Odalisque: Book One of The Percheron Saga

By Fiona McIntosh

Captured by slave traders in the inhospitable desert, Lazar fought his way to freedom, earning the coveted position of Spur of Percheron. Charged with protecting his adopted city from enemies on both sides of its walls, he has led a charmed life as confidant to and protector of Zar Joreb for many years. But now Joreb is dead. . . .

Though Joreb's well-intentioned fifteen-year-old heir, Boaz, will take the title of Zar, the balance of power lies in the hands of his beautiful and cruelly ambitious mother, a former harem slave who rose to power by the Zar's favor. Aside from Lazar, whom Boaz trusts and respects, the young Zar's only friend is Pez, the court jester, a misshapen dwarf whose tricks and diversions are accepted only because he is known to be mad.

When a stunning young girl is brought to the palace to fill a space in Boaz's harem, both Boaz and Lazar are surprised by their unexpectedly strong reactions to her. But Ana, the odalisque, finds the closeted world of the harem stifling and unbearable. And unbeknownst to all, the gods themselves are beginning to rise in a cyclical battle that is just beginning, and will enmesh everyone in the palace in a struggle for the very soul of Percheron.

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Release date: Oct 13, 2009
• ISBN: 9780061843938

Fiona McIntosh

Fiona McIntosh was raised in the U.K. but left London to explore the world and found herself in Australia, where she fell in love with the country and one person in particular. She has since roamed the planet for her work in the travel industry but now writes full-time and continues to draw inspiration from her travels. McIntosh lives with her husband and teenage sons, splitting her time between city life in South Australia and the wilderness of Tasmania.

Reviews for Odalisque

[infjsarah · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Entertaining enough though it didn't grab me. But easy to read and I have moved on to the 2nd book.

[knotbox · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Clichés and flat static characters galore! But I love the middle eastern setting, despite the amalgamation of a made up polytheistic religion and monotheistic Islam. Does McIntosh know what she's talking about?

In anycase it rivaled and in some ways beat Twilight for terribly written, but in the end, when I finally discovered I had no idea who the main character was (despite focusing on one major character and then naming the title for another major character, who I believe will later manifest in a very obvious way) it wasn't so bad. In fact, once I knew the ends goal, the last couple of chapters were semi-enjoyable.

Okay, breakdown: The clichés are killer. The abuse of the Muslim influenced middle east to fit a twisted (but interesting) fantasy world, was very uncomfortable for me. I like my harems and reinventions of Byzantium with a heaping dose of 'May Allah bless you and keep you in his wonderful kingdom, with all the wonders he has given us, and may he rule us forever in his auspiciousness.' The feminist turn is cool, and there came a point where the plot just dropped off the face of the planet for me, I had literally no idea what McIntosh would do next. She likes to deviate from the main point though, and there are a lot of extraneous words and scenes (Just to up the page count, I wonder?) that I really would have liked to be without.

I read this because I enjoyed middle eastern fairy tales as a child, and fantasy set in arab settings are few and far between, and obviously not always well written. I don't think I'll be looking for the rest of these books, the genre hasn't been killed for me yet, however.

[tlhelen · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A brilliant book by a brilliant author. 5 stars. Odalisque is the best book ever! I couldn't stop reading. A story about a young girl sold into slavery. The whole saga is about the girl's connection to the goddess, Lyana. Aided by a dwarf, a slave boy and a mysterious man. Ana(the girl) must find Lyana before the forces of evil destroy them all.

[megandb_1 · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

First up, a disclaimer: I only made it through all of the first book and a bit of the second book of this trilogy. Which I guess give you a clue about what I thought of it.Ah Fiona McIntosh, what do I do with you? Our relationship started out so well. I always love reading fantasy by Australian writers, partly because I’m as patriotic as the next gal, but also because it seems to a genre that Australian writers are good at. And certainty the first trilogy I read by McIntosh, The Quickening trio, was true to that. Those books put a nicely original spin on a reliable old fantasy story line, and the characters were complex and the plot well paced. The ending was a little to convenient for my liking, but not enough that it spoiled the books for me.This was the second trilogy McIntosh had published, so of course I went out and got a hold of her first effort, The Trinity trilogy. It was… not so good. The characters were walking cliché’s and the plot treated logic like an untrustworthy stranger. But I was forgiving, there was such a difference in quality between The Quickening and these books that I simply assumed McIntosh was improving as a writer with every effort.Having struggled though half the Percheron trilogy before giving up, I’m starting to think maybe The Quickening was a fluke. The Percheron trilogy, or at least the half I read, was terrible. The only positive thing I can think to say about them is that the cover art is truly spectacular. But then I just get all resentful that such poor books get to have such beautiful covers.Let’s start with the most important element in a book: the characters. We have the Odalisque Ana, the beautiful girl with mysterious ancestry. Did I mention she was beautiful? Little chance of forgetting, as we are reminded almost every time she appears on stage, and other characters are forever stopping to marvel at just how gosh darn beautiful and captivating she is. She is also kind to small children and animals, and when she sees an old lady being ripped off in the street she immediately jumps in and helps her. (The old lady, natch, turns out to be a Goddess in disguise and gives Anna a magical trinket in exchange for her kindness).We also have the head of the Zar’s security, Lazar (It's not a coincidence and not very clever that his name sounds so much Lazarus...). Lazar and Ana fall in love instantly, even though she’s barely a teenager and he’s well into his thirties when they first meet. Lazar is moody and mysterious and handsome, women want to be with him, men want to be him, etc. He’s also prone to self pity and petulance, but I think this angst is supposed to make us like him more. Spoiler: it does not.The only character who is not two shades away from being a Mary Sue is Boaz, the young Zar. Unfortunately McIntosh devotes little time to Boez, and while I obviously don’t know how the book progresses it seems to me that we are supposed to dislike him because, gasp, he wants to have sex with Ana! How dare the Zar want to get it on with a member of his own harem, am I right?And the plot? You could make an excellent drinking game out of it. Every time destiny gets mentioned, drink. I promise you’ll be seeing double before you’re half way through the first book. Characters who are meeting for the first time decide to trust each other because they sense it's destiny. They make huge leaps of understanding not because they uncover information but because they just know, somehow. It’s appallingly lazy writing. Oh, I can’t think of a reason why character A. would reveal his big secret to character B. I’ll just make it destiny!In the end I announced to my boyfriend that if I read the word destiny one more time I was putting the book down for good. I barely made it another page.Maybe the final book fully redeemed all of these flaws, but I doubt even Neil Gaiman could salvage something out of it. (I mean, I haven't even touched upon the the rampant Orientalism or Boaz's mother...)

[lewispike · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This book starts off slightly oddly, with the arrival of a "great warrior" as a slave in a rather decadent seeming city-state modeled on Istanbul under the Sultans (it says so in the introduction, and the elements are quite clear, but deftly handled). It then almost without warning jumps ahead 10 years and becomes almost day by day.For a little while it appears to be taking a rather different route to the expected one if you've read any of Fiona McIntosh's books before; then you suddenly meet the priestess of the almost forgotten Goddess, find out about the sorcerer who became a demon to keep her repressed and so much more and you feel right at home.There are still twists and turns, and she is growing more confident as an author, and is portraying both interesting characters and an interesting and not really standard culture with confidence. Whilst the themes in broad terms initially sound familiar, there is enough new in the details, and in some of the side elements that I found myself regretting book 2 wasn't instantly to hand.

[wyvernfriend · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

It's a book that's hard to define. Set in a place that is almost Constantinople, a Constantinople of imagination. The story starts with the death of the ruler, called the Zar, and the aftereffects of that death. With the ascention of Boaz to the throne, he's underage and there is a lot of scheming and jostling for power. Many of the powerbrokers are old and have had the power they have for a long time, and know that they could influence the new Zar.The Zar has allies, Pez, his late father's jester, a seemingly mad dwarf; Spur Lazar, head of the security and Ana, one of the new recruits for his harem, but they too have secrets.It did remind me a little of Guy Gavriel Kay but only quite vaguely.It does contain some disturbing scenes and occasionally the story lags I did enjoy it. At first I was looking to see if it really was fantasy or just an alternate world story but there is magic here, it's fairly subtle but it's there. The battle between the Goddess and the God embodied in their two servants is also interesting. This book does suffer from being the first in a series, in order to set up things it has to keep some questions unanswered but I enjoyed the read and look forward to the next one.