Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Bronze Age satire saturates this kooky offering from Parker (The Long Game) about a "colossally stupid" despot who coerces a bevy of academics into rewriting history. Ordered to alter the past or die in prison, the professors, including the tale's narrator, a linguist, begrudgingly pull together an elaborate origin tale about ruler Gyges being descended from an "ideal race of philosopher kings." To lend credence to the fabula, POWs by the tens of thousands are sent to excavate a fake ancient site outside the Aelian capital. The intention is for this farce to bolster Gyges's greatness and garner public support for a war with a neighboring realm, whose denizens are portrayed in the forged chronicles as "nomadic cannibals," but the discovery of a seemingly real ancient text, The Book of Kings, throws a wrench into those plans. While trying to assess its authenticity, the professors discover that it depicts as real everything they have just invented. Throughout this elaborate shenanigan, Parker pokes copious, sometimes over-the-top fun at academia. There's very little by way of action, and some readers will be disappointed that the only female character is courtesan Nine White Hairs, who provides the ending's twist. Still, this equally wacky and brainy novella packs a punch. (Sept.)
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Review by Library Journal Review
The tyrannical king of Aelia needs a pretext to invade a neighboring country. His solution is to coerce the preeminent scholars of Aelia's university to build him that excuse. They invent a myth about a civilization that never was, creating from the ground up a historical city that was never actually built and presenting it as the ruin of a bygone age, destroyed by the ancestors of the people the king wants to conquer. The scholars get caught up in the research and are too busy squaring off against each other to reckon with the cost of their work, until they discover that someone has beaten them to it and that they are on the wrong side of the inevitable assignment of blame. VERDICT As much wry philosophy as it is fantasy, Parker's musing on the way history is made, spun, and remembered will remind readers of the author's Sixteen Ways To Defend a Walled City through the self-deprecating observations of its unnamed narrator. Those who enjoyed the meditations in Nghi Vo's The City in Glass will find similar themes and explorations here.--Marlene Harris
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