Ash (Gentle), readthrough

rachelmanija posted about Ash (Mary Gentle) here. Faux-medieval history, mercenaries, framing emails -- lots of things I like here, so I downloaded the Kindle sample. Welp, very quickly I had finished the sample and bought the book.

And things keep happening in it -- it is a very plot-heavy book -- and I kept leaving comments to the post along the lines of "OMG [X] JUST HAPPENED" (I have rot-13'ed all spoilers on that post) and finally Rachel made me another readthrough post to continue basically liveblogging without having to rot13.

There is one thing that I find mildly obnoxious that might bother you not at all or might bother you much more: the "faux-medieval history" is really nothing of the sort, it is presented as one in the novel (complete with footnotes discussing translation choices) but it is very obviously a modern text, and although I certainly find 1120 pages (!) of modern text easier to read than pseudo-medieval text, the cognitive discrepancy is a bit jarring.

I can't exactly recommend it because I'm only 30% through and I've certainly had my opinion of books changed markedly between 30% and 100%, but otherwise, if you are OK with grimdark (there is a lot of rape and violence and people killing each other) faux-medieval history with mercenaries and framing emails sounds good, I would recommend trying the sample -- if it hooks you, then you may want to read the whole thing, and if not, then it's probably not for you.

(And then come read through with me on the readthrough post, which starts at 21%)

(Also, if you have already read it, rachel is hosting a spoiler post here that I am very carefully not looking at.)