By Rebecca Bradley
Lady in Gil is the first installment of Rebecca Bradley’s critically acclaimed Gil Trilogy…
All the dreams of the barbarously occupied kingdom of Gil depend on its greatest hero. Too bad only his brother is available….
“Enthralling…[Bradley] tells her story with great pace, and a vivid and subtle imagination.” –The Times (London)
“Tasty mind candy…an entertaining romp with intelligent credentials, plenty of action and an original approach.” –Infinity
“Well written and engaging.”–SFX Magazine
“An adroit mixture of wry humor and seriousness…lively.”–Starburst
Here are some Amazon reviews of the book:
I will confess I read this book, in fact the entire series, in paperback, but I wanted my own copy, so I was delighted when it became available on Kindle. Gil is a sad country that has been overrun by a vicious enemy. The original inhabitants of Gil live in subjection and squalor! They need someone to lead them out of bondage. Enter our hero – Tig. Tig doesn’t really want the job, but he valiantly gives it his best. How he does the job is a great yarn! But I didn’t like the ending, and will tell you so you don’t throw your computer across the room when you read it, that it will work out to your relief in Book 2 (Scion’s Lady – I can’t wait for that to come out in digital so I can read it again!) This book is hilarious, heart wrenching, and great fun to read.
I’ve been on a pop-fantasy kick for a month or so now, due to stress and the need for some escapism :-). Limited myself to books of 300 pages or less; no trilogies, must have characters speaking in modern-not-archaic English, that sort of thing. Mind candy. So imagine my shock when this particular bit of mind candy turned out to be unique, thought provoking, and ultimately borderline Greek-tragic.
Bradley takes your biggest, hugest, most dusty-hoary fantasy cliche of all time — unlikely hero must find talisman to free the land from evil — and turns it upside down simply by injecting a bit of reality into it. A cold dash of fist-to-the-gut realism. The evil empire is not magic, for one (nice!). And what happens when the upheaval is over? No happy-go-lucky jaunt off into the perfect sunset for these revolutionaries.
Of course now I hop onto Amazon to gush in surprise, only to find that this is indeed a trilogy and now I’m hooked. Darn.
Just an FYI for an issue I’ve seen raised — “Primate,” though it sounds odd, IS actually a religious term. (It’s one of the titles of the Archbishop of Canterbury, for a start. Means “first,” from the Latin “Primus.”) And a “flamen” is an ancient priest of Rome. So don’t let the odd terms bother you — Bradley has actually done research and is not merely making up stuff for the heck of it.
(I also have to point out — the cover art has no bearing on the story whatsoever. Also the book is short, therefore very plot-driven, less of the character-driven stuff I generally prefer. But you know what? I needed a break — this was it.)
Lady in Gil is one of my favorite books. I read it on the plane from Nashville to Hartford, and enjoyed every minute of it.
At the beginning it was predictable, the usual reluctant hero shtick, but very amusing. The characters were great, all well developed and most of them original. What is unnaparent until the last few chapters however, is the complexity of the plot that Bradley has been hinting at. The ending is SO surprising. There is NO WAY any one could have predicted it. NO WAY. If anyone tells you this book is predictable, they’re crazy.
And listen to Tig’s mother. She’s always right.Why, why is John Grisham famous, or Danielle Steel, or Robert Jordan, when Rebecca Bradley languishes relatively undiscovered?
Lady in Gil is one of those marvellous books where one begins reading without expectation, becomes delighted partway through the first paragraph, and by the turn of the first page know that one is in the hands of a great, not good, writer.
I’m not ordinarily a fan of secondary world fantasy, but those I read I read in the hopes of their being half as good as this book is–funny, poignant, charming, exciting, different. The protagonist is an archivist, forced into hero-ness after all the previous, better-suited heroes had failed at their task. The story is suprising, exceedingly well-written, and the subsequent two novels do not disappoint.
Please, read it. Then tell two friends.
Note: a 3 star ranking from me is actually pretty good; I reserve 4 stars for tremendously good works, and 5 only for the rare few that are or ought to be classic; unfortunately most books published are 2 or less.
My hands wouldn’t let me close this book once I had it open. Rebecca Bradley has an excellent voice in her characters when she writes, and I strongly recommend this book to anyone looking for a good story, interesting characters, and good laughs (the time our hero spends hiding away in the concubines’ sleeping chambers gave me a great number of laughs). The subtleties that Bradley puts into her characters to make them so unique and distinct paints such a realistic portrait of the world you dive into that it puts you directly in it.
Go pick up this book. I highly doubt you’ll regret it.