Suggestions for a Bernard Cornwell reader

[ATDrake]

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.

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.

[AndrewH]

I agree with ATDrake on Ysabel. In addition, GGK's overuse of modernisms like JPEGs and brand names like Coke were irritating. Also, though the novel takes place in France the overuse of French words when their English equivalents would have made more sense contextually was extremely annoying to me. For example, when all your characters are from English-speaking North America, they're not going to hand someone a serviette, but a napkin.

[arisaka]

Thanks everybody, I'm getting quite a long reading list together now!

[ATDrake]

Originally Posted by AndrewH

For example, when all your characters are from English-speaking North America, they're not going to hand someone a serviette, but a napkin.

Actually, English-speaking people in the eastern parts of Canada do in fact sometimes use serviette instead of napkin. This has to do with what Nancy Mitford, IIRC, called U and non-U patterns of speech and word usage, and all those Ontario/Maritimes people are probably just carrying on the middle-class-at-best British vocab of their ancestors. I myself am on the opposite coast and rarely, but occasionally, hear it.

But aside from that, yeah, for all the supposed "timelessness" of the central story, Ysabel's going to seem like a really dated period piece in a couple of years.

[Apache]

Originally Posted by ATDrake

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).



His WWII-set prisoner of war story King Rat is excellent and also made into a very good movie with Alec Guinness.

My only beef with Shogun was that James Clavell's book should have been a Historical Fiction Book. Except he changed the names of the major Historical characters. This made it harder for me to read. Imagine someone writing a Historical Fiction book about the American Revolution or Waterloo and changed the Historical Figures names.

James Clavell's King Rat was based on his experiences as a Japanese POW during WWII. If I remember correctly he was 17 or 18 when he was captured.

Apache

[ATDrake]

Originally Posted by Apache

My only beef with Shogun was that James Clavell's book should have been a Historical Fiction Book. Except he changed the names of the major Historical characters. This made it harder for me to read. Imagine someone writing a Historical Fiction book about the American Revolution or Waterloo and changed the Historical Figures names.

I think that's actually been done, in some of the AU sf/fantasy stuff. (GGK comes to mind, even though he hasn't yet gotten around to Waterloo, he's definitely done almost direct analogues of El Cid and Justinian and Theodora, among others, with not that much modification and Lois McMaster Bujold did a Spanish reconquista with Ferdinand and Isabella variant in her Chalion series, although she does blend in a large amount of original fantasy stuff into that, and Harry Turtledove directly transposed the fall of the Berlin Wall into the future Third Reich and I recognized a lot of public-figures-with-the-serial-numbers-filed-off from my history classes).

And Clavell did tweak some of the character stories (like setting up the love affair with Lady Gracia Hokosawa, who apparently never got involved with and perhaps never met the other guy in real-life and he made the Joao Rodrigues-based interpreter character a lot more "barbarian" than he was in real life, where he actually bathed and such) and I prefer it when authors do stuff like that, they don't pretend they're writing about the exact same people.

[carpetmojo]

Originally Posted by jgaiser

How about Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey and Maturin series of stories (Master and Commander, Post Captain, H.M.S. Surprise, etc).

A wonderful body of work - they require a modicum of concentration, I found, but thoroughly enthralling.
And the historical detail is fascinating, and meticulous.

Terrific series, and on my "always revisited" shelf.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrick_O%27Brian - well worth a read.

[whitearrow]

He's probably considered old hat now, but I cut my novel-reading teeth as a teenager on James Michener. Everything The Source to Space.

I also have a fond memory of John Jakes' North and South series -- at least the first one -- though I'm not sure how I'd feel about them today. Maybe I'd find out if I read them in ebook form, but they're not available yet. The Kent Family Chronicles should stand up pretty well, though.

If you are interested about somewhat more modern history, I recommend Herman Wouk's novels about the founding of Israel, The Hope and The Glory (also not in ebook form yet, grr.)

I second the recs for GGK, even though not strictly historical fiction. Fionavar and Tigana are my favorites.

[wayspooled]

I really loved the Sharpe series. Read it through twice I believe. I also love the Simon Scarrow novels and quite of few of the other things mentioned in this thread (read and enjoyed almost all of them in fact). But the best I've ever read was the Patrick O'Brian Aubrey/Maturin novels. I loved Hornblower when I was a kid and those have stood the test of time but when someone asks for a recommendation for HF, I always make the same 3. Patrick O'Brian's A/M, Cornwell's Sharpe or Dorothy Dunnett's Lymond Chronicles (Which is more complex storytelling and not exactly matching your request). In my opinion, those 3 are the best of the best.

http://www.nytimes.com/books/98/10/1...ian-plank.html

[plib]

If you're planning to read the Cornwell Arthurian/Saxon series then you would find a lot of Jack Whyte's work very similar.

I like them both anyway!

If you like Sharpe and Grail Quest you're not going to go very far wrong with any of the series listed in the thread.

[ametzler]

Hello,

a lot of nice recommendations in this thread, sadly many not available as e-book or even out of print.

Originally Posted by Belfaborac

Simon Scarrow writes historical novels mainly set in Roman times, but also the Napoleonic era.
[...]

I have now read the first two of the eagle series and feel a little bit underwhelmed. The main characters started rather lifeless and did not improve, fighting was less than thrilling. (A reviewer on Amazon aptly labels the series "pedestrian";-) Just started with Iggulden's Emperor, which seemed to hit of much better.

For an adventure book the settings is more the difficult to right than the Napoleonic wars, it is much harder to get a reader to care for Romulan soldiers crucifying barbarians or selling them into slavery.

-------
To throw in something completely different: Stephen Coonts' Flight of the Intruder somehow seems to fit in here. It is not far-away-once-upon-a-time-history but dated enough to have some distance.

[Belfaborac]

I too prefer Iggulden to Scarrow, but I guess it's a matter of taste since both have their dedicated followers. Maybe Scarrow's Napoleonic era books are better, but I've not read those yet.

Iggulden's Emperor series I found very enjoyable indeed.

[DiapDealer]

I loved the first book of Iggulden's Conqueror series (Genghis Khan) right from the get-go, but the first book of the Emperor series just didn't do much for me. I'm sure it probably gets better as the series progresses (it would almost have to), but the first book certainly didn't inspire me to rush out and buy the second.

[Belfaborac]

I actually enjoyed Emperor from the very first page, but like always: YMMV.

[DiapDealer]

but like always: YMMV.

I wouldn't have it any other way.