Ash - Mary Gentle

One of the best historical novels I have read, also a good fantasy novel and a great alternative history novel! How can it be all three at the same time? Well it starts off as a novel about mercenary companies in Europe during the late 15th century, then after sucking you in with well written text, you discover that this is not our 15th century, the Carthaginians seem to have somehow survived to this date and Christianity is not quite the same. At this point the novel becomes both fantasy and alternate history. But Mary Gentile is careful to feed the facts to you in such a way that you are about two thirds of the way through the book before the alternate history ...

Ash – A Secret History Oh, where to begin? To say this is the best fantasy novel I’ve read for years is a lame sounding accolade, but it’s the truth. Mary Gentle has produced a book that is not only unique, but also compelling, larger than life and mentally stimulating to boot. Weighing in at over 1100 pages and ½ million words, but costing only 7.99 online this is a must read for any lover of twisted history, fantasy or SF. I mention the three genres because Ash is hard to pin down as belonging to any single category. If you don’t have a good grasp of medieval history you could be forgiven for spending the first part of the ...