Historical Fiction?

[guessingo]

I prefer ancient/medievil history novels.

Anyway, does Tremaire do good research in her books? Do her characters act in logical ways or is it silly? Is it adult fiction or Y/A? I don't really like Y/A. I like SM Stirling/Harry Turtledove quality research for my alternative history. They clearly do know alot about the periods they write about .

If you are an anglophile and like napoleanic era, try David Webber's Honor Harrington series. That is sci-fi, but he is an anglophile and clearly likes napoleanic era brittish history. He basically takes that period and puts it into a sci-fi navy.

If you are interested in that period you may want to try Dianna Gabaldon's series. Hers are a time traveler novel where the woman goes back to scottland starting in 1750. I have only read the first one. Be warned, there is alot of explicit sex in it. I actually got bored with the sex and skipped over it. That sex scenes are romancesque and designed to get women readers (see the reviews on amazon, women readers are all in love with Jamie). They are also explicitly violent. They are somewhat different than other novels. The male lead gets tortured several times and actually beats his wife. Many people here may not like that. However, she is a good writer. BTW, I really liked her podcasts about writing on her website.

[Peter Ahlstrom]

Her name is Naomi Novik. The series is named Temeraire. The research seems fine to me. They are adult fiction.

[guessingo]

The New York Times did an article on her in 2006. She wrote her first novel in 2 months and it sold it 2 months later. That is pretty impressive. She said she writes 6000 words/day. That strikes me as alot.

[Nessa]

Wow, really? 6k words a day...? Wouldn't it be nice to be able to just pour stories out on my keyboard like that.

I believe Peter Jackson has bought the rights to the Temeraire series. While the first 3 books followed history pretty well, the later books start to diverge. I like the voice, it feels true to the era. I guess I really like reading her books because I first became fascinated with the Napoleonic Era from the Richard Sharpe series by Bernard Cornwell. That's good stuff, too. But, yeah, she tries to be true to the era. The main characters are interesting (secondary characters are a little more shallow), the plots are engaging, and the battle scenes are fun to read.

[Renoard]

It's not strictly historical fiction, but George Martin's Song of Ice and Fire is pretty close to the culture and political mosaic of the Early Modern period.

I think it's possible for fantasy authors to be quite thorough and accurate.

In WoT, Matt's army is a pretty accurate facsimile of Matthius Corvinus introduction of light cavalry Hakbussers, and Hussars.

[guessingo]

Song of Ice and Fire is not anything close to historical fiction. Just because he did research on what weapons were like in that period and how people acted does not make it historical.

[Renoard]

True but the initial question was contrasting the quality of historicity of medival and early modern fantasy against true historical fiction.  I merely pointing out that it's certainly possible for a fantasy to be build on a reasonably accurate model of human history.  On the other hand Daphne DuMarier a wonderful writer who wrote historical fiction, actually was looser with her historicity than some Fantasy writers.  It goes both ways.

A particularly good historical fiction --in terms of historicity-- is Arsinothrix, a novel about the fall of the Celtic Empire as Rome and the Goths encroached.