Oh, darn. I picked up the trilogy in Oxfam last year and was hoping that it'd be something a bit special. I think I was imagining something more like His Dark Materials; in that it'd be analagous to our world but breaking off from it in key ways; I didn't think it'd just be actual historical settings pretending to be fantasy by using made-up names. I'll still read it because I'm curious, but this is a bit sad, as I'd hoped it was part of the wave of fantasy that is influenced by something other than medieval Europe.