24 Days of Holiday Giveaways: Day 11

Day 11 winners: Congratulations to Ellen, Lynn, Heather and Suze.

Day 11 and more real, thrilling history! I grew up in KwaZulu-Natal, and studied the Anglo-Zulu War at university, as well as often visiting the sites of the battles of the war. As such, my historical novel Daughter of the Sky is one in which I feel a very strong sense of place.

Today, I’m giving away four e-copies of Daughter of the Sky to four commenters. Daughter of the Sky was previously mentioned in a Historical Novelists Society panel because of it’s unusual setting. While it is set during the Victorian era, which is a common time period, very few books of that era are set in Zululand.

My question today is do you like to take a chance on books set in places you’ve either never heard of or don’t know much about, or do you tend to gravitate toward the standard London or India setting of most Victorian-set novels?

Learn more about Daughter of the Sky.

22 thoughts on “24 Days of Holiday Giveaways: Day 11”

  4. Kareni

    I don’t believe I’ve ever read a novel set in Zululand, and I’ve read a goodly number of historical romances. How fascinating to learn that you were born there, Michelle; I can well imagine that that gives your story a true sense of place. As for me, I’m happy to take a chance on books with unfamiliar (to me) settings both real and imaginary (i.e., outer space), but I also like reading those with familiar places. I just like to read a good story wherever it’s set!

    1. Michelle Diener Post author

      Kareni, I wasn’t born there, but as close as it gets 🙂 I moved there when I was around one year’s old. And yes, from outer space to unknown corners of the world, as long as the story is good, I’m happy 🙂

  5. J.Lee Conaway

    Since a lot of the books I read take place on alien planets, or in alternate universes where things are definitely a little bit left of center, I would say that I enjoy reading about out ot the way places that are definitely not on the beaten path. I just gotta hope that the stobor don’t get me. 🙂

  7. Esther M

    I like the unfamiliar settings, but it’s the writer who can pull the novel aspects from any setting. I’m reminded of Richard McKenna, who came to writing late, and received a posthumous Nebula award for one of his short stories. He’s mostly known for his mainstream novel, The Sand Pebbles, but he left behind a number of unpublished fragments that I think were much better — in a collection titled The Left Handed Monkey Wrench that was published by the US Naval Institute Press. The stories explored characters seeing things in unfamiliar settings. In the Sand Pebbles, he’d written that he’d wanted to explore the way tha myths and tropes arose (in that instance on the China patrol scene). The unpublished stories and novel fragments sketched out snapshot views of other societies, of a second novel in Japan, and of the shipboard experience as an anthropological exercise. He had a very small body of published science fiction stories of excellent quality at the time of his death at 51, but the ability to see differently in these situations came though.

    I’d be interested to read your take on the Zululand theme.

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