Quote:
Originally Posted by DiapDealer
I think it's the contemporary setting and young protagonist that most fans have a beef with. It's not something he usually does.
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In my case, no, I had no problems with the contemporary setting of GGK's
Ysabel or Ned (though I found Kate kind of annoying). I quite liked the prose and background description up until the plot got stupid, IMHO, and people started acting stupidly to accomodate the premise of the overall plot.
I'm not going to spoiler what happens, but it's the sort of thing that's very, very irritating because if some people want to re-hash their dysfunctional personal drama over and over and over again, whatever, but stop insisting on dragging other people into it and getting them killed for your uncontrollable egos in the process. And other people should stop enabling them like they think it's a
good thing.
Anyway, back on topic, they're more "grand sweeping saga" than action/adventure type historicals, but I always kind of liked
James Clavell's Asian Saga novels, of which
Shogun (very much thinly veiled story of Will Adams, known as "Samurai Will", who was a Dutch-employed Englishman who got shipwrecked in Japan and became employed by Tokugawa Ieyasu and led to the displacement of the Portuguese with the Dutch as the main traders until the Japanese cut off all foreign contact) is probably the best (and it's got a rather good miniseries adaptation with Toshiro Mifune in it).
Tai-Pan is also not bad (though the movie version is, avoid), and a thinly veiled version of the Jardine Matheson company which came to dominate Hong Kong via the opium trade conducted on the sailing ships of the day, IIRC. The sequel
Noble House (also a rather good miniseries with Pierce Brosnan in it) may in some places be better, and is set in 1960s Hong Kong, but it really helps to read Tai-Pan first to understand the dynamics.
Gaijin, which is a sequel to both Shogun and Tai-Pan, is really not that great, but it's got some interesting stuff concerning the rebellions during pre-Meiji-era Japan as they were forced to open up again for trade by Perry and his gun-laden "black ships".
His WWII-set prisoner of war story
King Rat is excellent and also made into a very good movie with Alec Guinness.
And I should warn for the less-than-quality/interesting books by some of the authors I recommended above.
Judith Tarr has a Crusades-set fantasy romance trilogy which you may run across because parts are still in print/available as e-books. It's the one with Richard the Lionheart in it, and while it's not exactly bad, unless you really like the fantasy romance element, with a definite emphasis on the romance, it's probably something to avoid. And she has some pre-historic stuff which I'm kind of indifferent to after skimming a bit to decide whether to read, although they might actually turn out to be very good after I actually read it. I suggest sampling if possible before committing to anything you think you might like.
Diana L. Paxson has a bunch of Arthurian stuff out and a trilogy based on Finn MacCool which she co-wrote with Adrienne Martine-Barnes. Again, while they're not exactly badly-written from what I can tell, you're not looking at her best-quality/enjoyability works when you're reading those.