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selenakThis was given to me by cahn; takes place in an AU Renaissance (specifics to follow) in which Byantium never fell and instead became the last remaining superpower standing, gobling up most other countries (and is therefore the - off page - Big Bad of the story), while our heroes are a bunch of OCs - a Welsh wizard, a Greek mercenary who's really the last survivor of a previous dynasty, an Italian (female) doctor from Florence and a German science-minded weapons engineer plus mercenary who bears the hilarious-in-German-sounding designation "Fachritter", is otherwise called Gregory of Bavaria and is my favourite.
Oh, and he's also a vampire, one of the few good ones. This novel's take on vampirism is chillingly effective; basically a sickness the majority of the infected spreads around as they only look for their own survival/gratification, and also a biological weapon for the Big Bads. The whole saga culminates in our heroes ensuring Richard III. wins at Bosworth, because the way you can tell this is a novel from the Anglosphere is that England is one of the last realms not yet gobled up by Byzantium and that they want to take over, with the very briefly showing up Henry Tydder/Tudor only the last of many tools.
I can't make up my mind how I feel about this novel. On the one hand, the language is beautiful, there are many memorable phrases, the four main characters are all vividly brought to life, and the various AU takes on historical events were cleverly done. Like the Pazzi conspiracy. Because Christianity in this AU sank back into being a minor cult of many after a successful Emperor Julian (the Apostate) brought back paganism, a lot of rl elements would have been impossible (the shock moment of it taking place in the Duomo on Easter Sunday, with the Papacy involved, for starters). So instead of the Riarios and the Pope as key players in addition to the Pazzi, in this AU it's the Byzantines pulling the strings and blackmailing our heroine Cynthia Ricci and her father into poisoning Lorenzo de' Medici and his brother Giuliano. The net result isn't that different (Giuliano dead, Lorenzo lives (for now), primary conspirators dead in vengeance), but because we're in Cynthia's pov throughout and the AU circumstances are different enough for the twists to come as surprises, the emotional shock remains the same. Also, the novel's explanation for the fate of the princes in the Tower ties up various major storylines and uses the primary horror of it very well.
On the other hand: the whole novel feels like it's a sketch for a longer work. Our four original main characters, after being carefully introduced, hardly spend any time together (solving a locked room mystery) before hurrying off into different plot threads again, and yet we're supposed to believe they've become close and deeply care about each other. The AU takes on various historical characters who only show up in one chapter, be they Lorenzo de' Medici, Louis XI "The Spider King" of France, Marguerite d'Anjou or Cecily Neville are for my money more interestingly drawn than the hiistorical characters who do show up for a longer page time (primarily Anthony Woodville, and Richard the later III himself) - not that the later are dull characters, that's not it, but they're written in a fanfiction way, i.e. as if the reader is expected to already know and care about them and want the OCs to get invested in them. Which means that I'm never entirely sold on Dimi(trios) becoming so deeply and intensely loyal to Richard (and vice versa), or Cynthia having an affair with Anthony Woodville. (Speaking as a kind-of-Ricardian, I also can't decide whether I'm amused or appalled that this AU killed off Richard's rl bff and right hand man Francis Lovel in its backstory as a boy. This fulfills two important plot purposes - a) it means Dimi can take his place with Richard and be at Bosworth, and b) it means Anthony Woodville - who in the AU accidentally killed young Francis in a tournament - has a reason to feel guilty vis a vis Richard and when Richard doesn't kill him at the point when rl Richard did sides with him for the remaining plot and therefore is able to show up at Bosworth and complete the day saving that Dimi started. I mean, I'm all for AUs where Richard lives, but are you saying rl sidekick Francis Lovel was somewhat lacking and not good enough for you, John Ford?) (RL Francis, who was at the battle of Bosworth, never got over Richard's death and after some time in Burgundy with Margaret of York kept it up with the anti-Tudor rebellions until it got him killed.)
Byzantium as the off page Big Bad works because the introductory chapters in which all of our heroes are shown to get traumatized by various evil deeds of the evil Empire do show, beyond a general "Empires bad", why our heroic four are against them and they therefore foiling the England takeover is good. I also appreciate that the novel doesn't simplify by declaring that without Christianity, everything would be better - this AU is as bloody and messed up as rl history was, just with different players. But while the narration is compelling enough not to make me question it while actively reading, as soon as I put the book aside I start nitpicking the entire premise. For starters: where's Islam? Based on the brief mention of Saladin (as a bff of Richard Couer de Lion, since the Crusades didn't happen and neither was Richard a Christian nor Saladin a Muslim), Islam either never happened or remained in the minor minor cult stage, too. (We see two Christians, or Jeshides, in the novel at different points. We don't see any Muslims. At all.) And I don't see how this would have been a logical fallout from the two major points where history goes AU in this universe, to wit, first by Julian being successful in changing Christianity back from the newly exclusive faith to one of many, and secondly by Justinian and Theodora living longer than they did in rl (because vampirism) and managing to consolidate the reconquest of the old Roman Empire.
Secondly, I'm currently listening to a podcast about the history of Byzantium, which reminded me again how key inter Christian religious feudings (mostly, but not exclusively orthodox faith vs Monophycism) were to all the politics, and trying to imagine Byzantium without Christianity is really hard. (Would Justinian even have become Emperor? One of the reasons why his uncle Justin made it to the top job was that the previous encumbant had ticked off the orthodox majority by showing his own Monophysicst leanings.) And while we're talking monarchs, how come Louis XI is Louis XI of France in an AU where because Byzantium was able to regain control of the entire Empire during and post Justinian's reign, Charlemagne thus presumably never was crowned as Emperor in Rome by the Pope, the Carolingians never ruled, and thus presumably Hugh Capet (who was descended from two of Charlemagne's sons) didn't happen, either? (Of whom, in turn, Louis XI descended.) And let's not even start on the likelihood of the names of the historical characters remaining the same in this AU. I mean, I know why Ford did it - so the readers would know who these people are - but a lot of them were named for saints. Why the hell would Elizabeth Woodville and Elizabeth (Jane) Shore be named for Elizabeth the biblical cousin of the Virgin Mary and mother of John the Baptist in a world where the Christian bible has no meaning? (Same for anyone called Anne, which includes Richard's wife.) Come to think of it: John of Gaunt's second marriage to Constance of Castile evidently can't have happened in an AU where Spain remained part of the Roman Empire, there never was history of 700 years of Muslim kingdoms or a Reconquista. If John of Gaunt didn't marry Constance (and her money), does he marry Katherine Swynford directly and does he have the same children with her he did in rl with an existing Constance? Given John of Gaunt is the ancestor of Henry VI, Henry Tudor and through one of his Beaufort daughters of the Yorkist Kings as well, that's kind of an issue to the existence of basically everyone in the Wars of the Roses.
It just gets more headache inducing the more you think of it.
Like I said, this doesn't bother me while I'm reading, because the prose is really beautiful and I do want to know what happens to the main characters. It's just now that I'm bothered. :) Mind you, with all AUs, you have to accept to a degree that this just is how things are, and I'm so grateful for any that aren't the nth rerun of "what if the Nazis won?" Plus Hywel is a great take on the wily old magician archetype, Cynthia's entire introduction chapter with its Medici AU is perhaps my favourite individual chapter, and Gregory the vampire Fachritter (a term that will make me smile every time I think it ) makes me with for the AU where he and Hywel are sleuthing their way through a series of Renaissance mysteries. In terms of AU takes on Richard III, though, I'm still with Doctor Who and the blackly hilarious Big Finish adventure The King Maker. And I do wish we'd seen more of Cecily Neville, she was very memorable in the one chapter Ford gave her.
Lastly, I think if this novel had been a trilogy so we'd seen our four main characters become a team, had spent more time in each of the various locations and had gotten to see their relationships with the historical characters grow less rapidly, I think I wouldn't have even thought of wondering what the hell happened to the Prophet Mohammed. :)
cahn; takes place in an AU Renaissance (specifics to follow) in which Byantium never fell and instead became the last remaining superpower standing, gobling up most other countries (and is therefore the - off page - Big Bad of the story), while our heroes are a bunch of OCs - a Welsh wizard, a Greek mercenary who's really the last survivor of a previous dynasty, an Italian (female) doctor from Florence and a German science-minded weapons engineer plus mercenary who bears the hilarious-in-German-sounding designation "Fachritter", is otherwise called Gregory of Bavaria and is my favourite. Oh, and he's also a vampire, one of the few good ones. This novel's take on vampirism is chillingly effective; basically a sickness the majority of the infected spreads around as they only look for their own survival/gratification, and also a biological weapon for the Big Bads. The whole saga culminates in our heroes ensuring Richard III. wins at Bosworth, because the way you can tell this is a novel from the Anglosphere is that England is one of the last realms not yet gobled up by Byzantium and that they want to take over, with the very briefly showing up Henry Tydder/Tudor only the last of many tools.
I can't make up my mind how I feel about this novel. On the one hand, the language is beautiful, there are many memorable phrases, the four main characters are all vividly brought to life, and the various AU takes on historical events were cleverly done. Like the Pazzi conspiracy. Because Christianity in this AU sank back into being a minor cult of many after a successful Emperor Julian (the Apostate) brought back paganism, a lot of rl elements would have been impossible (the shock moment of it taking place in the Duomo on Easter Sunday, with the Papacy involved, for starters). So instead of the Riarios and the Pope as key players in addition to the Pazzi, in this AU it's the Byzantines pulling the strings and blackmailing our heroine Cynthia Ricci and her father into poisoning Lorenzo de' Medici and his brother Giuliano. The net result isn't that different (Giuliano dead, Lorenzo lives (for now), primary conspirators dead in vengeance), but because we're in Cynthia's pov throughout and the AU circumstances are different enough for the twists to come as surprises, the emotional shock remains the same. Also, the novel's explanation for the fate of the princes in the Tower ties up various major storylines and uses the primary horror of it very well.
On the other hand: the whole novel feels like it's a sketch for a longer work. Our four original main characters, after being carefully introduced, hardly spend any time together (solving a locked room mystery) before hurrying off into different plot threads again, and yet we're supposed to believe they've become close and deeply care about each other. The AU takes on various historical characters who only show up in one chapter, be they Lorenzo de' Medici, Louis XI "The Spider King" of France, Marguerite d'Anjou or Cecily Neville are for my money more interestingly drawn than the hiistorical characters who do show up for a longer page time (primarily Anthony Woodville, and Richard the later III himself) - not that the later are dull characters, that's not it, but they're written in a fanfiction way, i.e. as if the reader is expected to already know and care about them and want the OCs to get invested in them. Which means that I'm never entirely sold on Dimi(trios) becoming so deeply and intensely loyal to Richard (and vice versa), or Cynthia having an affair with Anthony Woodville. (Speaking as a kind-of-Ricardian, I also can't decide whether I'm amused or appalled that this AU killed off Richard's rl bff and right hand man Francis Lovel in its backstory as a boy. This fulfills two important plot purposes - a) it means Dimi can take his place with Richard and be at Bosworth, and b) it means Anthony Woodville - who in the AU accidentally killed young Francis in a tournament - has a reason to feel guilty vis a vis Richard and when Richard doesn't kill him at the point when rl Richard did sides with him for the remaining plot and therefore is able to show up at Bosworth and complete the day saving that Dimi started. I mean, I'm all for AUs where Richard lives, but are you saying rl sidekick Francis Lovel was somewhat lacking and not good enough for you, John Ford?) (RL Francis, who was at the battle of Bosworth, never got over Richard's death and after some time in Burgundy with Margaret of York kept it up with the anti-Tudor rebellions until it got him killed.)
Byzantium as the off page Big Bad works because the introductory chapters in which all of our heroes are shown to get traumatized by various evil deeds of the evil Empire do show, beyond a general "Empires bad", why our heroic four are against them and they therefore foiling the England takeover is good. I also appreciate that the novel doesn't simplify by declaring that without Christianity, everything would be better - this AU is as bloody and messed up as rl history was, just with different players. But while the narration is compelling enough not to make me question it while actively reading, as soon as I put the book aside I start nitpicking the entire premise. For starters: where's Islam? Based on the brief mention of Saladin (as a bff of Richard Couer de Lion, since the Crusades didn't happen and neither was Richard a Christian nor Saladin a Muslim), Islam either never happened or remained in the minor minor cult stage, too. (We see two Christians, or Jeshides, in the novel at different points. We don't see any Muslims. At all.) And I don't see how this would have been a logical fallout from the two major points where history goes AU in this universe, to wit, first by Julian being successful in changing Christianity back from the newly exclusive faith to one of many, and secondly by Justinian and Theodora living longer than they did in rl (because vampirism) and managing to consolidate the reconquest of the old Roman Empire.
Secondly, I'm currently listening to a podcast about the history of Byzantium, which reminded me again how key inter Christian religious feudings (mostly, but not exclusively orthodox faith vs Monophycism) were to all the politics, and trying to imagine Byzantium without Christianity is really hard. (Would Justinian even have become Emperor? One of the reasons why his uncle Justin made it to the top job was that the previous encumbant had ticked off the orthodox majority by showing his own Monophysicst leanings.) And while we're talking monarchs, how come Louis XI is Louis XI of France in an AU where because Byzantium was able to regain control of the entire Empire during and post Justinian's reign, Charlemagne thus presumably never was crowned as Emperor in Rome by the Pope, the Carolingians never ruled, and thus presumably Hugh Capet (who was descended from two of Charlemagne's sons) didn't happen, either? (Of whom, in turn, Louis XI descended.) And let's not even start on the likelihood of the names of the historical characters remaining the same in this AU. I mean, I know why Ford did it - so the readers would know who these people are - but a lot of them were named for saints. Why the hell would Elizabeth Woodville and Elizabeth (Jane) Shore be named for Elizabeth the biblical cousin of the Virgin Mary and mother of John the Baptist in a world where the Christian bible has no meaning? (Same for anyone called Anne, which includes Richard's wife.) Come to think of it: John of Gaunt's second marriage to Constance of Castile evidently can't have happened in an AU where Spain remained part of the Roman Empire, there never was history of 700 years of Muslim kingdoms or a Reconquista. If John of Gaunt didn't marry Constance (and her money), does he marry Katherine Swynford directly and does he have the same children with her he did in rl with an existing Constance? Given John of Gaunt is the ancestor of Henry VI, Henry Tudor and through one of his Beaufort daughters of the Yorkist Kings as well, that's kind of an issue to the existence of basically everyone in the Wars of the Roses.
It just gets more headache inducing the more you think of it.
Like I said, this doesn't bother me while I'm reading, because the prose is really beautiful and I do want to know what happens to the main characters. It's just now that I'm bothered. :) Mind you, with all AUs, you have to accept to a degree that this just is how things are, and I'm so grateful for any that aren't the nth rerun of "what if the Nazis won?" Plus Hywel is a great take on the wily old magician archetype, Cynthia's entire introduction chapter with its Medici AU is perhaps my favourite individual chapter, and Gregory the vampire Fachritter (a term that will make me smile every time I think it ) makes me with for the AU where he and Hywel are sleuthing their way through a series of Renaissance mysteries. In terms of AU takes on Richard III, though, I'm still with Doctor Who and the blackly hilarious Big Finish adventure The King Maker. And I do wish we'd seen more of Cecily Neville, she was very memorable in the one chapter Ford gave her.
Lastly, I think if this novel had been a trilogy so we'd seen our four main characters become a team, had spent more time in each of the various locations and had gotten to see their relationships with the historical characters grow less rapidly, I think I wouldn't have even thought of wondering what the hell happened to the Prophet Mohammed. :)
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Date: 2022-12-06 04:25 pm (UTC)