"The Boleyn Wife" Giveaway Winner

Wonder how I pick a random person? Well, it's simple. I assign numbers to all the people who enter, in order of comments. Then I use a Randomn Number Generator to select the winner. There were thirteen comments this time, not counting my own. The number generated was 5. Ipso facto the winner is:

Linda (lcbrower40(at)gmail(dot)com)

Congratulations, Linda.

Thanks to you all for entering the giveaway. ERxpect more giveawats of books from Helen Hollick's Sea Witch pirate series in November!

COOL NEWS! Brandy Purdy, the author of The Boleyn Wife, will be contributing a new feature to this blog called Book Maven where you can get all your historical fiction questions answered! Stay tuned!

The Reckoning, by Sharon Kay Penman

The Reckoning
Sharon Kay Penman

I am very sorry to report that I have now finished reading all of the books in Sharon Kay Penman's trilogy about the strife between the English crown and the Welsh from King John to Edward I, from Llewelyn the Great to his grandson, Llewelyn ap Griffydd. I did not read them one after another, but nevertheless, it will be hard not to have these people I have come to know, to love in some cases and to hate in others, in my daily life.

In this final novel, there was so much to wrap up with the fortunes of the de Montfort family and the royal house of Wales that at first I feared that was all the novel would be, a sort of superbly written denouement. It proved to be much more, though it cannot have had the single focus of the first two. Here Be Dragons was the story of Llewelyn and Joanna first and foremost, and Falls the Shadow was clearly focused on Simon de Montfort and his fight for a better goverbment in England. The Reckoning is several stories, the further adventures of the de Montfort boys and the love story of their sister Eleanor and Llewelyn's grandson, also named llewelyn. The plus is that the several characters involved in these two stories, the de Monrtfort sons and Llewelyn, Eleanor and his fractious brother Davydd, are such well drawn and compelling characters that the reader will not mind the string of connected yet separate tales to get to know them.

Penman has a highly developed abilitiy to stick to history and yet write a heck of a great story. I don't want to risk a spoiler, but not handled well, the dramatic events of the end of the novel, one coming after another as they did in real life, could not have been better crafted into a satisfying and well dramatized story. I have long admired Penman's ability to create a sort of linking character, in this case a largely fictionalized Hugh who can bring the characters, events and stories together. I was not as attached to Hugh as I was to her earlier linking characters, but he worked to the purpose anyway. I was afraid near the end that Hugh and Caitlin would get in the way of the story, but I was wrong. Pennman uses them to bring it all together at the end in an understated manner that i appreciated.

This novel was finished in 1991. I have read novels Penman wrote since then, but not all of them. I wonder if a device she used in this and earlier novels has gotten out of her system. There are regular and numerous scenes where a cut to another place and person is followed by a literal knock on the door, heralding a messenger with usually terrible news. Nothing wrong with a scene like that. Penman uses it to catch one up with what the other characters have been up to and does it darn well. But it happens so often that I found myself thinking, "Now, keep your trews on, you guys, because there's a message about some powerful bad news a-coming." A terrific novel like Penman's should not start to become comic unintentionally.

That is a minor problem, however, and probably something she's outgrown, and all in all The Reckoning is a wonderfully compelling and well told tale I would recommend to anyone and everyone. Penman has a healthy approach to the history in her historical novels. You can count on accuracy where it matters and yet find yourself lost in the speculative illustration the author adds to make her magic.

I listened to The Reckoning on National Library Service cassettes (RC 36863). It is also available from Bookshare.org in text and Braille for eligible persons. It is, of course, also available in the UK. I am sorry to say it does not appear to be abailable on Kindle or from Audible.com or BooksOnTape.com. It is only available in English.

Autographed Book Giveaway: The Boleyn Wife, by Brandy Purdy

The Boleyn Wife
Brandy Purdy

Brandy Purdy has accomplished what many of us independent authors dream of: she wrote a great novel, decided to publish it herself, then had publishers asking her for the privilege of taking it on! That should tell you something about the book, and you'd be right. It's good, it's fresh and it's provocative. It won't be released until January 2010 but you can get one now, autographed noless, , and all you have to do is ask.. oh, and be the one whose name is drawn. Just leave a comment on this post with your name and email address.

For those of you who were already familiar with the early version of this novel, which was titled "Vengeance Is Mine", let me assure you that this is the new and improved book. The one thing about which I had reservations with the first book, the rather brief treatment of Catherine Howard contrasted with Anne Boleyn, has been fixed. There is plenty about Catherine in The Boleyn Wife.

It's so nice to have a fresh look about the whole six wives mess. I once read that the three men who have had the most books written about them were Abraham Lincoln, Napoleon Bonaparte and Jesus Christ. I would hazard a bet that Anne Boleyn is one of the most written about women. So it's remarkable to have a book come out that has something new and different to say. The Boleyn Wife is the story in her own words of Anne's brother's wife, Jame. Jane is an unhappy woman. For one thing, her husband George is is "not that into her". If he is into girls at all, in fact, the one that fascinates him is his own sister. Why not? She's bright, funny, pretty, popular, and perfectly willing to go along in a jape. Jane, on the other hand, is plain, whiny, and definitely no fun at all. Needless to say, Jane is none too happy with the state of affairs. Add to that the fact she is more than mildly paranoid, feeling left out of everything, and not so good at thinking things through. It's a deadly combination, not just for her but also for Anne, George, and some quite charming and guiltless fellows. When Jane's resentful hate goes awry for Anne, it is her affection and protectiveness for Wife #5, Catherine Howard, combined with that inability to see likely consequences that brings the axe down, literally.

One of the things I l iked a lot about this book is the friendship Anne has with her "groupies", George and his buddies, artistic and aristocratic men. I can see how Jane would feel left out. There would be few people who make it into that clique, who would be quick enough, witty enough, or irreverent enough to fit in. One could feel sorry for Jane Boleyn if these "Evergreen Gallants" weren't so fun and she wasn't such a wet blanket. I also liked Purdy's inventiveness with the sexuality in this novel. By inventiveness I don't mean it's all lies. Much of what little Catherine does is right out of the records of her trial, but the fictional relationships between other characters adds spice to a too-oft-told tale.

You can preorder the book now at the online booksellers and no doubt at your local bookstore. But if you can't stand the wait for The Boleyn Wife make sure you leave a comment here, with your name and email address, and on October 30th I will randomly select someone who will get an autographed copy straight from Purdy herself.

Can the movie be long in coming?

Sorry, due to postage costs this giveaway is available only to persons in North America.

The Burning Land, by Bernard Cornwell - King Alfred #5

The Burning Land
Bernard Cornwell

King Alfred #5

I am just not going to be able to rave about The Burning Land as I normally do about Bernard Cornwell's books in general and Uhtred's series in particular. I am as disappointed with it as I was with Sword Song and for much the same reasons. Neither has the heart of the first three in this anticipated six-volume series. I suspect that Cornwell, warming to his mission, which I also suspect is lately come, to acquaint the British people with the source of their nation, decided he had to chronicle that creation and his typical terrific story-telling be damned. I am not saying this is a bad book. Far from it. It's Cornwell's usual riveting characters and action scenes. But it feels crafted about historical events rather than the character. I came to retitle the book "Uhtred Hops About", and my husband, who read it to me, added "Without Much Conviction".

We start with our warlord, Uhtred, at some future date tossing a manuscript he snatched from a monk's hands into the fire. It angered him because it told the story of a great battle all wrong, never mentioning him and, worse, giving credit to others who actually impeded his success. Apparently this situation, the Battle of Farnham, really stuck in Uhtred's craw, because soon after he gets so mad at a blind monk who also dissed Uhtred's now dead wife Gisela that he kills him in front of Asser and Erkenwald and Alfred and absolutely everybody. He storms out, breaking his oath to serve Alfred, and runs crying to Ragnar Ragnarson in Northumbria. He immediately hops into a plan to attack Wessex by ship, then gets a come hither message from Aethelflaed, Lady of the Mercians, to come save her, and drops everything and hops over to Mercia. It seems his oath to her trumps his oath to Alfred, his desire for revenge, his wish to be sort of like a Dane again, his dream of reclaiming Bebbanburg, his assurances to Ragnar and Britta that he is done with those blasted cabbage-farting (his words, not mine) Saxon, well, simply everything! So he goes and rescues her from a convent, gets a nasty bee sting, fights more Danes, has sex with Aethelflaed, burns up a bunch of ships and kills lot of Danes the remains of which will be found a thousand years later when they dig for a train station where little Bernie Cornwell grew up, and decides he likes Edward the aetheling after all. And for this I paid $53 to get the book from Amazon.co.uk!

Uhtred himself fusses about not having a purpose. He seems to be aware that he is just killing time as he waits for whatever Cornwell has in mind for him now. I thought the last two books were going to be about Uhtred's sons being on two sides of the conflict, but while he has two sons by the end of this volume, they are still kids. I can tell the next book will be about how Uhtred helps Aethelflaed kick Dane ass out of Mercia, but if the series is going to involve any sons it will have to go beyond six volumes. For heaven's sake, Alfred is still alive at the end of this one.

Cornwell is not known for his female characters. In his Historical Note at the end of this novel he talks about what a strong individual she was and how overlooked by even the feminists as historical heroines were being brought out of obscurity. Unfortunately the character of Aethelflaed in Cornwell's book cannot hold a candle to the real one. This Aethelflaed's heroism seems to amount to refusing to follow orders and looking beautiful and inspiring to the men. She drags her handmaidens with her as she accompanies the army. If I were Uhtred I would have a hard and fast rule that anyone who has to have handmaidens can't come with the army. Since of the themes of the Saxon series is that Uhtred constantly is ovberlooked for credit for his achievements which are ascribed to others, I have a bad feeling that in book six it will turn out that the generalship I ascribe to Aethelflaed is going to turn out to have really been Uhtred's all along.

In sum, let me say, if you skip Sword Song and The Burning Land and go on to the sixth -- last? -- volume, you won't have lost any plot. I hope Uhtred has more oomph in it. I wouldn't have missed reading it myself, as I enjoy Uhred and Saxon England immensely, but I can't say it even came close to the earlier volumes, and I don't understand why.

The copy Jim read to me I bought on Amazon.co.uk. The Burning Land is due to be released in the US this January. It is not in any accessible format yet.

Read about Aethelflaed

The Edge on the Sword, by Rebacca Tingle
Swords Across the Thames, by Elizabeth Garwood Haley (Warrior Queen Series)
The Lady Who Fought Vikings, by Don Stansbury
Aethelflaed: Royal Lady, War Lady, by Jane Wolfe
Ethelfleda, Lady of the Mercians on History and Women

Things Fall Apart: A Novel, by Chinua Achebe

Things Fall Apart: A Novel
By Chinua Achebe

Things Fall Apart: A Novel is a historical novel set in Nigeria in the late 1800s. The fact that the date is not clear suits the subject of the novel, the village life of a rural lower Niger region as it slams head on into a new world order, that of colonialism. How relevant is the time, after all? That relevance is creeping, and that is how Achebe presents it to us, one small clue at a time. First we learn the women of the village grow maize. Then we learn that the protagonist, Okonkwo, owns a firearm. Next we hear the village has a cannon. The first white man in the area comes in an "iron horse" which I assume to be an automobile. Finally the last clue helps us pinpoint the time. Victoria is the Queen of England. Thus we are brought into the global community gradually, just as the people in this book.

This is a very short novel. On cassette book from the National Library Service it did not even fill four sides. And again we learn something in a most subtle way. The Western habit of tomes shows how highly we regard the complexities of our lives. Not so the Ibo, Okonkwo's people. They get to the point, they say what they mean, they don't belabor the point. Like the folk tales with which this story is adorned, the tale is simple and it is short. It is told in an English that as closely offers the feel of the Obi language as the author could achieve, and it is faithful to the storytelling style of the culture as well. Just as in Nigerian folktales, for instance, connections between characters and events are related every time they enter the story line.

This is the story of a man who not only is ill-equipped to cope with the change that European religion, technology and government bring but was as ill-equipped to deal with his own patriarchal culture. Disgusted by his own father's laziness, Okonkwo overcompensates for what he regards a "womanly" and becomes hypermale. That is, he is big, strong, brave, hard working and tireless, and he is also harsh, violent, impatient, inflexible and quite unable to see any other view of his world than his own. In every situation Okonkwo chooses the most hasty and irretrievable action to take, and it leads to his own downfall.

What struck me most in this novel is how it neither lectured nor apologized, as so many books about European and American colonialism do. Achebe simply lays out Okonkwo's world and its culture. It is close-knit and just, but it is also full of superstition and heartlessness. Twins are unlucky so they are exposed at birth. Women are totally subject to men. If the priestess of a god says someone is to be sacrificed, there is no argument. Yet it is Okonkwo's maternal uncle who points out to him that he cannot live in a purely masculine society, that his error is that he does not honor the female virtues, recognizing, for example, the strengths in his favorite daughter but only wishing she were a boy to make those strengths of any value.

I would say what I most got out of this novel is a sense of a quite different way of telling a story, unsentimental, direct, faithful, and uncompromising. It was like having my brain fumigated. Now I will go back to our typical delightfully florid (comparatively) writing style.

When the colonial influence comes to Okonkwo's people there is neither acceptance nor rejection. The two worlds are so different they seem simply mad to each other. For Okonkwo the new religion and way of life is that of what he was beginning to think was growing in his own culture, an ebvracing of womanish balues, of favoring laziness, passivity, and self-indulgence. Okonkwo's downfall is as inevitable and ultimately blameless as will be his culture's.

This is the November selection for Let's Read Historical Novels. I read this novel as a cassette recording from the National Library Service (RC 47510). It is available as well in hardback and paperback and as audio CDs and cassettes in both the U.S. and UK. It is not on Kindle but it is available through BookShare.org. It has been translated into French, German, Spanish, Korean, Vietnamese, Bengali, Basque, Indonesian, Panjabi, Swedish, Catalan, Urdu, Slovenian, Hebrew, Ganda, Arabic,Chinese, Portuguese and Swahili. It may be available as downloadable Braille as well from WTBBL.

Pendragon's Banner, by Helen Hollick

Pendragon's Banner: Book Ywo of the Pendragon's Banner Trilogy
Helen Hollick

See also a whimsical interview with Ms. Hollick by a tenth century Cornish teenager at Nan Hawthorne's Booking the Middle Ages.

I will say right out that I am among those King Arthur afficianadi who like their Once and Future King as realistic as possible. You can keep the romantic legends of medieval minstrels and the celebrity wise women of Stewart and Zimmer Brandley. Give me a good post-Roman Celt in chain mail and a helm any day. That is, an Arthur just like Helen Hollick's in the Pendragon's Banner Trilogy.

Pendragon's Banner is the second novel in the trilogy of the same name. It follows Arthur from the point at which he has defeated his last Saxon warlord and is making peace by granting concessions and lands to them. The old men of the former Roman province don't so much like Arthur and his new-fangled ways. He's young, ambitious, brash and arrogant, and the first thing they do is divide Britain between him and themselves. His uncle Emrys is sorry, but Rome, he assures Arthur, will be back. If Arthur can't have faith in that, then they don't want him to be king of all Britain any more. Trouble is that Saxons aren't the only threat. King Lot and his witchy wife Morgausee are ready to come down from the north and take what they want. In Morgaause's case, it's the life of Arthur and everyone he loves. Then there are those that find Arthur's leadership style too inflexible who are willing to take their superior training and create armies to overthrow him. When these two groups come together, there's Hell to pay.

Meanwhile a domestic battle rages on and off. Arthur's beloved queen, Gwenhwyfar, is tired of camping out. She believes in him, but she wants solid walls and a thatched roof over her head. And he is not exactly Mr. Sensitive. He makes her travel by horse when days away from giving birth. When tragedy strikes the couple, both withdraw into private grief. When Arthur has his chance to make things right between them again, he gives the worst answer he can to "Why are you here?" The two, as their author says, are just too much alike, too strong, too independent. If they weren't such a perfect match and just nuts about each other, those distractingly attentive men she meets might tempt her.

I love how the story Hollick has crafted works in and out of the two fronts, the war with Arthur's enemies and the war at home. The view we get of what Britain may well have been like in the time after the Romans left feels genuine and is full of compelling conflicts and people. Arthur is bedeviled by women who want what he can't give. His ex-wife Winifred wants Gwenhwyfar never to have existed. Morgause wants Arthur dead. Other women take a little from him from have a big impact. The men in his entourage plague him as well, by challenging him or being disappointed by him or paying to much attention to his wife.

There were a couple things in the writing that I found jarring. In at least three important places Hollick chose to take the crisis to the breaking point, such as when one of Arthur's and Gwenhwyfar's sons has a tragic accident, and then jumps ahead some time to tell us what happened in the meantime. It's not a bad device, but it can be used too often, as is the case here.

Pendragon's Banner is a novel full of strong, well drawn characters for which you will feel either attachment or repulsion. I definitely want to read the first book in the trilogy, partly because I felt like I was missing some data when I started this one, but also because I enjoyed this one so much. Hollick's retelling of familiar tales without over-dependence on them and with an eye to carving out something that reflects the likely era of the originals makes this novel a thoroughly satisfying read.

Pendragon's Banner is available in hardback, trade paperback and mass market paperback. As far as I know, it is not available in any audio or digital text format. I read it as a pdf that was supplied to me for the purpose of the review by the publisher, Sourcebooks.

The French Blue, by Richard W. Wise

Jean Baptiste Tavernier's story is a remarkable one, and this novel, The French Blue, based on his true adventures is very nearly as remarkable. Tavernier lived in the mid-1600s, traveled as far as Burma and Indonesia in search of precious gems, and is most famous for his discovery of the huge blue diamond that came to be known as the unlucky Hope Diamond.

Wise's novel follows Tavernier from childhood in Paris where, the son of a mapmaker, he catches the wanderlust that led him first to travel all over Europe in the employ of nobility and thence to Persia to start learning about turquoise and pearls. Tavernier was multi-lingual and appears to have had a knack for getting along with potentates of all stripes. His honesty and his knowledge of gems makes him a trusted man wherever he goes. His acumen during his six voyages makes him an effective diplomat and also brings him wealth and a title, not to mention, in the novel anyway, the love of several remarkable women, not the least of which is a mysterious half-Persian beauty.

This is one thoroughly researched book. The author is himself a gemologist, lending much credibility to his descriptions of the diamonds, rubies, sapphires, pearls and other precious gems and to the trade in these stones in the 17th century. His handling of Tavernier's journeys, the places he goes, the people he meets, and his method of locating and acquiring literally tens of thousands of jewels provides a depth of authenticity to rival the best historical novelists. Even his description of shipboard travel and battle is richly detailed without being tiresome.

I was charmed by the language in this novel, learning in the author's afterword that he preserved Tavernier's own unique phraseology in this first person narrative. I had already noted how much of the flavor of French made it through into Wise's prose, and now I know why. I don't think I have ever seen this fidelity to the feel of a language in any other book.

The gilding on this lily is a host of wonderful illustrations of people and places from Tavernier's boyages, including his own illustreations of the gems he finds.

The novel illustrates one challenge authors face when fictionalizing real events. You just don't know what to leave in or out sometimes. The tale wandered off the track from time to time, clearly to try to depict real events and, as the author confesses, to fill in blank time periods when Tavernier's movements are unknown. One such story, while entertaining itself, involves his superfluous and entirely fictional involvement in the assassination of Albrecht von Wallenstein. As one author expressed this, too much dogged detail in a fictional biography is like a diamond in the rough. You need to cut it down to the essential gem for its value to be realized. This novel would have been a more polished work had Wise crafted it along a consistent theme and not tried to cram everything in, to detail everything in Tavernier's life.

The result is a fascinating story that tends to meander, whether to adhere to Tavernier's real life, to fill in the empty spots, or to inject relationships with women no doubt for the sake of the novelization. Nevertheless, The French Blue joyfully and skillfully introduces lots of 17th century celebrities, such as Louis Quatorze, the Sun King, and itself has enough luster to make any minor flaws easy to overlook.

The novel is currently available on Amazon Kindle, which is how I read it. The print edition is due to be released on December 1, 2009. It is not available in any other accessible medium at this time. There is a lovely book trailer on the book's web site, The French Blue.

This Time, by Joan Szechtman

This Time
Joan Szechtman

I caught the Richard III bug after reading Josephine Tey's The Daughter of Time like everyone else. So I wasn't surprised when I learned of Joan Szechtman's new novel, This Time, which uses a device of fiction well suited to solving the mysteries character assassinating public relations created about Shakespeare's villain. That is, bring Richard in and ask him.

In the novel a wealthy businessman who is a member of the Portland, Oregon Richard III Society decides to scoop the world by bringing the fifteenth century English monarch to the present day. Richard awakes from seconds before his death at Bosworth Field to find himself in a brightly lit room on a hospital bed listening to two men talking in a variant of English he does not recognize. Being by nature intelligent and adaptable, he, with the help of a linguist who is also a Ricardian, acclimatizes as quickly as might be expected to the world 500 years after his own time. Complicating his adjustment the businessman responsible for his trip to 2004 may be planning to send him back, creating a cloak and dagger effort to prevent this by the linguist, the physics whiz, and others who know to do so would be murder. We follow Richard through first this intrigue and then through his desire to use the science that brought him to today to bring his wife and son here too.

This story could be clumsy, contrived, even embarrassing. It is none of these. It is a surprisingly believable and sensitive bit of writing that drew me in and made me unable to put it down. First of all, the portrayal of Richard is affectionate but not idolatrous. Szechtman knows her protagonist well and built him and his situation into something entirely credible. Though the quest to solve the mysteries of his life, in particular the fate of the "princes in the Tower", is what brought him to now, this Richard is less concerned about his reputation than in being a good and honorable man in his present life. The science is handled with intelligence and a light touch so that the reader can accept its plausibility.

There was one major problem in the novel in my mind. When after hearing from the linguist that her friend "flies up from San Francisco on a regular basis, Richard reacts "He can fly?!" While a perfect example of the humor in this already enjoyable novel, it got me looking forward to reading about his own first experience of air travel. It didn't come. I asked the author about this, and she explained that she had cut the entire subplot of his trip to see a "creature works" lab. The experience of being on a jet is just so far outside anyone's experience from before the 20th century that I felt leaving out some mention was a mistake.

This flaw is however quite made up for by the charm and characterizations in this novel. Even non-Ricardians will enjoy this science/historical fiction novel with a healthy dose of thriller and mystery. Oh, and it's a wonderful love story as well.

Read an interview with Joan Szechtman on October 8 and an excerpt on October 9 on Historical Novel Review.

This Time is available in "Perfect Paperback" and was published by Collected Stories/Bassett LLC, ISBN 978-0982449301. It is not yet available in any format accessible to the print impaired.