Historical fiction has many unwritten rules-stick to one POV per section, avoid omniscient narrating, stay away from confusing names-and Penman breaks pretty much all of them. Many of these characters have little importance to the plot, some never show up again, and some readers will probably find this off-putting. The story begins in the late 12th century and within the first fifty pages, we are introduced to a litany of characters. Her stories are filled with beautiful, heart-rending scenes-colored by Penman’s vivid imagination but always informed by pain-staking scholarship-and there may be no better example of this than Here Be Dragons. Sharen Kay Penman, however, is different: she excels at prose and research. Evaluating the prose of a historical novel is inherently subjective, some of my friends love Hilary Mantel and some can’t get past the first chapter of Wolf Hall, but I think anyone who reads a lot of historical fiction has come across at least one well-researched novel they just couldn’t get into.

Gore Vidal has a great talent for sentence construction and pithy sayings but the research that informed The Golden Age is sub-par to say the least. Often times historical novelists can be described in one of two ways: they are either very good at prose or they are very good at research. I first discovered Sharon Kay Penman in the Silver Spring library and I’m glad I did as I consider her to be one of my favorite historical fiction authors. **This review can also be found at and Goodreads**

Here be dragons by sharon kay penman