h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Got it, it's Varangian...so there you go!

Yes, i found it. They sound much like the Germanic guards in Rome. Those were some lads too.

I knew that they sacked Rome, but there were actually Germanic guards employed there?

oh yes, there were. Arminius was one of their leaders at one time, in fact. So from the Romans point of view he was a renegade mercenary and relapsed barbarian. Arminius' brother Flavius also served in the Germanic guards corps, and he never broke alliance with Rome, and had little time for his rebel brother.

Nice.

Actually i think the name was Flavus (blondie), not to be confounded with the Flavius family of Rome.

Have you come across the Warlord Chronicles, by Bernard Cornwell? The Arthurian legends retold in a lovely dark ages style. You see the decay left after the Romans went home and the struggles of the native Britons against the Irish on one side and the Saxons on the other. Very dark and bloody, but with well researched historical background.

No i haven't, usually i steer clear of the Arthurian legend, with the exception of what Tennyson, TH White and Mak Twain made of it. But it sounds great, the way you tell it.

It's like Cornwell's other books, the history is impeccable and the battle scenes are brutal...Lancelot's execution with the "gelding's death" is particularly brutal. The descriptions of combat are worth a read as well.

Lancelot's execution? Did he die? Aw, my favourite knight!

He's a bit of a posuer in this one and actually plots against Arthur (who is never actually King, as he is the bastard son of Uther Pendragon)...They basically string him up on a riverbank and chop off his blokey bits and leave him to bleed to death...hence the gelding's death.

*HUMPF* not sure if i like that take on Lance. He is such a poetic figure in the legend. But this may be nearer to the actual truth i very much fearme, the cynic in me tells me that.

The story is told by one of Arthur's warlords and narrated to a young princess who in turn passes the tales on to her minstrel. The narrator comments that the minstrel and princess are intent upon changing things as they want a heroic tale of romance rather than a blood and guts account of the squalor of war and conquest. They want to make Lancelot a romantic hero and the narrator believes that they will despite his protests.

The retelling of legends and the distorting of historical fact are strong themes in the books as it was later French writers who elevated Lancelot and romanticised the Arthurian Cycle. The contrast with the story as the narrator tells it is amazing.

Oh that is just my line of onterest, the mechanics of myth making.
You've been a fount of inspiration today, and the cause that i placed a rather largish order with Amazone.

Nice!

I think there are even less good historical fiction writers than good fantasy writers, but when i find one, it's a revelation. Books didn't get here yet though, hope they weren't eaten by a Shoggote...

I really hope you enjoy them, Cornwell is a very good historical novelist (his books on the Hundred Year War are fantasticly brutal)...David Gemmell's Lion of Macedon and Dark Prince are sound mixtures of history and fantasy and follow the lives of the general Parmenion and his protege Alexander the Great (plenty of gore).

Oh yes, Gemmel has his moments, i usually like his baddies best

I liked Waylander, but Druss was a bit boring...He has a cloth-ear for dialogue and no idea of plotting though.

Dialogue is not easy to do, in my opinion it must be shorn of all that can as well be expressed in third person voice ... and Gemmel is too pc at times, the coward