Ash: A Secret History (Mary Gentle)

[cahn]

4/5. I finished Ash: A Secret History, and okay, yep, now I can recommend it (always with the caveat of grimdark and if you liked the Kindle sample, and with a couple other caveats that I'll poke at in the next paragraph). The E-book is $4 currently at amazon, and as it clocks in at 1120 pages, I have to say that the hours of entertainment to cost ratio has been higher than anything else I've bought for some time. except possibly for that one Don Carlo recording that I've listened to too many times to count. I wasn't sure at 30% whether the ending would live up to the wild plot-heaviness of the rest of the book, but it does!

This is one of those books where I feel it's better to have zero spoilers going on. That being said, (1) I must warn anyone who knows... anything... about science... that it does that Thing where "science" is basically used as a synonym for "magic" so you may be facepalming a lot at certain spots (... just call it "wakalixes," okay?), and (2) I must warn any medievalists (or even anyone who... just likes history) that there are lots of things here that might bother you, like the manuscript of Fraxinus not reading at all like anything even faintly from that time period, not just in word translation choice; and footnotes reading much less like what an actual academic doing a translation would write and more like what an author who had done a lot of research on the period would write; and emails from an academic that don't sound like anything an academic would think or write. (For example, at one point the academic is all "but the manuscript got X detail wrong, HOW CAN I TRUST IT EVER AGAIN" which... does not compute for anyone who's ever studied any kind of writing, medieval or not??) So. I was able to suspend my disbelief on all these points enough to really enjoy it (although there was a lot of eye-rolling and facepalming at certain points), but I would not blame you one bit if you couldn't.

Because of those things, I honestly do not know how much I'd like Gentle's other work. But all that being said, this book was awfully satisfying on a number of levels.

rachelmanija, WHOSE FAULT THIS ALL IS, has several posts of interest:
-The post that convinced me to pick up the Kindle sample (no spoilers, though general overall discussion)
-I got so WTF OMG about it in the comments to the above post (I did rot-13 spoilers) that rachel made me a readthrough post so I could flail around, MANY SPOILERS HERE
-Spoilers post, for those who have read it all the way through!

Comments

[rachelmanija]

Wasn't that fun? I got ever so much enjoyment watching you read it.

[cahn]

That was so much fun! :D

[little_brisk]

I feel both very seen and very called out by that list of caveats. But I am always after massive books by women and will look into this one!

[cahn]

Hee. I seem to have amassed a number of medievalist/classicist/neither-but-who-know-more-than-average-about-some-facet-of-it (this is where I fall) people as DW friends :)

For you, actually, I'd unpack that "grimdark" thing a bit more -- it's the kind of book where a rape happens on the first page. And there's a bit where Ash reveals a very humiliating incident that happened to her in the past (like, body fluids involved). So, you know. You might want to skip it.

I will say that (a) being written by a woman, rape isn't treated as some sort of weird male power fantasy -- it's more matter-of-fact "okay this is part of this person's life"; (b) while the humiliation part was not pleasant to read, it didn't actually set off my fairly-sensitive humiliation squick because Ash is so clearly way cooler than that and has lots more things going on in her life than this relatively minor bit, and (c) while Ash herself is het and has het relationships, there isn't a focus on het relationships as the end-all and be-all. Almost all the important relationships are not romantic ones, but rather friendships or loyalty or family-ish relationships... wow, when I put it like that it's pretty clear why I adored this book.

ETA: (d) ugh, I can't tell you because spoiler, but there's one character where you would really really like this character's arc and reveals and plot. Wow, that was probably the most unhelpful reason to read a book ever. But I guess if you decide you are not going to read it I'll tell you that bit.

[mildred_of_midgard]

"neither-but-who-know-more-than-average-about-some-facet-of-it"

I have NO IDEA who you're talking about. :P

Oh, yeah, and ditto on the humiliation bit: it was my least favorite part, but my humiliation squick considered it just at the threshold of tolerable.

[cahn]

Ha! I also fall into that regime -- I know, or at least used to know, a fair amount about medieval Welsh and Old English (for someone who isn't in the field at all, at least), and have a devastating love for the Divine Comedy, and as we discussed a fair smattering of early Christian theology though not maybe so up on the history. But other than that my knowledge of this time period is a vast wasteland -- I probably know less than the average person-with-a-liberal-education about e.g. the Roman Empire :)

[little_brisk]

Haha! I love this comment and especially the specially-calibrated Straight-Romance-O-Meter <3

[mildred_of_midgard]

Basically, Gentle never convinced me he was any kind of academic. I mentally reclassified him as "popular historian who happens to know Latin," suspended remaining disbelief, and moved on.

I had much bigger problems with the emails, consisting primarily of:

1) THE FONT, which hurt my eyes.

2) This is a personal quirk, but any time there's a main set of characters and storyline, and a completely different storyline with different characters interspersed every few chapters with only a little page space, I *cannot* make my brain switch over and care about what's going on there. I skip it. I don't think I've ever felt like I lost anything by doing so.

This time, thanks to your liveblogging, I forced myself to read the emails (eye strain and all), and keep track of what was going on, unlike last time I read this book, but not being the least bit invested probably helped me not care about the totally unrealistic aspects.

I know Rachel was all DON'T SKIP THE EMAILS and THEY'RE NOT WINDOW-DRESSING, and yes they're building up to the plot climax at the end, and it's a doozy, but I managed to read this book and enjoy it and figure out what was going on in the end last time without more than minimal attention to the emails. Mind you, I also have a low tolerance for figuring out complicated plotty endings and a high tolerance for enjoying the book without fully understanding the ending. If it's too much effort to untangle the ending, I won't bother.

Lol, I am a lazy reader of fiction by default; I put all my mental energy into 1) non-fiction, 2) select works of fiction that I've decided to *care* about: see Tolkien, Tillermans (thanks to having you to explore the ins and outs with), and some others.

[cahn]

1) hee! The font didn't bother me at all.

2) Heh. This is actually part of my problem with the Song of Ice and Fire books. It started with Daenerys, and I got very invested in her, and then not so interested in all the other random people who showed after her, lol, even though that's the bulk of the book.

I think a big part of why to pay attention to the emails, especially in the early part, is that it's a very useful "as you know, bob" for those of us who don't know about that time period :) So not as useful for you. I think the end would be confusing if you didn't read them at all, but I think skimming would be enough to get the hang of it :)

ETA: But yeah. He wasn't any kind of an academic, was he?

And yes, that's a difference between us: I have a very high tolerance and even enjoy unpacking endings if I think there's going to be payoff there :)

[mildred_of_midgard]

2) See, I don't mind multiple protagonists and storylines given equal weight! I mean, I'm not guaranteed to like them--I kind of hate the Greyjoys and increasingly skip/skim their chapters--but my specific *no* is around when 90% of the page space is devoted to the main storyline, and 10% is undeveloped characters, usually exchanging dialogue, in a way where I'm clearly supposed to pay attention, but no effort has been made to make me equally invested. Yawn.

Whereas I totally love the Starks and quite like a bunch of the other characters as well. I also feel like the book started with the Starks--am I wrong?

I will say that, like a lot of people, I'm suffering POV fatigue in later books (like 4 and 5), and the amount of detail and new characters are starting to feel more random and bring less payoff.