Pirates must be all the rage these days. Barely two months after the finale of Black Sails on Starz, which was a worthy prequel to Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island (with another season on the way), NBC is offering a new pirate drama based on the notorious captain Black Beard. It’s titled Crossbones and premiers tomorrow at 10 PM. The series…
Last August, I wrote a post about the excellent Starz original series The White Queen titled “The White Queen & A Game of Thrones.” The post commented on an article from Vulture.com that made a connection between The War of the Roses—the setting for The White Queen—and George R.R. Martin’s A Game of Thrones. Last…
This week, I’m pleased to feature another review by Bill Brockman, this time of Blood Eye by Giles Kristian, Book 1 of his Raven Trilogy. For those new to this blog, Bill is an avid reader of historical fiction, but he’s also devoted his life to public service as a Battalion Chief of the Atlanta Fire…
On Friday, Paramount Pictures issued a disclaimer about the upcoming Russell Crowe film Noah aimed at religious audiences. Here’s a link to an LA Times story about the disclaimer, and to a more humorous post on io9 titled “Noah’s getting a ‘please don’t freak’ disclaimer for religious people.” I’ve not seen any cut of the…
One of the best shows on TV last year was Vikings on the History Channel. (In my humble opinion, it was second only to Season 3 of Game of Thrones.) Season 2 of Vikings begins tomorrow, but before it starts I thought I’d re-cap 5 things about last season that have me looking forward to…
My meandering series on The Magic of Medieval Fiction moves into the Seventh Century, an era that is squarely within the Dark Ages as far as historical novels go. In fact, attempting to even identify novels set in this century proved to be a huge challenge. But maybe there’s a good reason for this. The…
I’ve been looking forward to the early 18th Century pirate drama Black Sails for months now, and I was both surprised and excited to learn that it promises to be a prequel to Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island! If you’ve watched the first episode of Black Sails, you already know that the production values are top…
After finishing The White Queen on Starz, a show I really enjoyed, I picked up the novel by Philippa Gregory on which the show’s based. The Starz series stayed true to the novel, The White Queen, with a few significant exceptions, namely a very real difference in the stories’ narrative points of view. The cover of my edition Having read the novel…
This week I’m featuring another guest review from Bill Brockman. I was fortunate a few months ago to feature Bill’s review of Hawk Quest by Robert Lyndon, which you can read here. This week, Bill is reviewing Fin Gall – A Novel of Viking Age Ireland by James L. Nelson, and it sounds like another…
It’s been a few months since my last post in this series, largely due to a crazy summer work schedule. But as life returns to normal, I’m trying to get this series back on track. I had left it at The Age of Arthur in the late Fifth Century, including posts on The Hallows of…
Starz’s The White Queen proved last Saturday that it was more than willing to cross the line between historical fiction and historical fantasy, and I really liked what I saw. I’ve not read Philippa Gregory’s books on which the show is based, but I assume the scriptwriters weren’t so bold as to add magic into…