# What are your favorite (or least favorite) historical fiction novels? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [December 5, 2008, 5:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-your-favorite-or-least-favorite-historical-fiction-novels/475822 "2008-12-05T05:49:42Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Ian\_D.Bergkamp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/5f8ce5/32.png) [@Ian\_D.Bergkamp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ian_D.Bergkamp)\ **Post date:** [December 8, 2008, 10:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-your-favorite-or-least-favorite-historical-fiction-novels/475822/61 "2008-12-08T22:34:38Z")
The recommendations I was going to make have all been made, so I’ll offer a couple that haven’t: [Lempriere’s Dictionary](http://search.barnesandnoble.com/Lemprieres-Dictionary/Lawrence-Norfolk/e/9780345384232/?itm=1), which is a conspiracy plot/murder mystery set in 18th Century London. I’ve seen it compared (favorably) to the Name of the Rose. Norfolk’s descriptions are so vivid that, at times, it’s close to watching a movie. One of my favorite books ever. Another (and one I’m surprised hasn’t been mentioned yet) is [The Alienist](http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/results.asp?WRD=alienist) by Caleb Carr, which is set in late-19th Century New York City. Clever murder mystery in which a psychologist uses then-new techniques to catch a serial killer. And, finally, a shout-out to [From Hell](http://search.barnesandnoble.com/From-Hell/Alan-Moore/e/9780958578349/?itm=1), Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell’s take on Jack the Ripper. You may not agree with Moore’s theory (and I don’t think that even he believes it), but it does a treat job of piecing together a taut narrative based on the known evidence. And it’s annotated! ---
**Author:** ![Roderick\_Femm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/roderick_femm/32/14875_2.png) [@Roderick\_Femm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Roderick_Femm)\ **Post date:** [December 8, 2008, 10:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-your-favorite-or-least-favorite-historical-fiction-novels/475822/62 "2008-12-08T22:51:08Z")
> [@slitterst](#): > > I’ve enjoyed every Dumas novel I’ve read. Which is technically only two – _Three Musketeers_ and _The Count of Monte Cristo_. The rest of the musketeers series (Twenty Years After, Vicomte de Bragelonne, Louise de la Valliere, Man in the Iron Mask) have been alleged to be primarily written by his assistants, although my google-fu is failing me in finding a cite for that. I recently read the last three of these, and I can’t say it would surprise me, but also that I don’t think it makes much difference. The plots move along briskly, the characters of the cast have already been introduced and are developed as they get old (except for one amazing lapse by Aramis), and so on. The historical characters are more-or-less just plot devices, but still interesting as characters. Even Charles II manages to come to life. So I still recommend them. Roddy ---
**Author:** ![Roderick\_Femm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/roderick_femm/32/14875_2.png) [@Roderick\_Femm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Roderick_Femm)\ **Post date:** [December 8, 2008, 11:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-your-favorite-or-least-favorite-historical-fiction-novels/475822/63 "2008-12-08T23:07:22Z")
I’d like also to put in a few words for Sir Walter Scott. Most of his works (Ivanhoe aside) take place in the lowlands of Scotland in the 17th and 18th centuries. If you can manage to wade through the lowland Scots vernacular dialog, you will come away with some wonderful, almost seminal, stories. He was a favorite source for plots for bel canto operas (I Puritani, Lucia di Lammermoor, Lady of the Lake, maybe others). Roddy ---
**Author:** ![Aspidistra](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aspidistra/32/3894_2.png) [@Aspidistra](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aspidistra)\ **Post date:** [December 8, 2008, 11:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-your-favorite-or-least-favorite-historical-fiction-novels/475822/64 "2008-12-08T23:07:46Z")
**Mary Renault** is my number one all time favourite historical writer, so even though she’s been mentioned over and over in this thread I’m going to go on and do it again. I will go slightly out on a limb though in giving my pick for “best novel” - I love _The Last Of The Wine_, which spends a good chunk of itself teasing out the psychological implications of the practise of infant exposure, and gives a very gritty and realistic description of what it would have been like to live in a beseiged city being slowly starved out. Also contains Socrates, which can never be a bad thing. **Gillian Bradshaw** is another brilliant writer, working in a slightly later period (she tends to concentrate on the mid-late Roman empire). _The Bearkeeper’s Daughter_ is written from the POV of an illegitimate son of the Empress Theodora (who may or may not have existed in real life - the son, that is, not the Empress) and is brilliant - I have also recently enjoyed _Render Unto Caesar_ and _Cleopatra’s Heir_ (despite a very unrealistic happy ending to the latter). Bradshaw’s characters tend to be powerless citizens trying to find justice in a culture where it’s pretty much accepted that justice is something that you _buy_. She’s very good in her descriptions of slavery, which is completely accepted as normal by almost all her characters, but nonetheless she works hard to display all the different nuances of behaviour between masters and slaves, and the web of mutual obligation that can grow up even between people of very disparate social status. I loved _The Alienist_ but it very much suffered from “presentism” - all the main characters are far too modern in their attitude to women, blacks and gays (I don’t believe there’s any way Cyrus wouldn’t have ended up swinging from a lamppost IRL after killing a white policeman, to name just one example.) Ditto _The Stress of Her Regard_ - very enjoyable book but there’s something a bit off about it historically. I’ve recently begun enjoying _A Free Man of Color_ by **Barbara Hambly** -set in New Orleans in the 1830s. She seems to have done her historical research very thouroughly, though not knowing much about the period it’s hard for me to judge. A very enjoyable read though ---
**Author:** ![ryobserver](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/b2d939/32.png) [@ryobserver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ryobserver)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2008, 2:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-your-favorite-or-least-favorite-historical-fiction-novels/475822/65 "2008-12-09T02:08:06Z")
Read this only as a bad example (how NOT to do it): _The Last Days of Pompeii_, by Edward Bulwer-Lytton. The guy who has a bad-writing contest named after him. With good reason. This book was a blockbuster in its day, inspired a lot of artwork you can still find in museums, and was later adapted for film several times. And it probably commits every sin historical fiction can commit, except the ones involving sex scenes, because B-L was far too proper a Victorian to write anything remotely resembling a sex scene. He could do food scenes that ran on for pages, though, for no reason except to show off all he’d learned about how Romans ate. And it’s one novel where even a dim reader can spot the backwards projection of modern beliefs–because the “modern” beliefs are B-L’s then-Establishment views about women, Italians, non-Christians, the dark-skinned, servants, and so on. (Yes, Italians. The novel is set in a Roman city, but the good guys are all expatriate Greeks, because Italians weren’t as “noble” or interesting as Greeks.) Plus the guy uses a well-timed minor earthquake as a plot device. He must have liked the idea, since he also did it in _Vril_, the closest he got to writing SF (and pretty poor too, but in different ways). ---
**Author:** ![maplekiwi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/a4c791/32.png) [@maplekiwi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/maplekiwi)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2008, 3:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-your-favorite-or-least-favorite-historical-fiction-novels/475822/66 "2008-12-09T03:56:47Z")
Many of my favourites have already been named. But I’ll put in a word for my all time favourite author, Georgette Heyer. She wrote historical novels as well as historical/regency romances. I love Desiree by Annemarie Selinko. I’m not sure if she wrote anything else. I remember reading historicals by Jean Plaidy. She appears to be out of print now, so you may have to try secondhand book shops. My local library has a copy of Madame du Barry. I don’t hate Phillippa Gregory the way the other posters seem to - but the Queen’s Fool is a terrible book. Georgette Heyer usually pulled it off, but generally it doesn’t work having 1 fictional character in the midst of real ones. ---
**Author:** ![Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e99b99/32.png) [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diogenes_the_Cynic)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2008, 4:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-your-favorite-or-least-favorite-historical-fiction-novels/475822/67 "2008-12-09T04:25:39Z")
I’ll second the Flashman novels and _The Name of the Rose_, and I’ll also throw in another Umberto Eco novel called _Baudolino_, and Ken Follett’s _Pillars of the Earth_. A lesser known book, but a real gem is a novel called [If I Never Get Back](http://www.amazon.com/If-Never-Get-Back-Novel/dp/1583941878/ref=pd_sim_b_njs_1) by Darryl Brock. It’s about a guy who finds himself transported back to 1869 and ends up playing with the first professional baseball team. This one is especially great if you like baseball, plus it has Mark Twain in it. ETA, I also want to mention Gore Vidal’s _Creation_, though most all of Vidal is pretty good. ---
**Author:** ![stargazer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/eb8c5e/32.png) [@stargazer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/stargazer)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2008, 4:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-your-favorite-or-least-favorite-historical-fiction-novels/475822/68 "2008-12-09T04:55:32Z")
I love love love Indu Sundaresan’s _The Twentieth Wife_. I wanted it to never end. The sequel, _The Feast of Roses_, is equally well-written IMO, but I don’t like the story as much (the two books tell the based-in-real-life story of Nur Jahan, one of the Mughal Empresses). These books create beautiful, richly-colored images in my mind – they’re just wonderful. ---
**Author:** ![valleyofthedolls](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/a4c791/32.png) [@valleyofthedolls](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/valleyofthedolls)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2008, 6:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-your-favorite-or-least-favorite-historical-fiction-novels/475822/69 "2008-12-09T06:49:45Z")
Forever Amber by Kathleen Winsor An under-appreciated bodice ripper. Winsor’s writing and story telling talents are exceptional. All of the above plus you get a very in-depth depiction of Restoration England. ---
**Author:** ![MarcusF](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/67e7ee/32.png) [@MarcusF](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MarcusF)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2008, 1:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-your-favorite-or-least-favorite-historical-fiction-novels/475822/70 "2008-12-09T13:10:23Z")
I’ll add my whole hearted vote to the _Aubrey/Maturin_, \*Flashman \*and \*Falco \*series. I also enjoyed McCullough’s \*Masters of Rome \*but I was never entirely sure why. My preference runs to a fictional hero in a contained plotline set against a real historical background - not to the life story of historical characters with the action spread over years and where we know what is going to happen to them! I would also vote for Clavell’s _Shogun_. Maybe not the greatest literature (and definitely not absolutely accurate history :dubious:) but brilliant at taking the reader inside an alien culture - of course ritual suicide makes perfect sense… A couple of series not been mentioned before: Malcolm MacDonald’s Stevenson family saga, _The World from Rough Stones_, _The Rich are With you Always_, _Sons of Fortune_, and (not so good in my view) _Abigail_. another author who takes you inside a different period - in this case mid-Victorian Britain as the railway age takes off. Dorothy Dunnett’s \*Lymond \*and \*Niccolo \*series. The most incredibly detailed and beautifully written depiction of 16th and 15th century Europe (and Africa) taking in areas of history I had never thought to study before - the seige of Malta, Constantinople in the early years of the Ottoman Empire, Trebizond, Timbuktu, etc, etc. ---
**Author:** ![singular1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ba9def/32.png) [@singular1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/singular1)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2008, 2:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-your-favorite-or-least-favorite-historical-fiction-novels/475822/71 "2008-12-09T14:02:01Z")
Genghis - Birth of an Empire. I picked this up in a grocery store as a time-waster, and ended up devouring it and the sequel. If you don’t mind getting him hooked on a trilogy, this is a great start, and part III comes out in March (already preordered!). ---
**Author:** ![PoorYorick](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ecccb3/32.png) [@PoorYorick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PoorYorick)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2008, 3:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-your-favorite-or-least-favorite-historical-fiction-novels/475822/72 "2008-12-09T15:08:32Z")
> [@Roderick\_Femm](#): > > I’d like also to put in a few words for Sir Walter Scott. Most of his works (Ivanhoe aside) take place in the lowlands of Scotland in the 17th and 18th centuries. I remember being enthralled while reading _Ivanhoe_ as a fifteen year old. For a while, it even invaded my dreams. I reread it a couple of years ago and was disappointed how poorly it held up. The writing and characterization seemed so unsophisticated to my jaded eye. I still didn’t mind the anachronisms, though. Some excellent recommendations here. Below are a few that I enjoyed that I don’t think have been mentioned yet: [ul] [li]\*Ragtime \*(early 1900’s) and _The March_ (Civil War) by E.L. Doctorow. Superb characterization.[/li][li]_The Angle of Darkness_ (1987) by Caleb Carr. If you enjoyed _The Alienist_, I think you’ll like this one. It continues the series with the same protagonist.[/li][li]\*Storyville \* (turn of the century New Orleans) by Lois Battle. I haven’t read it, but my wife swears by it. [/li][li]_The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters_ (Victorian) by Gordon Dahlquist. I don’t know if you could really classify this as historical, but if you’re into steampunk, I think you’d love this.[/li][li]ETA: _The Quincunx_ by Charles Palliser (19th Century England). Reminiscent of Dickens in that it draws you into the time.[/li][/ul] ---
**Author:** ![Khadaji](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/9e8a1a/32.png) [@Khadaji](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Khadaji)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2008, 3:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-your-favorite-or-least-favorite-historical-fiction-novels/475822/73 "2008-12-09T15:12:49Z")
_The Lion Of Ireland_ by Morgan Llwellyn (SP) It has one or two spots of mysticism in it, but nothing to make it hard-core fantasy. It is about Brian Boru one of Ireland’s legendary kings. I haven’t read it in years, but it is a good read. ---
**Author:** ![PoorYorick](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ecccb3/32.png) [@PoorYorick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PoorYorick)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2008, 3:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-your-favorite-or-least-favorite-historical-fiction-novels/475822/74 "2008-12-09T15:15:17Z")
Too late to edit: Needless to say, _The Angle of Darkness_ takes place in 1897, not 1987. ---
**Author:** ![pseudotriton\_ruber\_ruber](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/a9a28c/32.png) [@pseudotriton\_ruber\_ruber](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pseudotriton_ruber_ruber)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2008, 3:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-your-favorite-or-least-favorite-historical-fiction-novels/475822/75 "2008-12-09T15:46:11Z")
Burgess’s NOTHING LIKE THE SUN was a fun interpretation of Shakespeare’s missing years. For more recent periods, there’s Joseph Kanon’s book about the A-Bomb (forget the title) and THE GOOD GERMAN. David Lodge’s AUTHOR, AUTHOR is a novel about Henry James (and Du Maurier) and is excellent. ---
**Author:** ![Malthus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/85f322/32.png) [@Malthus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malthus)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2008, 3:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-your-favorite-or-least-favorite-historical-fiction-novels/475822/76 "2008-12-09T15:48:33Z")
> [@PoorYorick](#): > > Too late to edit: Needless to say, _The Angle of Darkness_ takes place in 1897, not 1987. The _Angle_ of Darkness sounds intriguing. Geometry gone bad. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![PoorYorick](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ecccb3/32.png) [@PoorYorick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PoorYorick)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2008, 3:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-your-favorite-or-least-favorite-historical-fiction-novels/475822/77 "2008-12-09T15:58:10Z")
Dammit!! ---
**Author:** ![Algernon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/a183cd/32.png) [@Algernon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Algernon)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2008, 4:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-your-favorite-or-least-favorite-historical-fiction-novels/475822/78 "2008-12-09T16:20:54Z")
Not enough time to actually comment, but I’ll place two books on the list that I really enjoyed. [Pretty Birds - recent history, Sarajevo in the 1990’s conflict.](http://books.google.com/books?id=crrxZaMomsEC&dq=label:%22historical+fiction%22) [Unto This Hour – fictional account of the Civil War battle of Second Manassas.](http://books.google.com/books?id=itwAGwAACAAJ&dq=label:%22historical+fiction%22) ---
**Author:** ![Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e99b99/32.png) [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diogenes_the_Cynic)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2008, 4:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-your-favorite-or-least-favorite-historical-fiction-novels/475822/79 "2008-12-09T16:25:57Z")
Has anyone mentioned McKinley Kantor’s _Andersonville_? ---
**Author:** ![OtakuLoki](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/ac8455/32.png) [@OtakuLoki](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OtakuLoki)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2008, 4:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-your-favorite-or-least-favorite-historical-fiction-novels/475822/80 "2008-12-09T16:26:48Z")
> [@RealityChuck](#): > > Though a fantasy, Tim Power’s **The Stress of Her Regard** does an amazing job of weaving the actual lives of the romantic poets (Byron, Shelley, Keats) into his story of psychic vampires, and giving the facts of their lives a supernatural twist. Tim Powers does a remarkable job with fitting his fantasies into known historical events. I’m not as certain about the accuracy of his characterizations. I believe that his **The Anubis Gates** is also a good view of the same period of history, though admittedly through the eyes of a time traveler - so there’s a lot less cognitive dissonance there with attitudes. It’s a very enjoyable book - I’m just not in a position to state it’s completely accurate from a historical perspective. In addition to Barbara Hambly’s Free Man of Color books, she also did a mystery set in ancient Rome (About seventy years after the Flavian period of Lindsay Davis’ M. Didius Falco books.) titled [Search the Seven Hills](http://www.amazon.com/Search-Seven-Hills-Quirinal-Affair/dp/0345344383/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1228839673&sr=8-1) also previous published as The Quirinal Hill Affair. Obviously, it’s a bit hard to find, now - but I think it’s a fun book to come back to, and it does work hard to show contemporary views of slavery, and the brutality of the Roman Games. I’d also suggest her [Bride of the Rat God](http://www.amazon.com/Bride-Rat-God-Barbara-Hambly/dp/0345381017/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1228839927&sr=1-1). The cover and title are both deliberately evocative of the silent movie era and the outre and over-the-top nature of much of the films of the time. Which seems to have hurt the sales of the book. But it’s completely proper to evoke that, since it is set in 1920s Hollywood. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-your-favorite-or-least-favorite-historical-fiction-novels/475822.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-your-favorite-or-least-favorite-historical-fiction-novels/475822.md?page=5)