Ahira's Hangar

Well, different from the feudal northern European setting that is so frequently used?

Here is a list of fantasy with backgrounds from various times and places in history.



I'm sure we can add to it, too.

Like American history in the early 1800's - Orson Scott Card's Tales of Alvin Maker

Russian setting - The Firebird by Mercedes Lackey

feudal Japanese setting - Tales of the Otori by Lian Hearn

early 1800's - China, the Silk Road, Turkey, and Africa - the Temeraire series by Naomi Novik

ancient Greece - Mary Renault's duology about Theseus, David Gemmell's duology about Alexander the Great, and David Gemmell's Troy trilogy

Regency England - Susanna Clarke's Jonathon Strange and Mr. Norell

Steven Erikson's Malazan Books of the Fallen have a huge variety of settings and cultures - my favorite of which are in the desert.

Weiss & Hickman's Rose of the Prophet series, also Arabian/Desert.

(Where's Taras to make fun of me? )

--A

There is some great fantasy set in Ancient Greece - but what about other ancient settings?

There is Joan Lambert's wonderful Circle of Stone, a series of novellas set in homind times in Africa up to stone age Europe...Jean Auel's Ayla stories in prehistoric Europe...a couple of books set in prehistoric Siberia by Elizabet Marshall Thomas (I should reread the Lambert and Thomas books, it has been awhile, and I remember them as being wonderful).

There are a couple of books dealing with Ancient Egypt and/or Egyptian mythology in Gene Wolfe's Soldier of Sidon and Zelazny's Creatures of Light and Darkness.

What about Australian aborigenes? Native Americans? Aztecs? Incans? Mayans? Pacific Isalnds?

Ancient China?

Ancient African cultures?

Roman Empire other than Silverberg's Roman Eterna?

Ancient Persia?

Mespotamia?

I have read a couple of things with an Indian subcontinent feel - Zelazny's
Lord of Light and many books later in the Black Company series by Glenn Cook.

I know that there are many historical novels set in those times and cultures, but what about specifically fantasy?

Tamora Pierce's second young adult Circle series, The Circle Opens features different types of settings for each of the four books.

Magic Steps remains in the same setting as the Circle of Magic series, pretty much your typical Medieval type setting.
Cold Fire is sort of a winter Netherland setting (I think). Perhaps Russian.
Street Magic is Asian inspired, but my own cultural awareness couldn't say which one. Perhaps it a conglomerate.
Shatterglass strikes me as Arabian in feel.

...although I could be totally off base on which cultures she's calling upon...

Hmmm, I've read a kids fantasy years ago...uh...Fur Magic by Andre Norton that's set in a native american world. (Read a sci-fi/fantasy one too, not a kids book...they travel through space to other planets in magic canoes...was better than that sounds. )

Gemmel's Echoes of the Great Song draws slightly on Native American and Aztec cultures.

What about those "People" books? You know, People of the Wolf that sort of thing? Quasi-fantasy (magic anyway) in what...early meso-american type culture?

Anothe "kids" book series... John Christopher's Fireball, Newfoundland and Dragon Path are set in alternate realities of Roman, South & North American and Chinese history. (Damn good actually...the characters "cross" accidentally into a world that is the present, (1980 something?) but where Christianity never took hold, and the Roman empire never fell. )

Will keep thinking...

--A

I read the first few "Peoples" books, but they started getting a bit repetative, so they lost my interest. And no -they never grabbed me the way all of the others I mentioned as "prehistoric fantasy" did.

Ironically, the same two people who wrote the "Peoples" series wrote three mystery books collectively known as The Anasazi Mysteries, which are set partly in the present day and partly in prehistory - and some of the characters in the prehistory portions cross over with the "Peoples" books -- but I enjoyed the mystery books a lot more.

Another possible for the prehistory fantasy is A A Attanasio, Hunting the Ghost Dancer about a couple of cro-magnon hunting a mysterious and perhaps supernaturally powered Neandertal.

--A