Susanna here.
I don’t read much fiction while I’m writing, so I don’t always have anything to offer for our monthly “What We’re Reading” posts, but I’ve been trying to tidy my files and I came across a not-so-old piece in which I was asked to choose five of my favorite historical fantasy novels.
This is one of my favorite genres to read in, so choosing a handful of titles was hard. Since I know a lot of other writers working in this category, I tried to keep my recommendations unbiased by only choosing books by writers from outside my own group of friends (although I’ve met Meljean Brook at conferences over the years, and might have waxed rhapsodic over her stories more than a few times…).
Here are five of the books I love best, in that sub-genre.
This is one of those books I bought solely because I fell in love with the cover, and then when I sat down to read it I found myself falling in love with this richly mysterious version of pre-revolutionary Boston, and with thieftaker Ethan Kaille, a man with a murky past whose varied skills as a conjurer, while they do help him solve crimes and catch criminals, don’t always endear him to his fellow colonists, who view any use of magic with suspicion and wouldn’t hesitate to hang a man for witchcraft. In his Thieftaker chronicles, blending real history with intrigue and spellcasting, Jackson’s created compelling historical noir, with a twist.
STARDUST by Neil Gaiman
I absolutely love this book. I came to it backwards, by watching the film first, but Gaiman’s incredible prose and the magic he weaves with his words quickly put this one onto my keeper shelf. Stardust had me from the first line: “There was once a young man who wished to gain his Heart’s Desire.” Reading this tale of young Tristan Thorn coming of age as he journeys to capture and bring back a fallen star, crossing the forbidden gap in the wall that divides his Victorian village from what lies beyond in the world of the fae, is as close as I’ve come to reliving those long-ago days of my childhood when I’d take the red book of fairy tales down from its shelf, wrap myself in a blanket, and lose myself wholly in wonder. It’s definitely a fairy tale for adults, touched with darkness, sex, and violence, but… Did I already say I love this book? Trust me on this one. Read it.
HIS MAJESTY'S DRAGON by Naomi Novik
This was the book that reminded me how much I really liked fantasy. I’d fallen out of reading it for a number of years, until I bought His Majesty's Dragon on sale and got swept up in the richly realized world of the Napoleonic Wars…with fighting dragons used as living airships, closely bonded to their ‘aviators’—officers they imprint on at hatching. When Captain Will Laurence captures a French frigate that happens to be carrying a rare dragon egg, he chooses the man that the dragon will imprint on—only the dragon, as Laurence will learn, has a mind of his own. This book is the first in a series that follows the wartime adventures of Laurence and his dragon, Temeraire. It’s a favourite of mine that I recommend often.
HEART OF STEEL by Meljean Brook
I was wowed by the first in the Iron Seas series, The Iron Duke—steampunk Victorian England with truly superlative worldbuilding—in which, as a side event to the main story, an airship captain named Yasmeen tossed an adventurer named Archimedes right over the rails of her ship into dangerous outlands infested with zombies, and left him there. In Heart of Steel, Archimedes is back with a hidden agenda, and he and Yasmeen forge an often uneasy alliance to follow a dangerous path to a treasure. I’m a sucker for a treasure-hunting road-trip tale told well, and this one didn’t disappoint me once. I highly recommend it.
THE HOUSE ON THE STRAND by Daphne Du Maurier
I think my father may have introduced me to this one, as it’s one of his own favorites, but it’s always been on our bookshelves at home. From the moment the first-person narrator, Dick Young, decides to experiment with his friend Magnus’s drug and is thrust back in time, I was hooked. In The House on the Strand, Dick finds himself an observer, unable to touch those he’s watching without being forced from the past to the present, but traveling back soon becomes an obsession and Dick finds himself growing ever more firmly entwined with the life of the man he’s observing, drawn into the intrigues of 14h century Cornwall. A fine sense of place and a highly suspenseful, original version of time-travel make this a book to remember long after you’ve turned the last page.
What books would you add to my list?