Best historical fiction

[SusF]

I read, and loved, The Long Ships. I found it in the library while browsing the stacks one day.

OH OH, and the Gulbranssen books, Beyond Sing the Woods and The Wind from the Mountains by Trygve Gulbranssen. My mother read them in German as a kid, and found them in English at the local library and handed them to me. Amazing books. They are set in pre-industrial Sweden (I think). Not Viking age or medieval. Slightly later.

[This message has been edited by SusF (edited January 17, 2002).]

[Corwwyn]

Joan Wolf
1-The Road to Avalon
2-The Edge of the Light
3-Born of the Sun

Mary Stewart
1-The Crystal Cave
2-The Hollow Hills
3-The Last Enchantment

Sharon Penman:
Here Be Dragons
Falls the Shadow
The Reckoning
When Christ and His Saints Slept
The Queen's Man
Cruel as the Grave

[Mithfânion]

Penman and Stewart I'm familiar with but Wolf doesn't ring a bell.

What sort of stuff does she write?

[Corwwyn]

I really like Wolf's writing style, but she's nowhere near as prolific as Penman.

Insofar as her books go, I'd suggest she is like a cross between Stewart and Penman.

If you can find a copy, read The Road to Avalon and see if you can resist hunting out the sequels

[JohnH]

Dorothy Dunnett stands head and shoulders above everyone else imo,

Sharon Kaye Penman
Arturo Perez-Reverte
Patrick Suskind
Charles Palliser
Druon's series on medieval France
Karleen Koen (borders on Romance but
still incredibly well written)
Katherine Neville (kind of a mix of mystical suspense, fantasy and historical novel)
Robert Graves
Mary Renault
Leo Tolstoy
Nigel Tranter -- his Robert the Bruce trilogy is fantastic.

I know I am forgetting a few. There is a lot of entertaining, readable fiction, but surprising how much does not really stand out as great

[Llama]

Not a bad list JohnH, although I am surprised by yr inclusion of Katherine Neville. I read THE EIGHT and I thought it was absolute fluff. Could barely finish it.

[saintjon]

I only skimmed the list, but I saw no James Clavell. How can this be? I've read almost the whole Asian saga and I think he's a fantastic writer! I have a far more piercing insight when it comes to politics and business thanks to reading his books and his stories are great (love them samurai). There's something about the way he writes his characters thinking that seems totally realistic.

[Mithfânion]

. Trouble starts when he is 12 and he kills two boys with an axe because he lost a ball game.

Lol. I was reading over this entire list of recommendations, it's excellent. This will definitly get me started on Egil's saga. I've got another couple of saga's that I'm very interested in.

BTW I found the essay on Dunnett by the New York Times.

http://query.nytimes.com/search/full...51C1A9669C8B63

[whitebelly]

bumping this in the hope some fresh recommendations may be added ...

I recently finished THE VOYAGE OF THE NARWHAL by Andrea Barrett which is one of the best historical polar exploration novels I have read (I admit I'm a sucker for polar exploration stuff). Finished it in one sitting which doesn't happen very often.

Halfway through ENGLISH PASSENGERS by Matthew Kneale which is excellent also.

Anyone read THE CRIMSON PETAL AND THE WHITE by Michel Faber? Any thoughts?

[Hereford Eye]

Originally posted by saintjon
II saw no James Clavell. How can this be?

Thought Tai Pan was best then Shogun. Lost interest in the rest.
How can there not be Michener's Hawaii?
Allow me to add some less well known stuff:
The Strangeness of Beauty by Lydia Minatoya - pre WWII
The Greatest Player Who Never Lived by J. Michael Veron - golf in the days of Bobby Jones
Girl With a Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier - a story of Vermeer in the 1660s.

[Sammie]

Ooh - i just read The Virgin Blue by Tracey Chevalier. Not bad. Pretty simplistic plot, but nicely written - certainly held my attention.

[Hereford Eye]

Sammie: I read somewhere she has written a story of women in London, think the title has 'Angels' in it. Where did The Virgin Blue take place?
A man who can't spell Virgin is getting really old.

[Sammie]

It's one of those parallel thingies. Adjacent stories - a women in modern day France, and one of her ancestors, in like the 15th century, or sth, also in france.

[AuntiePam]

And I'm not afraid to use it. I remembered this thread and came back for recommendations.

Whitebelly -- you asked about The Crimson Petal and the White. I loved it. It's big and fat, and you can read it fast or slow. There are plenty of places where you'll want to stop and think. A heroine with a skin condition? Man, this was good.

I mentioned Morality Play by Barry Unsworth earlier -- it's not fat like the historicals everyone likes but it has a gritty medieval feel. If you liked the movies -- The Navigator and A Walk With Love and Death -- that's what this book is like.

If you like fat historicals, you won't do better than Robert McCammon's new book, Speaks the Nighbird.

A good fat American western historical is Wanderers Eastward Wanderers West by Kathleen Winsor (of Forever Amber fame).

Anyway, I have a gift certificate and I was reminded of Charles Palliser. I adored Quincunx and I'm off to see about the other one you guys were talking about.

[Llama]

I also very much enjoyed THE CRIMSON PETAL AND THE WHITE. I would challenge you to read the first couple of pages and not keep reading, it's a terribly seductive opener. I admit I found the ending disappointing, however, but it's still among my top reads of '02.