Books shelved under “Historical Fiction”

During my time in England, I have consumed an extraordinary number of BBC documentaries (and the occasional drama) about Britain’s long, bloody, occasionally confused history. Some of these covered the Plantagenets, but the lion’s share tend to drift decidedly towards the Tudors. Even the brutal episodes of internecine family bloodshed of the Wars of the Roses have nothing on slow-motion car crash that is Henry VIII’s six wives, Reformation, and Elizabethan England. In The Marriage…

Having not grown up during a time with segregation, it’s difficult for me to understand completely what such a society is like. But stories like Wakulla Springs at least help by highlighting some of the less overt but no less harmful racist and oppressive tactics used in the United States to maintain the social status quo. In this eponymous Florida town, Andy Duncan and Ellen Klages allow their characters to dream—and then sacrifice those dreams…

I actually read this back when Subterranean Press first published it online. I almost didn’t re-read it when I found it in the Hugo Voters Packet … but then I decided that I wanted to write a review of it, and I wanted to refresh my memory. I’m glad I did this, because “The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feeling” is even better than I remember. (I am aware of the irony of this…

This is not an easy story for me to love, and maybe even like is not the appropriate word. I can appreciate it, as literature. That being said, unlike much of the so-called “great” or “classic” literature I have read to date, I do not feel immeasurably enriched by Things Fall Apart. Although at times moving and disturbing, Chinua Achebe’s account of how Europeans stripped Nigeria of its cultural and tribal identity lacks a…

In Grade 12 English we were responsible for an Independent Study Unit, where we read two novels and wrote an essay comparing their common themes. We also had to give a presentation on a theme from the books. I studied Douglas Coupland’s Hey Nostradamus! and Girlfriend in a Coma; my presentation was on theodicy and the Problem of Evil. A classmate gave a presentation about Pride and Prejudice. We had the opportunity to…

Thrilled by the excellent recent adaptation by the BBC, I decided it was time to finally read The Three Musketeers. I have vague memories of borrowing a book with a yellow hardback cover from the library when I was much, much younger. But at that precocious age I found the nineteenth century language and over-the-top tropes of romance and revenge difficult to enjoy, and I don’t recall if I ever finished it. This time,…

Lee Collins has gone and done it, people. He has made me a fan of a Western-based series. I never thought I would see the day. But if I liked The Dead of Winter, then I guess I loved She Returns from War. This sequel is everything I wanted and nothing like what I expected; Collins manages to satisfy my appetite while simultaneously surprise and delight.

Whereas The Dead of Winter is a…

I'm a sucker for books set in ancient Rome, and in particular, mysteries. So I've been anticipating Medicus and the Disappearing Dancing Girls, because it promises to deliver exactly what I like: the delicious, twisted knot of a murder set as microcosm against the larger intrigue of the corrupt Roman empire. R.S. Downie doesn't disappoint.

Ruso is an officer in the Twentieth Legion, which is stationed in Roman Britain--in other words, the middle of…

I saw this on a library shelf and fell prey to their assertion that, having read The Shadow of the Wind, I should read this too. Blair’s review is spot-on when she says “the story begins promisingly” but then “the book soon begins to get quite silly and more and more plot holes and unanswered questions pop up”. The Prince of Mist suffers from being, ultimately, a story without a heart. Carlos Ruiz Zafón…

The cover of this edition boldly proclaims, “He had decided to live forever or die in the attempt.” This quotation is from fairly early in Catch-22, yet I understand what it was chosen as representative of the book as a whole. The novel’s title has become synonymous with an absurd, recursive paradox—because that’s exactly what Joseph Heller depicts in this satirical World War II story.

When I was younger, Catch-22 defeated me, in that…

Yes, I have indeed read another romance novel with vampires. What is wrong with me?

As with The Rest Falls Away, Soulless has been on my to-read list for a while now. I almost bought the boxed set of all five books in this series at Christmas time, stopping myself on the grounds that I wouldn’t want to bring them back to England with me, so they’d gather dust at home until the summer.…

Kate Mosse has been on the periphery of my literary radar for a while now. Hers were books that would show up on recommendation lists based on books I had like. They would appear at my friends’ houses, imposing yet reassuring with their bulk and sleek, simple cover art. I was vaguely aware that she wrote historical fiction, and that was it.

Citadel confronted me from the stack of just-returned books at the library one…

I didn’t expect to be reading another one after the last one, but I guess what they say about vampire romance novels is true: it never rains but it pours.

Actually, The Rest Falls Away has been on my to-read list since 2009, long before Dracula, My Love waltzed its way into my life. The tagline everyone uses to describe this book is “Buffy the Vampire Slayer in Regency England”, and I’m unoriginally…

I love Agatha Christie mysteries. After mastering the adventurous Hardy Boys and the magical Holmes, I fell in love as a child with the cool, considering Poirot and the keen, canny Miss Marple. As an adult, I love Christie’s mysteries not only for their entertainment but for how she writes about class and English society. Her novels are little slices of a time that no longer (if ever it did) exist, one populated by quaint…

I had little but praise for The Alchemist of Souls, the first adventure of Mal Catlyn and Coby Hendricks in an alternative Elizabethan England. Anne Lyle had a keen eye for characterization and an ability to weave a tight, dramatic story that held my attention and left me wanting more. So more’s the pity that The Merchant of Dreams was quite a different experience!

This sequel picks up a little while after the first…

I tend to forget that books can be works of art. This might seem like a strange statement, considering how seriously I seem to take reading. Don’t let my relentless criticism fool you, though: by and large, I read for pleasure. The act of thinking about and analysing the books I read just happens to form an integral part of that process. Yet, for all that analysis, the artistic nature of the work often eludes…

A good book works because it tells a good story about interesting people. Full stop. These two qualities, narrative and personality, intertwine to create a unique and worthwhile experience. If the story isn’t compelling or the people aren’t interesting, then all the tricks and gimmicks and set pieces are not going to elevate the book beyond mediocrity. That being said, I don’t think that the best books are always those with the most hyper-realistic characters.…

World War II is understandably an attractive point of divergence for writers of alternative history. "What if the Nazis won?" is a compelling question that has been explored many times over. Dominion takes a slightly different tack, imagining instead that the war itself was largely averted through appeasement. C.J. Sansom takes as his point of divergence the fateful meeting in which Churchill, Halifax, and Chamberlain decide who will succeed the latter as Prime Minister. In …

So far I’ve been reading George Eliot’s work in a reverse-chronological order. For my third experience I’ve chosen Adam Bede, her first novel. I didn’t realize this until I read the introduction after finishing the book. In hindsight, I can see how her style is less polished than her later works; however, at the time, I was captivated by all the hallmarks of Eliot’s writing that make her my favourite Victorian novelist.

The plot…

I always feel a twinge of pity when someone tells me, “I don’t read for pleasure any more” or “I only read non-fiction.” Most of the pity is sympathy for the fact that, in today’s busy world, we just don’t have the time. Whenever someone expresses awe at the number of books I read in a year and asks me how I do it, I say, truthfully, that I make the time to read, just…