fantasy and science fiction need to be totally realistic seems to me to miss the point.
Not totally, but to some degree. For example of Conan, or Solomon Kane were to charge the bad guys with an AK-47 or a SAW that he found in some mystical lair, that would pretty much suck ass.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
As there is a US version, I can only assume that nobody will be importing this title so we'll all have to order them from amazon.co.uk or someplace. I hate buying an incomplete verion of anything.
One wonders who decided to make the cuts. Was it the US publisher, or did somebody in the UK decide that "those dumb yanks would never be able to understand this".
As an aside, an amusing British view of the US can be found at The American Adventure theme park (warning: site requires flash). Did you know all Americans speak with southern-Ozark accents?
>blast the living crap out of things in her back yard with an AK-47,
:-)
I'm fairly sure it isn't legal to own an AK47 in the UK. Even if it were it wouldn't be legal for her to fire it in her backyard
However she almost certainly does "blast the living crap" out of things in her backyard with something which looks a lot like an AK47. I've seen and played with some of her "toys".
Then again the town where she lives is a distinctly dodgy place - even if she lives in one of the nicer parts of it.
AJB
You can get the full book at amazon.co.uk, at: http://www. amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0575069015/026-85526 69-7622009
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Wha? TV & Movie Theme Songs? Oh yeah....
Considering that I already have my laptop, one or two technical books, a few files, a few notepads and my lunch stuffed into my briefcase, I think I'll gladly spend more money to read the slimmer tomes sequentially while riding the bus to work.
Of course I'd also be willing to pay far more for a laptop with a far less powerful CPU if it could rival my Palm Pro for battery life...
Just because the book is cheaper in one volume doesn't mean that one volume is better (and that works the other way around as well, I'm sure that some people would place a higher value on one volume for reasons other than price).
What nationality would you consider a man born in South Africa to English parents (they moved to South Africa because Tolkien's father took a job there) who spent most of his life in living in England?