The Ultimate Fantasy Series Ranking

Research dossier

Ash: A Secret History

#9443.77 adjusted 3.83 for sample size in the official ranking · full ranking

Books 4 books Status Complete 1999–2000 Reading commitment Medium Mary Gentle Last reviewed 2026-10-28

Overview

Ash: A Secret History follows Ash, a mercenary captain leading a free company through an alternate 15th-century Europe, who has heard a commanding voice in her head since childhood -- a voice she gradually realises comes from the Wild Machines, a buried bronze artificial intelligence built by a lost North African empire, Carthage (here called Visigoth Carthage), whose unnatural fog-and-cold "Eternal Twilight" is smothering Europe and rewriting history around it. A modern frame story, told through a translator's footnotes and correspondence with his publisher, presents the whole narrative as a genuine medieval manuscript whose translation keeps forcing the translator to revise his own understanding of real history as he works. Mary Gentle's four-volume sequence -- A Secret History, Carthage Ascendant, The Wild Machines, and Lost Burgundy (all 2000, following the 1999 original hardcover) -- won the 2000 British Science Fiction Association Award for Best Novel and was published in the United States as a single omnibus volume.

Historical fantasy · For Adult

Core Canon: Reading Order (4 works) counts toward ranking

Ash: A Secret History (The Book of Ash) Mary Gentle

WorkYearInternal chron.CanonRating
Cover of A Secret HistoryA Secret History19991core3.63 (795 ratings)
Cover of Carthage AscendantCarthage Ascendant20002core3.86 (332 ratings)
Cover of The Wild MachinesThe Wild Machines20003core3.88 (293 ratings)
Cover of Lost BurgundyLost Burgundy20004core3.92 (276 ratings)

One continuous novel, published as a single volume in the UK (Gollancz, 2000) and split into these four US paperback volumes (Eos, 1999-2000); each volume is catalogued separately here since each was published, sold, and rated individually, the same treatment already applied to The Lord of the Rings' three volumes.

Quick answers

Why is it ranked #944?

Ranked #944 in the official ranking.

How the ranking works →

Why explore this universe?

Rated · 4 books · Complete · 2k ratings · Ranks #944 overall

Good choice if you want a moderate-length historical fantasy universe that's already finished, so there's no wait for the next book.

Reading order

Publication order (4 Core Canon books)

  1. A Secret History (1999)
  2. Carthage Ascendant (2000)
  3. Lost Burgundy (2000)
  4. The Wild Machines (2000)

Documented internal/story order

  1. A Secret History (1999)
  2. Carthage Ascendant (2000)
  3. The Wild Machines (2000)
  4. Lost Burgundy (2000)

Awards (verified)

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Suggestions computed from what Ash: A Secret History and each of these worlds have in common on record (subgenre, audience, shape, reading commitment and score), not a documented narrative connection.

Official resources

Research details

Ranking metrics: weighted average 3.77 across 1,696 ratings on 4 Core Canon books. See Why is it ranked here? above for the full breakdown, or the full ranking.

How do we know this?

Admission: Canon extension: Ash: A Secret History (Mary Gentle) accepted 2026-09-13

Sources: (see source tier definitions)

Last reviewed: 2026-09-13

Rule: Core Canon = all four volumes. Originally published as a single novel in the UK (Gollancz, 2000); catalogued here as the four US paperback volumes it was also published as (Eos, 1999-2000) — A Secret History, Carthage Ascendant, The Wild Machines, Lost Burgundy — the same one-novel-in-several-volumes treatment already applied to The Lord of the Rings. There is no companion or expanded material.

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