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Books - Venice: Pure City
Mar. 6th, 2011 03:49 pmVenice is by Peter Ackroyd, and I suppose if you've already read his London: The Biography, then you already know whether or not you will like this book.
Otherwise, ok, hrm, y'know what this stuff is? This is pure world-building city-crack here. I don't know if it is good history. I don't honestly care if it's good history. It is the stuff of building fabulous stories. Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser would have a grand time here. Mr. Locke Lamora would fit right in in Ackroyd's rendition of Venice. Vlad Taltos could vacation there and no one would even notice the extra confusion trailing in his wake.
The men in capes will come to get you, toss their capes over your head, and disappear you into an underground chamber where the theater of punishment will be enacted! The trade guilds will process through the streets before imprisoning you on an island where you will learn alchemical secrets but never be allowed to leave on pain of death! You will send ships to steal the dead bodies of saints in order to buttress your founding legends! There will be spies, code books, and secrets. You will be encouraged to spy on your neighbors and drop your accusations into the carved stone lions' mouths of each district. Your squares will be the sites of tournaments, of street fairs, of singing, of public marital disputes.
Your convents and boneyards will disappear in to the sea, and no one will be able to trace them on a map centuries later. Your private villas will become convents, your convents will become sanatoriums, your nuns will peer at passing street scenes through grates, you will stare at your neighbor through opera glasses. Your group will wear embroidered tights on one leg only and dress up for mock battles on the city steps, that memorialize real battles, that cover current political agendas. You will paint your houses with gold. Your courtesans will be spies, your ambassadors will be spies, your merchants will be spies and your spies will be merchants.
So, yeah. Delicious if that's the sort of thing you like and I do. I like the way it's woven together ahistorically (by random little themed chapters), because it makes it easier to build stories around it in my head without worrying about what happened when to whom in real life.
Otherwise, ok, hrm, y'know what this stuff is? This is pure world-building city-crack here. I don't know if it is good history. I don't honestly care if it's good history. It is the stuff of building fabulous stories. Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser would have a grand time here. Mr. Locke Lamora would fit right in in Ackroyd's rendition of Venice. Vlad Taltos could vacation there and no one would even notice the extra confusion trailing in his wake.
The men in capes will come to get you, toss their capes over your head, and disappear you into an underground chamber where the theater of punishment will be enacted! The trade guilds will process through the streets before imprisoning you on an island where you will learn alchemical secrets but never be allowed to leave on pain of death! You will send ships to steal the dead bodies of saints in order to buttress your founding legends! There will be spies, code books, and secrets. You will be encouraged to spy on your neighbors and drop your accusations into the carved stone lions' mouths of each district. Your squares will be the sites of tournaments, of street fairs, of singing, of public marital disputes.
Your convents and boneyards will disappear in to the sea, and no one will be able to trace them on a map centuries later. Your private villas will become convents, your convents will become sanatoriums, your nuns will peer at passing street scenes through grates, you will stare at your neighbor through opera glasses. Your group will wear embroidered tights on one leg only and dress up for mock battles on the city steps, that memorialize real battles, that cover current political agendas. You will paint your houses with gold. Your courtesans will be spies, your ambassadors will be spies, your merchants will be spies and your spies will be merchants.
So, yeah. Delicious if that's the sort of thing you like and I do. I like the way it's woven together ahistorically (by random little themed chapters), because it makes it easier to build stories around it in my head without worrying about what happened when to whom in real life.
