There's a difference between having a story to tell and setting it in an analogue of reconquista Spain, and having the recreation of reconquista Spain be the goal with the story tossed in to make people read what amounts to a dressed up wiki article on the author's fav hobby.
I maybe shouldn't have named names because both of those authors have a pretty large body of work that exceeds what I'm talking about and maybe they weren't the best examples.
I think of GRRM who basically started out with a loose re-telling of the 100 years war and built a story around that. And you can see the affect because once he created his low fantasy medieval UK, the plot began to spiral out of control and became little more than a soap opera... if I'm going to read that, I might as well read about real people.
Interesting couple of points.
Am currently reading Kay's "Sailing to Sarantium" and he is a very good writer - some of his character writing is exceptional. But I've read a lot about Byzantine history and it does grate that not only is he just regurgitating history, he has chosen one of the most popularised periods - Justin -> Justinian + Theodora and the Nike Riots - but changed the names. (Also, the chariot racing scene feels a bit lifted from Ben Hur.
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While I've not finished the book, so far I think I would have preferred it if he had kept the names and written it as "historical fantasy" rather than "fantasy", as Stephen Lawhead did with his "Byzantium", which runs on a similar premise of someone travelling to Constantinople. Not least because my mind corrects the names as I read them, which stutters the reading experience.
However, I suspect a one reason for changing the names may be to prevent people calling foul of historical mistakes, which has to be an intimidating prospect.
I'm personally using a lot of the ancient world as an inspiration in my own writing, and the history of the Byzantine Empire features as a key source - but as an inspiration, not a copy. That would seem pointless.
As for GRRM going off on a tangent - heh, I think that's more through lack of discpline, both from GRRM and his editors. It certainly reads as his own unique world, with his own personal stamp on it. Whether the story rambles or not depends on whether you like to read the internal conflicts of every supporting character, or want to push on with the story, both of which appear to be real reader interests these days.
Personally, I'm not keen on magic use, because it means changing the laws of reality to accomodate it, and I don't think that many writers realise that. Magic becomes a dangerously cliched deus ex machina to help characters escape peril, even though in practical terms the prevalance of magic undermines the very world being built.
My memory of reading Tolkien is that magic was used sparingly and to great effect because of this - simple things such as Gandalf lighting his staff in the Mines of Moria underlined his great power. If he'd have just fireballed his way through the goblins there and let the others follow in the ashes, then they would have become redundant.
Ultimately, the less magic there is, the more any protagonist has to overcome problems through their own insights and virtues. That appeals more personally to me than having to change the rules of reality to make it easier.
Returning to historical fantasy, people through history have always described the mundane in fantastical terms, lacking the scientific knowledge we have now to explain there. There's no harm in having a magical character in an historical setting - just a damn good justification as to why someone with such power hasn't become a huge meglomaniac, or wiped out civilisation by accident.
2c.
