Ilario: The Lion’s Eye is set in the same alternate universe as Gentle’s book Ash: A Secret History. In this version of the world, Carthage has survived and become a formidable empire.
Ilario is a hermaphrodite, and a painter who longs to be a great artist. Seeking to become an apprentice to a master painter, Ilario travels to Rome via Carthage, in the process becoming a slave to the Egyptian eunuch Rekhmire’. Slavery is not the worst of Ilario’s problems, for his/her mother, ashamed of her “monster” child, is plotting Ilario’s death.
The book follows Ilario around Carthage, Rome, Venice and Constantinople, exploring Gentle’s alternate fifteenth-century world. And in this world Carthage is locked in eternal night, and some statues are golems, jointed and mobile.
This is a huge book, and was released in the US as two separate volumes (The Lion’s Eye and The Stone Golem). Gentle’s prose is lush, reflecting the canvases of Ilario’s world. It is interesting to compare the prose between this book and Ash, lush contrasting with harsh, reflecting the two different protagonists. It is not necessary to have read Ash to read Ilario, but it does add to the grounding of the world, and will allow the recognition of links between the books, enriching the reading experience.
Absolutely worth the read. Gentle is a master storyteller. This world feels real, even more real than true history at times.
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