Instead, he's written a fantasy novel set in Venice itself, in 1407, at the peak of its status as a mercantile world power. dozens of fantasy-novel settings draw their inspiration from the same source, rippling it and transmuting it along the way.Sci-fi veteran Jon Courtenay Grimwood's new book The Fallen Blade (the woefully-titled first book in 'The Assassini Trilogy') indulges gloriously in the same transmutations, but he hasn't bothered to transport the results. Thousands of tourists every year take in the sights of the place and leave without ever having understood what they were seeing: Viriconium, Lankhmar, New Crobuzon.
The trite modern confection of the place sanitizes a deep and complicated history, a history built on a thousand years of knife fights, desperate assignations, and insane gambles on heavy-laden ships at sea. The Fallen Blade (Act I of the Assassini Trilogy) Jon Courtenay Grimwood Orbit, 2011Venice, a critic has remarked, is a city of closed doors, inaccessible galleries, and hidden gardens.
