![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
adrian_turtleI am a mighty hunter! Or perhaps more of a mighty gatherer, considering I hadn't even known this particular book existed. But I feel very mighty, cuddling it. Let me tell you all the story, especially Steph Dray...
The evening had been one of franticness. (Counting "evening" from the time late this morning when I came to suspect that I'd spent the last 3 months developing a product to the wrong specs. Or perhaps from last night's trek downtown to buy tickets from a closed Greyhound terminal.) Anyhow, I stayed late at work, and arrived at Diesel too late to find any of the people I had hoped to talk to. Fortunately, not too late to use their bathroom. Though it was a near thing. Considering I first discovered the Tuesday night Diesel gatherings because I went in to use the bathroom, this amuses me, even though long waits for evening buses and the general absence of public potties is Not Funny. It's getting less funny as I get older, and may be a factor in my general mood of franticness.
Anyhow, that put me on a bus going home past the library shortly before the library closed this evening. While I'm not enough like a turtle to carry my whole house on my back, I do carry my almost-due library books in my backpack. (Much franticness, trying to persuade the bus driver to stop, and then to open the back door. This exercise, usually trivial, was so extraordinarily difficult that I wondered if stress was making me invisible, inaudible, insignificant.
I had only 7 minutes before the library closed, and this library usually herds people to the circulation desk at least 5 minutes before the official closing time. I'm not sure what inspired me to run to the New Fiction:Quick Reads shelf. I've been checking it every so often for Dan Simmons' "Ilium," having seen it once when I was already overloaded with 7-day loans, and not since. (Now I'm not sure I should read it at all, being so negatively impressed with "Hardcase" [1] last week.) Nope, no Simmons. No "Tooth and Claw." I was on my way back towards the main section in search of something by Sayers or Seth or McHugh, when it caught my eye.
Gillian Bradshaw has a new book, "Render Unto Caesar." I grabbed it off the shelf, squeaking with shock and covetous glee. I had no idea this was coming. Bradshaw's work is a bit uneven, and my responses over the years have ranged from fondness to admiration to something uncomfortably close to idolatry. I haven't really started this one yet. (I'm afraid that I won't be able to get to sleep at a reasonable hour - I started "The Bearkeeper's Daughter" at 1am, fumbling with unbound copies of galley proofs, and found myself unable to stop.) Based on the jacket blurb, it's rather like "Bearkeeper's Daughter," in being about a young man who comes to the big city from the provinces to make his fortune and navigate city politics and prejudices.
A long time ago, Steph Dray asked me for more details about Gillian Bradshaw's work, and I've delayed for more than long enough. My apologies, Steph. I can't recommend "Render Unto Caesar," yet, but some of my favorites are:
"The Sand-Reckoner" - about Archimedes. Also about what it is to be so lost in your own thoughts you lose touch with reality. And what it's like to love someone like that. Incredibly, vividly, real, on those terms...makes me want to sow paperbacks through Kendall Square. It also reads like hard sf, where the science is catapult design.
"Beacon at Alexandria" - about a girl who wants to be a doctor. In the Roman Empire of 1600 years ago. Bradshaw's history and sociology are extremely solid, and she doesn't pull punches about sexism. It's not YA, exactly, but I think it would appeal to some high school girls. (Wouldn't recommend it to a bunch of young strangers, though.) The setup seems entirely plausible to me, character-focused but not just deus-ex-machina for the sake of the characters.
"Horses of Heaven" - an extremely likable narrative voice, a young woman of the Saka who becomes lady-in-waiting for the Hellenic bride of the Saka king in Alexandria Eschate. (A few generations after Alexander.) Tomyris would rather be riding her father's horses than sitting with princesses, fussing over dresses and makeup. But she soon discovers that she is expected to be a spy, even a jailor, and then things get complicated. Morally complicated, not just plot twists - it's remarkable that Bradshaw still presents so many characters as sympathetic.
Arthurian series = "Hawk of May" + "Kingdom of Summer" + "In Winter's Shadow"
I read "Kingdom of Summer" first, which is the least fraught of the 3. (One *might* consider it YA, for some kids, especially if they could understand the Christianity, but "Hawk of May" demands a more mature perspective. IMO. Marius, you know your son better than I do, but I think he should wait a couple of years for these.) "Kingdom of Summer" is about a young man who chooses to leave his home on a comfortable farm to be Gawain's servant, for the sake of being part of Arthur's great endeavor. "Hawk of May" is about Gawain...his family issues, his magic, are blood-curdling and completely plausible. The whole series is superbly done.
"Imperial Purple" was a clever idea, executed competently but not brilliantly. I think it was quite an early work, not nearly as painstakingly polished as the trilogy. It's about a woman who weaves purple silk in Tyre, and how she navigates the politics of workplace sexual harrassment, imperial politics, and family politics. I'm not in a position to judge plausibility on the facts - I don't have the specialized education. Demetrios does seem to get a bit too implausibly lucky in some places and unlucky in others, and the setting is hard to believe. (Based on a bit of other reading, and on Bradshaw's later work, it seems much more likely that the actual historical setting just wasn't plausible enough for me than that Bradshaw botched her research. But her later work is more seamlessly convincing...places and characters that aren't just plausible, but that turn up in my dreams.)
"The Bearkeeper's Daughter" and "Island of Ghosts" have oddly similar structure. They're romances with male protagonists. "The Bearkeeper's Daughter" refers to the Empress Theodora, of course, but it's mostly about a young man newly arrived in Constantinople during her reign. There's one whopper to swallow at the heart of the story, but the characters are so good it goes down easy, and everything else I could see was plausible. "Island of Ghosts" is about a Scythian warrior the Romans transplanted to Britain after conquering his homeland. Loss, honor, culture clash, ptsd...but it's all character-driven. Too much focus on horses, for my taste, but that may be inevitable with Scythians (and Constantinople, and Saka, and realistic Arthurian stories, and ... ok, maybe the woman just has a thing about horses.)
I hope that helps. Now I really want to read, though I know I should sleep. *smile* Good night.
The evening had been one of franticness. (Counting "evening" from the time late this morning when I came to suspect that I'd spent the last 3 months developing a product to the wrong specs. Or perhaps from last night's trek downtown to buy tickets from a closed Greyhound terminal.) Anyhow, I stayed late at work, and arrived at Diesel too late to find any of the people I had hoped to talk to. Fortunately, not too late to use their bathroom. Though it was a near thing. Considering I first discovered the Tuesday night Diesel gatherings because I went in to use the bathroom, this amuses me, even though long waits for evening buses and the general absence of public potties is Not Funny. It's getting less funny as I get older, and may be a factor in my general mood of franticness.
Anyhow, that put me on a bus going home past the library shortly before the library closed this evening. While I'm not enough like a turtle to carry my whole house on my back, I do carry my almost-due library books in my backpack. (Much franticness, trying to persuade the bus driver to stop, and then to open the back door. This exercise, usually trivial, was so extraordinarily difficult that I wondered if stress was making me invisible, inaudible, insignificant.
I had only 7 minutes before the library closed, and this library usually herds people to the circulation desk at least 5 minutes before the official closing time. I'm not sure what inspired me to run to the New Fiction:Quick Reads shelf. I've been checking it every so often for Dan Simmons' "Ilium," having seen it once when I was already overloaded with 7-day loans, and not since. (Now I'm not sure I should read it at all, being so negatively impressed with "Hardcase" [1] last week.) Nope, no Simmons. No "Tooth and Claw." I was on my way back towards the main section in search of something by Sayers or Seth or McHugh, when it caught my eye.
Gillian Bradshaw has a new book, "Render Unto Caesar." I grabbed it off the shelf, squeaking with shock and covetous glee. I had no idea this was coming. Bradshaw's work is a bit uneven, and my responses over the years have ranged from fondness to admiration to something uncomfortably close to idolatry. I haven't really started this one yet. (I'm afraid that I won't be able to get to sleep at a reasonable hour - I started "The Bearkeeper's Daughter" at 1am, fumbling with unbound copies of galley proofs, and found myself unable to stop.) Based on the jacket blurb, it's rather like "Bearkeeper's Daughter," in being about a young man who comes to the big city from the provinces to make his fortune and navigate city politics and prejudices.
A long time ago, Steph Dray asked me for more details about Gillian Bradshaw's work, and I've delayed for more than long enough. My apologies, Steph. I can't recommend "Render Unto Caesar," yet, but some of my favorites are:
"The Sand-Reckoner" - about Archimedes. Also about what it is to be so lost in your own thoughts you lose touch with reality. And what it's like to love someone like that. Incredibly, vividly, real, on those terms...makes me want to sow paperbacks through Kendall Square. It also reads like hard sf, where the science is catapult design.
"Beacon at Alexandria" - about a girl who wants to be a doctor. In the Roman Empire of 1600 years ago. Bradshaw's history and sociology are extremely solid, and she doesn't pull punches about sexism. It's not YA, exactly, but I think it would appeal to some high school girls. (Wouldn't recommend it to a bunch of young strangers, though.) The setup seems entirely plausible to me, character-focused but not just deus-ex-machina for the sake of the characters.
"Horses of Heaven" - an extremely likable narrative voice, a young woman of the Saka who becomes lady-in-waiting for the Hellenic bride of the Saka king in Alexandria Eschate. (A few generations after Alexander.) Tomyris would rather be riding her father's horses than sitting with princesses, fussing over dresses and makeup. But she soon discovers that she is expected to be a spy, even a jailor, and then things get complicated. Morally complicated, not just plot twists - it's remarkable that Bradshaw still presents so many characters as sympathetic.
Arthurian series = "Hawk of May" + "Kingdom of Summer" + "In Winter's Shadow"
I read "Kingdom of Summer" first, which is the least fraught of the 3. (One *might* consider it YA, for some kids, especially if they could understand the Christianity, but "Hawk of May" demands a more mature perspective. IMO. Marius, you know your son better than I do, but I think he should wait a couple of years for these.) "Kingdom of Summer" is about a young man who chooses to leave his home on a comfortable farm to be Gawain's servant, for the sake of being part of Arthur's great endeavor. "Hawk of May" is about Gawain...his family issues, his magic, are blood-curdling and completely plausible. The whole series is superbly done.
"Imperial Purple" was a clever idea, executed competently but not brilliantly. I think it was quite an early work, not nearly as painstakingly polished as the trilogy. It's about a woman who weaves purple silk in Tyre, and how she navigates the politics of workplace sexual harrassment, imperial politics, and family politics. I'm not in a position to judge plausibility on the facts - I don't have the specialized education. Demetrios does seem to get a bit too implausibly lucky in some places and unlucky in others, and the setting is hard to believe. (Based on a bit of other reading, and on Bradshaw's later work, it seems much more likely that the actual historical setting just wasn't plausible enough for me than that Bradshaw botched her research. But her later work is more seamlessly convincing...places and characters that aren't just plausible, but that turn up in my dreams.)
"The Bearkeeper's Daughter" and "Island of Ghosts" have oddly similar structure. They're romances with male protagonists. "The Bearkeeper's Daughter" refers to the Empress Theodora, of course, but it's mostly about a young man newly arrived in Constantinople during her reign. There's one whopper to swallow at the heart of the story, but the characters are so good it goes down easy, and everything else I could see was plausible. "Island of Ghosts" is about a Scythian warrior the Romans transplanted to Britain after conquering his homeland. Loss, honor, culture clash, ptsd...but it's all character-driven. Too much focus on horses, for my taste, but that may be inevitable with Scythians (and Constantinople, and Saka, and realistic Arthurian stories, and ... ok, maybe the woman just has a thing about horses.)
I hope that helps. Now I really want to read, though I know I should sleep. *smile* Good night.
