: Re: Is it possible to narrate a novel in a faux-historical style without alienating the reader? One thing that often annoys me in historical fiction or fantasy books is the dissonance between the

@Connie138

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This is absolutely possible--with the old caveat that you can't please everyone. One great example is Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey-Maturin Series, which managed it over thirty-something years and twenty books, and has become something of a cult classic. These are set in the Napoleonic wars, and narrate the friendship and exploits of two men, one an English ship captain in the Royal Navy and the other an Irish-Catalan doctor who goes to sea with the former to escape poverty on land. Narration is generally third-person limited (with lots of dialogue and some journal-entry or epistolary sections) and the narrator, as well as the characters, strongly echoes a period author's word choice and structure.

There are three lessons that I would draw from this example:

In terms of writing style, don't be afraid to go all-in. O'Brian's works fit the period extremely well--it's often said that they read almost like actual period books. Write it well and your audience will come along with you. You will turn off some readers, this is inescapable, and it may dampen your commercial prospects, but if it's the story you want to write, do it. Be aware that if you want to get the tone right, you'll need to immerse yourself in writings of the period you're using as your inspiration, to the point that you find yourself adopting those turns of phrase almost without realizing. But needing to do research is inevitable if you want to do something convincing. (You don't have to be bound to write what you know--the world isn't hurting for navel-gazy middle-class litfic novels about grad students in writing programs--but it's absolutely essential you make sure you know what you write.)
But don't let the period language dominate the story or overshadow the characters. One of the things that makes these books so loved is that the characters remain very distinctive, both in terms of their personal idiosyncracies and the way their speech reflects their (social, national, ethnic, educational, class etc.) backgrounds. Make sure that your different characters speak and act like different people, and you'll do a lot to cut through the hypnotic "sameness" that can sometimes come from writing in an artificial style.
And finally, don't forget that every period experiences and expresses diversity. Different people talk and think differently from each other, whether today, 200 years ago, 2000 years ago. In addition to providing an opportunity for variety in your language use, this also means that you can bring readers into the story world by having them learn alongside the characters. O'Brian does this with nautical terminology; he does not shy away from using highly precise technical language, but he introduces it to his reader by having a character in-world require an in-world explanation (and subsequently having that same character make lots of mistakes and require further correction). If done right, this can improve the richness of your world and your characters, while also allowing a window into some of the more challenging parts of your writing.

To sum up: this is a brave choice but one that may produce a really interesting work. If you want your readers to care, make sure you do your homework and do it well; give your readers a window into the language and world; and make sure that you don't neglect the characters, the plot, the story.

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