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A review by serena_dawn
Soldier of the Mist by Gene Wolfe
5.0
I imagine a Romanticized reason to why we call the language of Rome, Latin, is for their latro, or soldiers. However, that's not a true linguist root.
I have wanted to read this series for many years, before, in fact, the Percy Jackson books came out, but it's one of those books which I had never much luck in finding. If honest I am touchy about historical fantasy and mythology, if done wrong, I can't seem to keep my temper and it will sour my reading for weeks - if done right (and this is done almost PERFECTLY!) I just adore it to pieces.
Latro wakes after a battle (based on a factual battle in 479 BC which Herodotos relates) with a head injury, he doesn't know his name, his people, his home, or even what side of the battle he had been fighting on! But, it's supposed by the physician that is the Great King's although no one knows his true name, his friend known throughout the book only as the mysterious "black man", who speaks neither Hellenic Greek or the language that Latro naturally writes in, yet remains a loyal if silent friend, with a equally unknown past, while they communicate in a finger language.
It is soon found that Latro has offended Demeter, the Great Mother, and at the dawn of each day he forgets what he knew the day previously. Yet without the mist of memory he sees the divine gods and goddesses of Greece. On his journey he is helped by Io and Pindaros, enslaved by Hypereides, Kalleos and the 'Rope Men' regent, Pausanias.
What Latro's most desires is to find his friends, and, he hopes, countrymen, and this is promised to him by a daughter of Demeter, but the promises and favors of goddesses can be perilous as Eurykles, or "Drakaina" could prove at the end.
There is a certain charm in the use of "translated" places names from Greece by Latro, that gives a sense of displaced wrongness throughout, and pulls sympathy to Latro and his journey.
I have wanted to read this series for many years, before, in fact, the Percy Jackson books came out, but it's one of those books which I had never much luck in finding. If honest I am touchy about historical fantasy and mythology, if done wrong, I can't seem to keep my temper and it will sour my reading for weeks - if done right (and this is done almost PERFECTLY!) I just adore it to pieces.
Latro wakes after a battle (based on a factual battle in 479 BC which Herodotos relates) with a head injury, he doesn't know his name, his people, his home, or even what side of the battle he had been fighting on! But, it's supposed by the physician that is the Great King's although no one knows his true name, his friend known throughout the book only as the mysterious "black man", who speaks neither Hellenic Greek or the language that Latro naturally writes in, yet remains a loyal if silent friend, with a equally unknown past, while they communicate in a finger language.
It is soon found that Latro has offended Demeter, the Great Mother, and at the dawn of each day he forgets what he knew the day previously. Yet without the mist of memory he sees the divine gods and goddesses of Greece. On his journey he is helped by Io and Pindaros, enslaved by Hypereides, Kalleos and the 'Rope Men' regent, Pausanias.
What Latro's most desires is to find his friends, and, he hopes, countrymen, and this is promised to him by a daughter of Demeter, but the promises and favors of goddesses can be perilous as Eurykles, or "Drakaina" could prove at the end.
There is a certain charm in the use of "translated" places names from Greece by Latro, that gives a sense of displaced wrongness throughout, and pulls sympathy to Latro and his journey.