Reviews

Writing Historical Fiction: A Writers' and Artists' Companion by Celia Brayfield, Duncan Sprott

grouchyhobbit's review

2.0

This book is very informative and the exercises in the end are useful, but that wasn't enough to redeem it for me. It is so heavily skewed towards English history above all else, that wouldn't be much of an issue except that they don't put even half as much work in to their inclusion of Ireland, Australia, Canada, or the US. And while they do include Wales and Scotland a great deal more, even then the section on British is also overwhelmingly English.

Beyond that, I often had a difference of opinion with Sprott's views. Which was in itself unfortunate because his views seemed to be the dominant ones in the book, and I would have liked to see more of Brayfield's views. Had she been either the dominant or equal in coverage to him, chances are I would've liked the book better. She has a style that is less academic than his and she writes more like a good historian writes, to both give facts and draw the reader in.

The book was also wonky in formating, and didn't seem to have been reformated for e-book. This means the middle section sort of ran together and the bullet pointed sections were annoying because some could clearly have been combined for the sake of clarity in either print or e-book.

All in all? I don't think I would recomend this book. It wasn't godawful, but it wasn't up to snuff.