Mary Gentles - 1610: A Sundial in a Grave

Gentles' novel Ash is one of the most extraordinary genre pieces I've ever read, but Sundial, the second of hers that I've done, isn't as good - a response on my part which no doubt owes something to raised expectation and something again to it not having the same figurative dagger up its sleeve as that concealed in the turns and peregrinations of the earlier. That said, it's still a rather good bit of fantasised history ('historical fantasy'?), if not quite on the sharp edge of greatness.