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.

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.

While I enjoyed this read, I’m not totally sure this novella is labeled correctly. Yes, KJ Parker’s Making History is set in a fictional fantasy world, but a good chunk of this is a political satire - commentary on our current political climate, both here in the U.S. as well as many other countries around the world, including the U.K., the author’s home country.

I tried my hand at writing a political satire before. I thought it worked pretty well as a piece of commentary, considering that very soon after publishing it I had VERY positive reviews and VERY negative reviews depending on the ideology of the person who had read my story. After looking at a few of the early reviews for Making History, I’d say as a political satire piece, Parker may have succeeded. There are some good reviews and some reviews where you can tell…he may have struck a bit of a nerve.

The name of the novella basically gives the story away. The king of a fantasy land wants to “create” a history of an ancient city, giving his best and brightest scholarly minds nine months to make sure the history he wanted to be told was the “official” story. Doing an archeological dig, they are tasked with painting a picture of their enemies…thousands of years in the past. Literally -- Making History.

With certain governmental leaders advocating banning books and whitewashing historical events today, Parker’s novella is a timely satire. It is humorous in a “wow that’s really spot on” and “you’ve gotta be kidding me” kind of way, but also a little tough to take in. If this was written…let’s say 15 years ago, it would be a farcical little story. Today though? It’s an interesting story that sometimes goes a little too over-the-top and is a little heavy-handed on some of the story elements.

Now…it isn’t a pure political satire. There definitely is a fantasy element and there is a twist at the end that changes a lot about the first half of the book, while keeping with a different aspect of today’s political climate. The narrative style may not be for everyone either -- at times its a bit of a stream of consciousness, but I’d definitely recommend giving this a read, if nothing else to see what Parker does with this short read.

Thank you to Tor for providing this book for review consideration via NetGalley. All opinions are my own.

I’ve read one other book by K.J. Parker (under the name Tom Holt). I had mixed feelings about The Outsorcerer’s Apprentice, and I have mixed feelings about Making History.

Making History has an interesting concept – a brutal tyrant forces expert historians to fake an ancient civilization as part of his Evil Plans. The main character is a linguist who is required to fake the ancient civilization’s language as it would/could have been before evolving into modern language. Once the historians get started, something startling happens (which I won’t reveal because spoilers).

The world building is good. Not overly detailed. There is some super casual cruel violence and torture, which I didn’t love. The narrator is very matter-of-fact about the dangers of working for a brutal tyrant. The characters aren’t overly developed, but this a short novella after all.

I was intrigued by the startling development but the climax/big reveal was disappointing. The author has a nice way with words that kept me reading. I don’t think Making History was a total success, although it is thought provoking, and I’d read another book by the author.

I read an advance reader copy of Making History from Netgalley.

The ability to build a world like this in 150 pages is impressive. I had a hard time connecting with the characters and wish the story had a little more so I had the opportunity to know them.

I love a story about the dark side of academia and propaganda, especially in a fantasy context, so I really enjoyed this novella. In this, scholars are forced by the king to invent an ancient civilization and create a city so that he can justify a war.

I'm an armchair linguistics nerd, so I really, really enjoyed our narrator's perspective. It was super engaging and drew me in immediately. I was also deeply impressed by the depth of the worldbuilding, and how rich this world felt, especially in a book so short.

I will say the story and plot shift significantly towards the latter part of the book, and I felt like not enough time was dedicated to making that part of the story feel as complete and fleshed out as it could have. Even with that, I was still very impressed with the mystery, and couldn't dock more than a star from my rating because of my sheer enjoyment.

Recommended for fans of unreliable narrators, historical revisionism, and questionable reality.

This novella is an evocative speculative piece, but it could have benefited from being divided into chapters.

By not having chapters or parts for the scenes, the text felt like a cramped stream-of-consciousness piece, and it didn’t quite work for me. It felt almost like it was tripping over itself or a rambling run-on diary entry, but that might very well just be a me thing, and this is kind of a nitpick, so I’m rounding up to a solid 3.

Thank you, NetGalley and Tordotcom for the e-ARC in exchange for my honest review.

I loved the premise of this novella: a group of scholars at the top of their field are 'asked' to create an ancient civilzation from scratch so that it can be 'discovered' by the ruler and used to justify another war. Our MC is a linguist and I found the details on language (as well as the other disciplines) fascinating, as this is what Parker chooses to go in-depth into in this story. How a language is born and evolves, how the culture of a society changes over time, what kind of artifacts one would find during this supposed time period, etc. I was glued to the pages.

Then, things happen. It's a fascinating twist and I was wracking my brain trying to unravel the mystery.

Then, the story becomes something slightly different and I didn't care for it, so the last quarter of the novella or so was not my favorite. Still, among Parker's novellas--especially among his 1st person works--this is good stuff.

An interesting novella that humorously delves into the nature of history, the past, and the stories we tell ourselves (and create) about our heritage. A little reminiscent of "Piranesi", this fun, short read will make you think about how we got to now, and what you take for granted about the past.

This started out a little slow, but then became so interesting I read it in one sitting. The voice of the narrator was so strong, I could see what was happening. Honestly, I wanted this to be more cause it was so interesting.