Ahira's Hangar

I have finished the three little books about the Horse Catchers. They told of how recaptured Spanish horses went from the Pueblos in today's New Mexico and gradually dispersed through the Great Plains tribes. They were told like myths...

Have moved on to a book recommended by Joy, set in another time and place...France under the reign of the Sun King...

Emilie's Voice is the first novel by Susanne Dunlap, who has a doctorate in music history.
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A dazzling debut novel featuring a young singer whose remarkable vocal gifts thrust her into a glittering world of sin and corruption, royal intrigue and instant celebrity: Versailles.

Set against the backdrop of Paris and the court of Versailles, Emilie's Voice introduces a young heroine of modest upbringing who possesses a special gift: the voice of an angel. When distinguished composer Marc-Antoine Charpentier hears Emilie's voice, he offers to instruct her in the art of singing with the ultimate goal of presenting her at the court of Louis XIV. Her head filled with dreams of elegant gowns, opulent jewels, and the thrill of someday performing in the great houses of Paris, she begins her training - until a scheming noblewoman looking to unseat the King's official mistress interferes by preemtively bringing Emilie to Versailles.

There, amid royal pomp and splendor, she is swept up in dangerous palatial intrigues, becoming a pawn in aristocratic power games. But it the passionate battle for control over her life and career waged between Charpentier and Louis XIV's official court composer, Jean-Baptiste Lully, that has far-reaching consequences for a girl on the verge of becoming a woman and a singer on the verge of becoming extraordinary.
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Our lives are the songs that sing the universe into existence.~David Zindell
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Emilie's Voice was so sad. It was well written and interesting - the corruption and selfishness of the high ranking courtiers at Versailles was very well conveyed - but it was still very sad. Now I want to go out and see if I can find any music by Lully and Charpetier, though. ******************************************************

Our lives are the songs that sing the universe into existence.~David Zindell
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I have just finished a very well written and nearly too-painful-to-read story set in Italy in World War II. In fact, brilliantly written as it is, I feel soooooo depressed now.

Mary Doria Russell has written some wonderful and deeply spiritually searching science fiction novels in The Sparrow and Children of God. She was raised and Catholic and converted to Judaism, and those two spiritual traditions have a deep impact on all of her stories.

In A Thread of Grace, Russell writes a historical novel set in Italy in the closing years of World War II.

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It is September 8, 1943, and fourteen-year-old Claudette Blum and her father are among the thousands of Jewish refugees scrambling over the Alps toward Italy, where they hope to find safety now that the Italians have broken from Germany and made a separate peace with the Aliies. The Blums will soon discover that Italy is anything but peaceful, as it quickly becomes an open battleground for the Nazis, the Aliies, Resistance Fighters, Jews in hiding, and ordinary Italian citizens trying to survive.

Tracing the lives of a handful of fascinating characters - a charismatic Italian Resistance leader, a priest, an Italian rabbi's family, a disillusioned German doctor - Mary Doria Russell tells the little-known story of the vast underground effort by Italian citizens who saved the lives of 43,000 Jews during the final phase of World War II. A Thread of Grace puts a human face on history.


It's a beautiful book which shows the endless compassion and determination to help others that some humans are capable of - at huge risk to themselves. Thousands and thousands of Italians were willing to face torture and death to protect Italian Jews and the impoverished Jewish refugees who came streaming over the Alps from Vichy France.

Yet is also explores the dark side of human nature. The Italian Resistance (at huge personal costs) protected those innocent people facing extermination and death - but they had to kill and commit crimes themselves in order to do that.

And that is also a theme Russell explores - are there any crimes so great that God cannot forgive them? When someone has commited unimaginable crimes of unimaginable magnitude, is there any way he or she can make restitution?


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Our lives are the songs that sing the universe into existence.~David Zindell
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I recently read two books of historical fiction.

Dan Simmons's The Crook Factory is set in 1940's Cuba. American writer Ernest Hemingway wishes to set up his own spy ring, and wishes to use his personal boat to track Nazi submarines. An FBI agent named Joe Lucas is sent to Cuba to keep a close eye on him. When Hemingway spy ring, called the Crook Factory, begins to find important evidence, things begin to get very interesting!

Robert Hicks's The Widow of the South tells the fictionalized story of a real life woman named Carrie McGavock, wife of a plantation and slave owner who lives in Franklin, Tennessee. Following the deaths of three of her children, Carrie sinks into a deep depression for years. When the Conferderates take over her home to use as a field hospital during and after the bloody battle of Franklin, Carrie finds something to live for in caring for the wounded. After the war, a local landowner decides to plow up the field where thousands who died in the battle (including some of "her" boys) are shallowly buried, so Carrie decides to bring the dead home and bury them in her own yard so she can continue to take care of them. Interesting story that has been largely forgotten in the time since the Civil War. ******************************************************

Our lives are the songs that sing the universe into existence.~David Zindell
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One of my favorite historical fiction writers is Phillipa Gregory. She has a series of books set in the tudor Courts of England. George Martin's Westeros has nothing on the Tudors and their courtiers.

The Other Bolyen Girl is the story of Henry VIII and how he went from his fiorst queen, Katherine, to his ssecond queen, Anne. It is told from the eyes of Anne Boleyn's sister, Mary - who had been the king's mistress before her sister became his wife.

The Queen's Fool tells the story of Edward, Henry's son, and then that of his cousin Jane Grey and then that of his older half-sister, Mary. It is told through the eyes of a "holy fool" - a girl with secrest Jewish roots (her family had fled Spain) who has visions of the future.

The Virgin's Lover tells the story of the young Queen Elizabeth I and her dangerous lover, her beloved Robin. She walka a tightrope between keeping her power and keeping her lover.

Now I have read the fourth book, The Constant Princess. It goes back in time to the court of Henry VII, and the arrival of Katherine of Aragon, who is to marry Arthur, Prince of Wales. Katherine was born on one of the campaigns of her parents, Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain. She grew up in the Alhambra Palace, just taken from the Moors on the power of a promise her parents couldn;t wait to break. England is a backwards and ignorant place to her. She is arrogant, confident that she is special to God just like her mother before her, and ambitious beyond anything. Her life in England becomes interesting with the death of her first husband, and she eventually has to realize many things about herself and about her parents before she becomes likable.

A fifth book, The Boleyn Inheritance, which will be about Henry VIII's fourth and fifth queens, will be out next month. ******************************************************

Our lives are the songs that sing the universe into existence.~David Zindell
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Hey, how come I missed this?

I like historical fiction quite a bit. In fact, I've just read The Journeyer which is supposedly the untold truth of the travels of Marco Polo.

Some of my favourites are the books by Bernard Cornwall.

The Sharpe series, chronologically running from Assaye in India, through the Peninsular wars and Waterloo.

His Civil War series, still uncompleted AFAIK, about the war between the states.

The GrailQuest series, following the exploits of an English longbowman at the start of the hundred years war (I think...Crecy and all that)

And a new series about the Danish occupation of England.

One of my all-time favourites is Louis L'Amour's The Walking Drum, set around 900AD from the shores of Brittany to the Russian Steppes...always regretted that he died before he could write the sequel he planned.

And another excellent series by Noah Gordon, (you'd like these Duchess), about doctors. The first book, Physician, is set also around 900AD, about a boy who, apprenticed to a Barber-Surgeon, wanted to learn more about medicine, and eventually disguises himself as a Jew so that he will be accepted into one of the great Islamic Medical Universities in Persia. (No christians allowed.)

The series continues for another two books based around his descendents, one in America of the Early 1800's, ( Shaman), and one set in reasonably modern times...can't remember the name, who all remain in the medical profession.

Great books. Recommend them highly...all of them.

--A ____________________________________

A sense of the sardonic preserves a man from believing in his own pretensions. -The Sayings Of Maud'Dib<i></i>

I have read the Journeyer ~ Av - keep your eye out for the books by the same author set in the Aztec Empire!!! Those are really interesting reads! ******************************************************

Our lives are the songs that sing the universe into existence.~David Zindell
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I certainly will, it was a fun read. But I take it with several large handfuls of salt.

--A ____________________________________

A sense of the sardonic preserves a man from believing in his own pretensions. -The Sayings Of Maud'Dib<i></i>

Oh most definately. I read historical fiction more to get a feeling for the time periods they are set in rather than to get actual history.

Recently I read the new novel by Charles Fraser, better known for his first novel, Cold Mountain. This one is called Thirteen Moons and tells the story of Will Cooper, an orphaned white kid who is sent into Cherokee country (at that time not part of the US) in the Smoky Mountains of western North Carolina to run a trading post. He is a bright kid with no family, and eventually he is adopted into the tribe. At different points in his life he becomes a lawyer, an advocate and chief for his tribe, and a Confederate officer. Throughout his life he will be haunted by memories of his first great love. This is very loosely based (perhaps inspired would be a better word than based) on the life of a real person named William Holden Thomas. ******************************************************

Our lives are the songs that sing the universe into existence.~David Zindell
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Hey, whadda ya know? I found Aztec among my moms books.

-A ____________________________________

A sense of the sardonic preserves a man from believing in his own pretensions. -The Sayings Of Maud'Dib<i></i>

I hope that you will enjoy it. I especially loved the contrast of the Spanish horror of human sacrifice in the Aztec religion vs. what the Spanish themselves do to Aztec "heretics". Made me view the tumultuous era of the Inquisition and the Reformation in a totally new way. That book gave me a paradigm shift when it comes to looking at religion in general and Christianity in particular. ******************************************************

Our lives are the songs that sing the universe into existence.~David Zindell
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A couple of recent historical fiction reads:

The Hidden Diary of Marie Antoinette by Carolly Erickson - the tumultuous life and times of the last true Queen of France. She was one of the youngest in her family, the huge royal family of Austria, and not properly educated or prepared for her eventual great marriage. Her husband was an unattractive man who was unsuited for the role he was born into. While she had a good heart, she was often too self absorbed and spoiled - not to mention ignorant of the poverty and hunger and anger stalking through France - to fully use her better nature to improve the lives of her subjects. This is a first person novelization of some of the events of her life.

The Boleyn Inheritance by Philippa Gregory goes back to the court of Henry VIII and explores the lives of three women late in that King's reign - his fourth wife, Anne of Cleves, his fifth wife, Katherine Howard, and the spiteful and mad woman who was in service to them both - Jane Boleyn - who had already helped send her husband George and his sister, Anne, to their deaths. The Boleyn family, in helping Henry break with his first wife and with the Church, taught him that he had absolute power. And then they paid the price. The Boleyn Inheritence to all of England and its royal court: false witness, selling your soul for wealth and power, false accusations against thoe who stand in your way when you seek power, the threat of an axe, a mad and paranoid King. The book shines in its portrait of Anne of Cleves - a very kind young woman thrust into a horrible situation, without a word of English - and not only survives but eventually thrives. ******************************************************

Our lives are the songs that sing the universe into existence.~David Zindell
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THINGS FALL APART by Chinua Achebe is a historical novel set in Nigeria, by a Nigerian.

Okonwo is a son of a slacker who makes it big by dint of his very hard work. He becomes an important man in his village and his tribe. He has three wives and a bunch of children. He is a good farmer and a powerful warrior.

But he is very insecure and therefore frightened, and is therefore, something of a bully.

And then, when the British colonials move in, his whole world falls apart.

I thought that this book was interesting in that it shows both the inherent wrongness of colonialism and the fact that the tribal culture it destroys would be considered brutal beyond belief when we look at it through modern eyes. Neither side is wholly wrong or wholly right. ******************************************************

Our lives are the songs that sing the universe into existence.~David Zindell
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