Category: Historical Fiction

Review: The Divine Sacrifice by Tony Hays

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The Divine Sacrifice is the second in a series of historical mysteries set in Arthurian Britain. Don’t miss my interview with author Tony Hays.

My review:

When an elderly monk is found murdered in his cell at the abbey of Ynys-witrin, King Arthur’s counselor Malgwyn ap Cuneglas is asked to investigate. On their arrival at the abbey, however, Malgwyn and Arthur are surprised to find that St Patrick is also about to arrive from Hibernia in order to root out heresy in the monastery. Is there a connection between the death of old Elafius and the presence of St Patrick at the abbey? As Malgwyn begins to unravel the mystery he discovers something which could threaten not only Arthur but the future of the country.

The Divine Sacrifice can be enjoyed on different levels as an Arthurian story, a historical fiction novel and a murder mystery, although it’s the combination of all three that makes the book so compelling. I have read a lot of mysteries and a lot of historical fiction but this book really stands out as something new and different.

I love the character of Malgwyn, who is one of the most unusual detectives I’ve ever encountered in a book. As one of the other characters in the novel observes, he’s an ‘uncommon man with an uncommon clarity of vision’. We also meet Arthur, Guinevere, Merlin and others who will be familiar to anyone with even a basic knowledge of Arthurian legend, athough they are not depicted in the way you might expect. It’s important to understand that this is not a retelling of the famous Arthur legends – it’s actually an original historical mystery with elements of the legends cleverly woven into the story. Arthur is shown here as a powerful leader who is working to unite the warring tribes of post-Roman Britain.
The mystery unfolds at just the right pace and there are enough twists in the story to keep the reader guessing all the way to the end. Tony Hays has obviously done a lot of research on his subject and is able to portray life in 5th century Britain in a realistic and convincing manner, meaning that I came away from the book feeling I knew a little bit more about the time period than I did before.

Although I hadn’t read the first book in the series, The Killing Way, the author provided enough background information relating to the events of the first book that I was quickly able to pick up the threads of the story and understand what was going on. However, I enjoyed The Divine Sacrifice so much I now want to go back and read The Killing Way and I’ll look forward to more books in this series in the future.

Recommended

Genre: Historical Mystery/Pages: 304/Publisher: Forge/Year: 2010/Source: Won ARC in giveaway

Review: The White Queen by Philippa Gregory

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Philippa Gregory is best known for her Tudor court novels, but with The White Queen she moves further back in time to the Plantagenets and the Wars of the Roses.

Elizabeth Woodville is twenty seven when she meets and falls in love with King Edward IV. Following a private wedding, Elizabeth becomes Queen of England and finds herself caught up in the ongoing battles between the House of Lancaster and the House of York. Amidst all the politics, intrigue and betrayal, Elizabeth’s concern is for the future of her children – in particular her two royal sons who will become the famous ‘Princes in the Tower’, a mystery which remains unsolved to this day.

The book is written in the first person present tense which I found slightly irritating, though not enough to stop me from enjoying the book. The use of present tense does help the reader to feel as if they are experiencing events along with Elizabeth, so it works in that sense, but my personal preference is definitely for past tense. There are a few passages where the viewpoint temporarily changes to the third person in order to describe battles which Elizabeth doesn’t witness but which are an important part of the storyline. I often find battle scenes boring, but these are well written and go into just the right amount of detail.

I found the story itself quite suspenseful and exciting – it probably helped that although I read a lot of historical fiction novels, I haven’t read many about the War of the Roses, so only had a vague idea of what was going to happen. Of course, this meant that I wasn’t sure exactly which parts of the book were based on fact and which parts were the invention of the author. In her note at the end of the book, Gregory mentions that there’s not much information available about the period, therefore there are some areas where she felt free to use her imagination.

If you’re not very familiar with the historical background, you’ll need to concentrate to be able to keep track of all the battles, changes of allegiances and numerous claimants to the throne. The family tree provided at the front of the book is not very helpful – it’s incomplete and really needed to show at least one more generation, as it ends before some of the important characters in the story were even born.

I found it difficult to warm to the character of Elizabeth but could feel sympathy for her, especially towards the end of the book. Richard III was also portrayed quite sympathetically – nothing like the evil hunchback in Shakespeare’s play! I would have liked to have seen his relationship with Elizabeth more thoroughly explored in the book – there was no real explanation for why she distrusts him so much, other than that she’s had dreams and premonitions that something bad will happen to her sons in the Tower. On the subject of the Princes in the Tower, the book explores an interesting theory, which may or may not be true – it would be nice to think that it was.

Interspersed with the main story is the tale of Melusina, the water goddess, from whom Elizabeth and the female members of her family are said to have descended and from whom they claim to have inherited magical powers. Magic and mythology are recurring themes throughout the book. Elizabeth and her mother Jacquetta’s witchcraft skills are used as an explanation for several key historical events – for example, they whistle up storms to defeat their enemies at sea. This aspect of the story became quite repetitive and just didn’t appeal to me much. Sometimes it felt as if there were references to Melusina, water, rivers, the sea etc on almost every page!

The book ends abruptly, but that’s not surprising since The White Queen is the first in a trilogy called The Cousins’ War and will be followed by The Red Queen and The White Princess which will focus on Margaret Beaufort and Elizabeth of York respectively.

I would recommend The White Queen if, like me, you don’t have much knowledge of the Wars of the Roses and are looking for an enjoyable and relatively easy to understand introduction to the period. For those of you with a lot of background knowledge, I think there should still be enough new ideas to keep you interested.

Recommended

Genre: Historical Fiction/Pages: 417/Publisher: Simon & Schuster/Year: 2009/Source: My own copy bought new

Review: The Moonlit Cage by Linda Holeman

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“I have always been told I was wicked…”

This is the first book I’ve read by Linda Holeman and it was good enough to make me want to read more of her work.
I love books that help me to learn about other times and other places: in The Moonlit Cage, Holeman introduces us to life in 19th century Afghanistan. Not being an expert in Afghan history or culture, I have no idea how accurate her descriptions are, but the book seems very well-researched to me. A glossary of unfamiliar Dari and Pashto words is included at the back of the book, but I didn’t feel the need to refer to this very often as most of the words were explained as we encountered them in the text.
 
 The story is narrated by Darya, a young Afghan girl. All her life Darya has refused to conform to others’ expectations and secretly dreams of one day finding freedom. When her father’s second wife, Sulima, puts a curse on her, Darya is forced to leave her village and is sold into marriage with the son of a nomadic chief. However, when her husband learns about the curse and threatens to kill her, she runs away again. As she escapes through the Hindu Kush mountains, she meets David Ingram and begins a journey which takes her first to India and then to London.
 

I really enjoyed this book and found it difficult to put down. The first two thirds, which took place in Afghanistan and India, were fascinating, though I didn’t like the way the storyline developed after Darya’s arrival in England. The only other problem I had with the book was that while Darya was an interesting, likeable character, I found David Ingram, as the hero of the story, quite boring and two-dimensional.I admired the way Darya’s strength and courage helped her to survive all kinds of pain and abuse.

After reading the first couple of chapters I decided that this book would count towards the Women Unbound reading challenge. Throughout the entire story, Darya constantly questions why she has to behave in a certain way just because she’s a woman and challenges the belief that daughters are worthless and only sons are of value.
 
I knew nothing about this book until I found it in the library (on the “H” shelf next to Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner which coincidentally is also set in Afghanistan) so I was surprised by how good it was. I would recommend it to anyone who enjoys long historical fiction novels…but you can prepare to be saddened and shocked by Darya’s story.
 
Recommended
Genre: Historical Fiction/Pages: 544/Publisher: Headline Review/Year: 2006/Source: Library book

Review: An Echo in the Bone by Diana Gabaldon

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An Echo in the Bone is the 7th book in Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander series (or Cross Stitch as it’s known here in the UK) and takes place during the American Revolution. I’ve been following the adventures of Jamie Fraser and his time-travelling wife Claire for more than 10 years now and although this book won’t be published in the UK until 2010, I ordered it from the US Amazon site as I couldn’t wait to read it.

This review may contain spoilers if you haven’t read the previous 6 books in the series

If you haven’t read (or like me, have read but didn’t enjoy) the spin-off Lord John series, you might struggle with certain sections of this book. I would recommend reading Lord John and the Brotherhood of the Blade before beginning, as a number of characters from that book feature quite prominently in Echo. In fact, there are so many chapters (mainly in the first half of the book) devoted to Lord John, William Ransom, Percy Wainwright, Hal and Dottie, that at times this felt more like a Lord John book than an Outlander one. I do like both Lord John and William as characters though, and towards the end of the book their storylines begin to tie together with Jamie and Claire’s.

According to Diana Gabaldon, the image on the book cover is a caltrop – a weapon with four spikes each ending in a sharp point. The caltrop represents the four main storylines running simultaneously throughout the book: Jamie and Claire visiting Scotland to collect Jamie’s printing press, following the fire that destroyed their home at Fraser’s Ridge; the adventures of Jamie’s son, William, a Lieutenant in the British army; Young Ian trying to come to terms with the break-up of his marriage to Emily whilst being pursued by a vengeful old man, and Roger and Brianna following Claire and Jamie’s fate via a box of old letters.

Due to all the storylines which were taking place, the story was told from many different viewpoints – Claire, Jamie, Roger, Brianna, Young Ian, William, Lord John, Rachel Hunter (a Quaker girl who falls in love with Ian) and even one or two pages from Fergus and Jemmy’s points of view. This technique gave the book a slightly different feel to the rest of the series, though I personally preferred the style of the earlier books which were told mostly by Claire.

I know this review has so far sounded a bit negative, but there were plenty of things I loved about the book. The story was filled with bizarre coincidences and almost-forgotten characters from previous books reappearing when you least expected them, and although you had to suspend belief at times, I enjoyed this aspect of the book.

I also enjoyed the Roger and Brianna sections, as they began to read Jamie and Claire’s letters one by one in the relative safety of 20th century Lallybroch. Later in the book, though, Roger and Brianna’s story takes a more sinister turn, and they discover that they’re not quite as safe as they thought they were!

I had been looking forward to Jamie, Claire and Young Ian returning to Scotland again and being reunited with Jenny and Ian Murray – however, this didn’t happen until near the end of the book, and when they finally did get to Lallybroch, it certainly wasn’t the happy reunion I was expecting! From this point onwards, the plot suddenly started moving at a whirlwind pace. Apparently this was intentional (this section was even entitled “Reap the Whirlwind”). I think I’ll probably need to read the book again to be able to fully understand everything that was happening.

We were left with a lot of loose ends and cliffhangers, which wouldn’t be a problem if we weren’t going to have to wait another 3 or 4 years for the next book! Still, Diana Gabaldon has given us plenty to think about, as there are now an infinite number of ways in which the various storylines could progress. Although this was not my favourite in the Outlander series, I still enjoyed it and am already looking forward to Book 8!

Recommended

Genre: Historical Fiction/Pages: 820/Year: 2009/Publisher: Delacorte Press/Source: My own copy bought new