Historical Fiction Novels

What are your favorite and/or some worthwhile and good historical fiction novels or book series worth reading that are light on fantasy and, if not perfect, are still notably historically accurate for the period despite being fiction?

Pic related.

I have no idea if it's accurate due to being a pleb but I found Pillars of the Earth very enjoyable

I also liked Clan of the Cave Bear but that's mostly speculation about prehistory padded out by increasingly mediocre heteronormative non-kinky sex scenes as the series progresses

Any of rutherfords books, but Paris.
After 4 is shit

Christian Camerons series are all great. I thought the Tyrant (diadochi wars) series was the weakest but still enjoyable. William Gold (medieval) was probably my favourite. I really enjoyed the Alexander stand alone too.

Robert Fabbri's Vespianus (early empire) series was great but i thought character growth was a bit weak.

Sam Barrones, Eskkar Saga (dawn of the bronze age) was decent too. I nearly didnt start this series because he starts every book with a shout out to Bill O'reilly. Only read the first 3 books.

No idea how accurate any of these books are.

The first man in Rome is an extremely detailed historical fiction recounting Sulla and Marius

I, Claudius

But can women ever understand it?

>I also liked Clan of the Cave Bear
that crap is nothing but anti-racist propaganda and porn for lonely middle-aged women

Historical novels don't get any better than the Aubrey-Maturin series user.
If you're interested in reading more napoleonic naval fiction, go with Ramage by Dudley Pope, Bolitho by Douglas Reeman, and Hornblower by CS Forester (honestly I found this last one unpleasantly angsty, but most people love it so you might as well try it). For even more naval fiction (but the quality start dropping sharply), you can read Drinkwater by Richard Woodman and Kydd by Julian Stockwin.

Also for some middle ages stuff, there's Sharon Key Penman who novelized the plantagenets, the war of the roses and 13th century Wales. There's also Cadfael by Edith Pargeter if you care for mystery novels, tho they're not quite The Name of the Rose. Eco in general is quite good, but he's not really concerned about history in his novels.

Also Bernard Cornwell of course. He's kinda pedestrian and you'll read some first level historical bullshit from time to time, but he's entertaining.

If you like Cornwell you should try Conn Iggulden

...

I'll never understand how the Sharpe tv series got to be successful. It's a fucking butcher job of the novels.

>I have no idea if it's accurate due to being a pleb but I found Pillars of the Earth very enjoyable

Pillars of the Earth is god tier, and the TV miniseries is just as good.

Good taste, user.

Lots of bored housewives liked Sean Bean being rugged.

>Lots of bored housewives liked Sean Bean being rugged.
>Implying everyone else doesn't like Sean Bean being rugged

being gay isn't natural, user.

I ctually read the books after seeing the series... and pretty much this

The accursed kings by Maurice Druon tells the story of the last capetians and the curse of the knights templar. I've only read the first book The iron king and it was pretty great. I have the next two in the shelf but I havent read them yet.

>Implying everyone else doesn't like Sean Bean being rugged
To be honest, I didn't really like him as Sharpe, and I usually really like him as an actor.

There's a gistorical series written about an ancient roman detective... I can't remember the writer, but one of the books is rubicon if I'm not mistaken

Because it was the only work where Sean Bean didn't die

Yeah, see? It was so bad they didn't even get the memes right.

>Sharpe was so based he was played by Sean Bean 16 times and never died.

>yfw you realize Harper was basically Sharpe on steroids

>YWN have a gun fashioned by Mr Nock of London

>being gay isn't natural, user.

Its not gay if you say 'no homo' before you start watching.

I've been thinking about getting this series. Does the translation hold up well?

No idea, I read the first book in spanish and then I fell for the >translations meme and bought the others in french.

Well shit, I guess I'll either need to learn French or risk shitty translations.

FLASHMAN

I was so disappointed in Flashman. Not nearly as funny as i told it would be.

Gore Vidal's Julian is pretty great. It's about two friends of Julian the Apostate during the reign of Theodosius, exchanging letters and commenting/annotating Julian's memoirs and journal during his Persian campaign.

Anne Franks Diary

I like it as its written from the first person perspective and thus almost makes it believable that something such as the holocaust could happen

It's significantly worse than the Caiaphas Cain series. And I mean, being worse than Warhammer 40k books is a pretty low bar.