Subject: Review: Rats and Gargoyles

From: [email-masked] (JIM HENRY)
Date: Mon, 4 Sep 1995 18:58:18 GMT

_Rats and Gargoyles_ by Mary Gentle (Roc, 1992) is a very odd semi-
historical fantasy.  The setting, a city at "the heart of the world," fits
nowhere in our history, but there are enough references to historical
persons, organizations and so forth (Paracelsus, the Freemasons, the English
black bee, the Temple of Solomon) that it isn't a pure invented-world
fantasy either.  However you like to categorize it, it's good stuff.  The
world-building of the city called the heart of the world is very well-done
indeed, down to often-neglected details such as the dialect of its
inhabitants - not pseudo-archaic, as in some fantasies, or spell-breakingly
modern and colloquial, as in others, but unique and convincing.  Humans are
subject to Rats, and both are in turn subject to the thirty-six Decans,
powerful god-daemons incarnate in stone bodies.  Their mortal subjects labor
at continually building new extensions to the Fane at the center of the
city.
   The plot involves just that, plots.  The Freemasons, one of the Decans, a
Rat priest, and the Invisible College all have elaborate plans in action
which interfere with one another to interesting effect.  Whoever succeeds,
the results will be such as to change the city permanently, perhaps to
change the very nature of the world.
   There are four very nicely-done main characters, and numerous others are
no detriment to the story.
   A word may be in order about the nomenclature.  Most of the humans' names
are from our own history.  The Rats names sound for the most part French.
The Katayan names (I suppose I haven't said anything about the Katayans;
never mind, go read the book) are nicely alien.  I noticed at least two
names which might be a homage to James Branch Cabell (the book is dedicated
to him and to G. K. Chesterton), or which might have come from Cabell's own
historical sources.
   About the only major flaw I see is in the humour; it is too
self-conscious in many places, and so is not as funny as it could have been.
The characters know they are being funny, and it spoils the effect.
However, since it is not primarily a comedy (except perhaps in the Cabellian
sense; one might subtitle it "A Comedy of Architecture" :) this is not such
a flaw as to prevent my recommending it highly.

%A Gentle, Mary
%T Rats and Gargoyles
%I Roc
%D 1992
%K fantasy Renaissance Cabell
%G 0-451-45173-2
%P 475 pp

cc: ALL in 170 on FTL
    ALL in 8 on FTL

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 * RM 1.3  * Eval Day 92 * [email-masked]