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…
As I edit away on my next novel, I have a suggestion for anyone suffering withdrawals since the season end of Game of Thrones: Watch a show about the War of the Roses, history’s real life game of thrones. It’s been well publicized that the historical War of the Roses helped inspire George R.R. Martin’s…
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…
With only two episodes left in the second part of Season 4 of Vikings, I’m not a hundred percent sure where the show is going now that Ragnar’s death has been avenged. But I suspect the show will alter history yet again. The past few episodes of Vikings have embraced some of the more significant…
I’ll be the first to admit that part 2 of Season 4 of Vikings on History snuck up on me. But when I started catching up with the new half-season, I did not realize that Vikings was becoming a prequel to Bernard Cornwell’s The Last Kingdom. In fact, it seems, we can credit Ragnar Lothbrok…
Isn’t this Throwback Thursday? In honor of this fairly recent tradition, I’m re-posting my 2012 review of one of the greatest works of epic fiction I’ve read in a long, long time . . . For several years now, I’ve been interested in medieval Spain, and about a quarter of my first novel takes place in…
Every once in a while I’ll reread one of my favorite novels for inspiration, and this summer that read was The Archer’s Tale by Bernard Cornwell. It reminded me how much I loved his Grail Quest series, and how pieces of it helped inspire my first novel, Enoch’s Device. I consider The Archer’s Tale to be a…
Yesterday, TV Guide published an article titled “Game of Thrones: What Was the Point of Jon Snow’s Death and Resurrection?” The article, however, never seriously answered the question. Instead, it concluded that “Jon was killed just for the show to have something to do during its saggy midpoint, and his death and resurrection won’t really…
The Season Six finale of Game of Thrones may have been the show’s best episode so far. And for readers of the books, it probably contained the most surprises. Here are my thoughts on “The Winds of Winter.” Note, *SPOILERS* to follow. In some ways, last Sunday’s episode reset the game board to where it…
Episode 9 of the sixth season of Game of Thrones, titled “The Battle of the Bastards,” was everything I hoped it would be, and more: epic and thrilling, with an unexpected stopover in Meereen that was quite awesome to behold. And for once in a very long while, the episode ended better than many would…