Reddit reviews The Lions of al-Rassan

> Islamic Spain.

I know of one book that used this, The Lions of Al Rassan by Guy Kay. An excellent read if you're interested.

It is important to remember that “the Middle Ages” spans well over a thousand years of history and many geographic and cultural cleavages. The enormous diversity of the Medieval period is usually ignored by most fantasists, who usually construct settings that mimic High Medieval France or England, though these settings usually bear little resemblance to current historical understandings of these time periods.

If you’re interested in Medieval Europe but tired of standard fantasy depictions of it, I would urge you to look at areas and time periods within Medieval history that are often overlooked, such as Muslim Spain or Norman Sicily. Several great low fantasies are Guy Gavriel Kay’s [Sarantine Mosaic] (http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_i_0_8?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=sarantine+mosaic&sprefix=sarantin%2Caps%2C198), which are heavily inspired by sixth-century Byantium, and [The Lions of Al-Rassan] (http://www.amazon.com/Lions-al-Rassan-Guy-Gavriel-Kay/dp/0060733497/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1421714452&sr=8-1&keywords=the+lions+of+al-rassan), based in a setting equally heavily inspired by [Al-Andalus, or Muslim Spain] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Andalus). Kay is an excellent author, who sets his stories in places heavily inspired by his historical influences. They are works of low fantasy in the sense that they have little to no magic. I would recommend these works as examples of fictional settings that depict different areas of Medieval Europe.

If you are truly interested in moving beyond Medieval Europe completely, my suggestion would be to try to find a time period in history that piques your interest. Read historical fiction set in various periods, pick up some intro level history books, watch a historical drama, or even enroll in a survey course either online or at your local community college. If you’re interested in antiquity, specifically Roman and Late Roman antiquity, I’d be more than helpful to point you towards some resources. If the Renaissance/Early Modern period is more your area, I’m sure /u/J_Webb would be able to recommend some excellent resources.

If you liked Song of Ice and fire you might really like Erikson:

Malazan Book of the Fallen is a 10 book series, might take you a bit to get into in the beginning but once it gets going I was not able to put it down. It's extremely gritty and has a lot of characters and plot lines, but they are all done extremely well, it gets to a point that you just start following the bigger picture of what is happening even as you read the events that each character is involved in. (I highly recommend this series to anyone that likes fantasy in shades of gray)

Another great book I read recently was Lions of Al-Rassan by Guy Gavriel Kay

Mistborn series by Brandon Sanderson is a very good page turner, had a couple of late nights not being able to put it down. The "magic" (don't know what else to call it really) in the books is really creatively done, his writing style keeps you reading late into the night.

And off the top of my head I also liked Night Angel Trilogy by Brent Weeks. This one is a fun read, not as involved as the others mentioned above.

Guy Gavriel Kay. His novels are fantasy, but with settings and characters that closely resemble various historical periods and figures.

If you've never read any of his works, I'd recommend starting with The Lions of Al-Rassan (setting resembles medieval Spain).

My other favorites are Under Heaven (Tang Dynasty China), The Sarantine Mosaic (Byzantine Empire), and Last Light of the Sun (Vikings, early medieval England & Wales)

From my fantasy library:

• A Song of Ice and Fire - George RR Martin
  
• Prince of Nothing - R Scott Bakker
  
• The Lions of Al-Rassan - Guy Gavriel Kay
  
  The above novels have themes and events reminiscent of medieval times with the Martin series alluding to The War of the Roses in England, the Prince of Nothing exploring themes of Christianity and Islam with one of the nations aping the Byzantine Empire and finally the Lions of Al-Rassan have many elements of medieval Spain. Magic is sprinkled in small doses and the political intrigue is ramped up in all of them. The characters in all of them are very engrossing and I've lost entire afternoons reading and rereading these.
  

For one last try, I'd recommend The Lions of Al-Rassan. It's my favourite work of his, and if there's any GGK work that might tip the scales for you, it's this.