[[Category:New Reviews|Historical Fiction]]
==Historical fiction==
__NOTOC__{{newreview|author=Lynn Shepherd|title=Murder at Mansfield Park|rating=4|genre=Historical Fiction|summary=Straight away the reader is plunged into the language of Austen's era, so dotted all over are such rather flowery phrases as ' ... conjugal felicity ...' and ' ... her family were not consumptive...' We are also introduced to a host of characters and although Shepherd has thoughtfully provided right at the beginning ''Names of the Principal Persons'', it does bombard and perhaps confuse the reader a little. I must admit to referring to this dratted list time and time again. It does break the flow at the beginning of the novel. But, several chapters in and you're right into the story thereafter.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1905636792</amazonuk>}}
{{newreview
|author=Sara Stockbridge
|summary=Pierre Hardelot and Agnes Florent were in love and had been since they were children, but there were problems - not the least of which was that Pierre was engaged to marry Simone Renaudin. Simone was an appropriate match for the grandson of a mill owner and member of the bourgeoisie, but Agnes was descended from brewers and lower middle class. In northern France, just before the outbreak of the First World War, such distinctions mattered. But Pierre and Agnes meet alone and rather than ruin her reputation Pierre proposes. In doing so he alienates his grandfather and the wealthy Renaudins. Pierre and Agnes' marriage and its consequences would reverberate for decades.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099520443</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Mary Hoffman
|title=Troubadour
|rating=4
|genre=Teens
|summary=In ''Troubadour'', 13-year-old noblewoman, Elinor de Sévignan, flees from her parents' choice of suitor by posing as a boy singer with a group of travelling minstrels in 13th century Southern France. As her transition from her pampered but restricted existence to roaming troubadour takes place on the roads of Provence, so begins the Albigensian Crusade. Forces from Northern France attempt to crush the Cathars, whose religious beliefs are seen as heretical, making their lands and wealth fair game for both fanatical followers of the Pope, and opportunistic mercenaries.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0747592519</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Margaret Redfern
|title=Flint
|rating=4.5
|genre=Historical Fiction
|summary=Will and his brother Ned have been plucked from their home in the Fens. They're on their way to Flint, ditch diggers for Edward I's new castle. Will is unwilling to go, and he's only eleven, but he can't abandon his strange older brother to strangers. Ned can't talk and most people dismiss him as an idiot, but he has skills. He can whisper to horses and calm them, he's a skilled herbalist, and he can make music that moves men's hearts. Ned is glad to be on this journey because he hopes to be reunited with Ieuan ap y Gof, an exiled bard and the man who taught him music.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1906784043</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=James McCreet
|title=The Incendiary's Trail
|rating=3.5
|genre=Historical Fiction
|summary=This book opens with a bang and except for brief slow-downs in the middle, is an exciting and riveting read. It's both a historical mystery and a thriller, teaching the reader a little bit about Victorian London while still making the book an immersive experience that can be hard to leave. The policemen really have very little idea who is behind the initial murder, much less the ones that follow, and I loved learning what happened along with them.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0230736270</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Matthew Pearl
|title=The Last Dickens
|rating=4.5
|genre=Crime
|summary=In Bengal, India on a June day in 1870 two young mounted policemen are hot on the trail of dacoit suspected of the recent daylight robbery of a train of bullock carts. The chests taken from the carts were full of Opium.
Meanwhile a few thousand miles away in Boston, USA, a young office boy is chased through the docks by a dark stranger of ''Hindoo'' appearance wielding a walking stick topped by a ferociously fanged idol.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>184655084X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Angus Donald
|title=Outlaw
|rating=4.5
|genre=Historical Fiction
|summary=When Alan Dale is caught stealing from a market stall in Nottingham he narrowly escapes with his life and limbs in tact. To protect him from the justice of Sir Ralph Murdac, Alan's mother begs the mercy of the great outlaw, Robin Hood. Robin agrees to take Alan into his protection, and so begins Alan's life as an outlaw.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0751542083</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Jane Borodale
|title=The Book of Fires
|rating=4.5
|genre=Historical Fiction
|summary=Agnes Trussel leaves her home to save her family from the disgrace of learning that she has been raped and is carrying an illegitimate child. With limited options and in despair at her situation she takes money from the home of a neighbour to pay her way to London. Once there, her life as assistant to the dour John Blacklock, a firework maker, gives her security and a sense of worth. But she is sure that all she values is likely to be lost once her pregnancy and her status as a thief becomes known. The crux of her situation, and that of many women like her at the time, is well summarised in her thoughts: ''the child is almost all I have, I think. And its'' ''existence will ensure that anything else will be taken away from me.''
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0007305729</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Adam Thorpe
|title=Hodd
|rating=3
|genre=Historical Fiction
|summary=Like every other English child I was brought up on tales of Robin Hood.
''Robin Hood, Robin Hood riding through the glen, Robin Hood, Robin Hood with his band of men. Feared by the bad,'' ''loved by the good, Robin Hood, Robin Hood.''
The theme music to the 1950s TV series starring Richard Greene says it all. The legends and myths surrounding Robin of Loxley, faithfully recreated in all of the outings from Walter Scott's ''Ivanhoe'' through the Errol Flynn films, to the BBC's recently lamented Jonas Armstrong depict the Outlaw as Saint.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0224079433</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Chris Hannan
|title=Missy
|rating=3.5
|genre=Historical Fiction
|summary=This begins so well, with just the right sort of first sentence to hook you into a book: ''I expect you have the'' ''consolation of religion, or the guidance of a philosophy, but when me and the girls get frazzled, or blue, or rapturous,'' ''or just awfully so-so, we shin out and buy ourselves some hats.'' So says our heroine of the piece, 19 year old Dol McQueen, who narrates us through her exploits in America's nineteenth century Wild West. She's rough, she's determined, but ultimately she's very damaged: a young, drug addict prostitute who trails hopelessly after her alcoholic mother from country to country.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099501554</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Ben Kane
|title=The Silver Eagle (Forgotten Legion)
|rating=4.5
|genre=Historical Fiction
|summary=I thought Ben Kane's debut novel [[The Forgotten Legion by Ben Kane|The Forgotten Legion]] was excellent, but that it ended a little abruptly, even with the knowledge there was more to come. Having now read that 'more to come', I feel a lot better about it. The story is so relentless that there was no obvious place to pause between books.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848090110</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Marie Brennan
|title=In Ashes Lie
|rating=4
|genre=Historical Fiction
|summary=It's September 1666 and although the mortals' Civil War is over the war amongst the fae is still raging in London. There's now a greater threat to the Onyx Court and it could destroy everything when a spark starts a fire which for three days spreads through the city devouring everything in its path. Can the mortals and the fae unite to find a way to defeat a foe which neither can better on their own?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1841497185</amazonuk>
}}
