The Architecture of Desire

by Mary Gentle

Overview

Mercenaries in lace and steel roam the countryside and the heads of criminals are impaled on London Bridge. The characters' relationships are played out in the shadow of the hangman's rope. Sequel to Rats and Gargoyles.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780575128828
Publisher:	Orion
Publication date:	07/25/2013
Sold by:	Hachette Digital, Inc.
Format:	eBook
File size:	290 KB

About the Author

Mary Gentle (1956 - )
Mary Gentle is one of the world's most acclaimed writers of fantasy and science fiction. Winner of the BSFA Award for Ash: A Secret History - the largest single fantasy work in the English language - and twice nominated for the Arthur C. Clarke Award, she has a number of academic degrees, including an MA in War Studies, and has hands-on experience of sword-fighting and armour, amongst many other useful talents. Mary Gentle lives in Stevenage, Hertfordshire.

For more information see www.sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/gentle_mary

Mary Gentle is one of the world's most acclaimed writers of fantasy and science fiction; ASH, the largest single fantasy work ever - longer even than THE LORD OF THE RINGS - combines the authentic details of Bernard Cornwell and the magical storytelling of Terry Goodkind; all editions were Gollancz bestsellers. Mary has a number of academic degrees, including an MA in War Studies, and has hands-on experience of sword-fighting and armour, amongst many other useful talents. She lives in Stevenage, Hertfordshire.

Editorial Reviews

Gentle follows her baroque fantasy Rats and Gargoyles with this semi-sequel, featuring two of the previous novel's characters in a far different milieu. The White Crow, aka Valentine, Master Physician of the Invisible College, and her husband, the Lord-Architect Casaubon--both masters of alchemical magics--have retired to the White Crow's estates outside of London. This alternate 17th-century England evokes that of Cromwell's Protectorate, with a few playful changes; here the monarch (Queen rather than King) remains alive, a rallying point for the royalists, and the Protector is a woman as well, General Olivia. The occasional historical figure appears (for example, the anatomist William Harvey) as the White Crow and Casaubon find themselves unwillingly drawn into the intrigues between the two factions. An old friend, Pollexfen Calmady, brings Casaubon to the city to help build a temple--``the eye of the sun''--for the Protector, while a puritan woman, Desire-of-the-Lord Guillaime, induces the White Crow to help in a scheme to encourage the Queen to go into exile. But when Calmady rapes Desire in the White Crow's home, events begin to spiral toward catastrophe. Where the previous novel was at times too complicated and over long, this one errs on the other side, sometimes feeling compressed, its turns of plot underrationalized. But Gentle's witty prose and the unusual and intriguing atmosphere of her world more than compensate. (Mar.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

As the reigning Protector-General and the deposed Queen Carola play an intricate game of plot and counterplot for the control of London, the Lord-Architect and his Master Physician wife become drawn into a web of conspiracy--on opposite sides. The author of Golden Witchbreed (NAL, 1985) and Ancient Light (NAL, 1990) broke new ground in Rats and Gargoyles ( LJ 3/15/91), creating an alternate world in which magical and alchemical principles formed the basis of science and fledgling technology. This sequel represents both a carefully thought-out application of those same principles to affairs of state and a rousing story of intrigue and old-fashioned adventure. Libraries who have already discovered Gentle's unique talent will definitely want this title.

Library Journal

Definitely an odd volume, this, parts of which read like the notes for a longer, though not necessarily better, book. Set in a pagan, sexually egalitarian alternative England undergoing its own version of the seventeenth-century civil war, the story features a husband-and-wife architect and doctor, both of whom possess magical powers and face knotty problems. The architect has to build a temple on cursed ground. The doctor must deal with a rapist and a royal escape. Too much is left undeveloped or put offstage, but what is presented is done with such command of the language and historical detail and such superlative characterization that Gentle may be forgiven far more vices than the book has. Good for most fantasy collections.

Roland Green