Genghis Khan Series - Historical Fiction

I opened this expecting you to be talking aboutThe Mongoliadfor some reason, bro.

Thanks for the suggestion, sounds fascinating.

Ronin, I haven't read much historical fiction but I am very interested in Ghengis Khan and history in that part of the world at that time. Does the author use footnotes to help discern what is fictional and what isn't?

At the end of each books he summarizes the historical facts he based his storyline on. The series is called "Conqueror" of which the first three books are about Genghis Kahn himself, while the last two about his legacy/sons.

His has another 5 books series called "Emperor" which is about the life of Julius Caesar.

I'd recommend both.

Bump.

While this isn't a book, the movie "Mongol", all about Khan's life, is excellent.

I guess we're discussing this here now instead of the BOTM thread. Finished book 3 last night and:



This series kicks so much ass.

I just finished book 2 and am trying to get into the new book of the month before starting book 3. Exciting stuff.

Book 4 also kicks absolute ass, FYI.

Seventh_sl said:

Book 4 also kicks absolute ass, FYI.

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Just finished it, really was great.

Iggulden is doing a great job with the Mongol politics. After books 1-2 I was worried it would just get super repetitive.

Also like the end of the little fact reveal epilogue for book 4, when he mentions that .

Gives a good idea of the sheer scale of what those crazy goatherders accomplished and what more they might have if not for one little death.

Speaking of historical fiction, have any of you read Michael Curtis ford's stuff?

Finished the series (book 5 is great as well), and looked at his Julius Caesar series. It gets trashed by history professors saying that it's just way too far from established facts. That's disappointing. Maybe he can get away with that with Genghis and the Mongols, but we in the West just know too much about Rome to be fucked with too much over reality. I can live with the minor complaints (he makes Caesar's mother a slut), but the major ones (Caesar's mother being a Pleb...no, and Brutus being part of Caesar's generation where he was actually much younger) are pretty unforgivable. I do hope that he didn't take as many liberties with Mongolia.

There was a post on Reddit today about the Mongol conquest being the bloodiest war of all time, killing "up to 17% of the world population", 14% more than WW2.

Number sounds like bullshit since it wasn't a sustained thing and happened over a few decades, so a number like that seems meaningless. But it does give some more sense of scale.

Plus the post led to a link to this podcast, Hardcore History, that did a 5 part, 8 hour series on the Mongol conquests.

http://www.dancarlin.com/disp.php/hharchive

I'm still avoiding real info, but after I finish this last book I'll be listening to these as I walk the dogs for a while.

Awesome, thanks for the link.

Grimmlokk_sl said:

Plus the post led to a link to this podcast, Hardcore History, that did a 5 part, 8 hour series on the Mongol conquests.

http://www.dancarlin.com/disp.php/hharchive

I'm still avoiding real info, but after I finish this last book I'll be listening to these as I walk the dogs for a while.

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Listening to that shit right now, thanks dawg.

Adam12_sl said:

Finished the series (book 5 is great as well), and looked at his Julius Caesar series. It gets trashed by history professors saying that it's just way too far from established facts. That's disappointing. Maybe he can get away with that with Genghis and the Mongols, but we in the West just know too much about Rome to be fucked with too much over reality. I can live with the minor complaints (he makes Caesar's mother a slut), but the major ones (Caesar's mother being a Pleb...no, and Brutus being part of Caesar's generation where he was actually much younger) are pretty unforgivable. I do hope that he didn't take as many liberties with Mongolia.

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I'm on the fence about how I feel about the professors not liking it. I love that the Khan books are (mostly) accurate, and while I usually skip author's notes at the end, with these I've been devouring them. I like that he's honest about the parts that he changed/embellished on to make the story better. I'm definitely going to read his Caesar series and give him the benefit of the doubt.

Finished the last of the Conqueror books the other night, and book 5 is (as expected) fantastic. Loved the author note at the end again, too.

On a related note, I grabbed the first of the Emperor (Caesar) books, and tore through it in two nights. Not quite as good as the first book of the Mongol series, and I'm not up on my ancient Rome enough to fact check it (and I really don't give a shit anyway) but it's absolutely worth picking up. Same great writing style and really well written characters again.

Xarpolis_sl said:

While this isn't a book, the movie "Mongol", all about Khan's life, is excellent.

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Just watched it the other day. Excellent is not a word I would use to describe it. Mildly interesting because it deals with someone I've just been reading about(from going to choose a wife up until uniting all the tribes), but as a movie it's horribly made. It just bounces around randomly as fuck. One minute he's a kid, then he's found by someone random and they decide they're blood brothers, then he's grown, then he goes to get his wife, then he's got a tribe, then he doesn't, then he's got more tribes, then he's captured, then he's got half the nation.

No transition, that's just like scene to scene. Straight cut from each situation to the next, no explaining how any of it got that way.

That said, it did introduce thatJamukhaperson to me, who I can not believe was just not in the books in any form. Basically Genghis' biggest bro, ended up being his main rival for control of the Mongols. Half the steppe tribes united behind him and not Genghis, but they eventually lost(after defeating Genghis multiple times) because he let them maintain their tribal allegiances instead of forcing them all to work as one. This wasn't interesting enough for the books??

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I'm through the first of the 5 podcast episodes. It's just 1 dude talking so gets kind of droney, but the info is solid and he keeps it interesting and avoids making it in to some dry recitation of history. And I love the opening point about how historians/people tend to ascribe positive motivations to these great historical conquerors(Alexander etc) that were really unintended side effects of the horrible atrocities they committed. "They're shooting the arrow and then painting a bullseye around where it hits". Genghis wasn't trying to spread freedom of religion and make safe trade routs, he was murdering millions for loot. That other shit just came happened=P

^ Wow, I watched (and liked) Mongol, but I figured that the awesome bald dude was just movie fodder. That is a pretty big omission, and would have made for an awesome storyline too.