Set in a magically-infused vision of 8th century China, Guy Gavriel Kay‘s Under Heaven (2010) straddles the line between historical fiction and fantasy. The fantastic elements are treated lightly, and the history is very compelling. The setting is the real hero of the story, with the rhythms and objects of Tang dynasty life building a deeply textured world.
The rest is fairly standard: the hero is heroic, the longing for lost love is deep, the battles are bloody, and the bad guys are brutal. There are a couple of nicely handled plot lines, where Kay makes surprising and intelligent choices in neither killing off all your favorite characters nor tying up all of the plot lines with happy endings, but the reason to read the book is more to lose yourself in a believable vision of early China.
There is a sequel of sorts, River of Stars, set a few hundred years later, but in the same setting. I have not read it.
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Historical research. Making a world historically believable (as opposed to invented) is so very hard, requiring a mixture of things and social structures both large and small in order not to jar the reader. Kay does so admirably. Note, that is not to say that his reconstruction of China is accurate, just that it is believable, which are not at all the same thing.
I enjoyed this book a great deal, especially surprising as I dislike the “historical fiction” genre intensely. I like to think of it as a fantasy or fantasia upon the theme of Tang China. The characters’ plot lines were nicely interwoven in a way that I could understand and track without having to refer to the cast list. I want to run this by a friend who knows a great deal more about Chinese culture than I do to see her reaction about the culture and values in this society compared to the historical China.