I have gotten a few questions about my review style, so I thought I'd explain it here on my blog. You can see yesterday's post here: How I Review History Books.
Unlike my reviews for history books, my reviews for historical fiction books don't require as much thought or critical thinking. As I mentioned in my post My Relationship with Historical Fiction (Part 2), I do look at/for a few things when reading historical fiction.
- Historical Accuracy - this is more along the lines of the period in time the book is set and the physical setting
- Characters can factor into this one, but it really depends on an individual book and if specific people play a role in the book
- Creative License - this one is pretty self explanatory
- Believability - is the story believable, taking into account both the historical accuracy and the creative license
While using the Goodreads set up for reviewing books (5/5 star rating and a review), I also have my own personal set up for book reviews, seen below.
Title: ____
Author: ____
Summary: ____
Storyline: 5/5 stars
Characters: 5/5 stars
Setting: 5/5 stars
Overall: 15/15 stars
Similarly with my history book reviews, I use this set up for two reasons.
In my opinion, storyline and setting are some of the more important aspects of historical fiction. Characters do certainly add to it, as they do with any genre, but it's the storyline and the setting that place a book in the historical fiction genre.
The second is that learning about that time is definitely more dependent on the reader for historical fiction books. Either you, as the reader, already know about that time, place, person, etc., or you don't know. In either case, you are ultimately encouraged to learn more to have a better understanding of where the author got the inspiration for the book.
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