Category: Historical Fiction

The Spring of the Ram by Dorothy Dunnett

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This is the second book in the eight-volume House of Niccolò series. In the first book, Niccolò Rising, we saw how Nicholas, a young dyer’s apprentice, rose in the world to become head of the Charetty trading company. In The Spring of the Ram, Nicholas and the other men of the Charetty company – including the doctor Tobias, notary Julius, priest Godscalc, engineer John le Grant and mercenary leader Astorre – journey to the Black Sea port of Trebizond to establish a trading post. With them every step of the way is Pagano Doria, a sea adventurer who has married Nicholas’s thirteen-year-old stepdaughter, Catherine de Charetty, and is now in a position where he may be able to seize control of the company through his marriage.

One of the things I love about Dorothy Dunnett’s books is that they give me an opportunity to learn about people and places I might never have known anything about otherwise. Dunnett’s novels open up whole new worlds, focusing on periods of history and geographical locations that are usually ignored in historical fiction. This is the first book I’ve read about Trebizond, a final outpost of the Byzantine Empire which at the time the story is set (1461) is under threat of falling to the Turkish army at any moment, and I thought it was a fascinating setting. I loved all of the beautiful descriptions of Trebizond and the other places Nicholas and his companions pass through on their journey to and from the Black Sea coast. This, for example, is the moment when the two ships belonging to Doria and Nicholas finally arrive at Trebizond:

So there came to the poisonous honey of Trebizond the two vessels from barbarian Europe, the four months of their travelling over, and winter turned into spring. One after the other, they crossed the wide, irregular bay towards the green amphitheatre which lined it. In its midst, the classical City gleamed on its tableland, alight with marble and gold against the dark mountain forests behind. There stood the fabled City, treasure-house of the East.

I enjoyed The Spring of the Ram much more than the first book, Niccolò Rising, possibly because I’m more familiar with the characters now and so found it easier to get straight into the story. And of course when I first started to read Niccolò Rising it was inevitable that I was going to compare it with Dunnett’s other series, the Lymond Chronicles, however hard I tried not to, and although I liked Nicholas and Marian de Charetty, most of the other characters seemed to me to be less interesting than the ones in the Lymond Chronicles. It seems that I just needed to give myself time to get used to them though, because now that I’ve read two Niccolo books I feel that I’m starting to get to know and understand some of the characters better. Nicholas himself continues to amaze me with his complex machinations and intricate trading deals, but despite the amount of time we spend inside his head in this book (which is more than we were ever allowed to spend inside Lymond’s) his character and motivations still remain a bit of an enigma to me. Most of what we learn about him is through the observations of the people around him – Tobie, Godscalc and the others – but we have to remember that none of them truly understand Nicholas either and have a tendency to misinterpret his actions.

All of Dunnett’s books are clever, complex and intricately plotted; this one, I thought, was particularly complicated because there seemed to be so much happening behind the scenes, so many different forces and factions all vying against each other, pulling in different directions and trying to turn things to their own advantage. The main trading powers – Venice, Florence and Genoa – are all rivals with conflicting business interests, then there are the various rulers and leaders – Emperor David of Trebizond, Uzum Hasan of the White Sheep Tribe, Sultan Mehmet II of the Ottoman Empire, and others. Members of Nicholas’s family also seem to have agendas of their own, and finally there are Violante of Naxos and the mysterious Greek with the wooden leg, both of whom are also trying to control Nicholas’s actions. With so much going on, I won’t pretend that I fully understood everything that was happening in the book because I certainly didn’t, but as with all of Dunnett’s novels I’m looking forward to reading this one again!

It has taken Niccolo a bit longer to win me over than it took Lymond but I’ve been pulled into his world now and have already started the third in the series, Race of Scorpions.

Wolf Hall Readalong: Week 1

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During August and September I am taking part in a readalong of Wolf Hall, Hilary Mantel’s Booker Prize-winning novel about Thomas Cromwell. The readalong is hosted by Michelle of The True Book Addict and Kai of Fiction State of Mind. This week we have been reading Part One, which consists of three chapters.

Here are my answers to this week’s discussion questions:

1) What prompted you to join this read-a-long?

As an avid reader of historical fiction I should probably have read this book before now, but for some reason, despite its success and popularity, I never got around to reading it. Now that the sequel, Bring Up the Bodies, has been released and getting so much praise and attention too, it seemed like the perfect time to finally read Wolf Hall, and when I saw that there was going to be a readalong it helped motivate me to actually pick the book up and start reading. I also like the way this readalong is structured and hopefully I won’t have any problems keeping up with the schedule!

2) What do you think of Thomas so far?

I don’t feel that I know Thomas Cromwell very well yet, but as I’ve still only read the first three chapters I’m sure I’ll get to know and understand him better as I read on. However, each of these first three chapters has given us an insight into a different side of Thomas’s character. In the first, we get a glimpse of what appears to have been a very unhappy childhood, living with a cruel and abusive father. In the second, we meet Thomas again as an adult and we are shown his public persona, the part he is playing in the politics of the country, and his interactions with other important historical figures such as Stephen Gardiner and Cardinal Wolsey. And in the third we see Thomas in his role as a husband and father.

3) What do you think about Thomas’s feelings towards his son Gregory? Do you think he is too indulgent? Do you think his treatment of Gregory now will affect Gregory’s future?

I think it’s a good thing that Thomas is trying to avoid treating Gregory the way his own father treated him. This quote gives us a good idea of his feelings on this subject:

Bawling, strong, one hour old, plucked from the cradle: he kissed the infant’s fluffy skull and said, I shall be as tender to you as my father was not to me. For what’s the point of breeding children, if each generation does not improve on what went before?

I don’t think Thomas is being too indulgent, but it’s too early to say at this point in the novel what effect his treatment of Gregory will have on Gregory’s future.

See Kai’s post for other participants’ thoughts on Part 1 of Wolf Hall.

The Second Empress by Michelle Moran

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This historical fiction novel by Michelle Moran is set during the final years of Napoleon’s reign, between 1809 and 1815, and explores the French Emperor’s relationships with his second wife, Marie-Louise, and his sister, Pauline. I have only read one of Michelle Moran’s previous novels, Cleopatra’s Daughter, which is set in Ancient Rome and although I enjoyed it, I thought this new one, The Second Empress, was much better – the quality of her writing seems to have improved and the characters felt more developed too.

The story is told by three very different characters who take it in turns to narrate one chapter each. The first is Maria-Lucia, the eighteen year old daughter of Francis I, Emperor of Austria. Abandoning her dreams of marrying Count Adam von Neipperg, the man she loves, and one day ruling Austria as her brother’s regent, Maria-Lucia agrees to a marriage with the Emperor of France, Napoleon Bonaparte, as it will help to keep her father’s throne safe. Napoleon hopes she will be able to give him a legitimate heir, which his first wife Josephine was unable to provide. Maria-Lucia, or Marie-Louise as she became known in France, is a lovely, compelling character, intelligent, well-educated and talented. The portrayal of Napoleon is very negative (not that I had really expected anything else) but despite his cruelty to her throughout their marriage, Marie-Louise continues to perform her duties with dignity and grace.

Our second narrator is Pauline, Princess Borghese, Napoleon’s sister. She dreams of marrying Napoleon herself so that they can rule Egypt together like the ancient pharaohs and she is bitterly jealous of both her brother’s first wife, Josephine, who she encouraged him to divorce, and his second, Marie-Louise. Pauline is a spiteful, malicious person but of the three narrators, I thought her voice was the strongest and the most fun to read. She’s not a completely unsympathetic character because she is so obviously unhappy and miserable. She also has a lot of eccentricities – she’s obsessed with Egypt, she likes to bathe in milk, and she even uses her servants as footstools to rest her feet on. Although Pauline was a real historical figure, she’s not someone I’ve ever read about before so I’m not sure how accurate this portrayal is, but I thought she was a fascinating character.

Finally there’s Paul Moreau, Pauline’s Haitian servant, who accompanied her back to France after Haiti gained its independence from the French. Despite his loyalty to Pauline (and the fact that he has been in love with her for many years) Paul is aware of her faults and is able to feel sympathy for Marie-Louise too. He also still has hopes of returning to Haiti to help rebuild his war-torn country and this adds another interesting aspect to the story.

Although I have read other books set during Napoleon’s reign, this is the first one I’ve read which concentrates on the lives of Napoleon and the Bonaparte family. Before I started to read, I was worried that I might struggle because I don’t know a lot about this period of French history, but luckily this was not a problem. The focus is on the lives of the three narrators and their relationships with each other and the people around them; details of politics, battles and military campaigns are kept to a minimum (which could be either a good or a bad thing, I suppose, depending on your personal tastes in historical fiction). I was fascinated by the characters in this novel, particularly Pauline and Marie-Louise and was inspired to do some research and find out more about them – though as I had no idea how their stories would play out and didn’t want to spoil the book for myself, I waited until I had finished before I looked anything up. The author’s notes at the back of the book were helpful too and explained what happened to each of the main characters after the novel ends.

As I have so little knowledge of this subject, it wouldn’t be fair of me to comment on the historical accuracy of this book but I could tell that it had been well-researched – Moran had even included some extracts from real love letters sent between Napoleon and Josephine. A huge amount of information has obviously had to be condensed into 300 pages, so the book doesn’t really go into a lot of depth but would be a good choice if you’re looking for an enjoyable, entertaining historical fiction novel and don’t want to be overwhelmed with too many details.

I received a review copy of The Second Empress from the publisher via Netgalley

The Secret Keeper: A Novel of Kateryn Parr by Sandra Byrd

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This is Sandra Byrd’s second novel featuring a lady-in-waiting to one of Henry VIII’s wives (the first was To Die For: A Novel of Anne Boleyn). I have not read that one or any of her other previous novels but requested this one from Netgalley as I’m always interested in trying new historical fiction authors.

The Secret Keeper is narrated by Juliana St. John, a knight’s daughter who becomes lady-in-waiting to King Henry VIII’s sixth and final wife, Katherine Parr (spelled Kateryn in this book). Amid all the intrigue of the Tudor court Juliana is a loyal friend to the Queen and as they get to know each other better a strong bond is formed between them. As we follow Kateryn’s story through Juliana’s eyes, we discover that Juliana is hiding some secrets of her own, including one that won’t be revealed until the end of the book.

Having read about this period many times before, I was familiar with the major events of Katherine Parr’s life including her marriage to Henry VIII, the King’s death and her relationship with Sir Thomas Seymour, and her support for Anne Askew, who was tortured and burned at the stake as a heretic. You don’t really need to have any previous knowledge though, as the story is easy enough to follow anyway (and there are some useful family trees at the front of the book too). Katherine is probably most famous for being the wife who survived, but this novel makes it clear that she deserves to be remembered for so much more. She was a Protestant reformer and wrote and published two books, Prayers or Meditations and The Lamentations of a Sinner. Bearing in mind this was the 16th century, this was a significant achievement (Katherine was apparently the first English queen to have books published under her own name) and I enjoyed the little insights we were given into women’s literacy. The Queen also liked to discuss philosophy and religion with her friends and played an important role in the education of her stepchildren, including the future Elizabeth I, another woman who valued literature and learning.

However, this book was more than just a retelling of Katherine Parr’s life story because Juliana is a fictional character with an interesting story of her own to tell. She goes through some very difficult and traumatic situations during her time at court and one of her ordeals in particular is something that still has a lot of relevance today. Throughout the novel Juliana also experiences prophetic dreams and she must decide what she should do with the special knowledge she has been given.

Juliana was a sympathetic character and I also really liked Jamie Hart, the Irishman who is Juliana’s romantic interest throughout the book. I wished we had spent more time with him, as I felt I didn’t get to know him well enough and I would have liked his relationship with Juliana to have played a bigger part in the story. Normally I find there’s too much romance in Tudor court novels rather than not enough, but in this case I just wanted Juliana to have some happiness and I found I was looking forward to Jamie’s occasional appearances at court almost as much as she was!

Considering the number of novels that have been written about the Tudor court and Henry VIII’s six wives in particular, it must be so difficult to find a different way to approach this subject. Sandra Byrd manages to do this to some extent, by telling the story through the eyes of a fictitious lady-in-waiting, but although I enjoyed reading it there was nothing that I thought really made the book stand out from other historical fiction novels of this type. I did appreciate the way the author had made an effort to use language appropriate to the period and avoided the excessively modern dialogue that can often spoil the atmosphere of historical fiction. Oh, and if you’re wondering about the spelling of Kateryn’s name, the author’s note tells us that there’s some evidence that the queen used this spelling herself, signing her documents Kateryn the Queen, KP.

I received a review copy of The Secret Keeper from the publisher via Netgalley

Here Be Dragons by Sharon Penman

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Here Be Dragons is the first in Penman’s Welsh Princes trilogy and follows the lives of King John’s daughter, Joanna, and her Welsh husband, Llewelyn ab Iorweth (known as Llewelyn the Great).

The book begins in the year 1183 when we meet Llewelyn as a ten-year-old boy, upset at having to leave Wales and move over the border into England following his mother’s marriage to an English border lord. The grandson of Owain the Great, King of Gwynedd, Llewelyn is homesick for Wales and as soon as he is old enough, he returns to Wales to reclaim his crown from his uncles. Llewelyn becomes Prince of Gwynedd and eventually rules most of Wales and devotes his life to securing the stability of his country as he believes that a united Wales will be stronger and better able to defend itself against the English.

Our other main character, Joanna, is the illegitimate daughter of King John. After her mother’s death she goes to join her father at court and when Joanna is fourteen the King arranges to have her married to Llewelyn in the hope that their marriage will help to bring peace between Wales and England. As the years go by Joanna begins to love Llewelyn but finds herself increasingly torn between her father and her husband.

As Sharon Penman’s The Sunne in Splendour is one of my favourite historical fiction novels I probably shouldn’t have waited so long to read this one, but I do tend to do that with authors I’ve enjoyed – I can never decide whether I would rather read all their books as quickly as I can or spread them out over as long a period as possible so I still have something to look forward to. I finally picked up Here Be Dragons a few weeks ago and I wasn’t disappointed – I loved it!

Penman does such a good job of making some very complicated periods of history easy to follow and understand. Before I read The Sunne in Splendour I didn’t know much about Richard III or the Wars of the Roses but by the end of the book I really felt I had learned a lot, and I had the same feeling at the end of Here Be Dragons. Of course these novels are fiction and you can’t assume that everything in a historical fiction novel will always be completely accurate, but Penman’s books are obviously very well researched and she does include an author’s note where she explains which parts of the novel are fact and which are fiction.

The relationship between Joanna and Llewellyn forms a big part of the plot, but that’s not all this book is about. As well as romance, the story also includes political intrigue, battles, feuds, rivalry between brothers, betrayal and forgiveness. I didn’t always agree with what Joanna did, but I did like her and had a lot of sympathy for her, being caught between her husband and her father; not a choice that anybody should have to make. Using Joanna, in her unique position, as one of the novel’s main characters meant we could see things from both a Welsh and English perspective and neither were portrayed as the villains. There’s no doubt that King John made a lot of mistakes and errors of judgement, but he is portrayed here as having some good qualities as well as bad ones and is shown in a better light than in other novels I’ve read about him.

Of the two Penman books I’ve read, although I loved them both I did prefer The Sunne in Splendour but that’s probably because I’m more interested in that particular period of history. I will read the other two books in this trilogy, Falls the Shadow and The Reckoning and will try not to wait so long this time before I get around to reading them!

The Adventures of Alianore Audley by Brian Wainwright

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I’m always looking out for novels about one of my favourite periods in English history, the Wars of the Roses and the reigns of King Edward IV and Richard III. When I came across The Adventures of Alianore Audley, described as “a brilliantly funny, subversive spoof” I was intrigued…it sounded like something very original and refreshing. I was even more interested in reading it when I found that the author Elizabeth Chadwick had named it one of her top ten historical fiction novels!

This book is a lively and entertaining account of the Wars of the Roses as seen through the eyes of Alianore Audley, a fictional 15th century ‘damosel’ who is present at some important moments in history and meets some of the leading historical figures of the period. She has an interesting personal story of her own, involving her marriage to the knight Roger Beauchamp and her career as a spy for Edward IV and Richard III, collecting information for ‘Yorkist Intelligence’, but the main focus of the novel is on Alianore’s sharp and witty observations of the historical events of the time.

The language Alianore and the other characters use is (deliberately) filled with modern slang and references that would sound ridiculous in a serious historical fiction novel, but perfectly suit the tone of this book. Alianore is quite pro-Richard and the way she explains the disappearance of the Princes in the Tower is about as believable as any other theory I’ve read. And if you’re a Ricardian you’ll probably appreciate all of her comments about “the obnoxious Tudor slimebag”, Henry VII, who she wishes she’d dropped down the shaft of the garderobe at birth.

I enjoyed Alianore’s jokes about her hennin (the cone-shaped headdress fashionable at the time) and I loved the idea of Richard reading the Court Circular and looking for his latest war horse in the “Used Destriers” section! Another thing I liked was the way so many parallels are drawn between 15th century and 21st century politics. Alianore is always worrying about Richard’s “image problems” and on another occasion she tells Edward his “ratings in the North have plummeted to their lowest levels since 1469”. I’m going to be completely honest though and say that unlike most of the reviewers of this book on Amazon and Goodreads, I didn’t find it hilariously funny. I did think it was amusing and witty but I suppose a sense of humour is an individual thing and while this book might have made other people laugh out loud it didn’t quite have that effect on me. This is not to say that I didn’t enjoy it though, because I did.

Despite the light-hearted feel of the writing, it’s obvious that the author has a good knowledge of the period (and I’m sure it’s usually the case that you would need to fully understand a subject to be able to write a convincing parody of it). Although this book was not difficult to read I don’t think I would recommend it as a first introduction to the period because to understand most of the jokes you really need to be familiar with at least some of the history involved. You might still enjoy it, but you wouldn’t be able to fully appreciate all of Alianore’s wit and sarcasm. But if you do decide to give this book a try, I can almost guarantee that it will be unlike any other historical fiction novel you’ve ever read!

One final thing I should mention: The Adventures of Alianore Audley is published by BeWrite Books, who are now an ebook only publisher. You might still be able to get a print copy, but I read the Kindle version which I thought was reasonably priced and well worth the money.

Niccolò Rising by Dorothy Dunnett

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If you’ve been following my blog for a while, you’ll probably remember that I read (and loved) Dorothy Dunnett’s Lymond Chronicles earlier this year. I read the sixth and final book in the series in April and was planning to wait a bit longer before I started the House of Niccolò series, but in the end I couldn’t resist the temptation.

The House of Niccolò books were written after the Lymond Chronicles but are set in an earlier period (the 15th century rather than the 16th) and there are some links between the two series. Niccolò Rising, as the title suggests, follows our hero Nicholas as he begins to rise in the world to become a successful merchant and courier. And that’s really all I can tell you about the story. It has so many different layers and is so complex, intricate and cleverly plotted that I wouldn’t know where to begin writing any kind of summary. It’s also difficult to know how much I can say without spoiling things for future readers; if you started reading this book without knowing anything at all about it, it’s possible that you might not even be able to tell at first who the main protagonist of the series is going to be, as Nicholas goes by a different name for the first half of the book.

This book, like all the other Dorothy Dunnett novels I’ve read, was not the easiest of reads but in my opinion it was definitely worth making a bit of extra effort. I did find myself feeling completely confused on many occasions while I was reading, but some of my questions had been answered by the end of the book and the rest I’m hoping will become clearer later in the series or on a re-read. The biggest problem I had was trying to keep the characters straight in my mind. There are over one hundred of them listed in the character list at the front of the book (many of them are real historical figures) though with even the help of the list I still couldn’t seem to keep track of them all! The historical setting for this story is not one that I’m at all familiar with (the world of trade, banking and politics in Flanders and Italy in the 15th century), but I enjoyed learning more about it. Bruges, where a lot of the action in the book takes place, is somewhere I’ve wanted to visit for a long time and it has now moved even higher on my list.

All the time I was reading this book I was trying my best not to compare it with the Lymond Chronicles or Nicholas with Francis Crawford but really it was almost impossible not to. So the question is, as an introduction to the series did I like this book as much as the first Lymond book, The Game of Kings? The answer is no. The writing style is quite different and I didn’t find it as much fun to read. I was enjoying it enough to be in no doubt that I would keep reading to the end, but it never quite reached ‘unputdownable’ status. Nicholas, I suppose, could be considered more instantly likeable than Lymond (though it soon becomes obvious there’s a lot more going on behind his seemingly cheerful exterior than anybody realises) but he hasn’t quite won me over yet; we’ll see how I feel about him when I get further into the series.

When I came to the end of this book I didn’t feel compelled to immediately pick up the next one the way I did with the Lymond Chronicles, but I will definitely be continuing with the series. A copy of The Spring of the Ram is already waiting on my shelf.