List: historical-fiction

This part of the series goes all in on historical fiction: It follows the backdrop of Rowena Ravenclaw, who is really called Hrodwunn of Hrabanklawa, Bavaria. We get some alright character building, and more importantly, some really fun historical fiction: Hrodwunn is friends with Theophanu, the wife of Otto II, and so her fate ist connected to the complex fate of the rulers of the Holy Roman Empire. It's well-researched and all kinds of fun (plus, part of it takes place in Quedlinburg).

Eaters of the Dead

by Michael Crichton · published 1976 · read 2022-01-22

Surprisingly good: Crichton's version of Beowulf, told from the perspective of an Arab traveller who gets taken along on the famous journey. The book strikes a decent balance among several things: the voice of an old epos and modern pacing; displaying the clash between the two cultures while also being an adventure book; proposing plausible origins for the myth while also making them sound sufficiently magical. Neanderthals as the origin of Grendel were a particularly neat touch.

Vaterland

by Robert Harris · published 1992 · read 2013-08-01

One of the few books that improve by translating them to German. Alternate history where Hitler won WW2 and everything is German. A mystery set in that scenario in the 60s – well-researched, well-paced. It's not a cheap dystopia, it's real and gritty and oppressive without going over the top.

Krokodil im Nacken

by Klaus Kordon · published 2002 · read 2010-05-01

Literary introduction to the horrors of the GDR and the Stasi. I don't remember the book well enough to say anything about its accuracy. Kordon usually tells well-researched stories that support the current narrative about past events, so that's what I'd expect. It's uncharacteristically long, and I don't remember much to justify the length.

Mit dem Rücken zur Wand

by Klaus Kordon · published 1990 · read 2003-03-01

The second book in this series takes place fifteen years after the revolution, during the fall of the Weimar Republic. It's haunting and gives a face to dissidents, to jews, to communists, and of course to nazis and collaborators. I was already emotionally invested in the series, so I didn't see the big turncoat coming (which my mother spotted from a mile away). The book didn't teach me many new things, if I recall correctly, but it cemented a sense of oppression and violence and the general social situation at the time.

Joseph Fouché

by Stefan Zweig · published 1929 · read 2008-07-01

Stefan Zweig just has a way with words, and his biography of Joseph Fouché taught me more about Napoleon's France (and the France before and afterwards) than my history lessons ever did.

The World of Yesterday

by Stefan Zweig · published 1941 · read 2008-12-01

Autobiographical memories of Zweig's youth in Austrian empire Vienna, as an intellectual jew. Balancing on the line between "elegant" and "overly flowery", late-life Zweig had surprisingly turned into a fan of the monarchy. He's busy romanticising the past, but he does it so well that I can't be mad at him.

The Legions of Fire

by David Drake · published 2010 · read 2020-07-20

The Legions of Fire is Historical Fantasy: It takes place in Ancient Rome while Tiberius is emperor, only that Rome is called Carce, so that Drake doesn't get punched by history nerds. Though the history nerds would have just about zero reason for punching him – Drake majored in history (with honours) and Latin, and it shows in loving background details. All other names stayed the same as in our history – Gaul, Carthage, Germany etc, even Octavianus Augustus, so I didn't quite see the point of calling it Carce. Either do Rome, or go the Codex Alera route.

Slaughterhouse-Five

by Kurt Vonnegut · published 1969 · read 2009-01-01

Vonnegut witnessed the Dresden bombing, and this is his book about it. Of course, it's not just that, and even where it is just that, it is processed beautifully. Vonnegut is brutal and yet kind, dramatic but always matter-of-fact.

The Physician

by Noah Gordon · published 1986 · read 2006-07-01

One of my earliest historical fiction books, and I loved it to pieces. It seemed so real, and so unflinching, and I dreamt about it a lot. Now I know that in many ways, it follows genre conventions and Gordon's research is … middling and in the service of drama. Oh well – I can't ask for more than enjoyment at the time of reading.

Désirée

by Annemarie Selinko · published 1951 · read 2008-08-01

Désirée got me started on serious historical fiction – this, or Klaus Kordon, but it's a close race. Désirée is the true tale of Désirée Clary, told in the form of her fictional diary.

Dodger

by Terry Pratchett · published 2012 · read 2017-06-01

Uh boy! Pratchett goes to the time and place he is most nerdy about: Early Victorian London.

Escape from Baghdad!

by Saad Hossain · published 2012 · read 2020-06-14

tl;dr: Fun, violence, fun.

Sailing to Sarantium

by Guy Gavriel Kay · published 1998 · read 2021-02-10

Sailing to Sarantium was my first Guy Gavriel Kay book, and it won't be my last. Not just that it didn't wrap up in one book (boo! … kidding), I also enjoyed the style a lot. Kay lets his story take place in Byzantium during Constantine's reign. It's not called Byzantium to allow for some creative freedoms and minor magic, but everything very clearly maps 1:1 to historic characters.

Lord of the Silver Bow

by David Gemmell · published 2005 · read 2021-08-21

David Gemmell shines when he writes warriors, no two ways about it. Lord of the Silver Bow is an adventure story set in and around Troy, before the Trojan war. Our protagonist is called Heliakon, a merchant (he doesn't like his first name, Aeneas), and we follow him through his life, often filled with hardship and hope and principles and dirty tricks. I liked this book a lot – its deviations from the Iliad are many, and they are fluent and consistent and fun.

11/22/63

by Stephen King · published 2011 · read 2018-10-09

I found 11/22/63 a good time travel story (Would you give five years of your life to stop the JFK assassination, given the chance?). Stephen King, as always, excells at the depiction of real, gritty human life with all its ups and downs. I really think he can write about anything, natural or supernatural, as long as it has at least a tenuous connection to Maine. The story had internal consistency, a bit of character development (with a not all that clever protagonist, which I appreciated – not all protagonists need to be the cleverererest), and a satisfying conclusion. Readers of It will appreciate the tie-ins, and I caught whiffs of the Dark Tower aesthetic and resonating themes. The quality of writing is, as always with King, good: believable characters, mostly even with more than one dimension, tight writing, the usual brilliant use of foreshadowing and -telling.

The Three Musketeers

by Alexandre Dumas · published 1844 · read 2003-04-01

People underestimate how honestly useful Dumas is. Well, if you get the abridged versions, of course, nobody wants to read that optimized-for-line-count nonsense. Read up on it, his tricks to stretch dialogue into more lines are hilarious, to the point of his writing style changing (and characters with long names suddenly dying) when his publishers changed the rules.

Of a Linear Circle - Part V - Gryffindor

by Flamethrower · read 2022-01-02

More backstory, more carefully researched historical fiction. Well, some is inaccurate in minor details, but on the level of getting one of the historical lords of Orkney wrong, which seems to be a cruel thing to count against a fanfic. Thanks to checking the story, also need to complain about the list of English (Wessex) kings with creative names such as Æthelred, Æthelstan, Ælfweard, Ælfwynn, Æthelwold, Æthelhelm, Æthelberht, Æthelbald, Æthelwulf …

A Marvellous Light

by Freya Marske · published 2021 · read 2021-11-05

Comfort ~~food~~ read. But for real, what is it with fantasy novels about gay magicians in Victorian England, where the lower-class magician falls for the upper-class non-magical nobility? Not that I'm complaining.

Ein Trümmersommer

by Klaus Kordon · published 1982 · read 2006-04-01

Honestly, I've always preferred Kordon's other book on 1945, "Der erste Frühling". But if you don't want to read a trilogy, then this is the next best thing. Kordon is reliably good at making teenagers understand what teenagers in other times experienced.

Der erste Frühling

by Klaus Kordon · published 1995 · read 2004-12-01

Concluding the series, we get to see the daughter of the first book's protagonist live through 1945 and deal with everything the world throws at her. Among other things: lies her grandparents told everybody to keep her away from nazi youth organisations, her father returning from the KZ, her whole worldview toppling along with her country, practical post-war problems, and adolescence.

Heimkehr zu den Dakota

by Liselotte Welskopf-Henrich · published 1951 · read 2003-05-01

Pain and emotional turmoil. Conflict and strife and family warmth – this book is high drama, and is both payoff for reading the first three books, and also sets up the second half of the series extremely well.

Über den Missouri

by Liselotte Welskopf-Henrich · published 1951 · read 2003-03-01

Concluding the series – I really should re-read to see what I think now. Back in the day I liked the early books more, but then, that's where the protagonist was closer to my own age. I wonder if my reading tastes just shuffle along with the protagonist's age …

Die Höhle in den schwarzen Bergen

by Liselotte Welskopf-Henrich · published 1963 · read 2003-06-01

I didn't relate to this book all that much, and I disliked the whole gold story arc. The story might have been better off without it. It's definitely good setup for the second half of the series though, so I won't grump too much.

Der junge Häuptling

by Liselotte Welskopf-Henrich · published 1951 · read 2003-09-01

More goodness: Harka has really come into his own and gotten back from his (well, his father's) banishment. Many well-loved characters from the first book re-occur. Welskopf-Henrich handles the reuniting very well, if memory serves.

Der Weg in die Verbannung

by Liselotte Welskopf-Henrich · published 1962 · read 2002-05-01

Our beloved hero is banished (well, his father is and he follows). The mood is predictably bad, but seeing Harka stand on his own and living through all the shit life throws at him was inspiring.

The Drawing of the Dark

by Tim Powers · published 1979 · read 2020-07-21

Taking place in Vienna, 1529, during the Turkish attack, this book is showing the struggle of "The West" and "The East" in the form of historical fantasy. The premise is, more or less, that the forces of East and West live in a constant struggle, magical and political, and at the same time, the world of magic has been losing power for the last 1500 years, because Christianity is hacking away at the root of it – soon, within 200 years, magic will be mostly gone.

Matters of Choice

by Noah Gordon · published 1995 · read 2009-08-01

Bringing the saga of the Cole family physicians to an end, we see a daughter of the family make her way through modern medicine. She decides against a soulless research jobs and becomes a country doctor. She deals with the difficulties that good doctors always find: Abuse, abortions, euthanasia, poverty. It's not my favourite part of the series, but I thought it was handled well at the time.

The Prince and the Pauper

by Mark Twain · published 1881 · read 2005-03-01

Twain humour and snarky class commentary – I wouldn't swear that it holds up to a re-read, but I liked it a lot when I was young.

The Gentleman’s Guide to Vice and Virtue

by Mackenzi Lee · published 2017 · read 2019-12-09

The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue by Mackenzi Lee is fun, but not outstanding. I was very tolerant of its flaws because it's very queer. The protagonist is an English aristocratic ass on his Grand Tour, which is a fine narrative device … until it gets tiring. Even a mistreated entitled idiot is still an entitled idiot, who in this case is surrounded by way cooler people. Especially his sister, who was the most competent person involved, would've made the book much better if it had been multi-POV, I think. Also, less of a euphoric "we ride into the sunset" ending – I had been hoping against hope for a better ending, and was disgruntled at this.

The Dragon Waiting

by John M. Ford · published 1983 · read 2020-07-25

Sometimes I'm reading a book and won't be very into it – only to discover that it grows on me after I've finished reading it, like some wines only really develop in the aftertaste. Dune was one such book for me, as was The Dragon Waiting.

I, Claudius

by Robert Graves · published 1934 · read 2020-05-15

This book has been languishing on my to-read pile for nearly two years, and when I saw it mentioned in Among Others, I was reminded of it and plunged into it. I'm a bit of a history nerd, but I never got too much into Roman history beyond the basics: Nine years of learning Latin left me scarred, and it just felt a bit icky because I mostly see military history fans being into it. Pre-imperial Rome is fun though, and then later East Rome, too, because who can resist a good collapse?

A Case of Possession

by K.J. Charles · published 2014 · read 2021-08-03

For the first part of the series, I called it “too well-written to deserve to be labeled as enjoyable trash”. The language of this second part remains well done, but the writing … not as much. It's more over-the-top, tryhard – when it doesn't really need to try hard, being itself would be enough: Magic Victorian lover boys return to the dirty city and deal with giant rats and prejudice while alternating between horniness and relationship drama. It's not bad, but the charm of the first part has worn off a bit. I'm not planning to read the next part any time soon, but I imagine at some point I'll be sick or tired or just in need of a comfort read, and I'll come back to the series then.

The Man in the High Castle

by Philip K. Dick · published 1962 · read 2016-12-12

Ok, so Philip K Dick is just too esoteric for me. Every book I've read has about 40% that I really like, that are clever, well-thought, and interesting. While the other parts are weird, sometimes they feel kafkaesque, or trippy, and I don't get them (or at least, their relevance and what they do in the book). As always I liked the premise (also, I'm a sucker for Nazis-have-won books), but the more it progressed the more I felt like I should take some drugs to properly understand the book. Not to say that it's a bad book, but it's just not for me.

The Last Cavalier: Being the Adventures of Count Sainte-Hermine in the Age of Napoleon

by Alexandre Dumas · published 1870 · read 2005-12-01

Disappointing, but not surprising: I knew that Dumas had written a lot, and even his best works need a lot of compression to be readable. The count of Sainte-Hermine probably would not have been good even with much more work, though. With a blatant Mary Sue (much, much worse than Monte Cristo) and a meandering plot at best, finishing this book is an achievement that was not worth it. Trust me.

Maria Stuart

by Friedrich Schiller · published 1800 · read 2008-02-01

Honestly, I don't remember much of this one except that I started out interested (Mary, after all, has a quite dramatic story to her name) and ended up bored.

Wilhelm Tell

by Friedrich Schiller · published 1804 · read 2009-12-01

Wilhelm Tell might be Schiller's most enjoyable drama, but also his most generic one. That's probably a compliment, seeing as it wasn't generic then, and only became so due to its own popularity?

The English Patient

by Michael Ondaatje · published 1992 · read 2019-11-20

The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje is a lyrical, slow, pain-ridden book about the trauma and separation and surreal life of people in and after WW2. It's not really for me, but it wasn't an unpleasant read, either.

Borgia

by Klabund · published 1928 · read 2020-05-11

This was nice, but not more than nice. The book tells episodes of the life of the Borgias, without much connecting tissue. I had expected it to be carried by witty or lyrical language (because Klabund), but found myself disappointed.

The City of Brass

by S.A. Chakraborty · published 2017 · read 2021-09-04

Set in Napoleonic Egypt, this is the story of Djinn, Daeva and related beings. Didn't do much for me – the concept of a hidden city of supernatural beings with tons of infighting sounded intriguing, and the stagesetting very promising, but. The protagonist is kind of flat and predictably Chosen (doesn't remember her childhood, knows magic language, has special powers, is very poor), and the dynamic between her and her semi-romantic sidekick fell extremely flat.

The Misplaced Legion

by Harry Turtledove · published 1987 · read 2021-02-16

★★☆☆☆ (did not finish)

When a Roman legion fights some Gauls, they are magically placed in a different world. This world has actual magic, has never heard from their world, and the society and politics closely resemble the Byzantian empire. Turtledove clearly knows his history, and makes sure to show how the legion adapts to the different world, the different language, the different gods. He handles that part well.

Shaman

by Noah Gordon · published 1992 · read 2006-09-01

Centuries after the first volume, the Cole family is still going strong as physicians. But how do you deal with the deafness of your oldest son if healing is your complete identity? Not particularly well, it turns out. There's a lot of room for personal growth and it is used very well. I also had the impression that the research was better (possibly because as a US American writer, Gordon is closer to the topic).

The Diaries of Adam and Eve

by Mark Twain · published 1906 · read 2006-01-01

Not the height of hilariousness, but solidly funny – might have been my first humorous take on the Bible?

A Symphony of Echoes

by Jodi Taylor · published 2013 · read 2022-01-26

Sadly disappointing: Only the second book in a series that is currently up to eleven books and countless novellas, and it already feels like the series is out of ideas and just mushing things together. There are regular excursions (Jack the Ripper as weird monster hybrid in need of getting shot repeatedly), there are the enemies-in-time, there is the protagonist being temporarily Director of the institute in the future for a bit (!!), there is YET ANOTHER giant huge misunderstanding with her partner due to them not talking about things properly, going to absolutely ridiculous and uncalled-for lengths, then a Dodo hunt, and a bunch more side plots in case you were not feeling sufficiently entertained.

Confessions of the Fox

by Jordy Rosenberg · published 2018 · read 2020-10-08

Apparently my reading choices are now powered by spite: I'm reading Confessions of the Fox that I partially picked up because a negative review complained about a) the amount of dirty Elizabethan English ("many crude terms appeared only once, so the author apparently just wanted to show off his research") and b) "If you like to constantly check footnotes whilst reading a novel, some of which are pages long, you might enjoy this book."

Romanitas

by Sophia McDougall · published 2005 · read 2020-07-29

After reading The Dragon Waiting, I wanted more Alternate History, and Romanitas seemed like an obvious choice. It's, to say it with the recommendation, Fatherland but with Rome. In a world with current-time tech, the Roman Empire has never fallen, it never even moved to Byzantium. All of society is just as in the Rome of Tiberius, only with tech. So we have no emancipation, an Imperial family with an Emperor choosing his successor, and of course: slavery and crucifiction, with high-tech iron crosses along major roads.

Flight of Magpies

by K.J. Charles · published 2014 · read 2022-01-23

by Patrick Süskind · published 1985 · read 2010-12-01

Perfume: The Story of a Murderer

Gross. Seriously, gross. I don't even know which book to connect to this one.

Bitter Seeds

by Ian Tregillis · published 2010 · read 2021-12-03

Nazis, but they have supermen, vs British war mages who will gladly sacrifice children. Unpleasant all around. Nobody is sympathetic, nobody is even interesting, everybody is terrible, and I haven't met flatter characters in ages. Didn't enjoy anything about it.

The Pillars of the Earth

by Ken Follett · published 1989 · read 2017-06-30

I didn't enjoy this book at all – some characters were fun, but the story was terribly flat, easy to predict and boring. Add in the length of the book and the semi-interesting rambling on architecture (seriously, I enjoyed a book on cathedral building a few years ago, but this pseudo mix of literature and facts was just annoying). Most characters were very flat aswell (good vs evil, bah), and overall I could have spent my time much better.

A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court

by Mark Twain · published 1889 · read 2020-06-08

I only barely finished this book. I picked it up on a whim – Twain sounded like fun, time travel into old England sounded like it could be hilarious. Which it really wasn't.

Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal

by Christopher Moore · published 2002 · read 2009-02-01