This was a very interesting premise that I was excited to jump into. The prose was excellent, however the execution of the premise fell a little short for me.

There was so much potential here. Build and entire forgotten civilization complete with a buried city, language, art and more. I was all in, but there just wasn’t enough. At the end of the day, I wanted more. I would have devoured every word if this was a 500+ page novel rather than a novella. I felt this just needed more to get me attached to and invested in these characters to the point that I was as gut punched as I wanted to be when the final reveal (and betrayals) came.

All in all it was well written and an excellent premise, but it would have been better served as a novel rather than a novella.

K.J. Parker’s upcoming short novel Making History (Sept. 2, 128 pages) is cynical, darkly humorous, and extremely relevant to our times. It’s being marketed as a dark fantasy, but although it’s set in a secondary world, the only semi-speculative elements are the hyper-competence of one faction, if that’s what’s really happening, or the mutable nature of reality, if that’s what’s really happening. It’s a short, sharp, biting read, and thoroughly engrossing; I highly recommend it for lovers of history, linguistics, politics, intrigue, and truth.

The setup is that the tyrant of Aelia wants a pretext for invading another realm, so he summons a dozen of the kingdom’s best scholars and gives them to understand that they must create evidence of an ancient civilization previously invaded and destroyed by that other realm. Since their alternative is death, or possibly torture and then death, the scholars agree. So the protagonist and the other professors (geology, archaeology, architecture, art, literature, military history, natural history, etc.) get to work devising a coherent fake narrative, and the manufacture of fake evidence (e.g. site quarrying by “disposable” people) begins.

But as the fakery progresses, disturbing bits of outside validation begin to appear. Are the scholar-fakers somehow coincidentally recovering a real past, or actually changing the past and reality itself?

Making History has a lot to say about truth vs. objective reality, via the plot but also via the narrator/protagonist (first person, mostly past tense). He’s a linguist, and he loves tracing the evolutions of words and languages, but his job in the fakery project is to de-evolve the current Aelian language back a few millennia to a hypothetical proto-language, to write fake ancient inscriptions and tablets. He is aided in this task by his attitude that the permanence of history is a naive stance, as understandings of reality are constantly being rewritten anyway, by new evidence, new explanations and new theories.

This, of course, makes me think a lot about real life right now, in a post-“truthiness” world, as false talking points are repeated until they sink into people’s subconsciousness as fact, and as history museums are ordered to purge exhibits of elements that make certain people uncomfortable or angry. It also seems to be in conversation with a lot other books; my first thought is of George Orwell’s 1984, where Winston Smith’s job is to rewrite historical documents to match the Party’s version of the past, but I also am reminded of the recent All Roads Lead to Rome: Why We Think of the Roman Empire Daily by Dr. Rhiannon Garth Jones, in which she explores how various cultures after Rome have claimed to be the true heirs of some facet of it, while ignoring the inconvenient bits that don’t fit.

Anyway, the protagonist of Making History is a scholar; there’s real-world experience in his past, but he’s been in academia a long time. His mistress, a dancer turned courtesan turned exclusive, has a lot more street smarts than him, and some bright ideas about what to do in an increasingly untenable situation. So their relationship reminded me a lot of Simonides the poet/musician and Lyra the hetaira in Mary Renault’s novel The Praise Singer, at least initially.

(Making History also provides an interesting contrast to Simonides’ initial resistance to a project of writing down The Iliad; in The Praise Singer he came from the oral tradition of memorization, but was reconciled to writing when he hears some lines that had been dropped from the version of the Iliad that he’d learned. But we now know to our sorrow that text can be nearly as mutable as memory itself.)

I was also strongly reminded of various elements in Glorious Exploits by Ferdia Lennon (2024), in which two working-class Syracusans decide to take advantage of the Athenian prisoners of war being worked to death in a quarry, during the Pelopponesian War, to put on a first-class play.

I haven’t read nearly as much K.J. Parker as I should, just the Engineer trilogy and the standalone Sharps. As I understand, Making History is set in the world of the Siege trilogy, which I haven’t read, but I didn’t have any trouble at all understanding Making History‘s setup, plot, characters, or themes. So any readers who have heard how great Parker is but are deterred by doorstoppers should strongly consider trying this little gem. Despite its short length, this book has a lot to say about people and truth, and says it very well indeed.

I am floating my way through all things dark academia/fantasy and I am loving every second of it. This book was spectacular. I don’t know what I was expecting reading this book but it wasn’t this. This book blew me away.

Making History is a darkly clever novella that’s filled with my favorite aspects of KJ Parker’s writing and still feels fresh and new.

Our narrator is a linguist, one of a dozen scholars called to the palace by Gyges, the new ruler of the kingdom. Gyges has an offer for the academics they can’t refuse. To justify a war with another city-state, Gyges demands they build the ruins of an ancient city from scratch along with all the trappings of a fine culture. It’s a fascinating challenge for the scholars, setting aside the thousands of lives that will be negatively impacted by this. And what else can the scholars do but do their best? And then things get strange.

I LOVED this. Parker’s novels and novellas are always enjoyable stories filled with squirrelly, unreliable narrators and biting commentary on politics and humanity. Making History certainly contains these, and its takedown of our perception of the past is absolutely brutal. The novella is the perfect length to explore this idea, and the occasional tangents about linguistics were an unexpected delight– the rambling tone perfectly captures a navel-gazing academic. I think this is now tied with Prosper’s Demon as my favorite Parker story.

It is connected to many of Parker’s other works, but no knowledge of the other books is necessary before starting this one.

This is a novella about a linguist's role in a questionable rework of history. This is fantasy, but the concepts are very familiar to real life events and attitudes.

I like linguistics in general, so I was compelled for the first half of the book. After that, it lost me a bit as the plot took a turn. I found the ending odd but not unlikeable, and honestly that explains the whole book for me.

The MC is insufferable, but he knows that about himself. I think there was a lot to explore in this concept, but with how short the story is, you don't really get to sink your teeth into it. I think it's an interesting peek into the effect current events and regimes can have on historians and worth reading if that is something that you like.

Making History has an absolutely brilliant premise, and it’s the kind of high-concept idea that immediately pulls you in. The story of a group of scholars forced by a ruthless king to "create" a fake historical city to justify a war is inventive and ripe with cynical humor. K.J. Parker's trademark dry wit and intellectual commentary are present throughout, making the book a thoughtful read on the nature of truth, history, and propaganda.

However, despite its cleverness, the book kept me at a bit of a distance. The characters, while serving the themes well, felt more like archetypes than fully realized people, and I found it difficult to emotionally connect with them. The narrative style, while witty, also meanders at times, which made the pacing feel slow, especially for a novella. While the final twist is a satisfying payoff, the journey to get there was a bit of a mixed bag.

Ultimately, Making History is a very smart book that showcases Parker's unique talent, but it was more of an intellectual exercise than a gripping story for me. It's a quick read for sure, but one that you'll likely appreciate more for its ideas than for its emotional impact.

This is a short read but wow I really enjoyed it! I thought it was funny, thought provoking and had a great premise! I love how the narrator isn’t just telling the story using the present tense. He is telling you the reader the story specifically! This main character was very funny to me with his somewhat sporadic mind and obvious obsession with his work. I also thought this gave an interesting commentary on how historians and academics play a role in how history is documented and or perceived by the public. Humans are complex characters and the things they are able to justify in the name of saving themselves can be disheartening. Nevertheless, it is interesting to see the workings of one’s mind who has been put in a situation where one must choose between saving themselves or altering reality.

This was a wild and fun read. This is for any of you intellectuals that love when research and academy get involved in fiction. This one really surprised me!

This was just one of those books that I didn't vibe with and had a hard time getting into. I found myself kind of drifting away after every few paragraphs and taking a break from the book. I did end up DNFing around 43%

In February 2024, Vladimir Putin dropped a massive work of creative “history” during his interview with Tucker Carlson. This “history” was meant to prove that Ukraine was always part of Russia. (Ido Vock, a journalist for the BBC, talked to several historians to debunk Putin’s revisionary history.) I thought about Putin’s revisionist history a lot as I read K.J. Parker’s uncomfortable fantasy, Making History.

Our narrator is a professor of linguistics, working among some of the finest minds from across the nation of Aelia, and is damned proud of it. Being professors should keep these men safe and out of the way of fighting or politics, so they are all very surprised when they’re collectively summoned to the palace by the new “First Citizen.” Gyges seems a little insecure as a conqueror whose warriors steamrolled across Aelia. He plans to do things in a more civilized way from now on. No more sweeping across borders with all the pillaging and murdering and raping. Next time he goes to war, he will have a proper casus belli to justify the invading, pillaging, etc. Except, there isn’t one. Aelia’s neighbors aren’t going to make a move against him; there’s no need to. The scholars are even more shocked when they learn why they’ve been summoned: they’re going to create a casus belli for Gyges. It’s an offer they can’t refuse.

Most of the scholars are reluctant to take on the job, in spite of the clear threats to their safety if they refuse. Our narrator, however, dives headfirst into the task. As a linguist, his job is to create an ancestral version of Aelian. He is immediately fascinated by the processes that change languages over centuries. He disappears into his work, musing about how grammar tends to become less complex over time and how pronunciations are affected by people talking so fast they can’t be bothered to enunciate everything. He never loses sight of the fact that he’s participating in the biggest scholarly hoax of all time, which is why he’s stunned to his toenails when the words of his invented language appear to have escaped containment.

There are a lot of ideas packed into Making History, not just linguistic ones. Readers who like to think about the nature of history and language will find a lot of food for thought here. There’s so much that it’s incredible that Parker manages to sneak in a great subplot for our narrator in this novella, too.

I found K.J. Parker's Making History absolutely delightful. Because the novel is historical fantasy, readers can't comfortably place it on their own timeline, but my guess would be 1600s-ish. Universities exist, but many structures of more recent times haven't yet appeared.

The premise is utterly absurd. A group of academics is called in for a meeting with Gyges, who has recently conquered their country. He wants to stabilize his power and has decided that the best way to do this is by creating an alternative history of the region. (Remind you of anyone?) The academics are ordered to create (and then bury) an archaeological ruin that can be discovered and unearthed and that will show the government before Gyges' arrival was illegitimate—the left overs from a barbarian horde who conquered and destroyed an earlier, more advanced society. In other words, Gyges wants to present himself as restoring civilization.

Almost immediately one can see the complications. How to dig down to an appropriate depth and create a city just to bury it again? How to create a new language that can be understood so that stellae can be read—only to reveal the illegitimacy of the society Gyges has just conquered?

Our narrator is a linguist who's been assigned to the team working on this project. He can go on endlessly about grammatical forms and the ways languages become increasingly complex as new, somewhat random rules of pronunciation and syntax take the place of older, more stable grammar.

So we "listen" to our narrator as he puzzles over how to create a fake ancient language and worries, along with the other academics assigned to this project, whether he'll still be alive at the end of it all. (One colleague killed himself at the start of the project, so he could at least be assured a swift death.)

If you enjoy playful intellectualism, you're in for a treat with this title. If you aren't, it may not hold your attention, but those who enjoy such play will find themselves reading cover-to-cover just to keep the pacing and the absurdity of the tale hurtling to almost certain disaster.

I received a free electronic review copy of this title from the publisher via NetGalley; the opinions are my own.

Series Info/Source: This is a stand alone book. I got a copy of this on ebook from NetGalley for review.

Thoughts: I liked this; it was intriguing and ironic. I like the message it delivers and enjoyed the twists and turns. The characters are definitely not all that likable, but I was impressed by the world-building in such a short page space.

The story follows a linguist who is part of a group of scholars who are given an impossible task by the new ruler, First Citizen Gyges. Gyges wants the scholars to fabricate a lost city and a history that will allow him to have an excuse to go to war with a neighboring country. After all, if the population is distracted by war they won't notice what a horrible ruler Gyges actually is...

This was a quick read and gets a bit rambling at parts, but it has a thoughtful message and an ironic twist. The whole idea behind a ruler "making" history to re-write things in a way he wants them to be remembered and to justify his actions is not new; but it is poked fun at in this book. The way leaders and scholars assume that the general public is a bunch of idiots is challenged as well.

I really enjoyed the ironic twist in this book; it is well done and adds a lot of ironic humor to the story.

The book is told from the viewpoint of a linguistic scholar, and, as much as I enjoy language, some of these parts get a bit dry. He spends quite a bit of page space talking about the intricacies and importance of language. Some of this is intriguing and some isn't. He also uses his engagement in the details of language as an excuse for the rather despicable action of literally re-writing history. This is not a character driven book and the characters in here are unlikable and forgettable. This book seems to be more of a politcal satire/satement than anything.

My Summary (4/5): Overall this is a quick and somewhat entertaining read. I enjoyed the irony of the story and some of the topics it delves into. Some of the linguistic discussion got a bit long for me, and none of the characters are likable or all that memorable. However, I enjoyed some of the twists to the story. It's been awhile since I read a book by Parker and I am guessing it will be awhile more before I pick up another. Everything I've read by him is decent but just doesn't really grab me.

A thoroughly enjoyable unreliable narrator discovers what any fantasy author can tell you - worldbuilding is all fun and games until you start having to think about the implications.

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!