I like tours-de-force. I like when authors pull out all the stops to write something mind-boggling. The Quincunx is a tour-de-force of Victoriana. Time and again, I thought I was reading Charles Dickens. Palliser's literary style is so accurate, I could not detect a single anachronism. And I also love the recreation of past cultures. I found this book to be a field guide to the lifestyles of the 19th-century
An extraordinary modern novel in the Victorian tradition, Charles Palliser has created something extraordinary—a plot within a plot within a plot of family secrets, mysterious clues, low-born birth, high-reaching immorality, and, always, always the fog-enshrouded, enigmatic character of 19th century—London itself.
“So compulsively absorbing that reality disappears . . . One is swept along by those enduring emotions that defy modern art and a random universe: hunger for revenge, longing for justice and the fantasy secretly entertained by most people that the bad will be punished and the good rewarded.”—The New York Times
I have always been fascinated by how the Bronze Age became the Iron Age. SBJ answers the question in fiction. Beginning in Hallstatt, the Alpine birthplace of iron-forging, SBJ traces the odyssey of a smith, learning the trade, seeing the world, seeking his forbears. I love books that teach me something. Packed with information on ancient smithing, mining, sailing, prehistoric geography, military tactics, adventure and more, SBJ introduced me to an ancient world of legend and archaeology, before actual history set in. I was surprised and pleased to see how the smith-hero eventually winds up in the legendary Theban Wars, still seeking his birthright. I particularly like how Douglas brings realism to legendary worlds, as he does in his recreation of the Theban Wars.
Hidden within the old hero myths are tales of men who sweated and stank, fought and blasphemed. They died entombed in the epic tales or forgotten in the mists of antiquity. Hall, a foundling raised by Celts high in the Alps, seeks his fortune and the mystery of his birth in the land of the Etruscans, in the cluster of hilltop villages that would someday be called Rome, in the Greece of legend when the heroes of the classical age were still remembered as men. He is an ironsmith, a singer of songs and tales, a warrior, a soldier, a…
I'm crazy about historical fiction. I especially like when I'm shown history I don't know already. I always thought Alexander the Great won all his battles. But Tyrant portrays one he lost. Or that his general, Zopyrion, lost, against an alliance of Greeks and Scythians. Tyrant taught me about the culture of the Scythians and also of the Black Sea Greek colonies. I like books that aren't cut and dry, good guys vs. bad guys, and Tyrant is not. This book depicts many different factions plotting and vying, changing loyalties from day to day, factions of mercenaries, Greeks, Scythians, aristocrats, townspeople, Macedonians, each with their own conflicting motivations. Thus, I found it to have a more satisfyingly complex plot than the usual story of ancient swordplay.
Glory. Death. Well-born Athenian cavalry officer, Kineas, fought shoulder to shoulder with Alexander in his epic battles against the Persian hordes. But on his return from the east to his native city, he finds not glory but shame - and exile.
With nothing to his name but his military skills, Kineas agrees to lead a band of veterans to the city of Olbia, where the Tyrant is offering good money to train the city's elite cavalry. But soon Kineas and his men find they have stumbled into a deadly maze of intrigue and conspiracy as the…
It is ancient, late-Republican Rome, and, denied the freedom he was promised, successful merchant-slave, Ariston, sets fire to his master’s Palatine mansion, rescues a slave-girl, Felicia, from crucifixion, and both escape to the distant Umbrian mountains where they marry and raise a family, setting in play an odyssey that leads from the cruel streets of the slums of Rome to chariot races in the Circus Maximus, from bloody, no-holds-barred street boxing to the pursuit of fugitive slaves across the length and breadth of Italia, from the great landed estates of the Roman countryside to the law courts of the Roman Forum.
