A Sundial in a Grave

1610

By Mary Gentle

2003

First Published

3.59

Average Rating

688

Number of Pages

21H00M

Audio Length

"First-rate speculative fiction from a very talented writer and a fascinating evocation of a turbulent, deeply significant moment in European history. ” — Washington Post Book World A sweeping, picaresque historical novel about two dueling swordsmen and the plot to kill a king in Renaissance Europe, A Sundial in a Grave is Shakespeare in Love meets The Three Musketeers, with a distinct edge 1610: Continental Europe is briefly at peace after years of war, but Henri IV of France is planning to invade the German principalities. In England, only 5 years earlier, conspirators nearly succeeded in blowing up King James I and his Parliament. The seeds of the English Civil War and the Thirty Years War are visibly being sown, and the possibility for both enlightenment and disaster abounds. But Valentin Rochefort, duellist, down-at-heels aristocrat and spy for the Duc de Sully, France’s powerful finance minister, could care less. Until he is drawn into the glittering palaces, bawdy back streets and stunning theatrics of Renaissance France and Shakespearian London in a deadly plot to both kill King James I and to save him. Determined to save his liege Sully, Rochefort’s journey will take him as far away as the distant Nippons, and as close as the truths of his own heart. This swordsman without a conscience is about to find himself caught between loyalty, love, and blackmail, between kings, queens, politicians and Rosicrucians—and the woman he has, unknowingly, crossed land and sea to meet.

Avg Rating

3.59

Number of Ratings

530

5 STARS

24%

4 STARS

34%

3 STARS

25%

2 STARS

10%

1 STARS

goodreads

Author

Mary Gentle

Author · 19 books

This author also writes under the pseudonym of Roxanne Morgan Excerpted from Wikipedia: Mary Gentle's first published novel was Hawk in Silver (1977), a young-adult fantasy. She came to prominence with the Orthe duology, which consists of Golden Witchbreed (1983) and Ancient Light (1987). The novels Rats and Gargoyles (1990), The Architecture of Desire (1991), and Left to His Own Devices (1994), together with several short stories, form a loosely linked series (collected in White Crow in 2003). As with Michael Moorcock's series about his anti-heroic Jerry Cornelius, Gentle's sequence retains some basic facts about her two protagonists Valentine (also known as the White Crow) and Casaubon while changing much else about them, including what world they inhabit. Several take place in an alternate-history version of 17th century and later England, where a form of Renaissance Hermetic magic has taken over the role of science. Another, Left To His Own Devices, takes place in a cyberpunk-tinged version of our own near future. The sequence is informed by historically existing ideas about esotericism and alchemy and is rife with obscure allusions to real history and literature. Grunts! (1992) is a grand guignol parody of mass-market high fantasy novels, with orcs as heroes, murderous halflings, and racist elves.