06-03-2003, 11:18 AM
Hi Conn, finished the book and here's my thoughts on the matter.<br>
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One of the bugbears of writing historical fiction is that one is tempted to write with an eagle-eyed pedant leaning over one's shoulder. You try to make sure that you have nailed down every fact, every detail of clothing and equipment. Every major historical event is only re-presented after exhaustive research. Failures in accuracy should be by omission rather commission. If there is a gap in the knowledge, then we license ourselves to fit our material in on the basis that the boundaries it shares with what is known are rendered as seamlessly as possible. Otherwise, as Bernard Cornwell oft remarks, we might as well slap bren guns on the poop deck of the Victory.<br>
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There is another approach, of course. That is to say that history itself is a story and as such it is perpetually being rewritten. To be more accurate, history is perpetually being re-interpreted on the basis of the same raw material. This form of historic fiction, or hi-fi for short, tends not to be so popular with fans of the genre, because it often twists the knowledge they already possess about the specific context. To guard against this most authors pursuing this strategy play fair by laying the ground rules in some kind of foreword, as Rathbone does in The Last English King.<br>
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You, however, try a new approach. You not only re-interpret history, but go a step further and re-invent it prior to re-interpreting it, and don't mention this until the author's note at the end. It's an interesting ploy, but it is also a high risk strategy for those readers who have more than a superficial grasp of the historical context. One example suffices to illustrate the problem. Sulla stabs Marius at the gates of Rome. Now this simply didn't happen and the moment you read it the immersion in the narrative evaporates in a flash. Once is distracting enough, but when such moments come piled one upon another, there's a problem. What I fail to understand is why you do this when the material is already exciting enough for the popular market? Why make Marcus Brutus (assuming the character turns out to be THAT Brutus later in the series… there’s still time to alter that possibility Conn) the same age as Caesar when there’s a chance he may have been one of his many illegitimate offspring? Why drop any mention of the outrages perpetrated on the population of Rome by kindly uncle Marius? It doesn’t make sense.<br>
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Which is a shame, since the first 150 pages were so very promising. The childhood of Caesar on a small rural estate is beautifully realised. There’s a real sense of place and, to a lesser extent, character. The words flow easily and I turned the pages with pleasure. It’s a welcome change from a lot of the Caesar narratives that dwell on the great man of later years and an approach that allows the character to grow with the reader. A good move for the author then. Things then begin to slip soon after we follow Caesar to Rome. Suddenly there’s an explosion of characters and narrative strands that overstretches any empathy the reader might have for the main characters. Some characters are thrust to the foreground and dangled in front of the reader only to be quietly sidelined. With so little time to develop personalities your cast is reduced to one-note stereotypes. Take Sulla, a character so lacking in guile it’s a wonder he ever made it past aedile. In every scene he is modelled on John Hurt from ‘I, Claudius’. Another problem arising out of this necessary minimalism is the characters’ penchant for declamatory dialogue. Take this example of a man, crying out in the heat of battle: “With me! They’re going after the general in the confusion.â€ÂÂ
<br>
One of the bugbears of writing historical fiction is that one is tempted to write with an eagle-eyed pedant leaning over one's shoulder. You try to make sure that you have nailed down every fact, every detail of clothing and equipment. Every major historical event is only re-presented after exhaustive research. Failures in accuracy should be by omission rather commission. If there is a gap in the knowledge, then we license ourselves to fit our material in on the basis that the boundaries it shares with what is known are rendered as seamlessly as possible. Otherwise, as Bernard Cornwell oft remarks, we might as well slap bren guns on the poop deck of the Victory.<br>
<br>
There is another approach, of course. That is to say that history itself is a story and as such it is perpetually being rewritten. To be more accurate, history is perpetually being re-interpreted on the basis of the same raw material. This form of historic fiction, or hi-fi for short, tends not to be so popular with fans of the genre, because it often twists the knowledge they already possess about the specific context. To guard against this most authors pursuing this strategy play fair by laying the ground rules in some kind of foreword, as Rathbone does in The Last English King.<br>
<br>
You, however, try a new approach. You not only re-interpret history, but go a step further and re-invent it prior to re-interpreting it, and don't mention this until the author's note at the end. It's an interesting ploy, but it is also a high risk strategy for those readers who have more than a superficial grasp of the historical context. One example suffices to illustrate the problem. Sulla stabs Marius at the gates of Rome. Now this simply didn't happen and the moment you read it the immersion in the narrative evaporates in a flash. Once is distracting enough, but when such moments come piled one upon another, there's a problem. What I fail to understand is why you do this when the material is already exciting enough for the popular market? Why make Marcus Brutus (assuming the character turns out to be THAT Brutus later in the series… there’s still time to alter that possibility Conn) the same age as Caesar when there’s a chance he may have been one of his many illegitimate offspring? Why drop any mention of the outrages perpetrated on the population of Rome by kindly uncle Marius? It doesn’t make sense.<br>
<br>
Which is a shame, since the first 150 pages were so very promising. The childhood of Caesar on a small rural estate is beautifully realised. There’s a real sense of place and, to a lesser extent, character. The words flow easily and I turned the pages with pleasure. It’s a welcome change from a lot of the Caesar narratives that dwell on the great man of later years and an approach that allows the character to grow with the reader. A good move for the author then. Things then begin to slip soon after we follow Caesar to Rome. Suddenly there’s an explosion of characters and narrative strands that overstretches any empathy the reader might have for the main characters. Some characters are thrust to the foreground and dangled in front of the reader only to be quietly sidelined. With so little time to develop personalities your cast is reduced to one-note stereotypes. Take Sulla, a character so lacking in guile it’s a wonder he ever made it past aedile. In every scene he is modelled on John Hurt from ‘I, Claudius’. Another problem arising out of this necessary minimalism is the characters’ penchant for declamatory dialogue. Take this example of a man, crying out in the heat of battle: “With me! They’re going after the general in the confusion.â€ÂÂ
