Category Archives: Historical Fiction

The Ionian Mission

Posted on May 18, 2013 by

For me, this blog is as much about keeping a record of my reading to serve as a memory aid as it is about sharing my reading with an audience. (Not that you dear readers aren’t lovely, but I don’t … Continue reading →

Posted in Fiction, Historical Fiction | 4 Comments

The Book of Night Women

Posted on May 7, 2013 by

I read The Book of Night Women by Marlon James a couple of weeks ago, and I’ve been putting off writing about it — not because I don’t have anything to say, but because it’s such an interesting and complex book … Continue reading →

Posted in Fiction, Historical Fiction | 4 Comments

A Treacherous Likeness

Posted on April 2, 2013 by

Note: I plan to discuss this novel and its plot in detail. I don’t think you can really “spoil” it, given that the events of the novel are historical and well-known, but Lynn Shepherd gives them her own interpretation, so … Continue reading →

Posted in Fiction, Historical Fiction, Mysteries | Tagged | 8 Comments

Queens’ Play

Posted on March 26, 2013 by

When the second of Dorothy Dunnett’s Lymond Chronicles begins, Francis Crawford of Lymond is no longer a pariah and exile but a trusted protector of the Queen of Scotland. The six-year-old queen is being brought up in the French court, … Continue reading →

Posted in Fiction, Historical Fiction | 12 Comments

Life After Life

Posted on March 23, 2013 by

No breath. All the world come down to this. One breath. Little lungs, like dragonfly wings failing to inflate in the foreign atmosphere. No wind in the strangled pipe. The buzzing of a thousand bees in the tiny curled pearl … Continue reading →

Posted in Fiction, Historical Fiction, Speculative Fiction | Tagged | 18 Comments

The Children’s Book

Posted on February 26, 2013 by

Fairly early on in A.S. Byatt’s The Children’s Book, Olive and Humphry Wellwood throw a huge, Bohemian costume-party, patterned after A Midsummer Night’s Dream. They are friends with all sorts of people: artists and artisans, Fabians and fabulists, socialists and … Continue reading →

Posted in Fiction, Historical Fiction | 20 Comments

The Surgeon’s Mate

Posted on January 23, 2013 by

The beginning of the seventh novel in Patrick O’Brian’s sea-faring adventure series finds Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin in Halifax, having just escaped the Americans who were holding them captive in Boston. With them is Diana Villiers, who has left … Continue reading →

Posted in Fiction, Historical Fiction | 7 Comments

The Game of Kings

Posted on January 22, 2013 by

“Lymond is back.” It was known soon after the Sea-Catte reached Scotland from Campvere with an illicit cargo and a man she should not have carried. “Lymond is in Scotland.” It was said by busy men preparing for war against … Continue reading →

Posted in Fiction, Historical Fiction | 15 Comments

Kiku’s Prayer

Posted on January 12, 2013 by

For centuries, Christianity was strictly forbidden in Japan. Japanese citizens were required to express their renunciation of Christianity by stepping on fumi-e, carved images of Jesus and Mary. Those who refused were subjected to painful tortures. This practice, depicted in … Continue reading →

Posted in Fiction, Historical Fiction | Tagged | 13 Comments

The Fortune of War

Posted on January 2, 2013 by

I closed out 2012 with the sixth of Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey/Maturin novels, The Fortune of War. This novel picks up shortly after Desolation Island, with Captain Jack Aubrey being released from command of the just-barely-seaworthy Leopard and reassigned to the … Continue reading →

Posted in Fiction, Historical Fiction | 18 Comments