The Persian kings are depicted as rescuers of the Jewish people from their Babylonian captivity, and Ezra-Nehemiah include multiple letters and other documents, supposedly based on actual writings, in which the Persian rulers support, encourage, and fund the restoration of the Jewish people and the rebuilding of the temple.
The Valkyrie Review
The story seems set up as a quest/mystery, but the narrative voice is more concerned with the rather forced romance between the two viewpoint characters.
Chronicles Review
Chronicles is to Kings what The Lord of the Rings books are to the movies - different interpretations with different emphases, but ultimately telling the same story.
The Maya Myths Review
Matsumoto's retellings of Maya mythological stories are more like plot summaries than any effort to really capture the feel and emotional context of the myths and stories involved. If writing down an oral story robs it of life, she gives us only the bones, not even the full corpse.
Avtandil’s Quest Review
If you were intrigued by my review for The Knight in the Panther’s Skin, but struggled with reading English translations of Rustavelian quatrains, Buell’s retelling is an excellent opportunity to approach the story in a different way.
The Wayfinder Review
What many people might consider to be reasons to put the book on their reading list were reasons I hesitated to put Adam Johnson’s The Wayfinder on mine, and I hesitated again before picking up the book to read. I was not entirely wrong.
Galileo’s Notes on Ptolemy
Copernicus and Galileo, who are credited (perhaps in slightly overstated fashion) with entirely recontextualizing our place in the universe, are thought of in this way, but the reality is that most seemingly revolutionary thinkers were less people who ran in a different direction from everyone else, and more people who saw the trail ahead more clearly and could take the next few steps for us.
Kings Review
What stands out most about Kings, even compared to the previous books, is its ex post facto attempt to impose religious and moralistic justifications for the successes and failures of different kings, and the associated flourishing of the Jewish states.
Beowulf Review
It can be read, outside of some of the trappings and language, as a kind of historical-fantasy tale with which plenty of people today are familiar. We still tell monster tales, albeit usually not in alliterative verse.
Life in a Medieval City Review
We’re all supposed to be getting away from the stock, default medieval Europe-inspired fantasy settings, because they’ve become passe. It’s true such settings can be overused, but they are mostly overused because so many authors fail to utilize books like Life in a Medieval City.
