Customer Reviews

Ilario: The Lion's Eye

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Ilario has spent childhood as a slave, as the Iberian "King's Freak." A true hermaphrodite, abandoned as an infant to die, Ilario recently found out his/her mother was a court lady, the wife of the king's chief advisor, Lord Videric--who wants to kill him/her to stop scandal and keep their positions.

At the start of the book Ilario has come to Carthage, a city that is always in darkness (one wonders if any plants survive--or how the darkness comes about, but this isn't revealed). He/she's recently been freed by the Iberian King and wants to go to Rome to study art. Even the guy at customs wonders why an artist would come to a place of darkness. Ilario takes the suggestion of the customs guy and stays with him at his mother's place--and has sex... and ends up drugged and sold into slavery.

And the misadventures and odd decisions do not stop there--they, naturally, get worse, as the scandal may affect the course of kingdoms and Ilario's father appears to help, to his own cost. Ilario is NOT an easy person for me to like. I almost threw the book across the room half a dozen times. For instance, Ilario is immediately sold to a large but soft-spoken Alexandrian, Rekmire', and immediately demands to be allowed to practice art when not doing scribe work (IS there time-off for a slave?). Rekmire' seems to go out of his way to accommodate Ilario (who also refuses to sleep with Rekmire' who asked politely). Things continue in this vein--Ilario continues to rush head-strong through life, others want to kill him, friends try to help him. And the first book doesn't really end so much as pause, and the tale continues right from that moment in the second book.

Somehow, after simply deciding that Ilario was a bit crazy-- as well as those around him/her-- I kept being curious about what would happen. I picked up the second book when I got the first and am reading that, now. So far, there has been no temptation to throw it against the wall, but I remain somewhat detached from the characters and the tale, even though it still holds my interest.

EDIT: I'm in the middle of the 2nd book now and all the characters are MUCH more fun and likable now. Ilario still makes some crazy decisions, but they are more and more understandable, given the established character. I suppose I'm just getting more used to him/her! I think I would give the first book 4 stars, now, in retrospect--but can't change it in the edit function.

I loved Gentle's "A Secret History" and thoroughly enjoyed "1610", but couldn't manage to finish "Rats and Gargoyles". I had high expectations for Gentle's "Ilario" series because it was set in the same world as "A Secret History". Having finished The Lion's Eye, I'm not sure if I'll read the next, The Stone Golem, even though I purchased both books.

Gentle's world building is wonderful, but in this outing, the characters are not deep or engaging. Ilario, a "true hermaphrodite" possessed of functioning sets of male and female organs, is not as interesting a character as this setup suggests. Aside from an early sexual encounter and a midpoint attempt to marry, Ilario's sexuality seems unimportant to him/her, and is mainly important to the plot for the reactions it provokes in other characters. Ilario's true passion is to study art, and Gentle is moderately successful in portraying it. But Ilario's quest too often leads him/her heedlessly into danger-- a danger established in the first pages and which powers the plot as Ilario flees from it. The result is that Ilario comes awfully close to resembling a stock heroine of the too-stupid-to-live variety. (She's fiesty! She's spirited! She tosses her head and defies the hero! ..and gets into trouble and needs to be rescued! Again!)

Ilario is fortunate to immediately meet up with a stock romance hero-- Rehkmire' is kind, tolerant of Ilario's emotionaly outbursts, amused by his/her cheekiness, always ready to come to the rescue, and a voluntary eunuch. Unfortunately this paragon adds no tension to Ilario's story. Ilario's long lost father also makes an early appearance, and is in every respect the fantasy father that any orphan would dream of. This all too agreeable trio make dull traveling companions through Gentle's fascinating alternate Renaissance world.

The Lion's Eye ends in a cliff-hanger involving the most interesting character yet introduced-- that of an assassin sent to kill Ilario. I might read the second book to find out what happens to him.

The problem here is that the author tries too hard.

This novel (the first in a trilogy) is set in an alternative XV century where people and events from our history are mixed with plausible ones, plausible if you assume Muslims (who are never mentioned) never conquered northern Africa which remained in the hands of Visigoths; that a schism divided the Christianity; that ellenistic Egyptians were forced (by whom?) to move to Costantinopole and reestablished their kingdom there.

A true hermaphrodite is chosen as the main character, a painter, which is not only potentially interesting but gives the opportunity to explore conventions, gender, society and physical places in an unconventional way. Yet this opportunity is not always exploited, Ilario looking for most of the time a spoiled brat (of whichever sex).

If assumptions are interesting there are downsides:

Ilario is 24 year old but generally acts and reasons like someone ten years its junior, despite the assumed time (in the middle ages people at 24 were married with children) and his having been brought up as a courtier/jester in a dangerous court. Sometimes, suddenly, the author chooses to show us how worldly and mature its upbringing has made it and we have a full grown, dangerous individual who nonetheless had time to train both as a soldier and as a lady but never achieved a decent skill in his chosen profession.

The plot is well contrived but at times rushed, at times slow to the point of dragging.

The writing is deliberately simple, made of short, abrupt sentences, everywhere we are made clear how painstaking the author's efforts have been.

All the above to say that I was bored most of the time (I still do not know whether I shall buy the second episode), the exceptions being nicely executed action scenes.
The book cover mentions "hot sex scenes" which are completely absent: there's one sex act, uncharacteristically muted, so that if I do not recommend this book to minors is not because of the sex but because of the effort it takes to appreciate the intended points of this work.

Insipid blurb on the cover aside, the book is a nice editorial object for a paperback: nice bookcover, fine paper, spotless printing in a most elegant font.

Borrow it before you buy it.

Mary Gentle opens up a world where Illario is struggling to learn an art form that barely exists. The characters are so human, their motivations so complex and the writing is so smooth it was like watching a movie. Great plot with many unexpected avenues, human, imaginiative. I could go on forever but I wont. Do yourself a favor and read it.

Ilario is a man-woman that fled from her old life and her mother to journey to a new land to be an apprentice painter. Along the way she meets some people that are friendly towards her and some that want to kill her. There is a tiny bit of political intrigue and a tiny bit of gender exploration, and that's about it. I was enjoying myself well enough but I got to a point where I realized nothing was going to happen, and there wasn't much of a plot. Ilario is not likable, he-she acts like a spoiled 12 year old girl. I never got a feel for the gender stigma because no one really made fun of him-her. I really think I wasted hours of my life reading this. The painter was amusing, the Egyptian was nice, but the main character is irritating and the plot is non existent. There is a group of people traveling from city to city occasionally running into danger and getting hurt. Hopefully that will save you the need to read it.

I brought a copy of Ilario: The Lion's Eye with me on vacation, and my only regret is that I didn't bring the companion volume, Ilario: The Stone Golem, with me because I devoured The Lion's Eye on the first day.

**MINOR SPOILERS FOLLOW**

This is a book about art, gender, family, friendship, and politics . . . and not necessarily in that order.
First of all, let's talk art. The driving force behind the story is Ilario's quest to study the new art of painting the thing itself - the world as it appears to the naked eye, rather than the iconographic representation. It's odd to think of a time when realism and perspective were undiscovered concepts, and it makes for a fascinating story.

Look beneath the art, and the Lion's Eye is the story of a rather unique and unusual friendship between Ilario, the hermaphrodite artist, and Rekhmire, the eunuch book buyer (and, we suspect, Egyptian spy). Their relationship is handled so beautifully, and so naturally, almost as if they were siblings or best friends getting reacquainted after a long absence. There is a lot of good-natured ridicule of their respective gender identities, but it's just that - good-natured and friendly. By the time we're introduced to Neferet, the feminized eunuch book buyer, her gender identity is almost a non-event.

Lastly, this is a book about politics and family. Poor Ilario must contend with the mother who left her 'freak' infant to die in the cold, the adopted parents who raised him and sold him to be the King's freak, and the father who returns from the Crusades to discover he has a son-daughter. If I could have chosen my parents, I don't think I could have even asked for a father as loving, understanding, and fiercely dedicated as Honorius. Oh, and just to round out the theme of family, Ilario must also contend with the fact that he-she is pregnant!

This is not the book I expected it to be, and that is too its credit. I must say, the ending is quite a cliff-hanger, but knowing there is a second volume eases some of the worry for lovely Ilario. Here's hoping The Stone Golem is a worthy conclusion to the tale.

In the fifteenth century Ilario was born a hermaphrodite and his mother Rosamunda wanted nothing to do with this abomination so Ilario became a side show freak for King Rodrigo of Iberia. When he-she is finally freed from his captivity as a monarch's freak Ilario journeys across the Mediterranean to Carthage where the sunless dark Penitence serves as an encouragement to his plans to become a painter.

Upon arrival, instead he-she is drugged and sold to Alexandrian even as his mother and stepfather learn that her offspring had been freed and plan to send this embarrassment to the hell he-she came from before he harms their position of influence if it becomes known that he came from her womb. Influential Alexandrian arranges for Rosamunda to be deported back to Iberia. He sends Ilario to Rome to study painting as he has plans for this he-she.

This is an interesting character study set in the alternate historical realm of Ash although fifty years earlier. Ilario is an interesting protagonist as he-she lands in one predicament after another in this well written coming of age tale. Although the plot seems more towards providing Mary Gentle's fans the recent history before the events in Ash, readers will enjoy learning of Caliph ruled ever dark Carthage (no explanation as to what caused the Penitence) and Pope-less Rome by following the escapades of a wannabe painter with a gender identity issue.

Harriet Klausner

The background world is fun to learn about, but the book seems a bit dull. As far as I can tell, Ilario's condition is basically just a plot hook. No disadvantages.