The idea of history being used as political propaganda is fascinating. The prose was well constructed and the narrator had plenty of character. But nothing really happened, at least nothing compelling or properly fleshed out. This could have been more interesting with a deeper dive into the linguistics, architecture, art history, literature, and geography that the professors were experts in.

Imagine being forced to reverse-engineer an entire ancient city from scratch, including architecture, waterways, language, and culture. Every detail must be believable, or you'll be killed. That’s the premise of this novella, and it’s just as tense and mysterious as it sounds. A group of academics is thrown into this high-stakes project, and naturally, a mystery begins to unfold around them.

The concept is incredibly compelling. The mystery definitely kept me guessing, and I didn’t see the twist coming at all. That said, the book felt slightly underwhelming for me. I think that’s mostly because I’m not the ideal reader for it. While it didn’t fully work for me, I can see this novella being a fascinating read for anyone interested in language, philosophy, and the complexities of rebuilding the past.

A humorous fantasy novella that will keep you engaged until the very end. I read this in one day and can’t stop thinking about it.

"In K.J. Parker's new whip-smart dark fantasy, a group of scholars must do the impossible for a ruthless king. The cost of refusal, of course, is death.

History isn't truth, it's propaganda.

Seeking war with his neighbor, the tyrannical ruler of Aelia convenes several of his kingdom's professors for a chat. First Citizen Gyges only just invaded Aelia a few years back and, naturally, his public image can't take the hit of another unjustified assault.

His totally sane solution? Simple, really. These scholars must construct a fake ancient city from scratch to verify Gyges's apocryphal claims.

Now these academics must put their heads together to make history. Because if they don't, they'll lose their heads altogether."

Oh, I think I'd really be good at making apocrypha!

<b>Thank you to Tordotcom for providing me with an eARC!</b>

This was recommended by the bookseller who runs my indie bookstore’s fantasy book club and I wanted to like it so badly. The concept is really interesting but it just disappointed me in how much it wasn’t for me. The whole idea of having to create a new language to fit a fake propaganda history of your country for a corrupt ruler feels brilliant, but the actual execution felt so lackluster and meh. Funny thing is, this was actually a relatively easy to read book, but the only reason that I ended up finishing it is because it was a novella and I knew it would end quickly. Honestly, I think for the right person this could be a pretty good read. It just feels distinctly like a man wrote it and I honestly could not make myself care despite the fact I was very initially excited for it. I hope this book finds its readers, but those are so very not me.

A bite sized Parker novella that does all the things you can typically expect from one of his full length books. If you’ve ever wondered if Parker is an author for you, this right here is a very solid way to find out.

Being a warmongering dictator can be tough sometimes, when you don’t really have a good reason to go to war. Thankfully, that’s a problem that can be easily fixed, with the right amount of propaganda. Which is how the senior academics of the University of Aelia find themselves under the proverbial and literal sword, forced to come fabricate an entire lost city to get the unwashed masses’ blood boiling. However, things begin to go according to plan, a little too well . . .

Everything I like about a K.J. Parker novel happens in this novella. The erudite injection of a specific topic, an oddball plot, characters who on paper seem like tropes but behave like anything but, and of course, an interesting ending. It’s all here.

In this one, Parker has a bone to pick with history, the way it’s shaped and it’s perception. We have the perceived infallibility of history, which we’re supposed to accept as fact right up until some other historian comes up with a new twist on facts and we’re supposed to go with it while completely ignoring how flexible it is, even as we’re dependent on the perceived authority. And that just opens the door for that authority to be suborned by vested interests and agendas. It’s literally just a ‘Trust me Bro’ system.

And then we have the pillars that hold up history, things like linguistics, the shape, formation and evolution of words to meet society’s demands. There’s a reason new words get added to the dictionary every year, and that’s before we even get into the shaky structure surrounding what a word even means, the way intonation and context can make it mean something completely different. If you want an idea of how flexible this is and what I’m even talking about, listen to a random Eminem song and you’ll hear him enunciate words in such a way that he can build out a rhyme scheme with words that don’t actually rhyme.

And then, of course, we have the standard Parker characters, ie. relatively standard people who through twists of faith and personality play some very interesting roles. A Parker story never quite goes the way you imagine it will, and even when it does the character motivations are plausible but yet something you’ll never think of, and we get all of that here. And into all of this he bakes what I can only ever think of as common sense, with very human and down to earth motivations, combined with a splash of good and bad. Parker’s characters are best described as average people who often get thrust into situations far beyond their capacities, and sometimes they rise to the occasion and excel but mostly they just manage to scrape by until they learn the ropes. Much like we all do.

All in all, a short fun read. Deciding to read all this guy’s stuff remains one of the better decisions I’ve made regarding the books I pick up.

NOTE: Youtube link goes public on 14th August 2025 @ 3 PM EST.

A weird, funny, irreverent story about how history is manipulated for good or for ill. If you liked Babel or the Lies of the Ajungo, this will be an enjoyable read for you. Thank you to Tor and Netgalley for the ARC of this book!

4.5 Stars

Loved the exploration of what is truth and how it changes based on who controls the narrative.

Thank you to NetGalley and Tor Publishing for an advanced reader copy in exchange for an honest review!

After the kingdom is overthrown and a new king has come to power, it’s time to write some history. But instead of starting now, the king wants history from the past. The only problem is, that history doesn’t exist. In Making History, a group of scholars are tasked with creating something from nothing. If they don’t accomplish the task, it’s death for them. We are given a first person POV through the trails and errors of creating. Will history be remade or is it too hard to do without messing it all up?

This book was a fun little ride. It was a good time but not a long time, being it’s a novella. I enjoyed the wit and banter as our MC beat through the most life threatening project of their life. I don’t have a ton of feelings about this one way or another. It was fun but not over the top amazing. It’s new and fresh as I’ve never read anything like it but the first person perspective is a little odd. It breaks the fourth wall a lot and I don’t know if that’s really my cup of tea. I did like the book overall! I’m settling at 3/5 stars as it wasn’t the best thing I’ve ever read but I did have a good time reading it.

Making History by K. J. Parker

A while back, I became a fan of K. J. Parker. I first heard the name of this author via Jo Walton’s monthly reading lists on Tor dot com. So I requested an eARC of A Practical Guide to Conquering the World by K.J. Parker and loved it! It was grabby (in a “can’t put this book down” kind of way) and it was thoroughly enjoyable. I said I’d be looking out for more books by K. J. Parker and I later really enjoyed an eARC of the Long Game and Pulling the Wings off Angels, which were both delightful books! After that, I went back and read Sixteen Ways to Defend A Walled City and How to Rule an Empire and Get Away with It, which were also wonderful, and the Saevus Corax books, which were also a blast.

This story centers on a linguist in a university who is roped into a project by the current dictator to help gin up a nonexistent ancient language as part of a project to justify an impending invasion of a neighboring polity. Like most of Parker’s books that I have read, this one is also a first person tale in which the protagonist is a clever bastard (in a thoroughly enjoyable manner). The final twist genuinely surprised me and I thoroughly enjoyed this book.

This novella captured all of that Parker wit without overstaying its welcome. Thanks to NetGalley and Tordotcom for the eARC in exchange for an honest review.

Making History by K. J. Parker
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️💫
Academia gets the spotlight in this oh so typical Parker novella. With a cut and paste narrator with a particular specialty and a twist-within-twist at the end, I still loved the thematic exploration of history, anthropology, language, and truth all while the narrator and his fellow experts are tasked with literally making history of a made up city-state.

I don't think I've ever read anything quite like this before, so I was very impressed with what the author was able to put together in such a short number of pages! With more well-trodden genre stories, I am usually a little more critical, but this shows so much creativity and deftness as both political satire and quality fantasy worldbuilding that I was really taken aback. I will be definitely picking up more from K.J. Parker in the future!

Totally unique. Dark and funny. This is a good book for people who enjoy using their brains but also love dark fantasy!

Fascinating little book about history, propaganda, who controls the narrative, all with a fun dark fantasy twist. Had a lot of fun with this book and will be keeping an eye out for more of Parker's works!

This was a fun novella of the “author has cool idea that won’t work for an entire novel” type. I tend to love this kind of thing; it’s fun seeing authors get experimental and run with things.

The premise here: the local king has a bunch of top scholars from the university attend to him. He wants an excuse for war on the neighboring kingdom. Their assignment is to use their knowledge of their respective disciplines and create a ruined city that can be rediscovered, showing that thousands of years earlier the ancestors of the neighboring kingdom had savagely attacked their own ancestors. None of them are particularly enthused about this, but the threat of death is a great motivator.

But then, as these are all academics, they get *into it*. They might not want to do the project, but they nevertheless get excited by the challenge of it. Our protagonist is professor of philology/linguistics; his job is to invent a language that could have been the proto tongue of their own modern language.

Things take a turn, though, when he hears a sailor in port using a word that he only understood because he had literally just made it up. And other pieces of their creation start appearing, to all appearances thousands of years old…

This was fun on many levels. Great quick read.

I was so excited to read this book because the premise seemed so interesting and intriguing to me. I was disappointed when the story itself failed to live up its potential. I found the first half of the novel slow and boring and the story's characters mostly boring and flat. The story picks up but by the conclusion feels rushed and ends in a very underwhelming way. The story isn't bad, just not what it could have been if given more pages to develop.

Making History is a witty and fast paced novella that's part dark academic fantasy and part absurd political satire. Told from the POV of an egotistical, self-serving academic who has been given an impossible task by a tyrannical ruler, this novella questions if it's possible to know the truth of a historical event when all history is uncovered and recorded by fallible individuals with their own biases and goals.

I loved the dark humor, morally corrupt characters, and conversational prose. I think fans of Olivie Blake will devour this!

I love K.J. Parker and will read anything he writes, and this was okay. It is definitely not my favorite book by Parker. Feels a little rushed and underdeveloped, frankly.

Making History. But which version of history are you making? Does history reflect what really happened or is the truth just whatever tale is spun by the ones who hold the pen?

Parker’s novella dives deep into this. Is history truth or just propaganda? In the kingdom of Aelia, its conqueror Gyges forces multiple scholars to collaborate on an impossible task. Change history, weaponize a narrative, be the driving force for a new war. I thought the plot was quite creative and had some interesting political intrigue for such a short book. I also enjoyed the writing, which had a sense of dry wit that I liked.

Having said that, it took awhile for me to get into this, even at its short length. The first 30% felt slow and overly dense, especially with the heavy focus on info-dumping linguistic studies on us (our main guy is the scholar of languages). However, the narrative eventually tightened, pulling in hints of mystery and political tension that paid off well.

While the pacing might deter some early on, the second half delivers a much stronger payoff. And in a genre where endings are often lacking and in a length where ideas are often half-baked, I appreciated how this one landed better than it began. If you’re into short, snappy, political fictions, this is a fun ARC to try out!

I was blown away by this book! In the short space of a novella, Parker managed to introduce the concept (scholars have to build the "ruins" of a city that never existed to give the ruler grounds to start a war with a neighboring kingdom), knock it out of the park, and still have time for some twists. I can honestly say I had no idea what was going to happen next the whole time I was reading, and that was a positive. It made the twist at the end that much better, when we are reminded that scholars may be intelligent, but they are just as easy to trick as any "less intelligent" person. I would love to read more from Parker in the future.