The Baroque Cycle is one of my favorite series ever. So fun! I’ve read it twice 
If I Never Get Back by Darryl Brock is amazing, too. It’s about the beginnings of baseball and Mark Twain (not sure how they are related IRL). It’s actually a time-travel novel but the protagonist hangs out with the real people from that era. After I read it the first time, we went to the baseball HOF and it was soooo cool to see the characters from the book in pictures in the real HOF!! I’ve read it 3 times.
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.
Those are hysterical, thanks for sharing.
I think my favorite is
I mentioned above and many other places the AWAKENING LAND series and one thing I love about it is that it pretty much avoids all of these. The character Sayward (pronounced “Saird”) is intelligent- though illiterate (hardly surprising)- and has the prejudices and superstitions of a “woodsie” (a frontier girl). Her husband Portius is a religiously tolerant agnostic (freethinker) as well as an abolitionist, two things that would seem enlightened to many today certainly and make him an odd bird in the story, but he’s neither of these in a - if this makes sense- politically correct way; he doesn’t have 20th century “what the f–k were they thinking?” vision about the issue, neither is an obsession or mission. He’s also not drop-dead gorgeous, is a largely disinterested father, can be arrogant to his neighbors who he regards (correctly usually) as his intellectual subordinates, and he’s an unfaithful husband— and he’s the good guy (and he really is)! The Indians are <gasp> not all nature worshipping peaceful mystics but actual human beings with virtues and vices, and rather than a passionate night with a soon to be killed hero that results in a beautiful lovechild Portius and Sayward just have lots and lots of sex [which Richter doesn’t feel the need to describe] that results in lots and lots of babies [until Sayward, who loves her children, just gets sick of having them])- she’s that rare historical fiction heroine who at 40 has stretch marks, broader hips, and sagging boobs. I love these kinds of complexity and realism for characters. (The miniseries is great also and I’ll get it the day it comes onto DVD- I’ve never seen that kind of detail to the sets, wardrobe, dialects of a period piece, and the selection of Hal Holbrook and Elizabeth Montgomery for the leads rather than a twenty-something studmuffin and a silicon bombshell was perfect.)
Something I have tried to find but they don’t seem to exist is a good Civil War novel about the Army of Tennessee (or even the Army of the Tennessee [the the being the difference in CSA and USA). Even scholarly and popular histories (non-fiction) seem to be about 25:1 in the Virginia theater v. the Western theater (and farther west still- Texas and New Mexico and the like- forget it). About the closest you get is historical romances set on plantations burned during Sherman’s march (in fact even if it was 50 miles out of his path he sent the most debased men of his army to go whampin’ and whompin’ every livin’ thing that moves within an inch of its life. Except the women folks, of course.)
For that matter, a novel set on the Confederate home front with people like MY ancestors and the ancestors of most people of Confederate descent: the yeoman farmers who probably never saw a Yankee but who felt the wore very much. These people are not only a thousand times more numerous than the white column sitting julep sipping hoop skirters but they’re many times more interesting.
Cloudsplitter, by Russell Banks, about John Brown. Incredible book.
Ah, another recommend- it’s one of the bestselling historical fiction novels of all time but there are many millions who haven’t read it-
Alex Haley’s ROOTS- I re-read it for the first time in probably 20 years recently and it was actually better than I remembered it. It’s also better than the miniseries, which while decent has two big problems:
1- the Battle of the Network Stars factor (i.e. the fact that pretty much everyone in the cast was at some point on either The Love Boat or Love American Style)
2- the padding (they added a lot of sideplots that weren’t in the book, and while some worked [the adulterous in-law relationship twixt Lorne Greene’s wife and brother, Robert Reed] some didn’t [Lloyd Bridges as Snidely Whiplash])
But if you haven’t read the book, it’s good. It gets a lot of flak today due to the asterixes about it regarding plagiarism lawsuits (which the new preface addresses head-on, but what Haley plagiarized was not, imo, worth the huge settlement he made) and factual impossibilities (a criticism I find irrelevant: Haley never claimed that he was writing a work of non-fiction, and anybody who’s ever done genealogy knows that you can have truckloads of records [in itself not likely when you’re researching enslaved African-Americans- you’ll be lucky to find their name in a will and be able to pick them out on a slave schedule by age and gender] but you almost never find anything about their personality or the “story arcs” of their lives; also anybody who’s done genealogy knows that you can trace your ancestry back to 1740 or whatever and then suddenly realize “Damn! I got the wrong Sam Smith!” and realize that three generations have to be re-done so you’re really only back to 1830---- anyway, Haley was flushing out names on records and incorporating family stories where he could and the rest was imagination by his own admission).
Anyway, the book’s only serious problem with it is the pacing: the story of Kunta Kinte/Toby takes about half the book, then the story of his daughter Kizzy and grandson George up until 1865 take most of the rest of the book, and then all of the generations since 1865 get covered in about 30 pages- you can practically hear Haley’s editor saying “Alex, deadline, we need the manuscript and we’re not going to wait any longer!” That said, in the young Kunta to middle-aged George sections there are many “you are there” moments that really take you into the slave quarters and the mindsets of the time, and again the characters are not all evil or all saintly. The most complex is probably the character played by Chuck Conners in the miniseries)- he’s a rapist who sees Kizzy as his property to do with as he pleases sexually and otherwise and is obviously never once concerned with the morality of it or her feelings, but he also comes to have true affection for his son George and George’s family and is capable of some unexpected kindnesses. An example is when he’s forced to sell them to pay his debts he goes to an effort to find a master who will buy the entire family (George’s adult sons, their wives and children, and the unmarried younger children) rather than split them up even though he’d make a LOT more money selling them separately. While it’s easy to say “well George is his son and those are his grandkids and great-grandkids, he should feel compelled to do that- in fact he should free them”, this wasn’t the mindset of the times (plus they couldn’t have remained once free without, literally, an act of the state congress).
Anyway, I’m not saying that the master (Tom Lea in the book, Tom [Murray?] in the miniseries- the name was changed when the descendants of the real man made a fuss) is a good guy by any means, but just that Haley avoided the temptation of making him Simon Legree. Also, the scenes in which Kunta is shackled and in the hull of the ship- Haley’s own research (being shackled and naked in a ship hull [Haley was a coast guard member and former merchant mariner who had lots of contacts in that community]) comes through in the writing of it, and there are lots of “blips” that just remind you of things slaves encountered on a daily basis that are far more horrifying in ways than the more sensational scenes of whippings and the famous foot scene played up in the miniseries (example: whenever Lea has sex with Kizzy he leaves a nickel in a jar by her bed- this is in many ways more degrading than a beating).
Sorry, didn’t mean to go into such long reviews, but the point is ROOTS is worth a read.
I also like Taylor Caldwell- nearly all of her books, although the Atlantis one is kinda goofy. But especially love Melissa and Testimony of Two Men although they are more period pieces than describing historical events.
A bit off topic, but did any of the Taylor Caldwell fans ever read “Search for a Soul” by her and Jess Stearn? It’s about her experiences in [ahem] past life regression. Among other things she was supposedly George Eliot’s assistant (who was hanged for theft), Mary Magdalen’s mother, and the wife of an angel named Darios who lives on another planet (Kolob perhaps). It’s just an incredibly bizarre book that I read when I was a teenager in a new age phase.
Even then I thought it was loopy and that the most interesting parts were about her own life: her mom, if the book is right, was a psycho piece of work [think Sybil] and her own life was a bit of a roller coaster. When her first novel was published she was actually living in a tent with her husband and her grandchild [she became a grandmother in her 30s and raised the kid for several years] though I forget why (I don’t recall if they were indigent or if her husband’s job somehow involved living in a tent).
I liked some of her books as well, though I haven’t read any in many years. I do know that she’s one of those people like John Lennon or Bobby Kennedy that you hardly ever read anything positive about from people who knew them well.
David Liss has two I really enjoy: A Conspiracy of Paper and A Spectacle of Confusion. Both novels deal with Benjamin Weaver, a Jewish ex-pugilist-turned-thief-taker .
Conspiracy of Paper is set in 18th century London and focuses on the beginnings of a stock market and the South Sea Bubble. I knew little about the historical period going in, but found all the details just fascinating.
My tastes in historical fiction follow my tastes in history, so I never like the same books as anyone. I study late medieval/early modern history, and I’m most interested in social/cultural history and the history of women. So court romances have never appealed very much, nor war epics (though I love World War I and II books - but you can get great memoirs and contemporary books about both).
My favourite “historical” writer is Umberto Eco - I love both The Name of the Rose and Baudolino (as well as the modern books I’ve read). He’s incredibly knowledgeable about the Middle Ages himself, so he not only has a ton of clever references, but he also has fun with it. I think that he understands that a modern writer can’t really write an accurate depiction of the Middle Ages, so he purposefully sets a modern character in the The Name of the Rose to react as the reader would.
I know I raved about it here before, but I recently read Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brook, and I was amazed by how well she captured the 17th century. My thesis supervisor liked it too, which is a huge stamp of approval (picky woman!:p). The author consulted with a great early modern social historian, which really showed.
I haven’t read it myself, but a friend of mine who studies modern Canadian history can’t stop raving about The Colony of Unrequited Dreams, by Wayne Johnston. She says the author happily and consciously includes glaring anachronisms, but he has fun with it. I think that’s the key to good historical fiction - a desire to tell a good story, not simply recount convoluted events, and a sense of respect for the past, combined with playfulness.
(Yes, I have given way too much thought to this. Actually, all the women in my graduate history program love historical fiction, particularly kids’ books, and I’ve seriously considered doing a real study of children’s historical fiction and the construction of a mythical past. Yes, I am a huge nerd.)
One I always liked was called Knight’s Fee by Rosemary Sutcliffe:
I’m also extremely picky about my historical fiction, so mostly I don’t even pick it up because I know it will piss me off (should have known better about The Pillars of the Earth - dumb me) so when I recommend the Brother Cadfael mystery books by Ellis Peters, be assured that I mean business. The people are IMHO quite authentically medieval.
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 thought I was the only person in the world who wasn’t thrilled by The Pillars of the Earth.
I like the Cadfael books, too.
Nope. Sarum was no great shakes either.
IMHO the reason we don’t get more negatives about books is because we don’t like to dump on stuff that other people are reading, stuff they say they’re enjoying. But in a thread like this, asking for opinions rather than just “What are you reading?”, folks are gonna be more up front with criticism.
Masters of Rome series by Colleen McCoullough.
I second Saylor’s ROma Sub Rosa
Read these two in conjunction - they deal with some of the same characters and are a lot of fun.
Another plug for the Aubrey/Maturin series. I’m on book 17 right now, not far from the place I quit reading two years ago simply because I didn’t want to reach a point where there were no more volumes left.
I also adored the Masters of Rome. Each time a new book came out, I’d re-read the entire series. Come to think of it, though, I don’t believe I ever got around to reading the final book. My bedside stack was about three feet high when it came out and it seems to have slipped my mind until just now.
Another favorite set of books is Nicholas Guild’s The Assyrian and The Blood Star. The first was eventually published in paperback, but not the second – the last time I checked I could pick up a second-hand copy off of the internet for about $80.
Antony and Cleopatra. I’m so glad she wrote it, because she said she was going to stop after Caesar’s murder and Augustus’ rise to power, considering it the end of the Republic and the beginning of the Empire. But then she realized it wasn’t quite the end of the story, and A&C is a nice finale.
The Outlander books, of course, are my favorites, but the Masters of Rome is a close second. I read the Kent Family Chronicles by John Jakes to tatters when I was a teenager, but I’ve read some of his other series and realized he’s not that great a writer. In the KFC every single woman in the Kent line, whether she’s married into it or born into it, is raped. It might be date rape, it might be gang rape, but every single one is raped. :dubious:
Additionally, his North and South series has rather one dimensional female characters, namely Ashton (the slut) and Brett (the good girl.) Maybe he doesn’t know how to write women characters, but I have no interest in reading the books again.
And every once in awhile I’ll dive into James Michener.
And every character male or female dies in or before their 40s. Basically he ran out of plots for them and wanted to move on to younger characters havin’ sex so he killed them off. (At one time he said, don’t know how serious he was, that he wanted to have a branch of the family move to Kansas, become farmers, and show up at a reunion with an adopted baby named Clark.)
Michener is one of the few authors whose movie versions, imo, are better than his books. So many of his book characters are never fleshed out at all- it’s more like a slightly meatier version of the begattings in the Old Testament- while the movie versions add some personality. Hawaii is a prime example: the movie only covers the lives of one of the many couples in the book in any depth (Abner and Jerusha Hale) but gives them both a lot more substance. In the movie, for example, Abner doesn’t want to consummate their marriage because he feels sex is inherently sinful, then goes mad (not that far a leap) when he realizes he loves Jerusha more than he loves God after delivering their breech child, plotlines that weren’t in the book but added much. (Also I loved the gargantuan actress who played the Alii Nui- perfect casting if ever there was perfect casting.)
There is an author by the name of Gary Jennings that I just love for historical fiction. He’s very hard to find, but you can get lucky at used bookstores. He wrote Circus, Aztec, The Journeyer and another book that has slipped my mind. They are all impeccably researched. Aztec is usually the easiest one to find but I found the follow-ups to that series just sad. Stick with the three I mentioned (and the fourth one that I can’t remember)!
I wish he’d written more. I found them all quite fascinating.
I like Margaret George, as well, however I’ve never made it through one of her complete books either. I just picked up Helen of Troy and will give that one a go. She starts strong but then her books just get bogged down in the middle with I don’t even know and I just lose interest. But I would really like to read this latest one as I don’t know much about Ancient Greece.
The Killer Angels, by Michael Shara was great. (And won a Pulitzer, I believe). I had the good fortune to read it at Gettysburg, and it really brought all those names to life for me. The movie was decent too…