Ars Historica

by Marie Brennan

[viking2917]

Having just returned from London, and seeing The Secret Agent (a play about Sir Francis Walsingham and Elizabeth I), and having just finished reading The Queen's Agent (a bio of Walsingham), and The Intelligencer (about Christopher Marlowe) I was excited to get a copy of Ars Historica from the Early Reviewers program.

Ars Historica is a collection of short stories with a strong historical fiction bent, from Marie Brennan, an anthropologist and Victorian academic who brings her strong historical knowledge to her stories. Of particular interest to me was the story about Christopher (Kit) Marlowe, the Elizabethan playwright and spy and contemporary of Walsingham, who died with a knife in the eye. Or did he? Brennan explores.

Brennan's stories are good fun, especially for anyone with an interest in history and historical fiction. I've read probably hundreds of historical fiction novels, but this is my first experience with historical fiction short stories, and it was good fun. Her stories have a strong thread of the fantastical running through them, with Faerie and Church Grims figuring prominently. Her story notes lay out which parts of the story are true and which invented (the works of Tim Powers come to mind here). The stories are generally short and go down easy, I read the entire thing on a plane flight and very much enjoyed them. The Guy Fawkes and Ada Lovelace (did you know she was the first computer programmer AND Lord Byron's daughter?) stories were also very good fun. But I found the Elizabethan stories the most compelling, perhaps because of my recent other readings.

Fans of historical fiction and fantasy will enjoy.