Newest Historical Fiction Reviews
From TheBookbag
Historical fiction
The Case Book of Victor Frankenstein by Peter Ackroyd
For fans of the Gothic novel, the gathering of Percy Bysshe Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley and Lord Byron in Villa Diodati on Lake Geneva in Italy has iconic status. From this meeting of minds there emerged a story-writing contest, with the creation of the first romantic vampire story and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, two major themes in Gothic literature. Full review...
The Heretic Queen by Michelle Moran
The Heretic Queen by Michelle Moran is not the kind of book I would usually choose to read. I enjoy historical fiction, but have never previously read one set in Ancient Egypt, preferring to stick with novels set around the British monarchy like those written by Philippa Gregory. However, I was swayed towards this book by its pretty front cover and a back cover recommendation by Diana Gabaldon, the author of my favourite Outlander book series. Full review...
The Redemption of Alexander Seaton by Shona Maclean
On a violently stormy night in Banff, Scotland, 1626, a young man staggers home. Taking him for a drunk, sisters Mary and Janet empty his pockets, but as they walk away he calls to them for help. Realising he has been poisoned, the sisters carry the man between them to the nearby schoolhouse and leave him at the desk of Alexander Seaton, where he is found the next morning dead. Full review...
Equator by Miguel Sousa Tavares
In 1905, São Tomé and Príncipe (a pair of tiny islands off the west coast of Africa) represent Portugal's smallest overseas possessions – exporting only cocoa and a little coffee. However, this places the islands in direct competition with British companies in Nigeria, Gabon, and the West Indies, making the colony a tactical lynchpin in Portugal's dealings with the other European powers. Working on the plantations is an unimaginably grim fate for anyone; toiling from dawn to dusk every day in constant risk of dysentery and malaria. To replace the numerous fatalities sustained every year, fresh workers are shipped in from Angola under a contract viewed by other colonial powers as little more than slavery. Full review...
Touching Distance by Rebecca Abrams
This terrific first novel by Guardian columnist Rebecca Abrams is a medical whodunnit, with its hero the redoubtable Alec Gordon, in search of the mysterious disease which is killing women a few days after childbirth. Set in a brilliantly-realised Aberdeen in 1790, Abrams draws the reader effortlessly into the historical world of this period and place, while protagonist Gordon's search for the mysterious killer, just out of reach, is as thrilling as the autopsy-heavy crime novels of Patricia Cornwell, with detailed anatomical descriptions and medical observations, not to be read while munching a ham sandwich (and not bedside reading for the pregnant). Full review...
Gypsy by Lesley Pearse
I had never read a Lesley Pearse novel, but when I received this book, I had a little look on Amazon at her previous releases, and they all had superb reviews, so I immediately looked forward to reading her latest release, Gypsy. The book starts in 1893, something which I admit puts me off slightly as I do not normally enjoy historical novels, but this one gripped me right away. Full review...
Black Ships by Jo Graham
A young girl is born in ancient Greece to a slave woman, by an unknown father. Hobbled, and therefore unable to fully earn her keep, she is gifted to a local oracle, where her innate ability to see the future is honed. That is, until the Trojans who she deems her ancestors arrive, to take revenge for a second raid on their peoples, and cause her to join them on a journey into the great unknown. Full review...
Revelation (Matthew Shardlake 4) by C J Sansom
Matthew Shardlake is an enigmatic lawyer, shunned and mocked by many in society, due to his physical deformity: he comes across as an immensely compassionate and clever man - born ahead of his time. Matthew shows immense physical and moral courage, strongly facing up to insults and taunts, at the same time as confronting a murderous enemy, who for most of the novel has the upper hand. Full review...
Mama Grace by Dana Bagshaw
It's 1907, and a natural calamity forces Grace to undergo a very awkward trek across the barren state of Oklahoma, with the most unlikely mix of four children, a babe in arms, a few farm and working animals, and a massively impractical iron stove, perched on the back of a covered wagon. Full review...
Mutiny on the Bounty by John Boyne
John Jacob Turnstile is one of a kind among the scamps and pickpockets that frequent Portsmouth's dockside. Not for his brilliance at his 'honest thievery' as he persists in calling it, but certainly in his acerbic wit, humorous narrative, and indeed the fate that will whisk him away from the English coast into such a dramatic adventure that the mind – especially his 14-year old one – can only boggle. Full review...
The Aviary Gate by Katie Hickman
The Sultan's harem, Constantinople, 1599. One of the major eunuchs lies dying – his mind drifting back through his poisoned pain to the days when he was created, as it were. You may well spend many mental exertions on working out who has tried to kill him – indeed the book would be a complete waste of time if you didn't – for there any many people in the harem with malicious intent, evil stories to tell and finish off; everyone out of necessity has changed their name, and some people aren't even supposed to be there at all. Full review...
The Blackstone Key by Rose Melikan
In 1795 England had already been at war with Republican France for two years. Mary Finch was a teacher at Mrs Bunbury's school – a job she disliked – so she was pleased when she received an invitation from her uncle to visit him in Suffolk, despite the dangers of travelling in war time. Her uncle and her late father had been estranged for some twenty years and Mary was pleased that it seemed that the rift was finally to he healed. Full review...
Sing as We Go by Margaret Dickinson
This is a fast-paced and well-written novel set in the early 1940s. The heroine, Kathy, is strong-willed and determined. Her father is unloving and sometimes violent, and her mother loving but not very strong. Kathy manages to leave - with her mother's blessing - and stays with her best friend's aunt in the city. She finds a job, makes new friends, and falls in love with the handsome Tony, who has reputedly broken several hearts already. Full review...
Centurion (Roman Legion 8) by Simon Scarrow
Palmyra, a tiny desert kingdom, separates two mighty powers - Rome and Parthia. Relations between the two are more than frosty, and a full-scale face off isn't far off. Rome fears a Parthian invasion, so the Second Illyrian cohort is sent to safeguard the Palmyrian royal family and protect its borders from incursion. In turn, their presence incites the Parthians and our heroes Prefect Macro and Centurion Cato respond to the inevitable raids in their usual forthright manner - they head straight into enemy territory. Full review...
A Small Part of History by Peggy Elliott
Sarah won't tell us where she is now because my Papa always told me it was best to start a story at the beginning… [and] it all really began back in June of 1845.
Back then, the Springers were in Idaho, with sunlight pouring through the poplars and people gathering in the summer kitchen, which was little more than an extended verandah – one wall and a roof, three sides open to the breeze and allowing the overspill of folks into the yard, and the orchard and the meadows. A verandah large enough to hold an oak table that would seat a crowd at harvest time – which the Springers needed because John Springer had just about the most prosperous farm in Vermillion County. Full review...
Ice Land by Betsy Tobin
The gods of Asgard - Odin, Thor, Freya and the rest - were driven out of Iceland by Christianity at the end of the first millennium. Ice Land is set at this time of upheaval and is told in the old oral tradition, one in which the boundary between god and mortal is blurred. Full review...
I Am Rembrandt's Daughter by Lynn Cullen
Cornelia lives in misery and poverty with her eccentric father, the famous painter Rembrandt van Rijn. His glory days long past, Rembrandt is mocked and reviled by much of Amsterdam society. He doesn't sell many paintings any more, and yet he persists in his rough style, refusing to paint in the desirable detailed smooth style. Cornelia's mother and Rembrandt's common-law wife died of the plague, leaving Cornelia and her half-brother, Titus, to the not-particularly-tender mercies of the irascible artist. Full review...
Counting the Stars by Helen Dunmore
You might not have any Latin. You might not have read any Catullus. You might know nothing about this Roman poet's life. You might think it all too abstruse and obscure to have anything to do with you and what you'd want to read. Helen Dunmore, herself a poet, begs to differ. She's right. Full review...
Lords of the Bow by Conn Iggulden
Lords of the Bow is the second part of Conn Iggulden's Conqueror series of books about the life of Genghis Khan. I must confess, I haven't read Wolf of the Plains, the first book in the series, but I must say up front that this didn't stop me from getting into or enjoying this second novel; it works as a book in its own right. Full review...
