Doomed Queen Anne by Carolyn Meyer

(Cover picture courtesy of Fictional Appearances By…)

Anne Boleyn was born without great beauty, wealth, or title, but she’s blossomed into a captivating young woman—and she knows it.  Determined to rise to the top, she uses her wiles to win the heart of England’s most powerful man, King Henry VIII.  Not satisfied with the King’s heart, however, she persuades Henry to defy everyone—including his own wife—to make her his new queen.

This engrossing novel tells Anne’s fascinating story in her own voice—from her life as an awkward girl to the dramatic moments leading up to her beheading.

I’ve always liked the story of Anne Boleyn, the woman whose ambition propelled her up to the greatest heights.  Unfortunately, the higher you rise, the farther you have to fall.  And, oh, did Anne Boleyn fall to the lowest of the low.

Doomed Queen Anne is the story of her rise and fall, told in journal form on the eve of her execution as she recounts the events that lead up to it.  It begins at her unhappy childhood and comes around full circle, which always adds a tinge of sadness to the narrative.  Carolyn Meyer is a masterful writer of historical fiction and sticks to the facts while telling this excellent story.  She shows that the women history has assigned bad reputations to weren’t really all that bad and were perfectly human, meaning they had flaws just like us.

I believe the best example of this is when she writes about Anne’s childhood as the ill-favoured daughter, overshadowed by her beautiful, dazzling older sister, Mary.  She was told she was ugly, but learned how to hide her flaws while emphasizing her better traits.  This well developed backstory is what makes her a memorable character that most readers will be able to sympathize with.

The plot of Doomed Queen Anne is reasonably well paced and the entire novel is historically accurate, as far as I can tell.  Carolyn Meyer is a very gifted writer and uses her talent to draw readers in to the backstabbing court of the Tudors and move the plot along to its inevitable, tragic conclusion.  I would recommend this book for people 12+ because there are brief scenes of sexuality, but nothing more than what you would encounter at most movies aimed at tweens.

I give this book 4.5/5 stars.

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The Best and Worst of May

I’m going to try something new here.  On the first of every month, I’ll recap my most viewed and least viewed posts in case you’re curious as to what people are actually looking at on my site.  So here are the five best posts last month:

1.  Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes

2.  The Hunger Games and Ancient Rome

3.  City of Bones by Cassandra Clare

4.  Son of the Mob by Gordon Korman

5.  Specials by Scott Westerfeld

I’m actually not at all surprised this time, aside from the fact that Flowers for Algernon has surpassed my popular cheat-sheet on allusions for The Hunger Games novel study.  But it’s not really all that surprising since Flowers for Algernon is another popular novel study book.  It probably won’t stay on top in June because school is going out.  Now, here are the worst posts of May (excluding site announcements):

1.  Run Like Jager by Karen Bass

2.  Scroll of Saqqara by Pauline Gedge

3.  The Many Diseases Found in Fiction (YA Fiction in Particular)

4.  The Seven Songs of Merlin by T. A. Barron

5.  Seer of Egypt by Pauline Gedge

Again, not really surprising, but notice that two out of the five books are by Pauline Gedge.  I guess both she and ancient Egypt aren’t nearly as popular as I thought.

River God by Wilbur Smith

(Cover picture courtesy of Scroll of a Modern Scribe.)

Ancient Egypt.  Land of the Pharaohs.  A kingdom built on gold.  A legend shattered by greed.  The Valley of the Kings lies ravaged by war, drained of its lifeblood as weak men inherit the cherished crown.

In the city of Thebes at the Festival of Osiris, loyal subjects of the Pharaoh gather to pay homage to their leader.  But Taita, a wise and formidably gifted eunuch slave, sees him only as a symbol of a kingdom’s fading glory.  Beside Taita are his protégés: Lostris, daughter of Lord Intef, beautiful beyond her fourteen years; and Tanus, proud young army officer, who has vowed to avenge the death—at Intef’s hand—of his father, and seize Lostris as his prize.  Together they share a dream—to restore the majesty of the Pharaoh of Pharaohs on the glittering banks of the Nile.

I believe accuracy in historical fiction is important, but usually I let things slide if a writer changes a few things around as long as the essential facts of the period are right.  In River God, however, there are things that literally made me snort with derision; this takes the worst of Hollywood perceptions of Egypt and makes it out to be reality.  To anyone familiar with Egypt, the idea that the Pharaoh’s son would be nicknamed “Memnon” (a  Greek nickname bestowed upon the colossi of Amunhotep III)…well that makes you question the events described in the rest of the book.

To prevent early high blood pressure, let’s just say that the most basic elements of River God are true, mainly the Hyksos invasion, and leave it at that.  Truly, that’s about all that’s mostly accurate, so don’t use this as a history textbook.  If you like this book, you can use it as a starting point for learning about Egyptian history.  Now, moving on…

Taita is a frustrating character because there are times he has some semblance of depth and other times when he is a complete Gary Stu.  He seems to be absolutely perfect, what with the fact that he designs many of the inventions in the novel himself, navigates politics impeccably and is extremely good looking.  The only thing that sort of redeems him in the end is the fact that he doesn’t get your classic happy ending.  Even then, it doesn’t really save his character all that much.

The one thing that redeems River God is Wilbur Smith’s writing style.  It slowly draws you in until you are hooked and have no choice but to finish it.  Smith has wonderful descriptions of all the exotic settings and characters, yet he maintains a decently paced plot, something that few authors can manage.  Now if only he would put in the effort to do proper research…

I give this book 2/5 stars.

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June is History Month

Well, it’s finally the month you’ve all been waiting for: June.  And over here at The Mad Reviewer, that means only one thing: History Month.  I’m going to be reviewing historical fiction for all ages as well as some nonfiction books I enjoyed.  I’ll still be guest posting over at We Heart Reading every Wednesday, but those reviews will also be on history-themed books.  If you’re curious about what June will hold, here are some hints:

  • Carolyn Meyer.  Lots of Carolyn Meyer.
  • Non-sparkly vampires
  • The French Revolution
  • Troy
  • Uther Pendragon

That’s just a few of the many subjects/authors/people my reviews will involve, so stay tuned!  There will be something for everyone next month.

Wither by Lauren DeStefano

(Cover picture courtesy of Goodreads.)

By age sixteen, Rhine Ellery has four years left to live. A botched effort to create a perfect race has left all males born with a lifespan of 25 years, and females a lifespan of 20 years–leaving the world in a state of panic. Geneticists seek a miracle antidote to restore the human race, desperate orphans crowd the population, crime and poverty have skyrocketed, and young girls are being kidnapped and sold as polygamous brides to bear more children.

When Rhine is sold as a bride, she vows to do all she can to escape. Yet her husband, Linden, is hopelessly in love with her, and Rhine can’t bring herself to hate him as much as she’d like to. He opens her to a magical world of wealth and illusion she never thought existed, and it almost makes it possible to ignore the clock ticking away her short life. But Rhine quickly learns that not everything in her new husband’s strange world is what it seems. Her father-in-law, an eccentric doctor bent on finding the antidote, is hoarding corpses in the basement; her fellow sister wives are to be trusted one day and feared the next; and Rhine has no way to communicate to her twin brother that she is safe and alive.

Together with one of Linden’s servants, Gabriel, Rhine attempts to escape just before her seventeenth birthday. But in a world that continues to spiral into anarchy, is there any hope for freedom?

(Summary courtesy of Amazon.)

A friend of mine was absolutely gushing over this novel, so she and I did a book exchange.  I lent her my copy of Timeless by Alexandra Monir and she lent me her copy of Wither by Lauren DeStefano.  As it turned out, it was a pretty good book exchange in which both of us got excellent new reading material.

The premise of the novel sounded quite promising to me: because of genetic modification, kids are now perfect, but have decreased life expectancies.  Severely decreased, as in 25 for men and 20 for women.  So, in an attempt to both live life to the fullest and carry on the very existence of the human race, wealthy men are now polygamous.  Which, of course sets up the plot of Wither: Rhine, a sixteen-year-old girl is taken from her only family, her twin brother Rowan, to become one of the new wives to Linden Ashby, a twenty-one-year-old man whose first wife is dying.  Rhine is chosen because of her heterochromia, her two different coloured eyes that her parents who were geneticists gave her and because she looks like Rose, Linden’s dying wife.

I bet you think you can predict the ending.  But with that said, I bet you’re wrong, at least partially.  I know I was.

Of course Wither includes what seems to be a staple of YA novels nowadays: a love triangle.  It certainly seems like it’s your stereotypical love triangle at first, but it is Rhine’s choices throughout the novel that keep it from being predictable.  Instead of accepting her fate as one of three wives and falling in love with her husband, she resolves to escape and to stay true to herself and Gabriel, the boy she really loves.  Rhine Ellery certainly deserves to be called a memorable character.

My only real complaint is that for science fiction, there is a definite lack of science.  We know that each person has a genetic time bomb because of scientists messing around with everyone’s genes, but it doesn’t get much more in depth than that.  Then again, most YA science fiction would be classified as ‘soft science’ anyway.  Still, I’d like to know a lot more about the science behind this mysterious genetic time bomb.

I give this book 4/5 stars.

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