Slitherine

Also, CJ Sansom is currently writing a detective series set in 16thC England. I have read the first two, "Dissolution" and "Dark Fire" and they really are very good indeed. Later titles include "Sovereign", "Revelation", "Heartstone" and the recent "Lamentations".

Dorothy Dunnett has written fourteen(!) novels set in the 15th and 16thC in two series . . .

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_House_of_Niccol%C3%B2

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lymond_Chronicles

Louise Berridge has recently written two novels about the Thirty Years War - "Honour and the Sword" and "In the Name of the King".

http://www.louiseberridge.com/

Try Nikolai Gogol's "Taras Bulba" (1842).

Heather Richardson has written a first novel about the siege of Magdeburg in 1631 . . .

http://historicalnovelsociety.org/reviews/magdeburg/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/With_Fire_and_Sword

"With Fire and Sword" - classic book by nobel prize winner Henryk Sienkiewicz of "Quo Vadis" fame. It tels the story of several Polish-Lithuanian noblemen and a Cossak leader during the great 1648 Cossack uprising.

It is an adventure novel, if I would compare it to any famous western novel as far as style is concened, then "The three Musketeers" would come to mind.

"With Fire and Sword" proved popular and the author later wrote 2 more novels using some of the same characters that form a trilogy. "The Deluge" takes place during the Polish-Swedish wars of the middle XVII century, while "Pan Wołodyjowski" takes place duing the conflict with the Ottoman Empire in the 1670s.

Ardaeshir wrote:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/With_Fire_and_Sword

"With Fire and Sword" - classic book by nobel prize winner Henryk Sienkiewicz of "Quo Vadis" fame. It tels the story of several Polish-Lithuanian noblemen and a Cossak leader during the great 1648 Cossack uprising.

It is an adventure novel, if I would compare it to any famous western novel as far as style is concened, then "The three Musketeers" would come to mind.

"With Fire and Sword" proved popular and the author later wrote 2 more novels using some of the same characters that form a trilogy. "The Deluge" takes place during the Polish-Swedish wars of the middle XVII century, while "Pan Wołodyjowski" takes place duing the conflict with the Ottoman Empire in the 1670s.

I cant recommend these enough, although finding good unabridged translations that arnt steep in price is very tough. I was lucky to get my copies a long time ago in an old second hand bookstore.

I have just bought all three of Sinkiewicz's deluge trilogy as e-books for £2.62 on Kobo.

The Jeremiah Curtin tranlations of all three of Sinkiewicz trilogy are available for free on Amazon in Kindle editions. There may be other translations but the Curtin ones seem to be the basis of all the versions I looked at on Amazon both Kindle and print formats.

This does explain where the titles for the Polish BY Fire and Sword rules most likely originate. They are or have released a second volume called The Deluge. As far as I know, only the first volume of the rules is available in English so far.

Chris

batesmotel wrote:The Jeremiah Curtin tranlations of all three of Sinkiewicz trilogy are available for free on Amazon in Kindle editions. There may be other translations but the Curtin ones seem to be the basis of all the versions I looked at on Amazon both Kindle and print formats.

This does explain where the titles for the Polish BY Fire and Sword rules most likely originate. They are or have released a second volume called The Deluge. As far as I know, only the first volume of the rules is available in English so far.

Chris

Hmmm, I have the Kunizak translations(with forwards from James Michener), Its odd but amazon sells the Curtin vesion for like $11, but its listed as being 295 pages, the Kuzniak version is 1125 pages! (And is 10 times the cost..)

I have all three books in the trilogy tranlsated by Kunizak (actually book two is so long that its actually two seperate books!)
My guess is many of these sold online are heavily abridged versions..

I also have the longer translation' it is a "must read",
particularly if you want to discus the possibility of charging on horse with a two-handed sword!
Danny Weitz

TheGrayMouser wrote:

batesmotel wrote:The Jeremiah Curtin tranlations of all three of Sinkiewicz trilogy are available for free on Amazon in Kindle editions. There may be other translations but the Curtin ones seem to be the basis of all the versions I looked at on Amazon both Kindle and print formats.

This does explain where the titles for the Polish BY Fire and Sword rules most likely originate. They are or have released a second volume called The Deluge. As far as I know, only the first volume of the rules is available in English so far.

Chris

Hmmm, I have the Kunizak translations(with forwards from James Michener), Its odd but amazon sells the Curtin vesion for like $11, but its listed as being 295 pages, the Kuzniak version is 1125 pages! (And is 10 times the cost..)

I have all three books in the trilogy tranlsated by Kunizak (actually book two is so long that its actually two seperate books!)
My guess is many of these sold online are heavily abridged versions..

I have a hunch that might explain it.

There are actually 3 novels in the "series" so to speak. The first one is "By fire and sword", the second is "The Deulge" and the third is "Pan Wołodyjowski". HOWEVER sometimes the whole set of 3 novels is called the "By fire and sword trilogy".

I assume the Kuzniak version is all three novels, while the Curtin version is just the first novel.

Another intersting book:
http://www.ibs.it/code/9788870182989/co ... a-mia.html
http://www.amazon.it/Life-Captain-Alons ... +Contreras

The life of a XVII sec soldier, the captain Alonso de Contreras, is full of battles, adventures and many other strage things

rippa75 wrote:Another intersting book:
http://www.ibs.it/code/9788870182989/co ... a-mia.html
http://www.amazon.it/Life-Captain-Alons ... +Contreras

The life of a XVII sec soldier, the captain Alonso de Contreras, is full of battles, adventures and many other strage things

Thank you for mentioning this. I never would have heard of Alonso de Contreras otherwise and it would have been a shame.

A bit later than our period(which I assume will end with the earlier wars of Louis XIV) is a historical novel about the War of the Spanish Succession. It is "Victus" by Albert Sanchez Pinol, and centers around the siege of Barcelona. I have just received an examination of its English translation, and will review it for Amazon.

Danny Weitz

TheGrayMouser wrote:

Ardaeshir wrote:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/With_Fire_and_Sword

"With Fire and Sword" - classic book by nobel prize winner Henryk Sienkiewicz of "Quo Vadis" fame. It tels the story of several Polish-Lithuanian noblemen and a Cossak leader during the great 1648 Cossack uprising.

It is an adventure novel, if I would compare it to any famous western novel as far as style is concened, then "The three Musketeers" would come to mind.

"With Fire and Sword" proved popular and the author later wrote 2 more novels using some of the same characters that form a trilogy. "The Deluge" takes place during the Polish-Swedish wars of the middle XVII century, while "Pan Wołodyjowski" takes place duing the conflict with the Ottoman Empire in the 1670s.

I cant recommend these enough, although finding good unabridged translations that arnt steep in price is very tough. I was lucky to get my copies a long time ago in an old second hand bookstore.

From the Wiki on Henry Sienkiewicz:

Henryk Adam Aleksander Pius Sienkiewicz (Polish: [ˈxɛnrɨk ˈadam alɛˈksandɛr ˈpʲus ɕɛnˈkʲevʲit͡ʂ]; also known by the pseudonym "Litwos" [ˈlitfɔs]; 5 May 1846 – 15 November 1916) was a Polish journalist, Nobel Prize-winning novelist, and philanthropist. He is best remembered for his historical novels.

Born into an impoverished Polish noble family in Russian-ruled Congress Poland, in the late 1860s he began publishing journalistic and literary pieces. In the late 1870s he traveled to the United States, sending back travel essays that won him popularity with Polish readers. In the 1880s he began serializing novels that further increased his popularity. He soon became one of the most popular Polish writers of the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, and numerous translations gained him international renown, culminating in his receipt of the 1905 Nobel Prize in Literature for his "outstanding merits as an epic writer."

Many of his novels remain in print. In Poland he is best known for his "Trilogy" of historical novels – With Fire and Sword, The Deluge, and Fire in the Steppe – set in the 17th-century Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth; internationally he is best known for Quo Vadis, set in Nero's Rome. The Trilogy and Quo Vadis have been filmed, the latter several times, with Hollywood's 1951 version receiving the most international recognition.


The three novels of the Trilogy are available for free on Amazon in Kindle versions under the titles With Fire and Sword, The Deluge (in two separate volumes), and Pan Michael (there seem to be three different versions of the name of this last book out there -- Pan is essentially Polish for Mr.) The translations are serviceable enough, but free Kindle doesn't seem to include the maps and illustrations (or I'm too low tech to figure out how to make them show up). The non-free Kindle versions are probably more approachable, and this is the kind of thing that really needs to be read in book form, so I'd recommend taking it out of the library.

With Fire and Sword was the thematic basis for an excellent First Person Slasher by Taleworlds that started life as a mod of Mount and Blade. With Fire and Sword and Mount and Blade are both available on Steam, but With Fire and Sword is now stand alone and you don't need to get Mount and Blade to play it (unlike Viking Conquest which seems to be experiencing serious growing pains). What's fun about With Fire and Sword is that you get to ride around Eastern Europe on a horse, and the costumes and architecture that you'll encounter when you clop into a village look like a virtual visit to an ethnographic museum. I have reservations about how the larger battles play out, but riding full tilt at a handful of bandits with a sword, wheelock, or lance in your hand is a blast, especially when you know that one of them could just pick up a matchlock and blow you off your horse (or shoot it out from under you) before you get a chance to close.

Finally,the movie version of With Fire and Sword is currently available on YouTube. The version posted on YouTube (with English subtitles) felt about an hour longer than the version I took out of the library (subtitles in several different languages) and may be the director's cut, if there is such a thing for Polish movies. The battle scenes in both versions are spectacular: Polish cavalry (including winged Hussars) against formations of pike and shot, cavalry charges that actually look fairly convincing (rare in a movie), and whole thing is informed by a sensibility that is most certainly not Hollywood. (The other two novels from the Trilogy have been turned into movies at various times, but the recent ones don't have subtitles).

I actually was able to purchase it on DVD it is spectacular.
Danny Weitz

Philip Rollo or The Scottish Musketeers by James Grant. Originally published 1875 and mainly a tale of the Scottish mercenaries in Denmark 1626-7, but Tilly and Wallenstein plus others put in an appearance. Free here ......
http://archive.org/details/philiprolloorsc02grangoog

Just acquired a Kindle as there are no longer any used book stores left anywhere near me worthy of the name and Barnes and Noble makes me wanta puke.

perhaps I got lucky but my ist snare was a good one:

Red Horse (uncivil wars #1) by MJ Logue basically about a cavalry troop captain on Parliaments side ECW.

Pretty darn good imho, will be reading the rest.

Thanks for the tip GrayMouser. I have just looked up the series which seems to have excellent reviews,and look forward to reading them