The book series by Bernard Cornwell is also excellent, if you enjoy that sort of thing. The books have a fairly well defined structure (one may even consider them formulaic), but he appears to have done a lot of detailed research into day-to-day life of that time, and happily shares it with the reader. Not quite Neal Stephenson level of digression, but not far off. I haven't read his Sharpe novels, but the Archer's Tale books and his version of King Arthur are similarly enjoyable.