This week’s Top Ten Tuesday, hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl, is a “genre freebie”. I decided to write about something that I’ve been reading lately, historical fantasy novels. By this I don’t mean fantasy novels set in the past, I mean books that are primarily historical fiction, focusing on actual history and real places, but with a fantastic twist (whether it’s time travel, mind-reading, body-jumping, reincarnation, or a sentient fig tree). A perfect example of this is the Outlander series, which I would argue is much more history than fantasy. So maybe I really mean “fantastic history”. In each of these books, I loved the way small elements of fantasy, or sometimes really big ones, were used to showcase history in a new way.
- Outlander series by Diana Gabaldon (especially Dragonfly in Amber): In this series, Claire is magically transported from the mid-1940s to 1700’s Scotland, as the Highlanders fight for independence from the British.
- Life After Life by Kate Atkinson: In this unique book, Ursula Todd is born in 1910 and dies, again and again.
- The Golem and the Jinni: This brilliant book begins in 1899 as a golem is transported to New York City, where she meets the jinni.
- The World That We Knew by Alice Hoffman: Another golem story, this one is set in World War II Germany and France, where a mother creates a golem to protect her child from the Nazis.
- Doomsday Book by Connie Willis: This book takes you back to the time of the Black Death, visited by a future time travel historian (not surprisingly, things don’t go too well).
- The Mermaid and Mrs. Hancock by Imogen Hermes Gowar: Do mermaids exist? This book set in 1785 will leave you wondering, though that’s really not what it’s about.
- Build Your House Around My Body by Violet Kupersmith: Leaning closer to horror, this book explores colonialism in Vietnam over the last century, in a strange story about a young woman who goes missing.
- The Island of Missing Trees: Set in present day London and 1970s Cyprus, this novel is partly narrated by a fig tree. It’s a fantastic look at a historical conflict and a beautiful story.
- A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki: Impossible to describe, this novel involves time, quantum physics, and spirituality.
- This Rebel Heart by Katherine Locke: The fantasy is subtle in this book – a whispering river, a colorless world – about a student uprising in Budapest against the Communist regime.
- The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V.E. Schwab: In this book, Addie LaRue lives the life of an immortal, but with a catch – no one will remember her.
- A Deadly Fortune by Stacie Murphy: I loved this book about a woman in Gilded Age New York who can talk to spirits and finds herself imprisoned in the Blackwell’s Island insane asylum.
Happy Tuesday – please share any other good examples of this genre, and please visit some of the other blogs participating in Top Ten Tuesday.
