I have to admit that I’m not usually a fan of historical fiction that takes place in time of war. Battle scenes and descriptions of armory bore me, but I decided to give Luke Jackson’s book, The Wrong Choice, a read mainly because I’ve been researching the Civil War a lot lately for a project of my own. I thought reading something else from that genre might help or inspire me.
It is ironic, is it not, how everything seems so poetic in death, yet we rarely see the poetry in life?
I couldn’t think of a more truer statement than this, spoken by a God-like king on the first page of Cheryl Anne Gardner’s book, The Splendor of Antiquity. True, we’d expect our Gods to say such profound things and the narrator of this book does not disappoint with such expectations. After all, he has been dead for centuries and our lead female, an archaeologists named Joliette Deneauve, is about to dig him up.
As I Rode with Cullen Baker opens, we are met with a scene evocative of Gone with the Wind with Tara burning in the background. Set in the South in the midst of the civil war, fifteen year old Jessica Linville watched while the Federal cavalry burned her house to the ground.
The King, Father, and Mother is reminiscent of Dan Brown’s Angels and Demons, not quite as good as the Davinci Code but still a compelling read. In Eric Rhodes’ book, we follow three men, separate in time but connected by an Irish hillside and a mysterious stone.
I admire historical fiction that draws from real facts from our history books and presents new theories on events or fills in the gaps history skipped over. S. G. Cardin has written such a book called Across the Fickle Winds of History. Now, with a title and book cover like that, I knew I wanted to read it.
I received a hard copy of Anthony R. Fanning’s book in the mail a few months ago. Opening the package, I discovered the book was wrapped in brown paper tied with cotton twine much like a treasure map. What a cool marketing idea, I thought! It really gave me a nice visual introduction to the book. Unwrapping the paper, I discovered a nice little 4.25″ x 6.88″ pocket size book totaling 430 pages and only 19 chapters! But it’s orange cover (the author has since changed the color) and pencil drawing of a young girl standing in front of an Old World Caribbean map appealed to me even more. I usually frown at 300+ pages in any book, but the small size of this book made it read more like 215.
I did enjoy Marva Dasef’s charming Tales Of A Texas Boy, with its bonus insight into past events and lifestyles. Based on her father’s reminiscence, these appealing stories take us back to 1930s Texas during the Depression era when life was very different. Each tale begins with an explanatory paragraph and is embellished with wonderful old family photos appropriate to the story. Modeled on Dasef’s father, “Eddie” narrates with a touch of dialect so natural it was as if I could hear his voice inside my head.
I have to admit that Thomas Patrick’s book appealed to me because of its book cover. Don’t judge a book and all. The cover itself is not appealing as it appears to be a bad scan of an old sepia photograph or quite possibly a photo taken of a photograph in a frame since there seems to be a shiny glare just across the woman’s face. However, I have a huge respect for the sepia photographs of yesterday and have been known to buy them up when I see them in junk stores and antique places. Yes, I have an odd collection of pictures of complete strangers…your great great grandparents, perhaps? So the old lady in the long dress feeding the chickens out in the yard spoke to me and I knew I wanted to read this book.
There’s a door to a room in the back of my mind where I store thoughts and bits of information – historical, current events, song lyrics, words and their definitions, newspaper clippings, magazine articles, movie scenes, lines from a book, pieces of conversation, etc. – determined to use them in a book one day. I have a huge respect for the historical fiction genre and for authors who are inspired by pieces of history and creative enough to put them into fictional context. Years ago I came across articles on a steamboat accident that happened at the end of the Civil War and killed almost as many people as the Titanic tragedy did many years later, but it was clouded over in the news by the assassination of Lincoln. I’m still determined to work it into a novel some day. For now, it sits in that far away room.
I first came across Mick Rooney’s blog earlier this year during the whole Amazon/Booksurge/POD mess. He, like many of us, was deep in the story with news and updates, writing and watching a small part POD history as it happened. It seems, today, that story is history indeed but Mick’s blog was one of the few that I kept up with after that whole charade. Recently, he held a poll to find out which POD Publisher his readers preferred. He took the top four results and outlined their pros and cons.
Do you love to read?
Do you support the POD community?
Can you be critical, yet positive?
Do you like to review books?
If so, we'd love to hear from you. LLBR is looking to add a few more reviewers to its team. Email us at llbookreview@gmail.com for details.
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