Part of Series
There Is More Than One History Of The World In a brutal age of bloodshed and miracles where dark sorcery has extinguished the sun, the fate of Western Europe, Africa—and perhaps all the world—rests in the hands of a warrior woman named Ash. The undefeated legions that are the army of Carthage rampage across the kingdoms of Europe. Beneath a sunless sky, Burgundy alone stands in the path of the Visigoth horde and their legendary slave general, the Faris. Deep in enemy territory lies a living stone idol of frightening power that must be destroyed if anyone is to survive, a being that whispers in Ash's soul, that has guided her through every military campaign, that only she and her enemy—her twin—can hear. But there is an even greater evil that lurks at Carthage, one that created the stone idol and shaped Ash's existence. It plots with deadly purpose the final annihilation that will wipe Burgundy from the face of the earth. For Burgundy lies at the heart of it all—the richest prize in Europe and the key to the world—the jewel of the Carthaginian campaign.
Author
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.
