The Queen's Man by Sharon Kay Penman

Sharon Kay Penman is an author revered by many historical fiction fans for her huge, all-encompassing novels that make the past truly come to life. She has written several  books, most recently a trilogy (soon to be a quartet) on Henry II, Eleanor of Aquitaine and their "devil's brood" of scheming children.

On a smaller scale, Penman also wrote four medieval mysteries, set during the period in which King Richard was held captive by his enemies in Europe, his mother Eleanor ruled England as regent and his younger brother John plotted to seize the throne. I just finished the first of these books, The Queen's Man.

I have mixed feelings about Penman's mystery debut. Her characterizations were strong, and her grasp of time and place second to none. She obviously knows this period inside and out. I particularly enjoyed how she wrote the formidable Eleanor of Aquitaine. However, I found the mystery a bit thin and the ending a letdown.

The Queen's Man introduces Justin de Quincy, bastard son of a bishop, who as the story begins has no income or prospects. By chance, he witnesses a murder on the road to London and discovers a secret letter for Eleanor hidden in the victim's tunic. The letter informs the queen of what has befallen Richard on his return from the Crusades. Eleanor, fearing the French king's involvement in intrigue against her son, charges Justin with discovering the truth behind the killing.

The book's first half was a quick, easy read, introducing several possible suspects and motives for the murder. Unfortunately, Penman abandoned those plot threads in the second half to place her focus solely on a hunt in London for a hired killer. I prefer my mystery novels to have more twists and turns that take me on a wild ride, before pulling everything together and springing surprises on me at the end. The ending of The Queen's Man, however, left me saying, "Is that it?" The few surprises were rather tepid and unexciting.

Justin was an appealing protagonist, a sort of "fish out of water" living by his wits and sometimes requiring help from those with more knowledge of the criminal underworld. The supporting characters were strong and kept me turning the pages even while the main plot dragged.

The book did spark my interest in learning more about the captivity of Richard the Lionheart, as well as the antagonism between Richard and John. I have heard subsequent novels are better, so I'll continue with the series for now.

My grade: C+

A Rose for the Crown by Anne Easter Smith

History records Richard of Gloucester (later King Richard III) fathered at least two illegitimate children. We do not know their mother's identity. Anne Easter Smith has imagined her as Kate Haute, Richard's first love, to whom he was faithful until his noble birth forced him to marry another. Smith tells Richard's turbulent story through Kate's eyes in her first novel, A Rose for the Crown.

Kate spends her earliest years on a humble farm until one of her mother's relatives takes her to his manor as a companion for his daughter. She tolerates her first, arranged marriage to a much older man, a prosperous merchant, who soon leaves her a wealthy widow. Kate then marries her dashing cousin George for love - or so she thinks. George wants her only for her money and prefers the company of the stable boy. During a visit to her neighbors, Sir John and Margaret Howard, loyal supporters of the house of York, Kate begins a passionate affair with Richard of Gloucester. Richard truly loves her and his children but makes clear he will eventually have to end their relationship to marry someone of noble birth.

The novel had its flaws but was an enjoyable and intriguing read overall. It kept my attention for all of its 600-plus pages, which is no mean feat, especially for a first-time novelist. Smith's writing was smooth and for the most part well paced, and the pages flew by despite the book's length.

Smith was best at evoking the textures of late medieval England - the clothes, the rich tapestries, the food, the music - as well as less pleasant realities of life - sickness, the stench of towns, the fleas and lice that plagued everyone. Her characters were well drawn and true to the times in which they lived. Kate and Richard's romance was sweet without being cloying, and Kate's domestic life, whether visiting Richard in a palace or playing with her children in her cozy cottage, was lovingly described.

Unfortunately, Kate was something of a "Mary Sue." She was far too perfect to be totally believable. Even her supposed flaws - outspokenness and stubbornness - endeared people to her. Most everyone in the novel just loved her, even when she should have made them angry. (The handful of characters who did not love her were the obvious, one-dimensional villains.) Richard, too, was portrayed as the perfect, chivalrous lord. Smith didn't have to turn him into Shakespeare's hunchbacked murderer, but a realistically flawed Richard would have made her story more believable and interesting.

Also, Smith tried to cram too much history into the novel's last 100 pages, which covered all the events from Edward IV's death to Richard's defeat on Bosworth Field. She skimmed over the juiciest parts of Richard's story and only mentioned in passing important characters such as the Duke of Buckingham, Margaret Beaufort and the Stanleys. Henry Tudor wasn't developed at all and the reader given scant information about why he invaded England to take the crown. I was disappointed Smith hurried through the climactic events of Richard's life. But overall, I enjoyed the story enough to eventually try another by this author.

A Rose for the Crown was my first read for the Historical Fiction Reading Challenge. My grade: B.

The Serpent's Tale by Ariana Franklin

Rosemund Clifford, beloved mistress of Henry II, lies dead in her tower, a victim of poisoning. Because of traitorous letters she wrote to Eleanor of Aquitaine, and because Henry believes his queen responsible for her death, war threatens to break out between them. Desperate to prevent this, Henry's loyal bishop, Rowley Picot, summons Adelia Aguilar, mistress of the art of death, to investigate.

Adelia travels with Rowley to Rosemund's tower, surrounded by an intricate hedge maze, where her investigation is interrupted by Eleanor herself, who plans to join rebel forces in nearby Oxford. Caught in a terrifying blizzard, the queen, her mercenaries and Adelia find their way to Godstow Abbey, where more murders occur. Adelia must discover how the murders are related and find the killers before civil war breaks out in England.

I really enjoyed Mistress of the Art of Death, Ariana Franklin's first medieval thriller featuring Adelia Aguilar. The sequel was even better - an intricately plotted, intriguing story filled with excitement, horror, pathos and wonderful characters.

For Adelia and for all of England, the stakes are much higher in her second adventure. The country once again faces the horror of monarch fighting monarch, and people fear they will suffer as they did during the war between King Stephen and Matilda, Henry II's mother.

Into this tale of politics and dynastic ambitions, Franklin wove a secondary theme: The limitations imposed on women in medieval society, from merchant's daughters to queens. Emma, a ward of the convent, is forced to marry against her will, while Adelia is labeled both a whore and a witch. Adelia is torn by inner turmoil, as her desire to see justice done for the dead wars with her desperation to keep her baby daughter safe. Her relationship with Rowley (who is now sworn to chastity) gains unexpected depths as they face danger together.

I don't want to say more about the plot for fear of revealing too much, but I have to add the story ends with clever dialogue between Henry and Eleanor that pays tribute to the classic film, The Lion in Winter.

I hope Adelia will have many more fictional adventures. Another novel by Franklin, Grave Goods, comes out next March, according to Amazon. I am guessing it will be the third book in this promising series.

My grade: A.

Good Masters! Sweet Ladies! Voices from a Medieval Village

Earlier this week, I picked up Good Masters! Sweet Ladies! from the library and spent a very enjoyable few hours traveling back in time to the Middle Ages.

Laura Amy Schlitz, a school librarian, wrote the monologues collected in this book for her students to perform. These little gems - in prose, blank verse and rhyme - portray 23 young people living near an English manor in 1255.

The characters sprang from the pages, brought to vivid life by Schlitz's lyrical writing and Robert Byrd's evocative illustrations. I was completely absorbed in the day-to-day happenings of their medieval village. I didn't just read this book; I experienced it. After I closed it, the villagers lived on in my mind with all their joys and struggles.

Good Masters! Sweet Ladies! had an absolutely authentic feel. Schlitz did not write dumbed-down or cleaned-up medieval history. Her villeins worried about growing enough food on their strips of land to survive another year. Her women remembered the perils of childbirth and fretted over feeding another hungry mouth. And Lowdy, daughter of a hound-keeper, scratched, slapped and prayed, "God save us from the fleas!"

Schlitz included helpful, unobtrusive notes and essays on medieval life, covering such subjects as the crop-rotation system, falconry and pilgrimages. These fit so well with the main text I was never torn away from the villagers' struggle for survival, but only more enlightened about their lives and their world.

This absolute jewel of a book won the 2008 Newbery Medal, which it more than deserved. My words can't do it justice. Read it, then share it with a child. My grade: A+

Mistress of the Art of Death by Ariana Franklin

Ariana Franklin's medieval thriller centers on Adelia Aguilar, a "mistress of the art of death." Trained as a doctor at the famed medical school in Salerno, Italy, Adelia's life's work is to hear the cries of the dead, not from their mouths, but from the injuries inflicted on their bodies. Through careful examination, Adelia can determine how, when and where someone died.

She is called on to help investigate a series of grisly child murders in 12th-century Cambridge, which the local citizens have blamed on the town's Jewish population. An angry mob has forced the Jews to flee their homes and seek shelter in the local castle, where they live on the charity of the Plantagenet monarch, Henry II. Henry, who relies on the Jews for their tax revenue, wants them exonerated.

I very much enjoyed this unusual twist on the modern forensic thriller. Franklin created a cast of appealing characters, with secondary characters - including an idiosyncratic housekeeper and cook, a stubborn, streetwise boy, and a particularly odiferous dog - sometimes stealing the show.

Franklin skillfully wove together many plot threads while illuminating the culture of medieval Cambridge. I learned about Jewish, Christian and Muslim customs, the lives of knights on crusade and the struggles that sometimes occurred between faith and reason.

Adelia herself was a likable character - a determined woman in a man's world, absolutely sure of her calling - and although I rolled my eyes a bit when Franklin gave her a love interest, that storyline was resolved in a way true to her character.

The climax of the tale was suitably exciting and horrifying. Franklin concluded her story with a dazzling appearance by Henry II himself, once again confounding church authorities while seeking true justice in his kingdom.

My grade: A.

Final book reviews for 2007

I have just three books left to review for 2007, with the clock ticking toward 2008 and, hopefully, a new year of great reads!

Perfume: The Story of A Murderer by Patrick Suskind is one of those books I'm glad I read (although it isn't one of my favorites from the past year) simply because it was unlike anything I've ever read before.

Set in 18th-century France, Suskind's dark fable explores the psyche of a man who possesses the world's most powerful and refined sense of smell. Throughout his life, Grenouille is obsessed with scents, longing to name them, to manipulate them, and finally to possess them.

The book moved slowly for me at first, but Suskind's evocative writing and his forays into the depths of Grenouille's black soul kept me turning pages to see how it all would end. Other characters, including Baldini the master perfumer and the amateur scientist Taillade-Espinasse, lent some sly humor to the story.

As Grenouille moved closer to the culmination of his obsession (and to the murders referred to in the title) I turned pages faster and read the last quarter of the book in one sitting. Everything fell into place for a horrifying, but completely appropriate ending. My grade: B+

I looked forward for much of the year to the re-release of Jean Plaidy's The Reluctant Queen, about Anne Neville, wife and queen to Richard III (published by Three Rivers Press in late August). Unfortunately, I found the novel a disappointment.

I hoped Plaidy's telling would better illuminate the life and character of Anne Neville, daughter to the powerful earl of Warwick, "The Kingmaker," who helped Edward IV to the throne before turning his coat and backing the Lancastrian heir, the son of Henry VI and Margaret of Anjou. Although the historical Anne had little control over her own fate, she lived in an especially intriguing and colorful age, during the English Wars of the Roses.

However, the Anne of Plaidy's novel was a curiously flat character who spent most of her time fretting about her future, or Richard of Gloucester's destiny, or both. It read a bit like a personal diary kept by a dull woman with no aptitude for writing beyond stating bare facts. Even her frequent declarations of love and devotion for Richard seemed rather muted and uninspiring.

I did appreciate one aspect of the novel. Plaidy did a fine job of making Richard's personality ambiguous toward the end, so I, as a reader, was never sure I could believe Anne's praise of him. Plaidy left the question open of whether Richard murdered his royal nephews, but skillfully suggested Anne might have a blind spot regarding Richard's ambition or his true personality. My grade: C-

Finally, I finished The Amber Spyglass by Philip Pullman so I could start the new year with a different (hopefully better) read.

When I reviewed The Subtle Knife, I was angry at Pullman for writing such a terrible follow up to The Golden Compass. Concluding the trilogy with The Amber Spyglass just made me sad. The author took what could have been a wonderful fantasy story and lost it in a muddle of plot holes, diatribes against Christianity and logic-defying scenes that occurred so often, it was laughable.

It's such a shame, particularly since The Amber Spyglass contained glimmers of the wonderful writing and strong characterizations that made the first book so appealing.

Will, at least, becomes a more multifaceted character. Lyra regains some of her former spark. Pullman's descriptions are often still beautiful, although his world building is much less effective because he jumps from plot point to plot point without giving anything adequate time to develop.

A few aspects of The Amber Spyglass intrigued me, such as Will and Lyra's journey to the land of the dead, or Mary Malone's discovery of the mulefa tribe. But with a tangle of loose ends left abandoned at the novel's end, these developments seemed rather pointless.

The Amber Spyglass was not as tedious a read as The Subtle Knife, but I stopped counting the plot holes about halfway through and abandoned hope that Pullman would adequately explain anything. (Some quick examples: We never understand quite how Lyra and Will can dominate the harpies in the land of the dead and convince them to abandon their bargain with The Authority. And it's never explained how Mary learned to communicate fairly complex ideas to the mulefa within a matter of days.)

Pullman's chief villain, Mrs. Coulter, inexplicably changed in the final book, sacrificing herself for Lyra's sake at the end. Where in the world did that change of heart come from? I don't buy that this cold, ruthless, power-hungry woman suddenly was overwhelmed by latent mother love.

I had no qualms whatsoever about encountering anti-Christian, anti-religious or anti-authoritarian themes. In fact, I hoped the trilogy would offer strong arguments for discussion. Instead, Pullman chose to rant about the supposed evils of organized religion without backing up his assertions. He made blanket statements such as "The Authority and his churches have always tried to keep (minds) closed." Maybe they have and maybe they haven't, but Pullman offered no examples either way. His "arguments" would not convince the average high-school debate class.

Again, the Church and the Authority seemed like nonentities to most people in Pullman's many worlds. Only Lord Asriel, Mrs. Coulter and the individuals fighting on either side of the war against the Kingdom of Heaven seemed to care about religion at all. Pullman never adequately explained why Lord Asriel wanted to destroy The Authority, or why Mrs. Coulter worked so tirelessly for the Church. (And how did she gain such power in an organization dominated by men?)

The Authority himself appears in only two scenes, with no rationale for why he supposedly strove to dominate people's minds and hearts and imprisoned them after death in a bleak, hopeless existence. Far from being a towering figure of evil, The Authority was portrayed as a decrepit, fragile, senile, harmless angel.

The Authority's second-in-command, Metatron, the prince of angels, a being described as having a towering intellect and centuries worth of knowledge, was done in by a pretty face and a lame seduction. And the eye rolling by no means ended there. After about a thousand pages in the trilogy, the fate of all the worlds rested on a pre-pubescent love affair that read like a teenage romance novel. (Oh brother.)

I'm longing to lose myself in another book to get the taste of these novels out of my mouth. The Amber Spyglass gets a D grade, and the entire trilogy gets an F for beginning with a great story, becoming hopelessly tedious in the middle book and concluding with an utter failure of imagination.

Lust and love in historical fiction

The title Royal Harlot should have tipped me off.

I picked up Susan Holloway Scott's novel about Barbara Villiers Palmer, notorious mistress of England's Charles II, expecting a certain amount of titillation, but also hoping for an enlightening glimpse into merry Restoration London.

I got smut.

I have no problem with a bit of smut. A well-placed sex scene can liven up any story filled with treaties, treason, war, politics and beheadings. After all, where would Henry VIII be without the beguiling Anne Boleyn or that tart, Katherine Howard?

But a third of the way into Royal Harlot, I already felt bludgeoned by the sex scenes. Reading this novel was a bit like watching Showgirls.

Heaving bosoms and throbbing manhoods do not a plot make. Therefore, I finished the book totally unenlightened about Charles' Dutch wars or his divisive religious policies. Scott spent just a few pages on the Great Plague and Great Fire of London. (I learned more by quickly skimming Wikipedia entries than I did from this book.)

But I did discover Charles II and Barbara Villiers liked sex. A lot. My grade: D

Thankfully, another of my recent reads, Loving Will Shakespeare, brought the past vividly to life while offering a convincing love story. Carolyn Meyer's novel focuses on Anne (Agnes) Hathaway, who became Shakespeare's wife.

Historians know little about Anne, other than Shakespeare bequeathing her the "second-best bed" in his will, and that she was eight years older than her husband. Meyer's Anne is a lonely girl growing up in an unhappy home, who despairs of ever finding someone to love her. She is drawn to Will by his charm, creativity and zest for life and as he becomes a young man, finds herself unexpectedly falling in love with him. Their romance will be bittersweet, as Shakespeare will spend most of his time in London, wedded more to the theater than to his wife.

The novel included many wonderful scenes of rural village life in Elizabethan England, including holiday customs, marriage traditions and the excitement generated by the queen's annual progress. My grade: A-

Morgan Llywelyn's Strongbow: The Story of Richard and Aoife, another novel centering on a love story, left me wanting to know much more about its protagonists. It was an absorbing, touching read, but too short. My grade: B-

Richard de Clare (Strongbow) was a Norman knight denied his lands and titles, who fought on behalf of Aoife's father, the deposed king of Leinster in Ireland. I discovered through a Google search that Richard and Aoife were the parents of Isabel de Clare, who married William Marshal, one of medieval England's greatest knights and statesmen. Does anyone know of any other books focusing on Strongbow or Aoife?

The final book in this love-themed reading roundup is the best book I've read this year so far: Peony in Love by Lisa See. A ghost story, a historical fantasy, a family saga and a coming-of-age tale, the novel immersed me in the unfamiliar world of 17th-century China and captivated me with its beautifully told story.

The novel is set during a time of political and social upheaval in China, when thousands of women left their cloistered existences to pursue intellectual lives, writing and publishing their own work, before society forced them back into their family compounds. A woman's right to express herself is a major theme of the novel.

Peony is a 15-year-old aristocratic girl obsessed with the controversial opera, The Peony Pavilion. During a performance of the opera staged in her family's compound, she secretly meets and falls in love with a poet, Wu Ren. Locked in her room for her transgressions and to await her arranged marriage, Peony becomes so absorbed in writing her thoughts about the opera, she forgets to eat, and dies just before her scheduled wedding.

From there, the novel explores intricate Chinese beliefs about the afterlife as Peony roams the world as a hungry ghost, visiting Wu Ren and influencing his subsequent wives to continue writing about the opera. Peony's story mirrors The Peony Pavilion but also deviates from the opera in unexpected ways. She learns surprising, heartbreaking truths about the women in her own family, and ultimately finds a way to be remembered and honored as an individual.

Peony in Love was a hypnotic, strange fairy tale that required some suspension of disbelief to be enjoyed. I willingly followed the story where it led me, sometimes slowing my reading to savor the beautiful writing, sometimes speeding up in my impatience to discover what would come next. My grade: A+