The best heroic epics for escaping into the conflicts of the past

This series is a fun, if bloody, romp through the late ninth and early ten centuries when the various Anglo-Saxon kingdoms were forcibly united by Alfred the Great and his descendants.

Saxon-born Uhtred of Bebbanburg is captured as a child by a Viking warlord and raised within the household until he is made homeless in a blood feud. He flees to Wessex and becomes a warrior in Alfred’s army where he is treated with respect for his fighting prowess but with suspicion for his Viking heritage. The books describe the course of Uhtred’s life as he grows in influence to become a warlord of Wessex and Mercia but whose name is omitted from the Anglo-Saxon chronicles due to jealousy from the church establishment.

These are epic poems that have been presented in the courts and amphitheaters from ancient Greece into the modern era. I first read The Iliad as a high-school summer-reading assignment. Later in college, I read The Odyssey for personal entertainment.

The Iliad begins during the siege of Troy (c.1200 BCE) and describes the personality conflicts among the Achaean besiegers as well as detailed descriptions of army and personal combat in this era. The Odyssey is the story of the return of the King of Ithaca and his retinue from the war. They inadvertently offend Poseidon which results in ten additional years of misadventures. By the time Odysseus returns to Ithaca, he is alone and he must reclaim his wife and his throne alone.

I first undertook to read these epic poems because they play such a huge role in Western culture but as I read them, I became fascinated by the interplay of the characters as well as the descriptions of battle in the Bronze Age. Also, I felt fascinated by the morality presented towards respecting the will of the gods.

This trilogy presents a clever reimagination of the Arthurian legend which I found delightful, of irreverent. It presents Arthur as a talented warlord protector of the infant King Mordred. Successful at first, Arthur devolves into an anti-hero when he is betrayed by power-hungry Guinevere and Lancelot, and again when Mordred comes of age. Merlin’s magic appears as a combination of plausible manipulation of the physical and the metaphysical with a healthy dose of credulity among the populace.

The pure creativity in this series makes it a keeper and I often refer to these pages for inspiration when writing. The author once declared that this was his personal favorite of the several series he has in publication, and as a fellow author, I can understand why.

This was the first series of heroic historical fiction I ever read. Forester’s narratives had the power to pull me into the stories as if I was serving alongside Horatio Hornblower.

The series follows the exploits of seventeen-year-old Midshipman Hornblower in 1794 as he rises in rank and responsibilities to flag rank by 1815. During the course of the series, we watch Hornblower mature from an unsure, bookish teenager to become a self-confident and bold commander. Forester’s ability to meld true historical events and personages into his narratives captured me from the start and is a quality that I strive to accomplish in my own writing. I read these books decades ago and still keep them on my bookshelf for when I need inspiration or want to understand how Forester resolved certain authorly issues.

This is the army counterpart to the Hornblower Series. The story begins in 1794 with 17 y/o Richard Sharpe deployed to Flanders as a private and continues through India, Spain, and France, ending as a lieutenant colonel at the Battle of Waterloo. A final volume carries the series to St. Helena and Chile, ending in 1820.

Sharpe and his men are always presented with challenges that require heroic acts of daring-do where Sharpe’s gutter-snipe cunning and that of his men ensure that he somehow accomplishes the mission. As one might expect, the size of his company of chosen riflemen dwindles continuously through the series, and becoming Sharpe’s love interest often seems a fatal prospect.

I enjoyed reading many of the stories at a time when I commuted regularly between the west and east coasts. The books are convenient in that one can begin a story during the outbound flight and finish it during the return flight, although I often found myself in the hotel, compelled to keep reading into the early morning.