I can’t say that I’ve thought much about Game of Thrones since its finale. What I did do immediately afterwards was order George RR Martin’s Fire & Blood: 300 Years Before a Game of Thrones. Here’s what it’s not: a prequel to the ASOIAF books. To me, it does not read like a novel, at all. The narrative conceit is that it’s a history book about the Targaryen dynasty assembled by an archmaester. In fact, it reads precisely like historical non-fiction … except it’s all about a made-up family in a made-up world.
As a lover of the historical non-fiction genre, this was right up my alley. If that’s not your jam, your mileage may vary. It’s a big honker of a book too – over 700 pages long. The first 50 pages or so had me worried because they are almost a word-for-word repetition of Martin’s The World of Ice & Fire “encyclopedia” history of Westeros, which I already own and read. If you have that book, you will know the broad strokes of the Targaryens’ reign; Fire & Blood adds a ton more detail and colour to the story. What I did not realize until the end was that it actually stops 5 or 6 kings before Aerys the Mad (the last Targaryen king before the ASOIAF timeline kicks in). So now I am wondering if this is going to be a two-parter history. Par for the course for Martin, I guess.
You might expect that this is a book which only GoT fanatics obsessed with Westeros minutiae might truly enjoy. I don’t count myself in that category, but as a history nerd I was totally engrossed by it and loved it. It’s basically a fantasy retelling of European history, focused primarily on the British isles. My favourite part of the reading experience was trying to figure out what real-life counterpart(s) each Targaryen king was based on; in most cases, each character was a mish-mash of several real kings, with events depicted in the book having been inspired by various (predominantly Plantagenet and Tudor) English kings’ lives. That’s my take, anyway. I don’t know if Martin has ever confirmed his sources of inspiration.
After reading Fire & Blood, I was in the mood for more history, so I re-read David Starkey’s Crown & County: The Kings and Queens of England, A History from my library. It’s an enjoyable, easy read though it felt rushed in places – what I basically wanted was a separate biography of each monarch, especially the Plantagenets. For reviewing the highlights, this hit the spot.
Then I decided to do the same with French kings … only to quickly realize that books on French history are much harder to come by than English history. Most royal biographies focus on the Bourbons (Henry IV through Louis XVI) which is all fine and good; right now, it’s medieval history I’m most interested in. There is a shocking lack of recent biographies on the Capetians and the Valois as a whole. I ended up ordering John Julius Norwich’s A History of France, which was broader in scope than I strictly wanted, but a great read as always – JJN is one of my favourite historians. My only complaint is that the book turned out to be much shorter than I was expecting (a relatively slim 400 pages), and a lot of the medieval history was very lightly touched on.
Let me take this chance to make another plug for Maurice Druon’s Accursed Kings series about (the Capetian) Phillip IV and his progeny, another likely source of inspiration for George RR Martin. This book has it all: political scheming, murders, adultery, sorcery, 13th century courtroom intrigue. And it’s (largely) based on real life events, which is fascinating. I basically want to read the non-fiction version of this series, and really delve into all of the details. Someone write this book, please. I am currently re-reading Barbara Tuchman’s A Distant Mirror, which is an excellent resource on the 14th century in Europe (predominantly France and England).
In non-historical fiction news, I also started but have yet to finish Normal People by Sally Rooney. This book came with a lot of hype but, for some reason, I didn’t connect with it enough to keep at it. I didn’t hate what I’ve read so far, but it’s meh. I’ll probably push myself to finish it at some point.
What have you been reading lately?
Have you read anything about Eleanor of Aquitaine? Historical fiction is NOT my thing, so it took me 3 years to get through a book about her, but wow, pretty interesting. It was called Eleanor of Aquitaine and the 4 Kings.
Yes, I’ve read about her indirectly through books on Henry II and his sons. She definitely had an interesting life/political career.
The hangman’s daughter is a light read/mystery series I enjoy. Simple writing but interesting. And I just read city of copper and city of brass which was also a bit basic but good premise (djinns!)