I really enjoyed Glorious Exploits, and I thought your review was excellent. Also I liked your observations (in the longer review you linked to) about the use of language in historical fiction. As someone who writes HF, I have often noticed the homogenizing and distancing effect of all that pseudo-Victorian dialogue, and I try to avoid it - yet some readers seem to expect it, or it doesn't count as HF, I guess.
TYSM! And yeah, it's very frustrating. I think the question of language has to be addressed in any historical fiction that includes dialogue, but there are so many ways to address it that aren't crudely aping Walter Scott or whatever. I'm always particularly annoyed when you have characters who are very familiar with one another addressing each other very formally. One of my favourites is the anglo-saxon "shadow tongue" of Paul Kingsnorth's The Wake, but I don't think it's necessary to recreate your own pseudo-language in every scenario. Glorious Exploits works because the author found a working class language for working class characters.
It's an interesting question I've been wrestling with for some of my (premodern) secondary-world fantasy as well. How, or should, I make dialogue especially sound archaic using modern English?
Anyway, I'm now absorbed with The Wake based on previews alone and am looking for the best way to buy an ebook edition here in Canada.
Normally I too prefer ebooks, but for The Wake you might want a paper copy, as I found myself flipping to the glossary in the back quite often, especially over the course of the first ten or fifteen pages.
Ah, these days it's mainly a pricing consideration, plus wanting to get started quickly as some of my current writing is set in a comparable time and place. But good to know!
I really enjoyed Glorious Exploits, and I thought your review was excellent. Also I liked your observations (in the longer review you linked to) about the use of language in historical fiction. As someone who writes HF, I have often noticed the homogenizing and distancing effect of all that pseudo-Victorian dialogue, and I try to avoid it - yet some readers seem to expect it, or it doesn't count as HF, I guess.
TYSM! And yeah, it's very frustrating. I think the question of language has to be addressed in any historical fiction that includes dialogue, but there are so many ways to address it that aren't crudely aping Walter Scott or whatever. I'm always particularly annoyed when you have characters who are very familiar with one another addressing each other very formally. One of my favourites is the anglo-saxon "shadow tongue" of Paul Kingsnorth's The Wake, but I don't think it's necessary to recreate your own pseudo-language in every scenario. Glorious Exploits works because the author found a working class language for working class characters.
It's an interesting question I've been wrestling with for some of my (premodern) secondary-world fantasy as well. How, or should, I make dialogue especially sound archaic using modern English?
Anyway, I'm now absorbed with The Wake based on previews alone and am looking for the best way to buy an ebook edition here in Canada.
Normally I too prefer ebooks, but for The Wake you might want a paper copy, as I found myself flipping to the glossary in the back quite often, especially over the course of the first ten or fifteen pages.
Ah, these days it's mainly a pricing consideration, plus wanting to get started quickly as some of my current writing is set in a comparable time and place. But good to know!