http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/1338809.html

A few years ago, shortly before I began bookblogging, I read and totally loved Mary Gentle's Ash. More recently, I was rather disappointed with her 1610. I'm afraid that White Crow was more towards the 1610 end of the scale. It brings together three short stories about her protagonists Valentine and Casaubon, and three novels, Rats and Gargoyles, Left to his Own Devices and The Architecture of Desire. Most of the stories are set in varyingly 17th or 18th century milieux, with a heavy admixture of Hermetic magic. I am afraid the only one I really liked was the exception to this setting, the near-future cyberpunkish Left to his Own Devices; the rest all lost me somewhere between the showing and the telling. I guess they are of interest as rehearsals for Ash, but I couldn't really recommend them. ( )

Based on the popularity of the fantastic "Ash: A Secret History", some bright spark at Gollancz came up with idea of churning out Ash-size omnibus versions of Mary Gentle's older novels, some of which predate Ash by more than ten years.

Which is no bad thing at all, especially since they're damn fine books, and a little hard to get hold of now. Yet the reason the White Crow omnibus only gets 3.5 stars from me is no reflection on the quality of the stories; it's more a question of the slightly strange order the publishers decided the put them in.

The omnibus features the White Crow novella "Beggars in Satin" and "The Knot Garden", the short story "Black Motley" plus the three full-length White Crow novels, "Rats and Gargoyles", "Left to His Own Devices" and "The Architecture of Desire". In that order. Whilst the 'trick' of the White Crow novels is that protagonists Valentine and Casaubon get on with their lives without remarking upon their changing worlds, times and number of children, and Mary Gentle herself claims not be "responsible for the order in which these people live their lives" ("White Crow", pg. xi), there is a sort of coherent chronology to them, which I personally think you can see reflected in the relationship between Valentine and Casaubon, and the levels of ‘technology’ which surround them.

There's also the question of the inclusion of "Black Motley". It's set in the same word as "Rats and Gargoyles", yet a good deal of time later. As Valentine and Casaubon are no longer part of that reality, it would make more sense to have placed "...Motley" either immediately after "Rats..." or right at the end of the book, as is quasi the case in the 1995 Orbit printing of "Left to His Own Devices".

Like wise, it would have seemed a little more logical to put the major novels in chronological order, publication-wise. This might just be my own personal reading, but the ending to "...Devices" seems a lot more definite than that of "...Desire". Without giving anything away, one tends to finish "...Desire" trying to work out just what Valentine will do next. (I say tend to. There are people who go “URGH! Double rape!” and give up on the book before the end...)

My pedantry aside, there's another reason that the White Crow omnibus didn't quite impress me enough to get that fourth star. Simply, although it condenses all the White Crow stories and novella AND "Black Motley" into one lovely, shiny white hand-luggage-sized book, and puts in an introduction from the author, it doesn't actual offer anything new up to the established (or rabid, in my case...) fan. The foreword, titled "Gargoyles, Architecture and Devices" might have been updated for the book, but it was viewable on various places on the internet in an article form for some time before the omnibus was actually published.

So, to wrap it up, it's a nice, portable omnibus edition, but not really worth your extra cash if you already own the novels and either of Mary Gentle's short story collections. ( )