 First edition cover | |
| Author | Jo Walton |
|---|---|
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Historical fantasy |
| Publisher | Tor Books |
Publication date | 28 May 2019 |
| Media type | |
| Pages | 384 (hardcover) |
| ISBN | 978-0-7653-7906-1 |
Lent is a 2019 fantasy novel by Jo Walton, about Girolamo Savonarola. It was first published by Tor Books, and was nominated for the Mythopoeic Fantasy Award.
In Renaissance Florence, Girolamo Savonarola is a Dominican friar with the gift of prophecy and the ability to see and banish demons. After Lorenzo di Medici dies in 1492, Girolamo gradually becomes more and more involved in politics, eventually culminating in his execution in 1498, and subsequent damnation to Hell.
He then finds himself in 1492 Florence again, and begins trying to change history.
In the Los Angeles Times , Cory Doctorow called it a "beautifully rendered retelling" of Savonarola's life, commending the "ringing verisimilitude of well-researched, real historical personages" who appeared in the novel, and noting that Walton portrays the basic concept of repeating historical events with "a new, rich ambiguity". [1] At National Public Radio , Amal el-Mohtar praised Walton's application of "mythographical playfulness" to Christian theology, her presentation of Savonarola as "a man wrestling with pride and its just causes", her depiction of Florence as a setting, and the book's overall narrative structure, but ultimately faulted the ending as "rushed" and "impatient". [2] In Locus , conversely, Gary K. Wolfe found the ending to "ingeniously satisf(y) both the terms of its 15th-century Florentine worldview and the SF-like machinery that makes it work." [3]
James Nicoll noted that the first half of the book can be considered "fairly straightforward historical fantasy: Italian history as it is known, but seasoned with demons and miracles", and lauded Walton's prose as "good to superlative". [4] The Globe and Mail proposed that it may bring Walton to the attention of "an even wider readership, crossing, as it does, the proverbial Arno into literary fiction territory." [5] The Winnipeg Free Press described it as "slow-moving but ultimately interesting", and – albeit "unique and thoughtful" – "(n)ot as revolutionary as Walton's other works." [6]
Lent was nominated for the 2020 Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Adult Literature. [7]
Girolamo Savonarola or Jerome Savonarola was an Italian Dominican friar from Ferrara and preacher active in Renaissance Florence. He was known for his prophecies of civic glory, the destruction of secular art and culture, and his calls for Christian renewal. He denounced clerical corruption, despotic rule, and the exploitation of the poor.
Cory Efram Doctorow is a Canadian-British blogger, journalist, and science fiction author who served as co-editor of the blog Boing Boing. He is an activist in favour of liberalising copyright laws and a proponent of the Creative Commons organization, using some of their licences for his books. Some common themes of his work include digital rights management, file sharing, and post-scarcity economics.
Jo Walton is a Welsh-Canadian fantasy and science fiction writer and poet. She is best known for the novel Among Others, which won the Hugo and Nebula Awards in 2012, and Tooth and Claw, which won the World Fantasy Award in 2004. Among Others is one of only seven novels to have been nominated for the Hugo, Nebula and World Fantasy Awards.
Tor Books is the primary imprint of Tom Doherty Associates, a publishing company based in New York City. It primarily publishes science fiction and fantasy titles.
Patricia Anne McKillip is an American author of fantasy and science fiction. She has been called "one of the most accomplished prose stylists in the fantasy genre", and writes predominantly standalone fantasy novels. Her work has won her numerous awards, including the World Fantasy Award for Lifetime Achievement in 2008.
Ian McDonald is a British science fiction novelist, living in Belfast. His themes include nanotechnology, postcyberpunk settings, and the impact of rapid social and technological change on non-Western societies.
Locus: The Magazine of The Science Fiction & Fantasy Field, founded in 1968, is an American magazine published monthly in Oakland, California. It is the news organ and trade journal for the English-language science fiction and fantasy fields. It also publishes comprehensive listings of all new books published in the genres. The magazine also presents the annual Locus Awards. Locus Online was launched in April 1997, as a semi-autonomous web version of Locus Magazine.
Random Acts of Senseless Violence is a dystopian and speculative fiction novel by Jack Womack.
Mary Robinette Kowal is an American author and puppeteer.
Tor.com is an online science fiction and fantasy magazine published by Tor Books, as well as an imprint of Tom Doherty Associates, a division of Macmillan Publishers. The imprint has also operated under the name Tordotcom Publishing since 2020. It publishes articles, reviews, original short fiction, re-reads and commentary on speculative fiction.
Among Others is a 2011 fantasy novel written by Welsh-Canadian writer Jo Walton, published originally by Tor Books. It is published in the UK by Corsair. It won the 2012 Nebula Award for Best Novel, the Hugo Award for Best Novel and the British Fantasy Award, and was a nominee for the World Fantasy Award for Best Novel.
Pirate Cinema is a novel by Cory Doctorow. It was released in October 2012. The novel is licensed under the terms of Creative Commons BY-NC-ND license and is available free on the author's website.
My Real Children is a 2014 alternate history novel by Welsh-Canadian writer Jo Walton, published by Tor Books. It was released on May 20, 2014.
Amal El-Mohtar is a Canadian poet and writer of speculative fiction. She has published short fiction, poetry, essays and reviews, and has edited the fantastic poetry quarterly magazine Goblin Fruit since 2006.
All the Birds in the Sky is a 2016 science fantasy novel by American writer and editor Charlie Jane Anders. It is her debut speculative fiction novel and was first published in January 2016 in the United States by Tor Books. The book is about a witch and a techno-geek, their troubled relationship, and their attempts to save the world from disaster. The publisher described the work as "blending literary fantasy and science fiction".
"Seasons of Glass and Iron" is a 2016 fantasy story by Canadian writer Amal El-Mohtar. It was first published in the anthology The Starlit Wood: New Fairy Tales.
Rivers Solomon is an American author of speculative and literary fiction. In 2018, they received the Community of Literary Magazines and Presses' Firecracker Award in Fiction for their debut novel, An Unkindness of Ghosts, and in 2020 their second novel, The Deep, won the Lambda Literary Award. Their third novel, Sorrowland, was published in May 2021.
"The Haunting of Tram Car 015" is an alternate history science fantasy police procedural novella by P. Djèlí Clark. It was first published by Tor.com, in 2019.
Or What You Will is a 2020 metafictional fantasy novel by Jo Walton, about immortality and creativity. It was first published by Tor Books.
An Informal History of the Hugos is a 2018 non-fiction book by Welsh-Canadian author Jo Walton. It examines whether the Hugo award nominees were the best five SF and fantasy books of the year, using as reference shortlists from other awards in the genre. It was well-received, and was nominated for the 2019 Hugo and Locus Awards, in the non-fiction category.