In this week's second post, we have a historical fiction book by one of the more popular living historical fiction authors. He's written several series, one concerning Rome, another about Genghis Khan, plus a fantasy series. None of those, however, is what I picked up. So what did I opt for?
My reviewer criteria. I like light, entertaining novels. I like smaller scale stories rather than epics. I like character focused novels featuring pleasant characters, with a minimum number of unpleasant ones. I greatly value clever and witty writing. I like first person, or close third person narratives. I dislike a lot of "head jumping" between POVs and flashbacks. I want a story, not a puzzle. While I am not opposed to violence, I dislike gore for the sake of gore. I find long and elaborate fight, action, and battle sequences tedious. Plot holes and things that happen for the convenience of the author annoy me. And I fear I'm a born critic in that I don't mind pointing out what I don't like in a story. However, I lay no claim to be the final arbitrator of style and taste, you need to decide for yourself what you like or dislike in a book.
Your opinions are always welcome. Comment below.
War of the Roses - Stormbird by Conn Iggulden DNF 57%
This is a contemporary written historical fiction book that reflects the seemingly bog standard contemporary style of writing fiction. Instead of telling just one story - how boring - authors these days, especially in fantasy, like to tell four, five, or more stories in every book, using multiple points of views. That's the case here. I counted five point of view characters used by the author just o tell the opening stages of the English civil war between the houses of York and Lancaster.
We get the point of view of a fictional spymaster/fixer. We get young Margaret of Anjou, the 14 year old bride of the King of England's story. Plus we have a retired English archer turned farmer in Marine, France's experiences. And that of various Dukes. And for some unknown reason, the story of some random fellows murdering a magistrate. I have no idea what they are doing in this story, since the episodes seemed to have no relationship to the larger story. Indeed, I ended up skipping those episodes after that first one. That wasn't the story I picked up the book to read.
Multiple point of view books are simply not my cup of tea, but if you like them or don't mind them, you can skip the rest of the review, and give the book a try if historical fiction appeals to you. Iggulden is a good writer, with interesting characters, assuming that you don't mind them coming and going all the time.
My problem with stories like this is that I need a character to travel alongside through the story. If I don't have one I'm not drawn into the story. That is the case here. While it may be that an author weaves all these stories in in order to create a multi-faceted epic, I question the necessity of doing so. Do you really need them if you have an epic story to tell? I'm left wondering how boring the story would've been, had not all these random characters been tossed in to have more things happening.
I also get the sense that by slicing, dicing, and sprinkling in all these viewpoint characters throughout the story, the author doesn't have to tell a complete story for each of theses characters. He just brings them for random dramatic parts, without the need to write a coherent story for each character. All the mundane parts of their lives can ignored, hidden behind all the other point of view interludes. I think that's cheating.
My other complaint about this book is that, after doing a little Wikipedia research myself, it seems that Iggulden is playing rather fast and loose with history. No doubt there are several interpretations of the historical events of the period for him to choose from. Still, in this book he has the truce between England and France that had England giving up two provinces to French set to last 20 years, whereas it seems it was only 23 months in real life. It also seems that he compressed timelines, perhaps for dramatic effect; historical battles may've been pushed up 3 or 4 years - though he is careful not to state the years, or the intervals between episodes. Yes, it is fiction, after all. But then again, it's historical fiction, not fantasy....
As I said above, my problem is with its structure, not the writing. Any character I could care about appeared only occasionally and not often enough for me to keep forcing myself to continue on reading all the other parts.
The book has just under a 4 star rating on Goodreads, but the spread is pretty even between 5 and 3, with 4 being the most popular, so I take it that this book is considered good, but not great. I won't be returning to this author. Too modern.
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