After months of exploring vintage fantasy, my pendulum has swung back 180-degrees to pure historical fiction, having just finished World Without End by Ken Follett. I’ve had this book since 2007, so reading it has been a long time coming. But I’m very glad I did. World Without End is the sequel to The Pillars…
George R.R. Martin based A Games of Thrones on the Wars of the Roses, history’s real game of thrones. It was the Yorks versus the Lancasters, instead of the Starks versus the Lannisters, in a conflict over the English crown. And if you’re interested in this historical game of thrones, Conn Iggulden brings another chapter to life…
Since the New Year began, I’ve been busy writing my next novel, but I’ve also found myself missing Game of Thrones. If you’ve been missing it too, Conn Iggulden’s Wars of the Roses series might offer the perfect remedy. After all, the Wars of Roses were the real game of thrones. The Wars of the…
Saint Patrick’s Day is one of my all-time favorite holidays, so today I’m re-posting an article about Stephen R. Lawhead’s Patrick: Son of Ireland. I had little appreciation for the story of Saint Patrick until I began my research for Enoch’s Device. The novel tells the story of two Irish monks who try to prevent the apocalypse at the end…
Once again in my life, all roads lead to Rome. I dropped a hint to it in my last post with the reference to the Leonine City. And thinking about the city brought me back to this post about HBO’s Rome and an article in The Verge titled “Before Game of Thrones, there was Rome.” Its point: without HBO’s Rome, we…
This past Saturday I started reading Breaker of Bones, the second novel in David Penny’s Thomas Berrington series. By Sunday, I had devoured the book. It was that good. Breaker of Bones is a gripping medieval mystery that, at times, places its hero in extreme peril at the hands of a truly diabolical villain. I…
I’ve been away from the blog for several weeks trying hard to finish the beta draft of the sequel to Enoch’s Device. In the meantime, however, I caught the premiere episode of Knightfall on History Channel, and wanted to share a few thoughts. I was completely unaware of this new series until I saw an…
Recently, I started reading more medieval mysteries, and I’m truly enjoying them. These are pure mystery tales like the stories of Sherlock Holmes or Hercule Poirot, except set during the Middle Ages. And this week’s mystery, The Red Hill by David Penny, is among the best I’ve read so far. Set in the fifteenth century,…
It look longer than I had hoped, but I finished reading The Flame Bearer, the latest installment in Bernard Conwell’s excellent Saxon Tales series about the founding of the kingdom of England in the early tenth century. Here’s my review. For ten novels – that’s right, ten – we’ve been waiting for Uhtred to reclaim…
After a brief vacation and a near month-long hiatus from the blog, I’m back today with a review of Liberty Boy by Irish author David Gaughran. It’s the first book I’ve read about Dublin that didn’t involve Vikings (who founded the city way back when), and one I highly recommend. Liberty Boy is a well-paced,…
I’ve been away from the blog for longer than normal because I’m spending most of my free time editing the sequel to Enoch’s Device. I always keep reading, however, and recently finished The Templar’s Cross: A Medieval Mystery by J. R. Tomlin. Here’s my review. The Templar’s Cross is an intriguing whodunit set in fifteenth…