On to the next post in my Farewell series! Today, it’s all about works of historical fiction. Here are the three I liked best this year.

You can read all of the Farewell 2025 posts here:

• Farewell 2025 – New-to-Me Games!
• Farewell 2025 – Historical Fiction!
• Farewell 2025 – Non-Historical Games!
• Farewell 2025 – Historical Non-Fiction!
• Farewell 2025 – Historical Games!
• Farewell 2025 – Best on the Blog!

Antony and Cleopatra (Colleen McCullough)

Long-time readers of this blog know my infatuation with Colleen McCullough’s Masters of Rome series. I have been reading the series since 2018 at the appropriately epic pace of one book per year (and last year, I skipped). Masters of Rome reading was always a highlight of my literary year – the high drama, the broad historical canvas painted with a myriad of characters, events, and microplots, and, most of all, McCullough’s readiness to engage the ancients on their own terms, with ever so many pages dedicated to this legislation or that campaign.

McCullough had planned to end the series after the sixth instalment (The October Horse, which covers the years 44 to 42 BCE). Only her fans’ pleas convinced her to write Antony and Cleopatra. Maybe that shows a little bit – the book takes a long time (say, the first 200 pages) to hit its stride, and never quite reaches the heights of previous instalments. Yet that mostly shows how good these books were (peaking with novel #5, Caesar), as this conclusion to the drama of the late Roman Republic was still one of my favorite historical novels in 2025.

Clarissa Oakes (Patrick O’Brian)

I’m continuing my re-read of the Aubrey-Maturin series, that delightful panorama of life at sea (and land!) during the Napoleonic Wars. Among the Aubrey-Maturin novels which I read this year, my favorite was #15 – Clarissa Oakes.

Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin want just one thing: Leave New South Wales and its mixture of brutal government (instigating clashes between the officers and men) and anti-Irish fervor (which gets Stephen into trouble). However, when the ship is out at sea, they realize that one of the younger officers has smuggled out a convict from the penal colony – an enigmatic young woman, who is bound to attract the attention of several of the men. No other book in the series makes so good on the premise of the characters being confined to a small ship, unable to avoid each other. And Clarissa, the escapee, is not just a plot device, but a complex and compelling character in her own right.

And my favorite historical novel of this year was…

A Gentleman in Moscow (Amor Towles)

„Where is it now?“, asks the poem which kicks off the book – “it” being purpose. Having been written after the failed Russian revolution of 1905, the poem is widely seen as a call to action and inspires Russia’s revolutionaries… and thus they do not sentence the aristocratic author Count Alexander Rostov to death when he returns to Russia after the October Revolution. Under house arrest at the Hotel Metropol in Moscow, he will spend the next thirty years rethinking and rediscovering his purpose. It will not count as a spoiler that he finds it in putting his abilities to good use and connecting with his fellow human beings – of course he does. Yet the point of the book is not the goal, but the winding way there, told with grace, nuance, and originality.

While the ending might be a bit kitschy, the unique protagonist, the cast of intriguing side characters and the delightful prose made this my favorite historical fiction read of the year.

Have you read any of these books – and, if so, what did you think? And what were your favorite historical novels of the year? Let me know in the comments!

On to the next post in my Farewell series! Today, it’s all about works of historical fiction. Here are the three I liked best this year.

You can read all of the Farewell 2025 posts here:

• Farewell 2025 – New-to-Me Games!
• Farewell 2025 – Historical Fiction!
• Farewell 2025 – Non-Historical Games!
• Farewell 2025 – Historical Non-Fiction!
• Farewell 2025 – Historical Games!
• Farewell 2025 – Best on the Blog!

Antony and Cleopatra (Colleen McCullough)

Long-time readers of this blog know my infatuation with Colleen McCullough’s Masters of Rome series. I have been reading the series since 2018 at the appropriately epic pace of one book per year (and last year, I skipped). Masters of Rome reading was always a highlight of my literary year – the high drama, the broad historical canvas painted with a myriad of characters, events, and microplots, and, most of all, McCullough’s readiness to engage the ancients on their own terms, with ever so many pages dedicated to this legislation or that campaign.

McCullough had planned to end the series after the sixth instalment (The October Horse, which covers the years 44 to 42 BCE). Only her fans’ pleas convinced her to write Antony and Cleopatra. Maybe that shows a little bit – the book takes a long time (say, the first 200 pages) to hit its stride, and never quite reaches the heights of previous instalments. Yet that mostly shows how good these books were (peaking with novel #5, Caesar), as this conclusion to the drama of the late Roman Republic was still one of my favorite historical novels in 2025.

Clarissa Oakes (Patrick O’Brian)

I’m continuing my re-read of the Aubrey-Maturin series, that delightful panorama of life at sea (and land!) during the Napoleonic Wars. Among the Aubrey-Maturin novels which I read this year, my favorite was #15 – Clarissa Oakes.

Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin want just one thing: Leave New South Wales and its mixture of brutal government (instigating clashes between the officers and men) and anti-Irish fervor (which gets Stephen into trouble). However, when the ship is out at sea, they realize that one of the younger officers has smuggled out a convict from the penal colony – an enigmatic young woman, who is bound to attract the attention of several of the men. No other book in the series makes so good on the premise of the characters being confined to a small ship, unable to avoid each other. And Clarissa, the escapee, is not just a plot device, but a complex and compelling character in her own right.

And my favorite historical novel of this year was…

A Gentleman in Moscow (Amor Towles)

„Where is it now?“, asks the poem which kicks off the book – “it” being purpose. Having been written after the failed Russian revolution of 1905, the poem is widely seen as a call to action and inspires Russia’s revolutionaries… and thus they do not sentence the aristocratic author Count Alexander Rostov to death when he returns to Russia after the October Revolution. Under house arrest at the Hotel Metropol in Moscow, he will spend the next thirty years rethinking and rediscovering his purpose. It will not count as a spoiler that he finds it in putting his abilities to good use and connecting with his fellow human beings – of course he does. Yet the point of the book is not the goal, but the winding way there, told with grace, nuance, and originality.

While the ending might be a bit kitschy, the unique protagonist, the cast of intriguing side characters and the delightful prose made this my favorite historical fiction read of the year.

Have you read any of these books – and, if so, what did you think? And what were your favorite historical novels of the year? Let me know in the comments!