Tagged: tudor england
In a Treacherous Court by Michelle Diener
(Cover picture courtesy of Michelle Diener’s website.)
1525: Artist Susanna Horenbout is sent from Belgium to be Henry VIII’s personal illuminator inside the royal palace. But her new homeland greets her with an attempt on her life, and the King’s most lethal courtier, John Parker, is charged with keeping her safe. As further attacks are made, Susanna and Parker realize that she unknowingly carries the key to a bloody plot against the throne. For while Richard de la Pole amasses troops in France for a Yorkist invasion, a traitor prepares to trample the kingdom from within.
Who is the mastermind? Why are men vying to kill the woman Parker protects with his life? With a motley gang of urchins, Susanna’s wits, and Parker’s fierce instincts, honed on the streets and in palace chambers, the two slash through deadly layers of deceit in a race against time. For in the court of Henry VIII, secrets are the last to die…
Brilliantly revealing a little-known historical figure who lived among the Tudors, Michelle Diener makes a smashing historical fiction debut.
[Full disclosure: I requested a review copy from Michelle Diener and was sent a free physical copy in exchange for an honest review.]
As much as I’ve read about the Tudors I never actually heard of Susanna Horenbout or John Parker. It’s strange because you’d have thought that a female illuminator would be mentioned frequently (if only because it was such a rarity) but Susanna really hasn’t been recognized by history. Michelle Diener meant to remedy that in this book.
Susanna is an amazing character. I like how she’s constantly trying to prove herself in a world where men don’t really believe she is a talented artist. It’s not a typical girl empowerment story so much as a very realistic portrayal of the attitudes of the time. At the same time, Susanna loves her art. She loves to draw and paint and she’s good at it. Inspiration strikes her at odd times but she’s not your typical day-dreaming artist either.
She has a good head on her shoulders and she’s more than a match for the cunning, somewhat ruthless John Parker. John Parker is also a fascinating character. His horrible childhood combined with his ruthless determination to serve King Henry VIII would make him interesting enough, but it’s his change in personality caused by Susanna that really makes him memorable. Both characters change as they spend more and more time in each others’ company.
The plot was very fast-paced, but obviously not at the expense of character development. There’s assassins lurking behind every corner, romantic intrigue aplenty as well as plots that strike at the heart of England’s court. Michelle Diener did fabricate some of the details but in her note at the end I liked how she justified her decisions to change history just a little bit. She blended history and speculation together perfectly and it all came together in a great novel.
From the moment you read the first sentence, you’re sucked back in time. From its filthy streets to the hostile/merry court of Henry VIII you feel like you’re right there with Susanna and John. You feel their emotions as their own, especially their pain, love and determination. I can’t honestly speak to the total historical accuracy of In a Treacherous Court but I can tell you that the major details are accurate and Michelle Diener certainly created a very authentic feeling with the details of daily life in Tudor England. That’s what’s really important in historical fiction.
Basically, this was a great debut novel and I can’t wait to read about the rest of Susanna and John’s adventures.
I give this book 5/5 stars.
The Other Boleyn Girl by Philippa Gregory
(Cover picture courtesy of Barnes & Noble.)
When Mary Boleyn comes to court as an innocent girl of fourteen, she catches the eye of Henry VIII. Dazzled by the king, Mary falls in love with both her golden prince and her growing role as unofficial queen. However, she soon realizes just how much she is a pawn in her family’s ambitious plots as the king’s interest begins to wane and she is forced to step aside for her best friend and rival: her sister, Anne. Then Mary knows that she must defy her family and her king, and take her fate into her own hands.
A rich and compelling tale of love, sex, ambition, and intrigue, The Other Boleyn Girl introduces a woman of extraordinary determination and desire who lived at the heart of the most exciting and glamorous court in Europe and survived by following her own heart.
First off, I don’t like the portrayals of pretty much any of the characters in this novel. Mary Boleyn was sweet and innocent to the point of being nauseating when in fact she very likely was the mistress of the French king before coming to court in England. As for Anne Boleyn herself (and don’t kid yourself, this book is really about her) she’s awful. Truly awful. Yes, we have accounts of her temper with Henry in later years, but was it truly to the extent Philippa Gregory tries to portray in this novel? Probably not because she was a very educated, well-spoken and by all accounts, charming young woman. As for George Boleyn and the homosexual ring around him those claims weren’t even really believed at the time and are laughed at by most historians these days.
As a lot of people mention in their reviews, this book plays with the facts constantly. Even if I ignored all of the historical inaccuracies (which is hard to do as they’re always present), the story itself collapses. Mary is just a spineless wimp all the way through the book, even at the end when she finally marries for love. Her relationship with Henry was pretty unrealistic and I hated the whole Machiavellian schemes her family went through to maneuver her into the position of king’s mistress. It was just unrealistic and more than a little ridiculous, even when I pretended I was just reading another fantasy book based loosely on history and not historical fiction.
The plot was unbearably slow, even for me. What could have been around a 300 page book was stretched out over 600 pages. I mean, really? I don’t need to know every single detail of Mary Boleyn’s life, especially the boring times when she was nowhere near court. Honestly, the 1000+ page books of Colleen McCullough have far more action in them than The Other Boleyn Girl. It’s not even guilty pleasure because finishing this was a chore. There were so many better ways to approach this, but throwing out the history and making Mary Boleyn ridiculously innocent was not the way to go.
In the end, The Other Boleyn Girl is for people who think soap operas are serious, not guilty pleasure. If you enjoy descriptions of multiple debaucheries, back-stabbing and playing fast and loose with historical fact, you might like this novel. If you can get past the navel-gazing introspection, that is.
I give this book 1/5 stars.
Spotlight: The Watchers by Stephen Alford
Spotlight is my new regular Saturday feature in which I highlight a book I really enjoyed or am eagerly waiting for. In this case, it’s a great nonfiction book about spying in the reign of Elizabeth I called The Watchers.
In a Europe aflame with wars of religion and dynastic conflicts, Elizabeth I came to a throne encircled by menace. To the Catholic powers of Europe, England was a heretic pariah state and her queen was “Jezebel,” the bastard offspring of Henry VIII’s illegal second marriage. The pope denounced her; the kings of France and Spain conspired to destroy her, their plans culminating in the Spanish Armada. Many of the Queen’s own subjects plotted her overthrow—or her assassination.
[Full blurb available on my review.]
Since The Mad Reviewer is YA (or at least adult novels that can be read by teens), I don’t get to read nearly as much nonfiction as I would like. That’s why I’m so glad Bloomsbury Publishing contacted me about reviewing Stephen Alford’s second book.
Although the writing style was a bit choppy at times because Alford jumped all over the place to fit all the spies into his narrative, The Watchers is one of the better nonfiction books I’ve read. Despite some choppy sections, overall it’s well written and engaging, but most of all, informative. The amount of research that went into The Watchers must have been staggering, and Alford has an entire section of the book dedicated to citing sources. I thought I knew a bit about the reign of Elizabeth I and the role spies played in it, but I really had no idea.
What I thought was unusual was that Alford stayed pretty neutral throughout the book. He explained things from the points of view of the Protestant English spies and from the points of view of the Catholics who worked to overthrow Elizabeth or simply survive. We see the plots by Catholics to kill Elizabeth I, but we also get to see the horrors any captured Catholics (or suspected Catholics) faced. Balance is important in nonfiction and Alford certainly achieved it.
If you’re looking for an informative but engaging read, I highly recommend picking up The Watchers.
The Watchers: A Secret History of the Reign of Elizabeth I by Stephen Alford
(Cover picture courtesy of Goodreads.)
In a Europe aflame with wars of religion and dynastic conflicts, Elizabeth I came to a throne encircled by menace. To the Catholic powers of Europe, England was a heretic pariah state and her queen was “Jezebel,” the bastard offspring of Henry VIII’s illegal second marriage. The pope denounced her; the kings of France and Spain conspired to destroy her, their plans culminating in the Spanish Armada. Many of the Queen’s own subjects plotted her overthrow—or her assassination.
If Elizabeth’s reign was a golden age, then, it was also a precarious one that required unrelenting surveillance by Her Majesty’s secret service. Headed by the brilliant, enigmatic and widely feared Sir Francis Walsingham, the Elizabethan security network willingly deployed every dark art: spies, disinformation, double agents, cryptography, and torture.
Delving deeply into secret files, Stephen Alford offers a chillingly vivid depiction of Elizabethan espionage. In his company we follow Her Majesty’s agents through the streets of London and Rome, and into the dank cells of the Tower. Alford brings to life this shadowy world, where no one could be trusted and a single mistake could have changed England’s history. The Watchers is a riveting exploration of loyalty, faith, betrayal, and deception with the highest possible stakes, in a world poised between the Middle Ages and modernity.
[Full disclosure: Bloomsbury Publishing sent me a free print copy in exchange for an honest review of this book.]
I don’t read nearly as much nonfiction as I would like, so The Watchers was both a refreshing change from YA novels and a great book in its own right. For someone who knows a decent amount about the Tudors and Medieval England, I was shocked at how big of a role spying played back then. It wasn’t just basic spying either: it was sophisticated and at times, incredibly complicated. Stephen Alford has documented the lives of some of the main players in the spy game, from the talented to the incompetent, the eccentric to the boring.
Although Alford’s writing can get a bit choppy here and there as he jumps from spy to spy, he does tie things up well at the end of the chapters and at the very end of the book. Despite the head-hopping, the writing style itself was very engaging for a nonfiction writer and made The Watchers far more enjoyable.To illustrate his point that spying was very important in Tudor England, he had a very lengthy introduction imagining a scenario in which spies did not exist and Elizabeth I really had been assassinated. I would have liked for the introduction to be cut down slightly, but Alford certainly did make his point well.
One thing I really liked about The Watchers is that Alford isn’t telling a completely one-sided story of the struggle of Protestants to protect their queen from evil Catholics. We get to see how the Protestant agents felt about their missions, but also get to see things from the point of view of Catholic exiles. it’s rare to find such balanced nonfiction these days, but Alford managed it. The political triumphs of courtiers like Lord Burghley are balanced by accounts of the terrible torture captured Catholics faced. Alford does not depict a picture of a Golden Age as most books about Elizabethan England seem to and we get to see that the ugly side of the Golden Age was quite ugly at times. It’s nice to find a more realistic portrayal of the times.
Overall, The Watchers is a great book for both newcomers to history and old hats at it. Personally, I’m looking forward to any future books Stephen Alford publishes.
I give this book 4.5/5 stars.
Innocent Traitor by Alison Weir
(Cover picture courtesy of Fantastic Fiction.)
While predominantly known on both sides of the Atlantic for her outstanding works of historical non-fiction, Alison Weir has, over the last few years begun to develop a very nice little niche in fiction novels too.
Like her non-fiction works, they cover many different periods in history, starting right back in the 1100s with her novel about Eleanor of Aquitaine, “The Captive Queen” and moving through to the Tudor period. It’s in this particular era she really does excel, and her novel “Innocent Traitor” which was published in 2007 is possibly her finest work.
A very true story
The main thrust of the story centres on the life of Lady Jane Grey, England’s “Nine Day Queen”, and the tragic outcome of her life. In essence, hers was a short, brutal stay in a world which did not favour women, and that was so rich in machinations and scheming it’s a wonder anyone survived with their head still attached to their shoulders at all.
Weir creates a very sympathetic portrait of the young Jane. From the outset, the reader is fully engaged with her and the life she is born into. It’s a very vivid picture of life in Tudor court, you can very often almost feel and smell the places she describes, hear the rustling of fabric and the clatter of heeled shoes on wooden floors.
The story is told from a number of different perspectives. From that of Jane herself, the people in her household and the people who had the closest connections to the Tudor Royal line.
Jane was a mostly just a helpless pawn in the game of her parents, who seemed hell bent on advancing themselves without a care for their daughter or her happiness. Her mother, Frances Brandon, is painted here in such a strongly disagreeable light by Weir that you really start to feel such hatred for her as you read further into the novel.
In some ways, perhaps, it is a rather one dimensional characterisation which is possibly the only criticism you could level at the novel as a whole. However, as you read further into the story you realise just how she had become so hardened and brutal and it isn’t pretty reading.
Jane herself was a very pious creature; she refused to dress in flashy, bright colours and always favoured more severe and unflattering clothes as if to enhance further her religious character and inherent bent towards the spiritual. Her mother seems to be forever chiding her into wearing the fashions of the time, but Jane consistently refuses and it becomes yet another bone of contention between mother and daughter.
Brutal storytelling
Weir has managed her to create a story that is both heart-wrenching and brutal. The novel opens as Jane sees herself installed in The Tower of London awaiting her fate and the reader knows from the outset that whatever is going to happen to Jane, it isn’t good.
It would be nigh on impossible to make it through to the end of the book without having cried at least once. Jane is frequently beaten and manhandled and very often on the receiving end of her parent’s vile tongues and harsh words as they scheme and plan to make their way to the top.
In modern terms her mother and father would have been top class business partners, plotting how best to get the most money from every deal they make and cannily using their wiles to compare business insurance so they never lose a penny and make the most from their wheeling and dealing. They’re the sort of people who would step on everyone on the way to the top and then expect help when they fell back down again! It is so hard not to feel sympathy towards Jane. The latter stages of the book, in which she is forced into a marriage with Lord Guildford Dudley, again for the advancement of the family, and the ultimate outcome of both the wedding and the fate that befalls her in the final chapters, are moving in the extreme.
At the heart of it all is a teenage girl who is totally helpless and has no way of escaping. Although it is a story that is centuries old, some of the themes will still resonate with teenagers today.
Who is this book aimed at?
This novel would appeal to anyone with a strong longing to know more about the Tudor period but who simply doesn’t want a long-winded, fusty non fiction tome to read. It’s the sort of story that would draw in anyone, right from young adult through to the more mature reader. Weir’s writing style is very easy to read, she doesn’t over complicate or use flowery language, she just tells the story simply and truthfully.
The fact the story centres on a young teenage girl might make it perhaps slightly less appealing to male readers, but not exclusively so, as Weir’s writing, both fiction and non-fiction does tend to have a loyal following from both genders.
This book is rated very highly: 4/5.
Lisa Jennings is a freelance writer from England who mainly writes art and literature reviews for a number of online journals, as well as dryer topics such as how to effectively compare business insurance and other areas of finance. She spent most of her twenties travelling across Asia on bumpy buses or sat atop mountains alone with her tent and just a book for company.