Kingdom of Shadows, by Barbara Erskine. Book review

First published 1988. Edition reviewed, Harper 2009, ISBN 978-0-00-728866-3. 715 pages

Kingdom of Shadows is a time-slip novel set in Scotland and England with two intertwined plots, one set in about 1290 to 1314, one set in the 1980s. The historical plot centres on Robert Bruce and Isobel MacDuff, Countess of Buchan, with other historical figures including Isobel’s husband the Earl of Buchan and Robert’s queen Elizabeth de Burgh featuring as secondary characters.  All the characters in the modern plot are fictional.

In 1980s Britain, Clare Royland inherits Duncairn Castle, a (fictional) romantic ruin on the north-east coast of Scotland, from her beloved aunt Margaret Gordon. The castle has been in the Gordon family for over seven hundred years and Clare, like her aunt, feels a powerful connection to Duncairn and to its earlier owner, Isobel Countess of Buchan, a family ancestor who played a tragic role in the Scottish Wars of Independence. But Clare’s husband Paul, a ruthless and distinctly dodgy financier in the City of London, sees Duncairn first as a nuisance and then, when an American oil company bids to buy the land, as a potential solution to his secret financial problems.  When Clare refuses the American oil company’s offer, Paul tries to make her sell Duncairn, by persuasion, fraud and force.  Meanwhile, Neil Forbes, a Scottish environmental campaigner, is organising a campaign to oppose both the sale of Duncairn and drilling for oil.  He and Clare are on the same side, but for different reasons, and Neil initially regards Clare as an enemy.  As the pressure on her builds, Clare experiences increasingly vivid visions of Isobel’s life, as though Isobel can somehow call to her from the distant past.  Is Isobel’s tragedy about to repeat itself through Clare?

I first read Kingdom of Shadows years ago.  I was reminded of it more recently when I read The Lion Wakes, because both novels feature Isobel MacDuff, Countess of Buchan, as a major character and involve a (probably fictional*) love affair between her and Robert Bruce, though that’s about the only similarity between them.  Kingdom of Shadows is a full-blown (and, at over 700 pages, ‘full’ is the operative word) Gothic romance, packed with menace, drama, passionate love and equally passionate hatred, with vaguely supernatural forces looming in the background.  The first time I read it, I remember finding the supernatural aspects irritating, so much so that I ended up skimming through quite a lot of the novel.  This time I treated it as a fantasy novel creating a world of its own that happens to have some similarities with late twentieth-century and early fourteenth-century Britain, and that worked much better for me. 

Isobel (Isabel, Isabella) MacDuff’s story, what little of it is recorded in history, is itself the stuff of tragic romance.  She was a member of the MacDuff family of Fife, who had the hereditary right to crown Scottish monarchs.  Although her husband John Comyn, Earl of Buchan, was a senior member of the Comyn family, enemies and political rivals of the Bruce family, Isobel crowned Robert Bruce when he seized the Scottish throne in 1306.  This conferred some traditional legitimacy on Robert’s rather hurried coronation, which may lie behind the harshness of the punishment later inflicted on Isobel by Edward I of England.  (I’m trying to avoid too many spoilers for readers who are not familiar with the history, so I won’t spell out what happened to her here; anyone who wants to find out can look it up on Wikipedia).  

The modern plot in Kingdom of Shadows has to go into overdrive to live up to the dramatic events of Isobel’s true story.  It reminded me of a rather over-the-top Eighties TV drama series, with its ostentatious wealth, corporate double-dealing, insider trading, fraud, blackmail, family secrets, deceit, abduction, suicide and attempted murder.  I gave up trying to keep track of all the double-crossing and fraud, and also got rather lost among Paul Royland’s collection of rich and mostly rather unappealing relatives and City colleagues.  If the financial wheeler-dealing background to Clare’s tale is intended as a sort of modern analogy to the turbulent power politics in fourteenth-century Scotland that form the background to Isobel’s tale, it has the appropriate level of dizzying complexity.

On this re-read, I was struck by the degree of allegory between Clare’s storyline and Isobel’s.  Not just in the broad parallels between the situations of the two women – controlling husbands, a love triangle, the need to make a stand – but also in details.  Sometimes the effect is quite powerful, as in their shared experience of imprisonment.  At other times I found the allegory a bit heavy-handed for my taste.  For example, both women are subjected to religious rituals by clerical brothers-in-law; and in the historical plot Robert Bruce has an Irish wife, Elizabeth de Burgh daughter of the Earl of Ulster, so the romantic hero of the modern plot, environmentalist Neil Forbes, is duly given an Irish girlfriend. I wonder if Clare’s passivity, which was another feature that irritated me first time round, was also there in the interests of creating parallels between her situation and Isobel’s. Isobel lived in a time when women, even wealthy high-born women, had very few rights. Clare has lived a very sheltered life, a beautiful rich girl who married straight from school, has always been dependent either on her parents or her husband and has never had to take her own decisions, and so she is easily pushed around by other people. Similarly, the unpleasant portrayal of Isobel’s husband may owe more to allegory with Clare’s abusive husband in the modern storyline than to the historical John Comyn.  The historical Isobel clearly disagreed politically with her husband on at least the matter of Robert Bruce’s coronation, but as far as I know nothing is known of their personal relationship except that the marriage had no surviving children, which could be interpreted in many different ways.  

The writing style is heavy on detail – I didn’t feel I really needed a description of Clare’s outfit almost every time she makes an appearance – and some of the descriptions of Clare’s nightmares and visions of Isobel border on the repetitive. The pace picks up in the last 200 pages or so as the various sub-plots involving Clare’s friends and relatives either fall by the wayside or converge on the main plot.  Atmosphere and landscape are conveyed well, especially at Duncairn with its mystical connection to both women.

A useful map at the front of the book shows the major locations in the tale, including the fictional Duncairn, and a very brief Historical Note outlines Isobel’s known history.

Gothic time-slip romance based on the tragic history of Isobel MacDuff, Countess of Buchan, during the Scottish Wars of Independence, interwoven with and paralleled by a tale about her fictional descendant Clare Royland in 1980s Britain.

*’Probably’ fictional because although there were allegations of an affair between Isobel and Robert Bruce in hostile contemporary chronicles, these may have been no more than inventions by political enemies.

Ripples in the Sand, by Helen Hollick. Book review

Silverwood Books, 2012. ISBN 978-1-78132-077-8. 310 pages.

Uncorrected advance review copy in PDF format supplied by publisher.

Ripples in the Sand is the fourth in Helen Hollick’s historical fantasy series featuring dashing (ex-)pirate captain Jesamiah Acorne and the white witch Tiola Oldstagh.  The series began with Sea Witch (reviewed here earlier), and continued with Pirate Code and then with Bring It Close (reviewed here earlier).  The historical figures Henry Jennings and James Stuart (father of Bonnie Prince Charlie) appear as secondary characters.  All the main characters are fictional.

Former pirate Jesamiah Acorne and his wife Tiola are on their way to England to sell a cargo of tobacco from Jesamiah’s plantation in Virginia (not to mention some other valuable items that need not trouble the customs officers). Tiola is seriously ill as a result of the hostility of Tethys, the sea goddess; all white witches have difficulty crossing the sea, but Tethys has a particular feud with Tiola because Tethys wants Jesamiah for herself.  Jesamiah is coerced into carrying a passenger, Henry Jennings, ex-pirate and now on a political mission to the English government in which Jesamiah has no interest whatsoever.  All Jesamiah wants is to get Tiola safely ashore and to find a buyer for his tobacco (and the unofficial cargo).  But Jesamiah soon finds himself embroiled in family ties he did not even know he had, and then entangled in a political plot – at risk from an unknown traitor among the plotters, and from the deadly fury of Tethys.

Fans of the previous books in the series will know what to expect.  Despite now being respectably married, a landowner, and (technically at least) no longer a pirate, Jesamiah’s temper, tendency to jump to conclusions and liking for wine and women (not necessarily in that order) still land him in trouble on a regular basis, requiring quick wits, cunning and skill to get himself out again. Tiola’s magical powers and her supernatural conflict with Tethys give the novel a strong fantasy element. The back story of Jesamiah’s complicated family history, Tiola’s supernatural powers and their relationship is explained as required, so although Ripples in the Sand is the fourth in a series, it could be read as a stand-alone.  The scene for Ripples in the Sand has shifted from North America and the Caribbean to the North Devon coast, specifically the estuary of the Rivers Taw and Torridge near the edge of Exmoor. Exmoor is, of course, Lorna Doone territory, and some later generations of the notorious Doone family make an ingenious appearance in Ripples in the Sand. 

Jesamiah’s complicated family history acquires another layer of complexity in Ripples in the Sand – it’s a wise child that knows its own father, as the saying goes – giving Jesamiah a completely unexpected set of new relatives to come to terms with. Members of Tiola’s family also make an appearance, causing conflict in her relationship with Jesamiah.

The political sub-plot involving an attempted Jacobite invasion makes a dramatic background, and the Monmouth Rebellion and its brutal aftermath a generation earlier still cast a long shadow over some of the characters.  There is plenty of action, including sea chases, a naval battle, a shoot-out with the customs men and a jailbreak.

The fantasy plot revolving around the conflict between Tiola and Tethys worked less well for me; I am not well attuned to supernatural powers that actually work (as opposed to beliefs in supernatural powers, a different matter entirely), and I suspect that a lot of it went over my head.  I got rather lost in the time travel sequences, although I did like the cameo appearance by not-yet-King Harold Godwinson, a thoroughly decent man even when raiding and probably my favourite of Helen Hollick’s historical characters (he stars in Harold The King / I Am the Chosen King, reviewed here earlier). If I understood the supernatural plot correctly, I think it resolves a plot strand that has been running since Sea Witch; the question of why Tethys has an obsession with claiming Jesamiah for herself.

The political adventure plot does not so much end as take a brief pause for breath, and Jesamiah’s predicament at the end is clearly a potential springboard to a further adventure (according to the Author’s Note a further instalment is indeed planned soon). Jesamiah’s unexpected new family ties, as well as Tiola’s family, may also offer scope for further development.

Dialect is used to indicate regional origin and social standing, from the French accent of the Breton sailing master Claude de la Rue to the broad Devon dialect of the ferryman and tavern keeper.  It took me a little while to ‘tune in’ to some of the accents, especially the broad Devon dialect, which I found hard to follow at first.  As expected, given the setting, the text is liberally salted with nautical terms, and these are explained in a comprehensive glossary at the back of the book and a plan of a square-rigged ship at the front.

A helpful Author’s Note at the end describes some of the inspiration behind the novel and outlines some of the underlying history. I was interested to see that one of the most attractive characters, a boisterous boy named Thomas Benson, is based on a historical figure and is planned to feature in further instalments.

Historical fantasy set against a background of smuggling and Jacobite rebellion in eighteenth-century Devon.

 

Bring It Close, by Helen Hollick. Book review

Silverwood Books, 2011. ISBN 978-1-906236-62-5. 385 pages. Advance review copy provided as PDF by publisher.

Bring It Close is the third in the Jesamiah Acorne pirate series, following Sea Witch (reviewed here a few years ago) and Pirate Code. Set in October-November 1718, mainly on the coasts of North Carolina and Virginia in what is now the US, Bring It Close features the notorious historical pirate Edward Teach, aka Blackbeard, as a main character. Other secondary characters such as the governors of North Carolina and Virginia, Blackbeard’s crew and the British naval lieutenant Robert Maynard are also historical figures. The two central characters, pirate captain Jesamiah Acorne and white witch Tiola, are fictional.

Captain Jesamiah Acorne has inherited his family’s tobacco plantation, accepted a government amnesty and, in theory, retired from piracy. Bored and still troubled by questions about his father and his family’s past, he has a one-night stand with an old flame, causing his lover, the midwife and white witch Tiola Oldstagh, to quarrel with him and depart to attend a difficult birth. The plantation turns out to be run down to the point of bankruptcy, his half-brother’s widow is disputing the inheritance, the fearsome pirate Blackbeard still wants revenge on Jesamiah for sinking his ship, and Jesamiah’s dead father is trying to contact him from the world of the dead. Jesamiah finds himself arrested for piracy – ironically, this time he is innocent of the charge – and sentenced to hang. If he is to save his life, clear his name and be reunited with his beloved Tiola, he will have to hunt down and kill Blackbeard. But, unknown to Jesamiah, Blackbeard has sold his soul to the Dark Power, the implacable enemy of Tiola and the power she represents, and cannot be killed …

Bring It Close is a fantasy set against the swashbuckling historical background of piracy in the Caribbean and along the east coast of North America. Central to the novel is a supernatural struggle between the powers of Good (the Immortals of Light, the Old Ones of Wisdom), represented by Tiola, and Evil (the Dark Power, the Malevolence), represented by Blackbeard. Attempts by governments to stamp out piracy, and the antagonism between Jesamiah and Blackbeard, are components of this larger conflict. The magic forces are real within the world of the novel, not beliefs held by the characters. Here Blackbeard is, or was, a human who has sold his soul to the devil and is now possessed by the Dark Power. Tiola is a non-human immortal being, one of the Immortals of Light, who has taken human shape. Having fallen in love with a human, Jesamiah Acorne, she can communicate with him by telepathy and has supernatural powers over earth, air, fire and water (but not salt water). However, Immortals of Light are forbidden to kill, and so Tiola cannot use her power to destroy Blackbeard. Indeed, she has to take great care to keep her identity secret from the Dark Power inhabiting Blackbeard’s body, since the Dark Power could harm her and those she cares for. As Blackbeard is protected from death by the Dark Power, and as Tiola is not permitted to use her opposing power to kill, the supernatural battle is at something of an impasse, and is maintained as a conflict throughout the book.

As well as the magical conflict, there is no shortage of earthly action, from tavern brawls to naval battles, blackmail, political double-dealing and a harrowing childbirth scene. Blackbeard is the major historical figure, and according to the author’s note, “many of Blackbeard’s scenes happened – but without Jesamiah and Tiola of course”. The historical Blackbeard came to fame as an adult and not much is known of his early life, giving the author scope to weave him into the lives of the fictional characters and to develop unexpected connections between them.

As a character, Blackbeard in the novel is pure evil, as one might expect from a pirate who has literally sold his soul to the devil. Jesamiah is still much as I remember him from Sea Witch - his liking for drink and women, not to mention his complete lack of tact and his talent for making enemies, get him into trouble on a regular basis, and he has to rely on his resourcefulness, quick wits and ability to lie through his teeth to get himself out of it again. Fans of Johnny Depp as Captain Jack Sparrow will probably also take a liking to Jesamiah Acorne. Jesamiah’s painful childhood, stormy family history and troubled relationship with his dead father thread through the narrative, as do the dark memories borne by his father’s ghost. Some of this complicated family history seems to have featured in the second book in the series, Pirate Code, but I had no difficulty following the narrative even though I haven’t read Pirate Code. So although Bring It Close is the third in a series, it can be read as a stand-alone.

A useful Author’s Note explains some of the historical events underlying the novel, and sets out the reasoning behind some of the fictional additions. There is also a glossary of nautical terms and a diagram of a ship to help readers unfamiliar with seafaring terminology.

Swashbuckling fantasy set on the coasts of colonial Virginia and North Carolina, featuring the dashing fictional pirate Jesamiah Acorne and the historical pirate Edward Teach, better known as Blackbeard.

Lion of Cairo, by Scott Oden. Book review

Transworld, 2010, ISBN 978-0-593-06125-1. 410 pages.

Lion of Cairo is set in and around twelfth-century Cairo. Some of the secondary characters are based on historical figures – I recognised Amalric, King of Jerusalem, and the Syrian general Shirkuh, among others. There may also be other historical figures that I didn’t recognise. The main character, Assad, is fictional.

In Cairo, capital of a decaying empire, the young Caliph Rashid al-Hasan is kept a virtual prisoner in his own palace by his ambitious vizier Jalal. On Egypt’s border, a Syrian army led by a previous scheming vizier and the powerful general Shirkuh is poised to invade. Vizier Jalal is hatching a nefarious plot to ally with the Christian Kingdom of Jerusalem against Syria, murder the Caliph, and seize the throne for himself. But he has reckoned without Assad, the greatest assassin of the age and owner of a legendary blade with malevolent supernatural power, who has been sent by the Hidden Master of Alamut to offer help and alliance to the Caliph. As well as the duplicitous Vizier Jalal and the two invading armies, Assad must also deal with a rival sect of assassins and their leader’s loathsome black magic – a task that will stretch even the formidable Emir of the Knife to his limits.

Like Men of Bronze by the same author, which I reviewed a while ago, Lion of Cairo is a blockbuster adventure in the tradition of Robert E Howard, to whom the novel is dedicated. “Action-packed” would be an understatement. Lion of Cairo is overflowing with spies, political intrigues, secret passages, rival sects, murders, assassinations, conspiracies, betrayals, duels and battle, with a helping of necromancy thrown in. It’s also a very dangerous novel to be a character in, as one might expect of a novel with an Assassin as the central character. This is a story in which political backstabbing isn’t a metaphor. The deaths start in the prologue and reach a truly impressive level by the end of the book. Combat scenes are frequent, detailed and graphic; readers who enjoy violent blow-by-blow fight scenes will find Lion of Cairo much to their taste.

The plot is intricately constructed, with several sub-plots that at first appear to be distinct but which cleverly converge to reach a climax at the final battle. The narrative cuts back and forth between sub-plots and different groups of characters, building suspense by always leaving one sub-plot on a cliffhanger when the scene switches to the next. So much is packed into the story that it’s hard to remember that the main events span only a few days.

Although the setting is medieval Cairo in the second half of the twelfth century, and some real historical events and real historical figures are featured, Lion of Cairo has the larger-than-life feel of a tale from the Arabian Nights. Assad’s fearsome knife, called The Hammer of the Infidel, has some evil supernatural power, which Assad himself does not fully understand (although there is a hint that one of the other characters does, and that this may be taken up in the sequel). The leader of the rival assassin sect in Cairo is a necromancer and black magician, who seems to be seeking occult knowledge among the forgotten remains of ancient Egypt.

In the Author’s Note, Scott Oden says “The Cairo presented herein is not the Cairo of history but rather the Cairo of Scheherezade – a city where the fantastic occurs around every corner.” And indeed it does – the city of Cairo is drawn so vividly that it is almost a character in its own right, a teeming metropolis filled with colour, glamour and squalor, where new buildings jostle for space with ruins of unimaginable antiquity, a city filled with the energy of life and with the risk of sudden, violent death. In its variety and vigour it reminds me a little of Terry Pratchett’s Ankh-Morpork, and trust me, that is a compliment.

The ending leaves clear scope for a sequel. There are still plenty of ambitious men with designs on Cairo, and the history of Assad’s mysterious knife is still to be resolved. Not to mention the appearance near the end of a charming and capable young man by the name of Yusuf ibn Ayyub, who (if I have identified him correctly) has an exciting role ahead of him.


Violent, action-packed adventure fantasy full of swords and sorcery, following in the heroic tradition of RE Howard.

The Silver Eagle, by Ben Kane. Book review

Edition reviewed: Preface Random House, 2009, ISBN 978-1-84809-011-8. 402 pages.

Sequel to The Forgotten Legion, The Silver Eagle is set across most of the Roman known world in 55 BC to 48 BC. Julius Caesar, Decimus Brutus*, and some of the senior Roman officers and politicians are secondary characters. All the main characters are fictional.

Fabiola, sold into prostitution as a child slave, has been bought and freed by her lover, senior army officer Decimus Brutus. Her twin brother Romulus and his friends the Etruscan soothsayer Tarquinius and the mighty Gaulish warrior Brennus were captured by the Parthians after Crassus’ disastrous defeat at Carrhae (told in The Forgotten Legion), and are now serving the Parthians as border guards in the distant province of Margiana (modern Turkmenistan). Fabiola wants to find out if her brother is still alive and to take revenge on the unidentified Roman aristocrat who raped her mother. Romulus wants to return to Rome and find his sister – but he, Tarquinius and Brennus must first face an epic battle in India and a dangerous journey from the ends of the known world. And Fabiola faces her own challenges in the no less perilous world of Roman high politics.

The four leads are the same as in The Forgotten Legion, virtuosos in every respect. The all-action cinematic style of The Forgotten Legion is continued in the sequel, and if anything the pace is even faster. Rapid intercutting between Fabiola’s adventures in Rome and Romulus, Brennus and Tarquinius in the east, always switching scene at a crucial moment with one or more of the leads on the brink of death, adds to the sense of breakneck speed. Fans of graphic battle scenes will find much to enjoy in the description of the Battle of Pharsalus and the 30-page epic (fictional) battle between the Forgotten Legion and the armies of the Indian kings, which takes place by the River Hydaspes in what is now the Punjab, literally on the edge of the Roman known world**.

Paradoxically, as I noted with the previous book, the technique of always leaving at least one character in mortal peril started to pall after a while, at least for me. I find it difficult to maintain a constant peak of dramatic tension when there are no quieter interludes to provide contrast, and after a while I got rather blasé and found myself thinking not “are they going to get out of that?” but “I wonder how they’re going to get out of that?”, which is not quite the same thing. This feeling was accentuated by the frequent use of prophecy.

Mysticism and supernatural visions featured in The Forgotten Legion, and this theme is continued and developed further in The Silver Eagle. In the earlier book, Tarquinius was established as a soothsayer with real supernatural powers to predict the future. In The Silver Eagle, I felt the mysticism tipped over the balance into historical fantasy. Romulus now also has prophetic visions, and Fabiola not only has visions but undergoes some sort of shape-shifting experience. This is not belief or illusion, as many other characters (an entire army) see her for real in her shape-changed form. Events are so heavily prophesied and foreshadowed that although the plot twists and turns there are few surprises. For example, the jacket copy says that of the three heroes “only two will survive”, but the prophecies in the first book, heavily repeated in The Silver Eagle, make it obvious from the beginning who has the short straw. This has the effect of reducing the suspense, and for me it gave the book a curious feel of waiting for the inevitable to happen.

The worship of Mithras, a soldier’s god, is widespread among the Parthians (as one would expect, given the eastern origin of the cult), and also runs through the Roman Army like a sort of first-century Freemasonry. This gives an interesting slant, as Tarquinius and Romulus in Parthia and Fabiola in Rome all encounter the Mithraic religion at about the same time, despite being thousands of miles apart.

Roman high politics and the civil war between Caesar and Pompey form a dramatic backdrop to Fabiola’s escapades in Rome, and her adventures provide a neat way of keeping the reader in touch with the Roman world while also following the three heroes in the distant east. The identity of the rapist who fathered Fabiola and Romulus is made clear in this book, just in case anyone hadn’t worked it out from the clues in The Forgotten Legion (yes, it is who I thought it was, and no, I’m not going to give it away here. Email me if you want to know). I suspect I can hazard a guess at the centrepiece of the third book in the trilogy, and possibly some of the roles the three remaining leads are going to play. Fabiola has already sown a seed that looks as if it might bear dramatic fruit in the Senate in 44 BC.

The geographical spread of The Silver Eagle is if anything even wider than that of The Forgotten Legion, which is saying something. The plot ranges from Gaul in the north all the way to India in the east and the coast of Africa in the south. The scene on the Ethiopian coast where the characters encounter Africa’s iconic wildlife – elephants, giraffes, antelopes – is one of the most memorable in the book. And the cast of subsidiary characters is equally exotic, including nomadic steppe tribesmen, pirates in the Indian Ocean and a wild beast hunter in Africa.

Greatly to the author’s credit, the lengthy civil war between Pompey and Caesar isn't compressed for plot purposes, the book simply makes use of the “Two years later” technique in chapter headings to skip over events that would be too complicated to tell in detail. As with The Forgotten Legion, a helpful Author’s Note summarises some of the underlying history and an invaluable map helps in locating all the exotic places and following the characters on their extensive travels.

Frenetic all-action historical fantasy spanning the limits of the Roman known world.

* The Brutus everyone has heard of, of “Et tu Brute” fame in Shakespeare, is Marcus Junius Brutus. Decimus Brutus was a contemporary who served as an officer in Caesar’s army in Gaul. I guess they were probably related, but they were different individuals.
**The river marked the limit of Alexander the Great’s campaign in 325 BC, so it was the furthest limit of the Mediterranean world’s knowledge of Asia.

Historical fantasy

For me, historical fantasy is to novels what bacon and egg ice cream is to food; however much I like the components individually, the combination leaves me a little baffled. Reading Temeraire made me think about why this might be, so I’ll try to explain it here.

Better start with some definitions. For the purposes of this post, historical fantasy means a story that features supernatural powers and/or creatures unknown to natural history alongside real historical events or in a setting that claims to be a real historical time and place. I’ll illustrate how I think it differs from historical fiction, alternate history and fantasy by means of made-up examples:

• Historical fiction - real events and setting, no supernatural forces. E.g. William of Normandy defeats Harold of England in battle in 1066, by shooting Harold in the eye with an arrow.


• Historical fantasy - real events and setting, with supernatural forces playing a key role. E.g. William of Normandy defeats Harold of England in battle in 1066, by casting a spell on Harold or smiting him with a fire-breathing dragon.


• Fantasy - invented events and setting, with supernatural forces playing a key role. E.g. Gwilym of Northland defeats Rorhald of Cornerland in battle in the Year of the Stunned Spider, by casting a spell on Rorhald or smiting him with a fire-breathing dragon.


• Invented history - invented events and setting, no supernatural forces. E.g. Gwilym of Northland defeats Rorhald of Cornerland in battle in the Year of the Stunned Spider, by shooting Rorhald in the eye with an arrow.


• Alternate history - real events and setting with one or more major alterations from recorded history, no supernatural forces. E.g. William of Normandy loses to Harold of England in battle in 1066, or William defeats Harold by using gunpowder.

Of course these all merge into one another, since books follow a continuous distribution, not a series of discrete groups. And it should go without saying that this is in no way intended as a hierarchy, and that I don’t consider any category to be superior to any other. There are some that I enjoy more than others, but a personal taste is not a judgement.

Supernatural, in this context, means an event or action for which no natural explanation is plausible. E.g. a human who can breathe underwater without special equipment, animals that talk in human languages, people who turn into animals and vice versa, inanimate objects that act or speak of their own volition, people who rise from the dead, and spells that work (whether they slaughter armies, move mountains or do the washing-up). It doesn’t include belief, technology or random coincidence. E.g. a warrior who believes he is possessed by a god, kills the enemy leader against heavy odds, turns the tide of battle and is hailed by the other characters as a god (that’s belief); painting a dog with phosphorus so the other characters think it’s a ghost (that’s technology); cursing someone who then falls dead of a stroke (that could be coincidence); dreaming that a colleague is in trouble, going to their rescue and arriving in the nick of time (that could be coincidence).

I enjoy historical fiction, fantasy and invented history (I’d put Guy Gavriel Kay’s Lions of Al-Rassan in this latter category). But I find I have more trouble with both historical fantasy and alternate history. Why should that be?

I think it’s because I see a disconnect between the components of the story. A real historical time, place or event exists independently of the world of the novel. I usually know a little bit about the historical background before I start, and that may well be what drew me to the novel in the first place. Even if I know little or nothing about the history, I probably have some idea about the geography, climate, plants, animals and natural resources. As I read, I’m combining what I already know with what the author puts in the novel and building up a combined picture. I’m sure all readers do this to some extent, which is why authors don’t feel obliged to explain that Paris is the capital of France or that alcohol makes people drunk. Some background knowledge has to be assumed. In the case of historical fantasy or alternate history, as soon as William loses at Hastings or wins by using magic, there’s a direct conflict between what I already know and what the novel is telling me and the picture in my head falls apart. I have to consciously keep track of which version I’m supposed to believe, and this distracts me from the story.

I don’t have this problem with fantasy or invented history because the world in the novel has no independent existence that can conflict with the novel. I take Tolkien’s word for it that wizards can light fires with magic words or that dwarves fight with battle-axes, and as long as the author doesn’t tell me something different in the same novel I don’t have a problem. Al-Rassan might strike me as remarkably like medieval Spain and Rodrigo Belmonte as remarkably like El Cid, but they are not claiming to be medieval Spain or El Cid, so I don’t have a problem when Rodrigo Belmonte’s fate diverges from El Cid’s.

So I get around my difficulty with historical fantasy or alternate history by treating it as fantasy or invented history, taking place in a parallel world that happens to share some features with the real world. Provided I remember to do it, this avoids a collision between two incompatible mental images and leaves me free to enjoy the story for itself - if it’s compelling enough.

Does anyone else do this? I think I’m in a very small minority on this one. What do you think of historical fantasy?