Rating: 
Summary: Fascinating ... mostly
Review: This was my first encounter with Mary Gentle. What an gifted writer she is! The book is one of the best adventure novels I ever read. Filled with great passages that make you want to cheer. Ash is a fascinating, unforgettable character.However, there are some flaws. I didn't mind the obscenities, gory details and not even the spectacular anachronisms. But in the second half Gentle seems to be stalling for time and space. I don't know whether she _had_ to deliver enough pages for the US-4-book-edition (I read the single volume UK edition). Anyway, there is too much repetitive dialogue at the end. Another flaw would be that Gentle is not able or willing to flesh out the supporting characters within 1100 pages. Florian, the Faris, the Earl - I would have liked to know more about them. That said, I still recommend this book very strongly.
Rating: 
Summary: Tasty if you like grit in your fantasy
Review: Two months in the life of a brilliant young captain of a mercenary company in 1476, as interpretted by the translator of the medieval chroniclers of her life. Sort of a Sharpe's White Company framed by DOOMSDAY BOOK. Warning: First of a series. The spine says "fantasy," but this may not be the case.
Rating: 
Summary: Mary Gentle's BOOK OF ASH
Review: Well, I read it all, by golly! Now I'm going to tear it to shreds. This review considers all four volumes. SF OR FANTASY?
Ms. Gentle wants to write both at once, so we start in medieval Europe and soon are up to our necks in robots (golems), flame-throwers (Greek fire), electric lighting (more Greek fire--versatile stuff), a tactical computer, and a parallel universe which isn't really our Europe. Eventually the whole story becomes SF. We are regaled with many pages of e-mail among modern researchers. These should be torn out and burned. Doing this would in no way diminish the story of Ash but would make it commendably shorter and more coherent. LOOK MA, NO EDITOR!
Ms. Gentle has said that the book was passed around by several publishers. That may explain why it never had decent editing. The book is far too wordy, repetitious, and diffuse. An editor could have cut it to three volumes. I have never seen a book more in need of someone who could wield a red pencil like Ash can wield a sword. LIFE BEYOND THE GRAVE!
To put readers through the trauma of a major character's death and then have that character revived is cheating of a most tawdry kind. Of course, it has ample precedent: Tolkien himself (all bow) does it with Gandalf. But when one man cashes in his chips and then survives as an etherial voice, we are not amused. Ms. Gentle even gets to kill him again, thus showing a formidable talent at wringing the most out of a character. And then there are the last ten pages....oh, please. NO RUSH TO GET THERE
One sometimes feels that the author is being paid by the word. The events are so embedded in baroque descriptions of clothes, buildings, scenery, etc. that eventually the reader feels like screaming as he struggles to get on with the story. Ash never just goes from point A to point B. A transition from the street to the council chamber requires a chapter. PANZERKRANKHEIT (ARMOR SICKNESS)
Getting Ash into or out of her tin suit consumes an awful lot of ink. Metallic haberdashery has an effect on the author similar to that of catnip on a cat. How lovingly we are told, over and over and over, of tassets and cuisses and plackarts and bevoirs and faulds, as the author indulges her unusual fetish. There is no end to it. Alas, there is an end to the reader's patience. (We can be very grateful to the Faris for stealing Ash's armor, which spares us further descriptions of it for a while. Unfortunately, she sends it back.) PS - Anyone desirous of becoming an instant authority on plate armor can consult page 113 of Edge's and Paddock's -Arms and Armor of the Medieval Knight-. (Pity that the diagram could not have been included in the book.) PRIDE OF KNOWLEDGE + LACK OF COMMON SENSE = OBFUSCATION
One characteristic of those possessing knowledge recently acquired is a desire to display it, and certainly anyone who collects college degrees as a hobby could not be expected to hide her light under a bushel. So we are treated to an enchanting demonstration of erudition on late-medieval weapons, flora, fauna, medicines, a little Latin and French, etc. And, conscious of her ignorant readers, our learned author helpfully provides us with footnotes. Yes, footnotes, in a novel, 50 to 100 per volume. How edified and improved we feel for this invaluable tuition! But these scholarly trappings seem misplaced. The book employs such inappropriate conversational language--the English of modern hoi polloi--that any sense of being in the Middle Ages is effectively destroyed, despite the pourpoints and the poleyns and the self-heal. YUCK!
As a describer of the vile and the sordid Ms. Gentle has no peer.(Or, if she does, I don't want to know who it is.) The author must have cudgeled her brains--I certainly hope these parts did not flow naturally from her pen--to come up with such sewage. (I am referring to events. For language, see below.) On the other hand, she seems oblivious of those parts of the Middle Ages which were noble and splendid. THE HEROINE (SUCH AS SHE IS)
Ash is very brave and very charismatic. Ash is also happily illiterate, dead to altruism or generosity, paranoiacally mistrustful, and static. I have always thought that long books centering on a single character were supposed to see that character develop, alter, change. Ash doesn't. The key to this poor girl's moral handicap is at II,76. Charles of Burgundy--about the only appealing character in the book other than Brifault and Bonniau (who are dogs)--has put honor above law, and guaranteed a war, by refusing to hand Ash over to the Visigoths. Her reaction to this chivalrous and noble deed is, "I don't -get- it." And she never gets it. As for her charisma, well, although Ash had many victories in the past, her feats upon the field of Mars as chronicled in the book are usually less than unqualified successes. Nonetheless, her simple-minded followers constantly hail her as a hero, the "Lioness," the successor of Joan of Arc. What an insult to St. Joan. POV
Ash is in every scene. It was certainly an error to write so long a book from a single point of view, especially with a character as one-dimensional as Ash. Sixteen hundred pages of Ash is just too much. Since her reactions and vocabulary are so predictable, the book becomes boring. The conclusion of this review is found under Volume II of the series (Carthage Ascendant)
Rating:
Summary: Captivating, Original and Fun
Review: Wow! I have not read a captivating book like this in a long time. Great characters, an original plot (mercenaries in the 15th Century), written in an original way, as a researcher, the text interspersed with letters and emails. I ordered the second one when I was only a quarter finished. It grabs you right from the first page. As one of the other reviewers said, "Gritty", it is. If you like gritty fantasy (?) with deep characters buy it, you will not regret it. If you are sick of fantasy with the main character being a Prince/Princess etc.. then this is for you.
Rating: 
Summary: blood, guts and gore
Review: You have to have an iron cast stomach to read this book. I could only read 10 pages before the disgustingly graphic writing assaulted my stomach. It sounds like, from the other reviews, that it is a good book if you can handle the blood, guts, rape and foul language. I have a vivid imagination; I didn't pay enough attention to the other reviews.
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