Ancient Light

Orthe #2

by Mary Gentle

This gracefully written sequel to Golden Witchbreed powerfully depicts the impact of a high-technology civilization on a decaying planet. Ten years after having served as Earth's first envoy to Orthe, which is struggling to survive after a planetwide holocaust millennia ago, Lynne de Lisle Christie returns there as an advisor to PanOceania, one of Earth's giant multinational companies, which is seeking to discover the technological secrets of the Goldens, the ruling race that had destroyed itself while almost obliterating Orthe. Christie seeks to help the native people, some of whom have been her friends, some her enemies, but all closely bound in her memories and loyalties. Instigated by the last of the Golden, a madwoman seeking domination, war between the poor and starving hiyeks of the Desert Coast and the land-loving telestres of the north is aggravated by smuggled high-tech weapons. Christie, while holding a dreadful secret from the Orthe's past, attempts to mediate. Gentle creates moving, different, yet recognizable societies and people that catch the reader's emotions as they struggle to save themselves.

Genres: Science Fiction, Fantasy, Fiction, Speculative Fiction, Science Fiction Fantasy, Space Opera

539 pages, Hardcover

First published December 15, 1988

About the author

This author also writes under the pseudonym of Roxanne Morgan

Excerpted from Wikipedia:
Mary Gentle's first published novel was Hawk in Silver (1977), a young-adult fantasy. She came to prominence with the Orthe duology, which consists of Golden Witchbreed (1983) and Ancient Light (1987).

The novels Rats and Gargoyles (1990), The Architecture of Desire (1991), and Left to His Own Devices (1994), together with several short stories, form a loosely linked series (collected in White Crow in 2003). As with Michael Moorcock's series about his anti-heroic Jerry Cornelius, Gentle's sequence retains some basic facts about her two protagonists Valentine (also known as the White Crow) and Casaubon while changing much else about them, including what world they inhabit. Several take place in an alternate-history version of 17th century and later England, where a form of Renaissance Hermetic magic has taken over the role of science. Another, Left To His Own Devices, takes place in a cyberpunk-tinged version of our own near future. The sequence is informed by historically existing ideas about esotericism and alchemy and is rife with obscure allusions to real history and literature.

Grunts! (1992) is a grand guignol parody of mass-market high fantasy novels, with orcs as heroes, murderous halflings, and racist elves.

Reviews

[Lynn Hall · Rating 2 out of 5]

Loved Golden Witchbreed,and have re-read it because it was so involving.To build such a living breathing world in the first book.........then tear it apart so thoroughly in this...........is sad and not logical.l'll stay with the first book and forget this was written.

[LemLems · Rating 2 out of 5]

If you loved Golden Witchbreed, I suggest you don't read this book.

I loved Golden Witchbreed, it's one of my favourites and I've reread it a few times. As a few other reviewers have said this sequel almost ruins Golden Witchbreed.

The pacing of the story is a bit off and Gentle goes into mind numbing detail in some areas where it turns out to be not worth it and skims over other aspects that really could have done with more exploration. Most upsetting is the lack of depth to the characters - even those who were so lovingly created to be complex and engaging in the first book are just thinly drawn shadows in this one.

There's a lot of debate about the ending of the book - whether it's the right one or the one people wanted to see. My objection is that the book doesn't really have an ending - it just stops and I was left with an overwhelming feeling of resentment about the hours I'd put into reading the book.

[Kate · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ancient Light is a lot less likable than Golden Witchbreed. Poor Orthe is being screwed over by an earth company ten years after Christie's original visit as envoy. And she is working for this company which is looking for Witchbreed artifacts to profit on. And of course she is torn between Orthe's wellbeing and her loyalty to her employer. It's the usual story of exploitation which descends into war. And this being Mary Gentle it doesn't all get nicely resolved.

I had no warning when I got to the final pages and there is NO saving this situation.They stand around bickering whilst the world is literally ending around them. It's quite horrifyingly hopeless and bleak. I don't think i will read this again.In fact as someone said in an Amazon review – I wish I could unread the last 50 pages because it has spoiled my enjoyment of Golden Witchbreed knowing that this happens.

[Jennifer · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this. I was so angry at Christie at times. I wanted to slap her.

This and it's predecessor Golden Witchbreed are up there in my favorite reads. I love Orthe. I love its people. I hope there is a planet out there like it, with Aliens like the Ortheans. Call me crazy.

Was this ultimately sad? Yes. heartbreaking. But what else could have happened? We could go all deep and talk about colonization, and culture, and should we or should we not involve ourselves. The writing was on the wall the minute we sent humans into space.

[Clare O'Beara · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the sequel to Golden Witchbreed which brought an ambassador to the planet Orthe. I found it an excellent book, well written and full of description of a people and planet like, but unlike, ours. However if you have not previously read it, you should read Ursula LeGuin's The Left Hand of Darkness first which is the archetypal tale of an ambassador to such a planet.

In this book the ambassador has returned after some years and diplomacy has progressed so that equipment is being imported to Orthe. Weaponry is not permitted, but as we are reminded, anything can be used as a weapon. The native people are derived from reptiles and are greatly suspicious of the artefacts of their previous ruling class, the golden witchbreed. No wonder, as we learn that the witchbreed were more malevolent and destructive than we had realised.

By the end it all goes horribly wrong and Gentle said that she wanted to create a Jacobean tragedy, with the stage littered with bodies at the closing curtain. Had she not done that, she could have invited us back to Orthe, her finest creation, at any time; so she and her readers are both the losers. Having read this first and admired it I was able to read the previous book so maybe that after all is the best approach to take.

I have never been able to get into any other books by Gentle. If you have not enjoyed her other works, do give the Orthe duet a try as the first in particular is a wonderful adventure full of excellently drawn characters.

[Yefim · Rating 2 out of 5]

It’s like the anti-Avatar!

In this sequel to “The Golden Witchbreed,” Earth idiot Lynne de Lisle Christie returns to the planet of Orthe ten years after she left. In that time, corporations took over Earth and now one of them wants Golden Witchbreed technology. Christie, now working for them, has divided loyalties, at best, as she tries to keep this encounter of colonizer and colonized from going the way these sort of encounters usually go.

It’s an interesting premise for a novel. Unfortunately, like always, Mary Gentle snatches failure from the jaws of success. It’s too long by about 200 pages, most of them dedicated to a mystery of whether a set of memories implanted in the protagonist during the first novel are a retcon, or an asspull. When things go to hell, they do so suddenly, with little emotional buildup. Then, as before, the whole thing degenerates into a series of meetings and negotiations, one after another, after another, for hundreds of pages. Things happen, and then there are more meetings. Very little happens until the very end.

The meetings waste everyone’s time, and everyone is being stupid, and in the end, life on the whole planet is wiped out by an ancient Witchbreed weapon that had been kept in check for millennia, until the failsafes were destroyed because the protagonists wasted too much time in a meeting. The end.

[Jordan Youd · Rating 2 out of 5]

I’ve been wrestling with what to say in this review for weeks because it was a singularly upsetting book to read. In the first book, author Mary Gentle, created a really interesting, semi-medieval, near earth world and then let her protagonist run amuck over the entire planet. In the first book, the author posed questions about morality versus love versus economics, which she brilliantly left unanswered. We were exposed to a different way of thinking and being in the world and it was really interesting.

Switch then to book two. The protagonist returns to Orthe with a heap of unexplained baggage and self recrimination, and in the employ of the enemy, yet she returns with an unjustified messiah complex that only she believes. The plot goes from bad to worse because the author constantly steers everything toward the negative, and instead of investigating interesting questions about what happens when human culture interacts with the alien, in Ancient Light, Gentle seems determined to burn shit down.

Where other stories of this ilk like Dances With Wolves and Avatar end positively, with the protagonist integrated and both cultures benefiting from their hybridization, Ancient Light ends in despair and utter tragedy. I don’t like to psychoanalyze authors, but this ending makes me wonder is Mary Gentle didn’t experience a major personal tragedy, or develop a deep-seated hate for human (capitalist) culture before she finished this book?

Then again, what’s to say that this book isn’t the only honest piece of literature that I have read that actually deals with the reality of cultural intercourse, and stories like Dances with Wolves and Avatar aren’t out to lunch with their optimism.

All that said, don’t read this book if you liked book one, and don’t read this book if you are looking for a happy ending. Read this book if you are looking to encounter a truly brave, if massively depressing author who has the courage to take something beautiful and interesting that she made in book one and end it, badly.

[Daniel Daniel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ancient Light was a difficult reading experience; maybe because of the book, mostly because it appears I was unable to fully meet it. I had to drag myself through this, convinced that if I stopped mid-reading I would not come back to it.

So why go through? I think Mary Gentle is an excellent writer and I admire and respect what she does. "Book of Ash" was a story that I'll probably never forget. I had trouble with "A sundial in a grave", but mostly because I had trouble relating to the characters, which is my problem, not the book's. Golden witchbreed", the first of Orthe's duology, is a book that I thouroughly enjoyed, although it did require some effort as well. It took me some time, and the fact that I benefited from a long bus ride with nothing to do except read it gave me a momemtum that made the rest just flow.

This never happened with "Ancient Light". The experience proved stenuous, and given the complexity of the world, I'm sure I missed a lot. Some elements from "Golden Witchbreed" that I hoped would carry through the next tome simply did not (ie. the Fenborn).

However, Mary Gentle tackles the themes of this story (for example, colonialism) with a strength and a drive that do not falter. There is a commitment to this book that never wavers, leading to a bleak story, full of loathing. It does not give in to the tropes one would find in other stories with a similar setting (ancient artefacts on an alien word and the desire to acquire them; humans merging in with another species and bringing with them "advanced tech", etc.).

"Ancient Light" is a harsh read. It is difficult to go throught and difficult to take in as well. It will not feel good.
It is also stronger because of this.

[Bron · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the sequel to Golden Witchbreed (please note if you are looking for magic and sorcery, this isn't for you). Ten years have elapsed and Lynne Christie is back on Orthe but this time she isn't the government envoy, she's working for a huge business conglomerate that's on the hunt for alien technology that can be adapted for human use. They are also, at first, on the Southern Continent where the people and cultures are very different from those in the north (explored very thoroughly in the first book). It's a desert region of the planet, cursed with few natural resources but there are traces of alien artefacts which is what's tempting the corporation to meddle. Christie sees that big changes are inevitable as human technology starts to be imported but she hopes to be able to keep its effects to a minimum. Unfortunately the political situation is unstable and human meddling triggers a war. The corporation then tries to deflect the violence with counterstrikes of its own - leading to a total tragedy. This book was written in the 1980s but it feels startlingly relevant now when we find ourselves in the middle of frightening climate change and our inability to sort out political and religious differences.
I fell in love with the Orthe described in the first book Golden Witchbreed. I wanted to be able to imagine it still out there, the Northern continent's way of life flourishing unbroken but Mary Gentle doesn't give you that luxury. The end is still shocking even though I've read it before and I'm thirty years older.

[Shaun Dyer · Rating 2 out of 5]

Ancient Light is a hard book to take. I really enjoyed the first book in the series and, while unlike some I don't think this one takes anything away from my enjoyment of that book it is a huge letdown.

The promise of the book was in finding more about the Golden Witchbreed and their 'Ancient Light' weapon that nearly destroyed the world. Unfortunately, the book spends most of its time retreading old ground with familiar characters that seem somehow more shallow than in the previous book.

We do see flashbacks to the time of the Golden Witchbreed, and then the book is gripping, the imagery evocative and you remember why you fell in love with the world. Unfortunately, they are few and far between, and the current day story fails to live up to the intrigue of the past. While the book does pick up the pace and drama in the final third, the pay off is not worth the wait, and I fear many readers will have bowed out before the controversial ending.

A lot of people don't like the ending of the book, and I'm one of them, but for different reasons, it seems. I don't mind it all ending in tragedy. I mind the fact it is all so vague and sudden. You never find out what the Ancient Light is, why it was created or how it works. There isn't really a good explanaition of why the antagonist unleashed it again either it all just doesn't make sense then ends.

[Pipkia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well, that was a masterpiece.

Don’t get me wrong: this is a book that fiercely divides opinion, and there is a large chance that it will... possibly ruin Orthe for you? It is tragic, and brutal, and the ending might seem senseless. But it’s also a vast and visionary novel that I think eclipses its predecessor, and if it is senseless that it only because it is messy in the way that the real world is. Christie is older and wiser and this book shows it, shows her living with and coming to terms with the events of the first book. It’s a lot of things: a book of reminiscences, a tale corporate intrigue, a war novel, a book about (post-)colonialism, and, surprisingly, a love story (between Christie and Ruric—whether you see it as romantic or platonic, it’s an incredibly powerful relationship that shapes Christie and the book as a whole. A lot of what she has to deal with comes of Ruric’s betrayal, after all. It is overwhelming and incredible and crushing and I love it to pieces.

[Deborah · Rating 3 out of 5]

Double review: This one and its sequel.

Golden Witchbreed is the first not-Ash book by Mary Gentle I've read. I adore the Ash chronicles, so much so that for years I feared they would be ruined for me if Gentle's other books didn't enrapture me as much.

These books do not, in fact, meet the Ash standard, but that's okay. I enjoyed them. Gentle's created world is very real, the characters varied and well-developed, the culture and natural environment richly imagined. Golden Witchbreed is the story of human Lynne Christie, envoy from Earth to the post-holocaust, post-tech planet Orthe, where advanced technology is considered suspicious because of the super-tech once wielded by the now-extinct (or are they...?) and evil Golden Witchbreed. As Christie shares the skin tone of the 'Breed and has advanced tech in her possession, her first-contact job is exponentially more difficult, and she quickly finds herself ensnared in political intrigue, fighting for her life.

The only issue I had was with the rather elaborate character names (examples are Sulis n'ri n'suth SuBannasen and Gur'an Alahamu-to O'he-Oramu-te; those are only two people) used interchangeably with the characters' titles, so that combined with the sheer volume of them made it difficult to remember who was who. There's a Cast of Characters in the front of the book, but I got tired of flipping back and forth. I'm lazy that way.

I liked the first book well enough that I bought the sequel, Ancient Light. My biggest gripe with that one was toward the end, it was draaaaaaging out soooooooo baaaaaad. I considered not finishing it several times - we'll have a meeting here, now I'll take a shuttle over here and have a meeting, while you take another shuttle over there and have a meeting, and Whosis can take a third shuttle for a meeting in that other place - on and on and on and on. But I'd invested almost a month reading these two books, and I had to find out what I happened, and I stuck with it. A great many other reviewers were angered by the ending, but it made sense to me. This is colonialism. This is what happens when other lands (or worlds) are befriended for what we can get from them, with no thought for the existing balance and culture that we erode and destroy. Sorry, I guess that was kind of a spoiler...? Kind of.

Neither book has a lot of action and both are heavy on descriptive passages, but the world-building is phenomenal and they're worth reading just for that.

So I liked these well enough, I'm not so much a Mary Gentle fan as I am a Super Huge Fan of the Ash books that happen to be written by Mary Gentle.

[Rik · Rating 3 out of 5]

Glacial pace, but somehow still quite readable- perhaps the hint of mystery and ancient alien technology managed to keep it alive. I frequently lost track of who characters were, particularly early on, same with places - at least due in part to the odd names. The author definitely employs show not tell, which perhaps contributes to a frequent sense of missing something or uncertainty whether it's really been understood. The not quite humanoid element and the associated culture helped to create an alien world, and much remains alien, even by the end of the book. So many things are never explained. I reread the ending, and I'm still unsure if I got the implication, which made it feel a little flat and disappointing.

[James]

In 1985, Mary Gentle exploded onto the science fiction scene like no other first author in years with the bestselling Golden Witchbreed. Now, after four years, she returns with Ancient Light, her most spectacular achievement yet. HC: NAL.

[Charlotta Larsson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Star treks first rule, don't change another world explored in depth by Mary Gentle. You feel this story this isn't a light vacation read. It's really suited for university students.

[Megan]

DNS 7/16/2021

[Dena Vogel · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was very confusing, very hard to follow. The first book Golden Witchbreed, was pretty good, albeit a little hard to follow but interesting. This one was not interesting at all.

[Peter Tillman · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars.

[Arthur B · Rating 2 out of 5]

The second Orthe novel feels like a sequel which exists out of obligation, not passion. Full review: https://fakegeekboy.wordpress.com/201...

[R S · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hmm, where to begin. The unstable narrator who is walking on a razor's edge. The annoying first person narrative. These comments may seem like nails in the coffin, but they're not. Its just that Golden Witchbreed gained traction far earlier than this book did.

Gentle is a more than competent writer. Especially in this book. My misgivings about the "I this" and "I that" tiresomeness aside. Just as in Golden Witchbreed, the author paints an engaging landscape and memorable characters (although alot of them are borrowed from Witchbreed). After the first 70 pages or so, it becomes worth reading. Lisle shifts from a tenuous protagonist to a more forward moving force.

During the last 50 pages it becomes obvious that things are not going to end well. Lisle's attempt to fill a void is doomed. I know that some people have found the ending to be unacceptable. I am not in this camp, but I feel that more time should have been spent on what the Artifacts of Orthe were. This might have made the last couple of pages seem less like a sudden sting.

This book is worth the time you will spend on it. I think that most people were expecting a clone of Golden Witchbreed. It is definitely is not that.

[Snail in Danger (Sid) Nicolaides · Rating 2 out of 5]

A re-read. I should probably note that I adore the prequel to this book, Golden Witchbreed. You love sense of wonder-planetary romance-science fantasy-finding home in an alien place books? Then Golden Witchbreed is for you. However, it's not about saving the world. (A relative rarity in SF/F.) And neither is Ancient Light. Oh boy, is this book ever not about saving the world.

Golden Witchbreed has an exquisite balance of realizations, discoveries, love, betrayal, acting, thinking, and talking. Ancient Light is in some ways like a weird, too-long, too-sad coda. I feel like this book has so many flaws that it almost ruins the first book for me. But for a more enthusiastic reception, see this review.

[Joe Davoust · Rating 2 out of 5]

It's all about expectations I suppose. This is a sequel to Golden Withchbreed which I stumbled upon as part of an EBay bulk sci-fi book buy (which is a great way to get lots of cheap Good Reads, by the way). I was surprised at how good the prequel was since the cover was kind of sappy looking and I had never heard of the author before. I really enjoyed the prequel, and sought out Ancient Light hoping for more of the same. Instead I got less of the same. The world had changed too much, unnecessarily, and the plot became very tedious and repetitive. Had I not expected so much more, I may have liked it better.

[Pam Baddeley · Rating 2 out of 5]

The sequel to Golden Witchbreed. Gentle develops the alien society very well. Her people are real aliens, not humans in an exotic society. Also the novel is about the clash of 'advanced' Earth culture led by all powerful companies against the native people who are post technological.

I don't want to include spoilers, but suffice to say this novel has one of the most downbeat endings ever. Gentle destroys the whole set up she created in the first book.

[Angela Mortimer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sequel to Gold Witchbreed. 10 Years later Lynne Christie is back on Orthe. This time she feels torn by feeling as if she belongs to both cultures. Earth of course is again looking for old and great technology but Lynne at times feels as if she is going mad trying to stop Earth's exploitation and the old conflicts reigniting. Brilliant, as is the first book.

[Beth Wright · Rating 4 out of 5]

Again loved it, just wish the one she fell in love with could have been in it more and their relationship grown more.

[Leone · Rating 1 out of 5]

Didn't finish it.

[3sm3 · Rating 3 out of 5]

Less culture and discovery, more battle in this one. Liked it less than the first as a result. Still good tho.