I want to turn the last page imagining good lives for the characters, and my own mood to be a smile before I go downstairs to brace for another attack of the news, in the sweltering heat.
I feel exactly the same way. Those are the fanfic I try to write, and read.
I have moderately different priorities for historical fiction, though I certainly share your appreciation for Austen. I'm willing to have the dark aspects of the past appear in a story, as a basis for showing the protagonist facing them with courage and integrity; I think the ability to do that is an admirable human trait, and I'd like a story to give me a character I can admire. (I just reread Stranger in a Strange Land, and while I have complex mixed feelings about it, I was still moved by Jubal Harshaw's discussion of Rodin's fallen caryatid.)
I have to say that your comment about historical fiction you loathe is a painfully close fit to how I felt about Taylor's Just One Damned Thing after Another. The PoV character's hostility toward Christianity seemed so intense that I could not imagine how anyone could have chosen her to spend time in a past society. And you know, I myself am not Christian, and find many aspects of Christianity's history repugnant (particularly the long centuries when I would have been tortured to death for
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Yeah: I find any kind of one note bigotry like that irritating.
I can deal with dark things but like you, I want to see them faced with courage and integrity, that is nicely said. (I also don't want a stone depressing ending. That I can get reading history.)
I find I can take a small amount of gritty reality, as long as it's balanced by humour and by characters standing united to work against the evils of the age. But unrelieved grittiness and brutality, no thanks.
I like Barbara Hambly's Benjamin January books, set in 1830s New Orleans, though they can be terrifically dark in places. And I enjoyed Alan Gordon's Fools Guild series with their Medieval Mediterranean setting - they manage to be light-hearted even though they're set in brutal times.
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I feel exactly the same way. Those are the fanfic I try to write, and read.
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I have to say that your comment about historical fiction you loathe is a painfully close fit to how I felt about Taylor's Just One Damned Thing after Another. The PoV character's hostility toward Christianity seemed so intense that I could not imagine how anyone could have chosen her to spend time in a past society. And you know, I myself am not Christian, and find many aspects of Christianity's history repugnant (particularly the long centuries when I would have been tortured to death for ( ... )
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I can deal with dark things but like you, I want to see them faced with courage and integrity, that is nicely said. (I also don't want a stone depressing ending. That I can get reading history.)
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I like Barbara Hambly's Benjamin January books, set in 1830s New Orleans, though they can be terrifically dark in places. And I enjoyed Alan Gordon's Fools Guild series with their Medieval Mediterranean setting - they manage to be light-hearted even though they're set in brutal times.
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