Ugh, Neil Gaiman ensnared my interest for this one and I felt compelled to give it a full read just to see why. I can assure you, he's got something in him that is not in me. This book was HARD to get through. I never found myself caring about anyone but the Italian doctor and even she felt expendable by the end. Surely the book was a treat for many a false-history reader, but Game of Thrones this is not. I did finish it, so it wasn't so bloody awful I couldn't bear it... but it was barely worth the effort and time. I do not feel as if I gained anything having done so. If you ARE a alternate history junky then you probably have already read this. If you haven't then this is probably the best example I have found of a book that rewrites history, throws in fantasy, and utterly confuses you all at the same time. Good luck!

Feel like the author is trying too hard. Obtuse and possibly deliberately Byzantine. Decent enough storyline.

First read review: 5ish/10. Second read review: 9.5/10

Rereading this book caused me to clarify some of my muddy thinking with respect to wish-fulfillment characters and stories and those that try to present the world as it should be, could be, might be with a little imagination and grace.

The very far end of the spectrum is the so-called Mary Sue story, wherein the protagonist is the center of the universe just because the narrative voice tells us the protag is a special snowflake. Leading off down a different path is the idealized protagonist, which could be termed the Beau Ideal.

In the hands of a great writer this character serves to show what humans could be, and as such he has a venerable history. Not starting with Castiglione’s Courtier as I’ve seen asserted, but farther back, and at the inspiration of a very strong woman: Eleanor of Acquitaine, who worked so hard to wrench the war hungry drive of feudalism into a semblance of the chivalric ideal because she got tired of stinking, sweaty men tromping with filthy boots into her fine rooms, blabbing exclusively of killing unruly barons and damned Saracens, to the exclusion of wit, history, song, and about anything else worth listening to.

There’s a traceable line of these heroes, particularly in the hands of female authors, stemming from the Pimpernel, up through Peter Wimsey to Crawford of Lymond and those he inspired. That Beau Ideal is recognizable through his descendants—witty, well, read, courageous, seemingly immoral or amoral, but actually true to his beliefs. And he has beliefs, even if it is only in his fellow-man.

I think of him as a descendent of Eleanor's vision, and in The Dragon Waiting John M. Ford gives us the splendid Dimitrios, the anchor to the story, the sign that though the world around the characters seems to be sick with disease, war, greed, ambition, and death, there is grace, even if as elusive as the echo from an unseen choir.