A male voice interrupted
my thoughts, speaking the language of Carthage. 'Papers, freeman—'
The man broke off as I
turned to face him, as people sporadically do.
For a moment he stood
staring at me in the flaring naphtha lights of the harbour hall.
'—freewoman?' he
speculated.
The opening five paragraphs
of Mary Gentle's Ilario: The Lion's Eye lay two of the novels central
themes squarely on the table: parent-child relationships and the uncertainties
of gender identity. There are many
others — political manoeuvring, the nature of history, the ideals of
Renaissance art — but these two take us straight to the heart of the book.
Ilario is an alternative history novel set in the same
"First History" as the earlier Ash: A Secret History, but
about half a century earlier (necessarily earlier, though the reason for that
necessity is a massive spoiler for Ash). This is a version of the 15th century in which much is the same
as the history we know, but much very different. Unlike Ash, though, which includes both SF and fantasy
elements, this contains only one or two aspects that set it aside from straight
history, if not entirely the history we're familiar with.
The book's written in first
person which, as we quickly discover, is a practical necessity as well as
narratively appropriate. Ilario, a
former privileged slave, is a pure hermaphrodite, who not only has the physical
aspects of both genders in equal measure but also has a personal identity in
which they are equally balanced. Just
imagine writing 663 pages while trying to skirt around the issue of whether the
central character should be called he or she.
The illegitimate child of a
nobleman's wife and a soldier, Ilario has been the King's Freak to an Iberian
kingdom (though not exactly one of the Iberian kingdoms we know) and freed just
before the start of the novel. All s/he
(it'll have to do) wants is to be a painter in the new style that's challenging
traditional mediaeval art, but life isn't that simple, and s/he unwittingly
becomes the centre of a political crisis that envelopes much of the
Mediterranean world.
The Mediterranean world of
the First History, that is. Ash began
with a Europe that seemed normal enough — just odd hints that all is not quite
what it seems — before confronting us with an invasion from the Visigothic
kingdom of Carthage, which most certainly doesn't belong in any history we
know. Ilario, as we've seen,
opens in Carthage, and quickly introduces us to many other differences in this
version of history. Rome is now a
crumbling backwater, and Constantinople is the centre of an Egyptian empire in
exile — though still threatened by the Turks.
There's no sign of either an Arabic empire or of Islam at all, while Christianity
has a very different form and background, seeming to have been European in
origin.
Gentle introduces a number
of historical figures into this world, including Johannes Gutenberg, the
pioneer of printing, though in many cases they're slightly displaced in
time. For the most part, though, it's
populated by exotic figures like Ammianus, King-Caliph of Carthage, or
Ty-ameny, Queen of Alexandria-in-Exile.
Not to mention the lost fleet of Zheng He from the strange land of Chin
— presumably this history had no Marco Polo to bring back word from the great
civilisations of the east.
Like all alternative
history, Ilario is to some extent commenting on history as we know it by
showing how it could have been different.
Fascinating as this is, the story is fundamentally about the characters,
and they're a varied and engaging crowd.
Besides Ilario, the most important are Rekhmire' — the Egyptian eunuch,
book-buyer and spy — Ilario's father Honorius and mother Rosamunda, and
Rosamunda's husband Videric. The cast
ranges, though, from Honorius's mercenaries (Gentle has always done soldiers
well) to the fascinating Queen Ty-ameny.
Not to mention Onorata, the
baby Ilario improbably manages to produce.
Although the baby's main contribution to the action is to scream and
yell, it's most of all in Ilario's relationship with Onorata that both the
gender and parent-child issues come to their head. Is Ilario the child's mother or father? S/he feels s/he should be the mother, but only knows how to be
the baby's father, and that imperfectly.
On the other hand, just as
Ilario has an improbable number of parents (five, counting step and foster)
Onorata has "fathers" on all sides, most of whom seem better at it
than Ilario. Ilario has been rejected
by his/her mother, who has made a number of attempts to kill the
"monster" she's produced, and consequently has no model of parenthood
to create a relationship with Onorata — or thinks s/he doesn't, while actually
not making a bad job of it.
The other main theme of the
novel is the coming of the Renaissance — in the First History, just as in ours
— in all its forms. Ilario's training
as an artist focuses on the revolutionary concept of painting what you see, not
what you know is there, and this concept informs all aspects of the story, from
Ilario's unique gender to the politics.
Especially the
politics. The Renaissance produced not
only Leonardo and Erasmus, but also Machiavelli (pictured left), and the realpolitik he
described is alive and well in Ilario.
Even the more sympathetic politicians, such as Ty-ameny, are
unsentimental and realistic, exploiting the difference between what's actually
there and what people "know" to be there.
Ilario isn't for readers who look for breakneck
action. It certainly has action,
excitement and terror (the attack of the stone golem, one of the book's few
fantasy elements, has all these) but it also has long sections of reflection
and discussion: the final five chapters, for instance, are essentially a single
conversation. Personally, most of these
passages held me spellbound in their complexity and the ideas they throw out,
but probably wouldn't interest all readers.
Occasionally (very
occasionally) there's too much of this even for my tastes. In the final scene, for instance, the gender
politics that have been subtly shown and implied throughout become perhaps
overstated, though only by a little, though the relationships being explored at
the same time certainly prevent any loss of interest.
Mary Gentle's world-making
and her philosophical subtexts are among her great strengths, but (as should be
the case in fiction) her greatest is her ability to create characters capable
of fascinating the reader. Ilario, in
particular, is someone who attracts and exasperates in equal measure:
idealistic, reckless, intelligent, conflicted, occasionally clueless, with an
explosive temper. S/he sees everything
and everyone in utterly visual terms, as an artist. Even (especially) at moments of greatest tension, when s/he
expresses the tension by defining exactly what colours would be needed to paint
the scene.
Gentle has something of a
habit of creating odd couples (Valentine and Casaubon, Rochefort and Dariole)
and Ilario and Rekhmire' make an excellent addition. The hermaphrodite and the eunuch, they seem opposites but fit
together perfectly. And at least they
have similar tempers.
Ilario: The Lion's Eye isn't quite my favourite Mary Gentle book (that's
still the incomparable Rats & Gargoyles) but it's certainly helped
maintain her as my favourite living author (formerly jointly with Iain Banks,
who alas no longer qualifies). I'd
definitely recommend it to anyone who appreciates wonderful characters, epic
sweeps of history and the challenge to think as you read.
Note: The UK paperback
edition of this, with the cover shown, is a single-volume edition, but in the
US and on Kindle it's published in two volumes as Ilario: The Lion's Eye and
Ilario: The Stone Golem.
However, these are in no way separate books, merely a novel published in
two parts. And, if you have the full
edition, don't allow yourself to be seduced into buying the
"continuation", since you'll have already read it.
