 Fiction and History RevisitedbyGillian Polack
How many ways are there of encapsulating the dreams of our past? I don’t really care, today. Today I’m thinking about just three of them. I’m thinking of the way we read history when it’s encapsulated in literature shapes how we are able to see history when we look at it elsewhere. So today I’m looking at three different novels that draw on history and retell it in quite different ways with quite different effect. These novels are Pierre Pevel's The Alchemist in the Shadows, MD Lachlan's Wolfsangel and Mark Chadbourn's The Scar-Crow Men. All three of them are fantasy, with a more or less historical foundation. Starting in reverse alphabetical order by author (to demonstrate that I know the alphabet backward, but possibly not forwards), Pierre Pevel’s novel is a translation from the French. It’s set in a seventeenth century dragon-riddled France. Some dragons are pets or familiars. Some wish to rule the world. All very straightforward, really. It’s tempting to say that it’s Novik having a dinner party with Dumas, but it isn’t, really. Pevel’s dragons are more the dragons of the Dragonlance series—with powers and the capacity to look human or humanlike, with politics and the hunger to change things—than Temeraire’s friends, who are more companions than threats. While technically historical fantasy, Pevel doesn’t play with real history, but in the history we know through literature, rather like Connie Willis in To Say Nothing of the Dog. Willis invents a Britain where the tales told by Jerome K Jerome and other writers are part of the past that her time-travellers visit. Pevel tells of a France where Dumas’ The Three Musketeers is real. Despite this, Pevel’s not simply rewriting Dumas and adding dragons. It’s a genuine fantasy novel (and part of a series). Pevel’s style is quite different. Although some of this is quite probably due to the translation, his characterisation is less complex than Dumas’ and he doesn’t have quite the same joy in playing with regional and historical stereotypes. In other words, Pevel is far more serious and the path of his story follows adventure fantasy rather than historical adventure. The amateurism in his history shines through, but so does the enthusiasm. Louis is not merely Louis, or King Louis, but King Louis XIII, time after time. Louis is more often the thirteenth of his name than a person in his own right. Pevel loves his setting and he communicates that love, even as he brushes over and past the stuff of real history. This is not, therefore a novel for those who find that history gets under their skin, but for those who want a pageant and a dragon-influenced adventure with magic and the vast sweep of time. The history adds flavour and underpins plot choices, but historical accuracy isn’t crucial to the novel’a success. Destroying my alphabetic logic, the next book I want to consider is Mark Chadbourn’s The Scar-Crow Men. It’s set in Elizabethan London and is focused on Christopher Marlowe, although he is not the chief protagonist. It also has somewhat of a literary underpinning (although not as obvious) with passing references to scenes from Shakespeare, for instance. I reached the stage where, when I saw that there were two gravediggers working, I expected them to stop and have a comic discussion. In Chadbourn’s case, however, the broad brush is history and the telling detail provided from literature. There is Black Death in London in 1593 and there is a move from the Unseelie Court to take over rulership of England. Will Swyfte, famous for his spying (how good is a spy who is famous as a spy? This question fretted me throughout this book), stands between England and certain doom and he can trust no-one. He’s told so, many times. The Unseelie Court is in the same position as the greedy dragons in Pevel’s book, and the strength of the women and the savoir-faire of the men also bears similarities. These two novels belong together on a shelf. MD Lachlan's Wolfsangel belongs on a different shelf entirely. In theory, it has a similar setting. It’s the Viking North rather than the later era south, but it’s still Europe and it’s still historical. The writing is stronger and the plot more demanding. It’s not a light read. It is, in fact, wholly absorbing. I took many pages of notes about the other books, but with Wolfsangel I kept forgetting that I was supposed to be taking notes. Lachlan creates a complete fantasy world. There is, as with the other books, some historical background, but it’s far less important than the relationship of the people with their mythology. Lachlan uses Norse myth and a Viking-ish culture as a base and builds a very coherent argument concerning how people could interact with the gods to bring about the destruction of both. At their best these novels are joyous romps in near-familiar places and times with the added spice of magic and more mayhem than a vulgar world can provide, and, at their very best (Lachlan’s novel), they explore our mythology through the historical setting and give us new thoughts and insights. They are, however, none of them historical novels. They use history, but it’s not the core of their stories. In Lachlan’s case the core of the story is the myth and its relationship to humans and their role in enacting. In Chadbourn’s and Pevel’s, the core is the fantasy story and its links and references to other literature. All three novels are larger than life. Action novels. They don’t focus on daily life nor even on the real politics of a place and time. History is a backdrop for fantasy—with magic and daggers and death and gods and dragons. Books mentioned in this column:
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