Mary Gentle has created an interesting series in The Book of Ash. The story follows Ash (a strikingly beautiful woman warrior, a cliche I'll overlook here because the character herself is so earthy and realistic) from her childhood in the train of a mercenary company to her tenure as captain of her own company, the Lion Azure. But the story of Ash is itself a story - one being translated by scholar Pierce Ratcliff from a partial manuscript titled Fraxinus me fecit which is presumed to have been written circa 1480 and to contain the dictated autobiography of Ash. Sound complex yet? There's more. The history that Fraxinus relates is contradictory to what Pierce (and the rest of the world) knows as history. Ash's company signs on with a variety of European employers, and her main foe is the Visigoth army out of Carthage. That's right, the Visigoth Carthage that's still standing in 1476. Not only that, but there is a darkness creeping over Europe; the sun's light has become a greyish twilight, under which crops cannot grow, and famine and war stalk the land. Yet the sun still shines over Burgundy.
Pierce and his editor, Anna, want to publish the translated Fraxinus text as a work of nonfiction, but they need physical evidence to substantiate the claims made in the manuscript. The story of Ash is broken into parts following the sections of the Fraxinus text, and usually covering only a few days' worth of events; in-between those sections, which make up the bulk of the book, are copies of the email correspondence among Pierce, Anna, and Isobel, the expedition leader searching for the ruins of Visigoth Carthage that could support Pierce's work. The back-and-forth movement from present to past and issues of academic and historic truth may be jarring and/or unimportant to some readers, though I've found the discussions interesting enough.
Note for Readers New to this Series
This review covers Book 3, The Wild Machines, and may reveal plot points from earlier books. In order, the books are:
A Secret History
Carthage Ascendant
The Wild Machines
Lost Burgundy
I suggest beginning at the very beginning - it's a very good place to start.
The Wild Machines
As book three opens, Ash has returned to Europe from her imprisonment in Carthage. She has a few things she needs to discuss with the enemy commander, her twin - the Faris. Conveniently the Faris and her army are camped outside of Dijon, besieging the city and its inhabitants, including the Burgundian Duke Charles. Ash decides to join the Duke in the hope of fighting the Wild Machines: so long as the Duke lives, Burgundy will not fall under the creeping grey twilight, and the machines will not have their revenge - a world unfit for human habitation.
Of course, things aren't ever that simple.
The Faris is as stubborn as Ash, and refuses to question her orders. Carthage wants Burgundy destroyed, and Carthage will see Burgundy destroyed; the Wild Machines are not manipulating anything. The siege at Dijon will continue, though Ash is welcome to join the group outside the wall. It would be silly to defend the city, particularly when the defenders are outnumbered three to one and their leader, Duke Charles, is dying. Ash refuses the offer; she is committed to protecting Burgundy, and that means defending Dijon. But Duke Charles is indeed dying - wounded three months past at Auxonne, he is still unable to rise from his bed, and he needs the information Ash can gain from speaking to the Stone Golem.
Alongside these larger problems, Ash also needs to handle the leadership of her own company. Has the time come to pass the torch? Will her squire never tire of begging to fight? Has Floria, her physician, developed a more than friendly attraction to her? And will she ever get her darned armor back? The company is finally reunited, but the question of whether or not they will continue to follow Ash weighs heavily on her mind.
The Wild Machines is a tightly compressed book. Though the communiques between the present-day researchers span several months while they attempt to recover lost Carthage, the narrative of Ash only covers three days in the defense of Dijon. Those days, however, are filled with action and detail. What I particularly enjoy about Mary Gentle's writing is her obvious love for the material and her dedication to rigorous detail. She creates the flavor of the late medieval period, from the fingers and noses frozen by the chill wind to the improper fit of borrowed plate armor. The historical material and unfamiliar terms are often referenced with footnotes that indicate inconsistencies with our own history, or give translations for those who haven't memorized the canonical divisions of the day (and really, you should all be ashamed of yourselves if you don't know the difference between Sext and Prime).
I would not suggest this book to the casual reader; it does require a bit of effort to get into because of the unusual style, but I do think the effort is well worth it for anyone interested in warfare, tactics, and strategy. The mercenaries are blunt in their speaking and their actions, as mercenaries are wont to be, so the tenderhearted might give this book a pass. Ash is a compelling character, however, and the writing is tight and confident, if somewhat of a cross between a fictional story and a historical tract. There's no lack of realistic action, readers finally get an answer to the question that's been nagging since book one (Why Burgundy?), and the ending delivers a satisfying twist that had me scrambling for book four.
Next up: Lost Burgundy
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