r/HistoricalFiction

I read The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett out of curiosity and I absolutely fell in love! I'm a heavy sci-fi and fantasy reader but I just wasn't feeling any of my TBRs so I tried reading Pillars and oh wow I couldn't put it down! The world building and characters are just so well-developed and the pacing is immaculate UGH i just LOVED it

Now I'm on World Without End and am thinking of going further into the series (and the Century Trilogy)! Can't wait!

Please drop your great historical fiction recs because I'd love to explore this genre more! And please tell me this is a worthwhile rabbit hole haha.

I read The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett out of curiosity and I absolutely fell in love! I'm a heavy sci-fi and fantasy reader but I just wasn't feeling any of my TBRs so I tried reading Pillars and oh wow I couldn't put it down! The world building and characters are just so well-developed and the pacing is immaculate UGH i just LOVED it

Now I'm on World Without End and am thinking of going further into the series (and the Century Trilogy)! Can't wait!

Please drop your great historical fiction recs because I'd love to explore this genre more! And please tell me this is a worthwhile rabbit hole haha.

Historical fiction research rabbit holes are something else. I went in knowing Sumer was "the cradle of civilization." I came out with a completely different picture of what that actually means. A few things I didn't expect:

1. Writing was invented for accounting, not literature.

The oldest written texts we have from Sumer aren't prayers or poetry — they're receipts. Grain tallies. Temple inventory lists. Cuneiform started as a bookkeeping system for the temple economy. The first thing humanity felt compelled to write down was essentially 29 sheep received, 8 distributed. The Epic of Gilgamesh came later. Bureaucracy came first.

2. The first named author in human history was a woman.

Enheduanna, daughter of Sargon of Akkad, high priestess of the moon god Nanna at Ur. She wrote hymns around 2300 BC and signed them. By name. That's the oldest known attributed authorship in recorded history — not a Greek philosopher, not a Roman statesman. A Sumerian woman doing theology and poetry 4,300 years ago.

3. Civilization had an operating system, and it was called the Mes.

The Sumerians believed there were ~100 divine laws — the Mes — that governed everything: kingship, truth, descent into the underworld, the crafts, music, the scribal arts. They weren't metaphors. They were treated as real objects, stored in the underworld by the god Enki. There's a myth where Inanna gets Enki drunk and steals them, which is essentially a heist story about the transfer of civilization from one city to another. The Mes are the most fascinating concept I've encountered in any research for anything, ever.

4. Workers were paid in beer.

Not as a perk. As a standard wage. The Hymn to Ninkasi — a 3,900-year-old text — is both a prayer to the goddess of beer and a functional brewing recipe. Daily beer rations were recorded alongside grain. Beer was nutrition, currency, and social ritual simultaneously. Drinking through long reed straws from communal vessels was normal. The straws kept the fermentation solids out of your mouth.

5. The flood story in the Bible has a Sumerian version that's 1,000 years older.

The Epic of Gilgamesh contains a flood narrative — a man warned by a god, a great boat, animals, a dove sent out, the waters receding — that predates Genesis by roughly a millennium. Most scholars think the stories share a common source. Sumer keeps showing up as the origin point for things we assume came later.

Happy to go deeper on any of this if there's interest. The research alone has been worth it.

Yeah, that's pretty much it.

I've read The Queen of Jasmine Country by Sharanya Manivannan.
I don't mind if it is religious, just no retellings, please.

Prefer books, including visual novels. I find it very hard to concentrate on films and TV these days, so would prefer something written, if at all possible.

Games are ok too, if any exist.

I doubt my lamentable Marathi is going to stand up to the more formal language used in a film or TV show (I can just about manage serials), so would appreciate English (subbed or dubbed), please and thanks in advance.

ETA: I enjoy historical romance, and for the purposes of this prompt, don't mind speculative fic as long as it is grounded within the real world (i.e. not a loose imitation secondary world "inspired by").

Thank you!

It’s bad enough that people kept dying, nobody was safe in that book. Then at the end I found that nobody was happy, nobody seemed to get what they wanted. Not a single happy ending to latch onto. I love it all the same, the historical representation of what it was to be out in the wild and how horses function was just breathtaking. Now all of a sudden I want to drive a bunch of cattle up to Wisconsin and maybe into Canada 🤣.

I’m looking for recommendations.
I’m going on a cruise of the Danube [budapest to regensberg]
along with additional time in Nuremberg, Berlin, Prague.
I would love to read about this region.
I’ve enjoyed Edward Rutherford, James Michener. Something meaty that includes the history of the region.
English only. Thanks!

Hey, not long ago I posted a few timelines on the best historical fiction novels on Rome. Well I just did the same for the Middle Ages, and I thought this might interest you. I also added national epics cause they can be quite good. Honestly, the amount of books written around Richard Lionheart is baffling.

https://preview.redd.it/omtee822b32h1.png?width=2022&format=png&auto=webp&s=9d72a8f8a2aed78af049a0d65779fccaa1384b11

https://preview.redd.it/q7fn9822b32h1.png?width=2042&format=png&auto=webp&s=1d4a0f93eaf86b91d776edfb4740d2549e3969b4

Hi everyone,

I’m looking for a few beta readers for a completed historical fiction novelette titled:

WHERE THEY STOOD
A Chronicle of the Sacred Band of Thebes

The story follows the rise and fall of the Sacred Band of Thebes, the elite Theban military unit composed of 150 paired male couples who became one of the most formidable fighting forces in ancient Greece.

Rather than writing this as a fast-paced war novel, I approached it more like an observer recounting memory across time. The story is written almost like a reflective historical chronicle, as though someone is standing centuries later on the battlefield itself trying to understand what these men were, what they believed, and why they refused to break.

The focus is less on spectacle and more on:

• loyalty
• sacrifice
• mortality
• legacy
• brotherhood
• love under pressure
• how civilizations remember the dead
• what it means to “hold the line”

This is not fantasy and not romantasy.

It is heavily researched historical fiction grounded in recorded events surrounding:

• Pelopidas
• Epaminondas
• Tegyra
• Leuctra
• Chaeronea
• Philip II
• Alexander of Macedon

Tone/style:

• atmospheric historical fiction
• reflective war narrative
• character-driven history
• literary historical fiction

Details:

• Approx. 8,500 words
• 36 pages
• 9 chapters + prologue and epilogue
• Approx. average reading time: 35–50 minutes

A brief synopsis:

The Sacred Band of Thebes was unlike any military unit in the ancient world: 300 elite soldiers formed from bonded pairs who believed devotion to one another made them unbreakable in battle. Through victories that reshaped Greece and a final stand that became legend, the story traces the rise of the Band from experimental formation to immortal memory beneath the Lion of Chaeronea.

A short excerpt from the opening:

“The lion does not roar, does not bare its teeth, does not threaten or defend or warn. It simply watches — stone shaped into memory…”

I’m specifically looking for feedback on:

• pacing
• emotional impact
• readability
• historical immersion
• whether the writing stays engaging without becoming too dense
• whether the relationships feel authentic and grounded

Content notes:

• battle violence
• grief/loss
• historically accurate male relationships within the Sacred Band
• no explicit sexual content

If this sounds like something you’d enjoy reading, comment below or send me a DM and I’d be happy to share more details.

Thank you.

There were pictures of colorful spiral castle spires on the front of the book.

I'm 99% sure she's French.

Adding in some other details bc it's driving me crazy still!!

It was a decently long book, the things that I remember was that it was heavily based on this woman's inherited skills as a confectionery person. She learned the trade from her dad. And I think there was some political stuff going on in the world at the time. It was definitely set in an older time period, maybe the early to mid 1800s. The book cover had the types of Russian architecture with the spirals and stuff on it. And I think at one point she was in a palace. The main character guy's name started with an A, I believe. And it's just her story as she goes through her life and moves up and progresses with her talents.

Hey I don't know if anyone's ever considered this, but I thought it would be interesting to compose timelines using historical fiction, so that if you want to learn history, you have a sort of guide on what are the best fictional books covering each era. So far I've done a fair bit, and there really has been so much written you can cover all of history through fiction. Here are some of the timelines below for Rome (Republic and Empire) tell me if I missed anything. I also sometimes write articles about these if anyone's interested, but I just thought this was a good idea.

https://preview.redd.it/jnzrzb5ynu1h1.png?width=1824&format=png&auto=webp&s=7d1a865e9214e6915232b99ea60a0269eb28f1c4

https://preview.redd.it/nv5reb5ynu1h1.png?width=1684&format=png&auto=webp&s=0c89e384d61c6de0a24e72fd4852ae43d757ae14

Was enjoying a lovely grilled leg of lamb tonight with a bottle of Red Bordeaux and I can't remember exactly how the conversation turned to WW2 historical fiction set in the vineyards of France, but it did. I think the only historical fiction I have read, that was set in France, was The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah (which I absolutely loved). Some authors I tend to enjoy are James Michener, Leo Tolstoy, Edward Rutherfurd, Gore Vidal, Sharon Kay Penman. Would love suggestions for historical fiction set around the wine industry and vineyards of France during WW2.

For a very long time I have been trying to develop a plan for a historical fiction novel set in the capitals of long-standing European states such as England, France, or Austria, between the 1800s and 1960s. I am experienced in writing but developing the scenario and deciding on the events that will take place is much more difficult for me than the actual writing part. Since I am still struggling with indecision regarding how and what will unfold in the novel I started two years ago, I cannot say I have finished even five percent of it. Generally I enjoy creating neo-Nazi-style villains with extreme ideas or, to give an example from real history, characters like Rasputin who possess a manipulative power great enough to poison the masses. ​I am fond of themes consisting of Gothic settings (manors, antique residences, operas), the modern era, extremist religious cults, popular uprisings and revolutions, mystical yet events that do not overstep enough to break realism but make the reader question things, vintage streets where horse-drawn carriages or early model cars roam, occultist experiments, gambling, making deals with a malevolent figure, assassinations, dramas of deep-rooted families, philosophy, international espionage, the clash of ideologies between different factions, thefts and heists, magnificent evening balls where something is going wrong in the background, auctions, underground societies, characters making references or nods to ancient times within the scope of theology and the history of religions, stage magic (for the purpose of deceiving people), and politically critical environments. I hope that with all these examples I have been able to visualize what I am looking for in your mind. I know it is a very broad spectrum. Implementing all the elements I love into a single story would mean creating numerous clashing logical errors. Therefore I am aware that I can never use all of them together. I have tried giving up on some ideas but I usually end up back where I started, at zero. ​When it comes to mysticism I want to open a separate parenthesis here. Until now I have been obsessed with ensuring that what I write is true to reality and free of anachronisms. However, looking at the types of books I love; The Picture of Dorian Gray, Frankenstein, Interview with the Vampire, Faust, The Master and Margarita, Dracula... All of these are Gothic, yet if the fantastical elements were removed, their plot skeletons would vanish. Still these are not fantasy works in the sense of having wizards throwing fireballs at each other, people cursing each other or teleporting, or fighting with lightsabers. I think I love devil and vampire themes set in the past that are detailed, realistic, and meticulously handled. Yet they are still cliches, aren't they? If you were to write this kind of novel without overdoing it would you put forward brand-new ideas that you were the first to find and use, or would you further develop existing ones? In other words should I break the cliches or play it safe? What would you suggest to me? Do you think I should set aside my "realism" requirement and be open-minded toward these mystical themes, processing them in a way that would be a first for me?

Like the title says - looking for recommendations to learn more about this subject.

One of the first historical movies that got my attention, was 1993's Swing Kids. It's about a trio of teenage boys in Nazi Germany, who attend swing parties in defiance of Nazi Germany... only to be slowly torn about by the Third Reich's nightmarish brainwashing.

Siskel and Ebert loathed the movie because it only showed 2 scenes of people getting taken away, and the Nazi's antisemitism took a relative backseat. I personally think they are completely missing the point. That's not the story the movie wants to tell. It wants to highlight the manipulative and corrupting side of the Nazi's by showing how easily they could turn even the kindest Germans into the most vile Germans. It also shows the Nazi's censorship of the media, and how ruthless they could be with brainwashing people. In other words, the movie shows the psychological horror of the Nazi's.

What do you think? Think Siskel and Ebert's criticism was valid?

Sorry if this has been asked before. I'm looking for historical fiction books that are easy to read. I have a stressful life and I need some escape that isn't more work. Some ones I've enjoyed have been the wolf den ,lady Tremaine and all the light you cannot see.