Are you familiar with Rosemary Sutcliff's novels set in Roman Britain? "The Eagle of the Ninth" is the best known, but there are two others: "The Lantern Bearers" and "The Silver Branch".
I suspect you'll find Mary Renault too much like a history lesson, but they are classics for a reason. I see from your profile that you're into the hawt gay men, so you might appreciate the fact that they tend to focus on male/male relationships. (ETA: "The Persian Boy" also has some harem type stuff, IIRC -- the main character is a eunuch.)
If you're interested in non-fantasy medieval, I really like Sharan Newman's Catherine le Vendeur mysteries, set in 12th century France. They have a long arc through the whole series, and it all circles around this one woman and her family. The same author also did a Guinevere-centric series based on Arthurian legend (but quite historical for Arthurian, if you know what I mean) that I quite enjoyed.
(If you like mysteries, there are a LOT of good classical/medieval historical mysteries out there.)
And randomly, looking at my shelves, Michael Chabon's "Gentlemen of the Road" is good fun -- it's hard to categorise but it's kind of swashbuckling and fluffy but also very historically interesting. It's about Jews in 10th century in what is now Turkey/Azerbaijan/that sort of area.
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Date: 2010-05-01 09:17 am (UTC)I suspect you'll find Mary Renault too much like a history lesson, but they are classics for a reason. I see from your profile that you're into the hawt gay men, so you might appreciate the fact that they tend to focus on male/male relationships. (ETA: "The Persian Boy" also has some harem type stuff, IIRC -- the main character is a eunuch.)
If you're interested in non-fantasy medieval, I really like Sharan Newman's Catherine le Vendeur mysteries, set in 12th century France. They have a long arc through the whole series, and it all circles around this one woman and her family. The same author also did a Guinevere-centric series based on Arthurian legend (but quite historical for Arthurian, if you know what I mean) that I quite enjoyed.
(If you like mysteries, there are a LOT of good classical/medieval historical mysteries out there.)
And randomly, looking at my shelves, Michael Chabon's "Gentlemen of the Road" is good fun -- it's hard to categorise but it's kind of swashbuckling and fluffy but also very historically interesting. It's about Jews in 10th century in what is now Turkey/Azerbaijan/that sort of area.