Fifteen years after Lazar ably assumes this high position, a riding accident ends Zar Joreb's life, leaving his 15-year-old son, Boaz, as the new Zar. Lazar may not be able to protect the inexperienced new ruler, because Boaz's greatest enemies are those closest to him. These include the obsequious Vizier, Tariq; the cruel Grand Master of the Eunuchs, Salmeo; and Boaz's own mother, the ambitious Herezah. She made herself the late Zar's favorite despite considerable competition, and she has no intention of letting her son, Boaz, wield any true power. She also brooks no rivals: Upon the old Zar's death, she immediately executed Boaz's half-brothers, borne by the other harem women, then cast those women into the streets.

As her next act, Herezah separates the new Zar from the Spur of Percheron, sending Lazar into the desert to find women for Boaz's harem. Boaz is left with no support save that of his late father's jester, the mad dwarf Pez. But Pez is more than he seems—more, even, than Pez himself realizes. And there are forces at work that are deeper and more powerful than even Pez, Lazar or Herezah can guess at. A strange foundling, grown into the beautiful young maiden known as Ana and chosen as one of Boaz's odalisques, has a strange affinity for the half-forgotten goddess Lyana. But Ana may prove no aid for the beleagered new Zar. For Ana and Lazar have feelings for one another that they should not. And the demon Maliz, servant of the god Zarab, is rising to power again in Percheron.

A rocky but promising start

Australian author Fiona McIntosh, who debuted in America with her critically acclaimed Quickening Trilogy (Myrren's Gift, Blood and Memory and Bridge of Souls), has launched her unusual new high-fantasy series, the Percheron Saga, with the powerful novel Odalisque. As the title hints, McIntosh draws her inspiration from an historically rich city and era rarely utilized by fantasists: the Constantinople of the Ottoman Empire. McIntosh develops her fictional city of Percheron in considerable depth, and she develops her characters almost as deeply. Her good guys occasionally achieve an improbably superhuman feat, and her bad guys are undoubtedly villainous, but she layers them all with complex minds and motives and entangles them in fascinating subplots and schemes.

However, Odalisque has some significant weaknesses. The prose can get rough, as in this example: "Had he known what was to come that day, he might have found good reason to ignore the hunger pangs that made him so accessible to the Elim runner sent from the palace with such dire news." The samey-sounding monickers don't help matters. Despite McIntosh's sharp characterizations, many readers will be hopelessly confused by titles and names like Lyana, Ana, Varanz, Lazar, Zar, Valide Zara, Zefira, Maliz, Boaz, Herezah, and Pez. And two of the names have unfortunate baggage. It's hard not to visualize jester Pez as a candy-dispensing collectible novelty. And, as the term for a draft horse, "Percheron" has no hope of evoking the exotic ambiance of the city known variously—but always beguilingly—as Byzantium, Constantinople and Istanbul.

There's another consideration that will drive off some readers, even as it rivets others to the pages of Odalisque: The author doesn't avoid the grimmer implications of her medieval Turkish inspiration. She describes castration, flogging and impalement on the stake with enough detail that readers know exactly what happens. She doesn't linger over the details (thankfully, this isn't pain porn); but her cool descriptions are still disturbing. And she doesn't necessarily spare her major players. No one can accuse Fiona McIntosh of that cruelest of fiction-writing sins: being too nice to her characters.