Smudge Marks & Engel Werks Inside GMT Flash of Steel Playing at the World Dyson’s Dodecahedron Quest for Fun! Bruce Heard and New Stories Fantasy Cafe Lynn’s Book Blog Sitrep Hex and Violence Banzai!! Dungeon Fantastic Ravens N’ Pennies Let’s GURPS The Collaborative Gamer Don’t Forget Your BootsGillian Bradshaw is one of my favorite historical authors, and this one does not disappoint. She admits up front to distorting the timeline slightly in the interests of the plot, which spans about seven critical years in the Fourth Century.[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
Long ago, my Dad recommended the novel Sword at Sunset to me. Before I ever got around to it, I found out that it was part of a series of novels Rosemary Sutcliff wrote about Roman and post-Roman Britain. So,[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
It’s been… wow, a decade? Since I read Master and Commander. So, yes, I can say that you don’t need any detailed knowledge of the first book before reading this. In fact, while the climax of the first book gets[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
The eruption of Vesuvius in AD 79 must rank as the most famous volcanic eruption in all of history, even over such titanic eruptions as Krakatoa, or such well-covered events as Mt. Saint Hellens. Of course, Vesuvius got extensive coverage[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
This is less a novel, and more a fictional memoir. There’s no real plot, and a barebones structure. The entire story is told first person by a young German soldier in WWI who describes the horrors of the Western Front[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
Clavell’s Shogun is certainly a very good book, but it doesn’t quite seem to know what it wants to be. It’s a historical novel, but instead of presenting historical personages doing what they historically did, and then filling in a[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
White Mare’s Daughter is technically a historical novel, but I find it hard to classify it as such. This takes place way back in prehistory, around 4500 BCE or so, featuring a pair of cultures that it is impossible to[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
Historical, fantasy, or romance…? The Golem and the Jinni is a bit of a mix of all three. The Manhattan of 1899 is almost as much a character as anything else in this novel, but it doesn’t feel like a[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
I know of Barbara Hambly for her various epic fantasy stories, so a historical murder mystery was a bit of a surprise for me. As a historical story, it’s great. It’s obvious that Hambly spent a lot of time and[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
This isn’t quite an Arthurian book in the usual sense. Set in post-Roman Britain, The Winter Prince adapts from the Welsh versions of Arthurian legend, taking the general situation to tell its own story. The entire story is told by[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…