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competencefantasy 's review for:
King Hereafter
by Dorothy Dunnett
If you're thinking of reading this book but have limited experience with the time period in question, here's what you need to do. First take a short course on 11th century Scotland or the whole British Isles if you're feeling ambitious. Find and learn off the entire extended family of king Canute. Get hold of a good map of 11th century Europe and give it a good look over. Optionally learn off the major religious factions of the day and the names of the relevant popes. Then, congratulations, you're all set to enjoy King Hereafter.
This is a difficult one for me to review because I like to assess historical fiction on whether it says something interesting about the events or people it's fictionalizing. King Hereafter definitely does that. The issue is that it has such an accessibility problem you might never know.
The premise for the story is that Macbeth of Moray, the historical character behind Shakespeare's play, and Thorfinn the Mighty, another powerful person at that time, were not different people but instead the pagan and christian names for the same man. Dunnett uses this premise to make a lot of interesting points about identity, religion, cultural change etc.
However, if you read the above paragraph and didn't know why those two men being the same person would be interesting, Dunnett isn't about to help you out. There is an enormous amount of detail included, which lends the book weight and veracity, but it can be difficult to tell what is going to turn out to be important and what is merely the 20th proper noun on the page. Additionally, Dunnett writes with a heavy writing style with many very long sentences with too many clauses. The individual sentences are very well done, but it a row they make a sort of drone-like rhythm that could have used more variation. Together, these create an overall pacing in the book that lurches with each section, first going into a dreadfully slow exposition where everyone's land holdings, financial and military situations, marriage alliances, and personal allegiances have to be enumerated with detail that makes one long for a professor standing at the blackboard drawing on a map in colored chalk. Then, as the actual events play out, the pace picks up.
This is a difficult one for me to review because I like to assess historical fiction on whether it says something interesting about the events or people it's fictionalizing. King Hereafter definitely does that. The issue is that it has such an accessibility problem you might never know.
The premise for the story is that Macbeth of Moray, the historical character behind Shakespeare's play, and Thorfinn the Mighty, another powerful person at that time, were not different people but instead the pagan and christian names for the same man. Dunnett uses this premise to make a lot of interesting points about identity, religion, cultural change etc.
However, if you read the above paragraph and didn't know why those two men being the same person would be interesting, Dunnett isn't about to help you out. There is an enormous amount of detail included, which lends the book weight and veracity, but it can be difficult to tell what is going to turn out to be important and what is merely the 20th proper noun on the page. Additionally, Dunnett writes with a heavy writing style with many very long sentences with too many clauses. The individual sentences are very well done, but it a row they make a sort of drone-like rhythm that could have used more variation. Together, these create an overall pacing in the book that lurches with each section, first going into a dreadfully slow exposition where everyone's land holdings, financial and military situations, marriage alliances, and personal allegiances have to be enumerated with detail that makes one long for a professor standing at the blackboard drawing on a map in colored chalk. Then, as the actual events play out, the pace picks up.