This was posted in another thread, but it did get me thinking - what are my honourable peers views on this topic? How do you like your writing to be? Any specific authors that exemplify this for you?
Personally I'm a fan of at least mild authenticity, authors like Christian Cameron being my favourites, and first-person viewpoints to tales as well.
Three of my favourite books, all set during the Late Roman Empire - 'Eagle in the Snow' by Wallace Breem, 'The Boat of Fate' by Keith Roberts and 'Raptor' by Gary Jennings - are all written from a first-person viewpoint and all reasonably authentic, each author making the best use of the information they had at the time of writing, hence why some of Jennings' descriptions of Roman armour etc are a little anachronistic at times.
It is from these and others that I take my lead when it comes to writing AARs and stories of my own, my own belief being that first-person - while being more limited in scope due to being 'static' in placement - allows for more of that grounding...more...sense of being to a person and their environment.
Perhaps it is because of this that I have found more modern authors of the 'Sword & Sandal' genre, authors like Scarrow and Sidebottom (who are both good in their own respects by-the-by), to be more like the 'Hollywood' of the genre; big and cinematic with their writing, less capable of the descriptive and non-military aspects, but pretty good at writing set-piece battles and skirmishes. Basically the sort of books you find in WHSmiths by an airport or train station.
Don't get me wrong, I like both of them and a few others, just fine! After the first few books I found they weren't for me though.
So, what about my fellow readers/writers? You have the floor.