[Hereford Eye]

Originally posted by I, Brian
Someone before mentioned a work based on the Spartans at Thermopylae - I think I heard David Gemmell once recommend it also - but I'm highly suspicious that the Spartans will have been far too romanticised and glossily treated. The Spartans were, in essense, a bunch of dedicated and superstitious thugs, with an ingrained policy of homosexuality. I am extremely suspicious that any writer of fiction could properly convey that. And those poor Thespians who shared the same fate at Thermopylae - all 15,000 of them - are usually forgotten.
The book is Gates of Fire and while the Spartans come across heroically the description of the battle is well done with all participants getting full recognition. And. no, the author doesn't make a case for supposed homosexual inclinations. Still a very fine read.

[Mears]

Originally posted by I, Brian
Got to add to this list:

Byzantium - Stephen Lawhead

It follows an Irish monk who is waylaid from an important journey to Constanitinople by Vikings. Later ends up running around Arabia. Excellent characterisation, good dialogue, and a gripping plot.

Couple of niggles, but nothing serious. Certainly a good read.

I liked this book a lot. He also wrote "The Celtic Crusades" Trilogy that starts with "The Iron Lance" To call it historical may be pushing it a bit, but It's worth a mention IMO. Set over 3 generations in the 11th century, with a good plot and great characterisation it has the same qualities as Byzantium.

[Eldanuumea]

I want to add my two cents for Byzantium, and Lawhead in general.
I have a guilty pleasure......I know it's a bit cheesy, but it's an emtional favorite: The Robe, by Lloyd Douglas. I first read it as a teenager and became fascinated by the relationship between Marcellus and his slave Demetrius. I've reread it innumerable times, and still enjoy it.

I recently read The Crimson Petal and the White and found it to be very well-written and hard to put down. The author impressed me from the opening page. But one should be warned that it is quite sexually explicit.

[Maciliel]

Hello folks - I'm new around here (led here by Eldanuumea, peripatetic internet adventuress) and I am very much enjoying seeing recommendations of books I've never read. I recently started The Voyage of the Narwhal by Andrea Barrett which looks very promising.

I heartily agree with the choices of Robert Graves, Josephine Tey, Patrick O'Brien, Mary Renault, A.S. Byatt's Possession, Ellis Peters, C.S. Forrester, Bernard Cornwell.

With regard to books I don't think anyone's mentioned yet, I greatly enjoyed the Poldark series by Winston Graham and Daughter of Time by Isabella Allende is a wonderful "romp". An off the beaten track (at least in the U.S.) trilogy about Viking Age Scandinavia is Jan Fridegard's Holme series - Land of Wooden Gods, People of the Dawn, Sacrificial Smoke. "Till We Have Faces", while it's not usually placed in the historical fiction category, would, I believe, fit.

Some of the best historical fiction I've ever read, I read as a child. The House at Green Knowe series by Lucy Boston, A Traveler in Time by Alison Uttley, and books by Margeurite DeAngeli are all wonderful. And of course there's The Prince and the Pauper!

Lucy Boston's books are about an 11th C. (IIRC) manor house in England, the historic events that occured during the house's past, and the children that inhabited it. The House at Green Knowe is a real place that can be visited. I'm not sure if the house in A Traveler in Time is extant, but is about a girl who travels between the present and the 16th C. (IIRC). Marguerite DeAngeli's books feature a variety of historic periods, andvery real historic communities mostly in Pennsylvania. The protagonists are children, but in at least one book she gives cameo roles to historic figures.

These books sparked my love of history and as a result I now work in an historic house museum. I've reread all of them within the past 3 years, and I loved them still.

In the category of 19th C. sailing ships, In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex is an absolutely gripping page turner (though not historical fiction).

Bronte by Glyn Hughes was terrific - teetering as it does on the thin line between historical fact and fiction, it is dark as can be.

[Twelve]

If someone has already mentioned The Dreamthief's Daughter" by Moorcock, then please forgive me.

12

[Eldanuumea]

I don't recall if it was already mentioned, but I really liked that book!!

[moif]

My favourite historical novels, as well as being my favourite books over all others, are the twenty novels written by Patrick O'Brian about the exploits of an English Naval captain, Jack Aubrey, during the Napoleonic war and his Irish/ Catalan friend Stephen Maturin.

These books, especially the middle of the series books, are the greatest description of a friendship I have yet met, and I have spent many a happy hour on the gun deck of HMS Suprise or watched over the tropical sea's from the aft quarter deck.

The books ebb slightly as they near their end since O'Brians life itself was ending, but they never deviate from their own inner beauty.

If I were to recommend any historical books to any one, it would be these.

[Maciliel]

Originally posted by moif
...I have spent many a happy hour on the gun deck of HMS Suprise or watched over the tropical sea's from the aft quarter deck...
Ah Moif, if you happen upon a woman taking the air on deck or regaling the officers' mess with ribald stories that you think at first is Diana Villiers, well look again, because it might be me...

O'Brien's books are not my favorites of all time, but they are up there in the stratosphere. Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin are surely some of literature's most finely drawn and detailed characters.

[Twelve]

Originally posted by Eldanuumea
I don't recall if it was already mentioned, but I really liked that book!!

Good to see that someone else did. I just received the sequel, The Sprayling Tree: Albino in America, in the mail a couple of hours ago. I'm about to crack it open tomorrow to see if Mr. Moorcock can do it again!

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[AuntiePam]

Maciliel, I loved the Barrett book, and I don't even like maritime-nautical-exploration themes.

I'd like to share historical fiction recommendations from another board -- many have been mentioned here, but some haven't, and the folks recommending these were pretty enthusiastic:

The Royal Physician's Visit by Per Olov Enquist
The Red Tent by Anita Diamant
Colleen McCollough's Roman series
The Marcus Didius Falco detective series by Lindsay Davis
The Difference Engine by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling
Wobble to Death and other Victorian mysteries by Peter Lovesey
The New York Detective and Faces in the Crowd by William Marshall (New York City in 1884)
the Claudius books by Robert Graves
The Kristin Lavransdatter by Sigrid Undset
The Winter King by Bernard Cornwell
the American pioneer series by Conrad Richter
Firedrake's Eye by Patricia Finney
The Quincunx by Charles Palliser
Lest Darkness Fall by L. Sprague de Camp
Tales of the Genji by Lady Murasaki
Shogun and Taipan by James Clavell

I don't think we'll ever run out of good historical fiction. People have been writing it for many years, and good new stuff comes out all the time. Unlike other genres, which go through slumps, or seem to die altogether.