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 Katherine Swynford is one of English history’s best known mistresses. Her attractions were clearly so strong to John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, that he eventually broke all tradition and gave up the prospect of marital advance in order to marry her, a knight’s daughter who offered very little at that point in her life. But who was Katherine and what do we know about her?
As it turns out, the answer is not much, and this effort by Alison Weir ended up as a disappointment for me. I’ve never really enjoyed the history that is virtually all speculation. I understand some of it is necessary in many pursuits, but I went through this book feeling that Weir didn’t really need to write an entire book on Katherine’s life when she had so little to work with. As always, it ended up being a book about the men in Katherine’s life and bits about her more illustrious relations and children. Large sections are devoted to Chaucer, who had an absolutely tiny role in Katherine’s life, but because he’s a well known figure in history and was married to Katherine’s sister, he gets a role, even after Katherine’s sister dies. I have to say I was disappointed in that; I thought a book based solely on John of Gaunt or Geoffrey Chaucer would have been far more interesting, as Weir could have dug deeper into their lives and drawn a few more relevant conclusions. It’s a sad reality that medieval women’s lives are so little documented, something we all wish we could fix, but that’s not a case to make a book out of something.
I was also disappointed with the level of scholarship I found in the book. Weir’s analysis of her sources seems very uneven. Virtually all first hand medieval sources are unreliable to a degree – you have to take into account bias, propaganda, and so on, just like you would when deciding whether to believe someone today – and she seems to use this when it suits her and ignore it when it doesn’t. This is especially true in the case of Froissart – I thought she should have addressed his unreliability from the start, so readers had a solid background going in. I like that she uses so many primary sources, but I would prefer a bit more depth of analysis, even in popular history like this.
I also really disliked how she drew conclusions from what may have been and then just went with them, without considering other options as the text went on, as it severely limited the depths of her continual analysis throughout the book. It also led to flimsy conclusions built on flimsy assumptions, which all historians should do their best to avoid. There genuinely isn’t enough here for a book, which is what’s caused this problem. Some of the assumptions are necessary to keep the history going as a fairly steady narrative, and possibly helps for people who are unfamiliar with the Middle Ages, but I just wanted more from it. I remember enjoying Weir’s earlier books a great deal more than I liked this one.
That all said, I do think Katherine Swynford is a decent choice for getting a nice, reasonably accurate picture of fourteenth century England. Weir’s work is very readable, although at times devolves into lists and dates. For the most part she paints a nice picture of the time in which Katherine lived and how she might have thought or felt. Sadly, it’s impossible to draw any conclusions about Katherine herself, and despite Weir’s flimsy guesses we end up with little picture about the woman herself. I ended up feeling like the book was lacking, even though I liked it while reading it, and would only really recommend it to someone interested in these few years of English history and not necessarily looking for much detail about Katherine herself.
I am an Amazon Associate. I borrowed this book from my local library.
 Shen Ai Li is the daughter of the Emperor of China, though it’s never a position either she or her father wanted. On her way to her assigned marriage, she discovers that her future husband had a hand in her brother’s death, among other things; she immediately does her best to flee despite knowing she will have brought dishonor to her family. With butterfly swords in hand, she seeks to rescue herself, but she is greatly aided by the help of a strange white man, Ryam. Realizing that this barbarian stranger is probably the only person she can trust right now, she lies to him about her identity in a bid to get him to return her to her family. Amidst the challenges of the road ahead and her betrothed’s constant attempts to get her back, Ai Li and Ryam start to feel more for each other, but such a relationship is well outside society’s expectations of them.
I’m sure I’m not the only one who is thrilled that a romance set outside of England or the US has managed to take hold like this one, which is set in Tang dynasty China, and the hype it’s already received is genuinely well deserved. Plus, check out that lovely Chinese girl on the cover! This is the kind of book that I want to champion, that I want to see more of. It helps that this is a thoroughly enjoyable romance. I loved that the white man was turned around and made the minority, something I think we get too little (if any) of in romance literature these days, so even though Ai Li falls in love with him fairly quickly they still have to deal with not only the stigma of his different race but the issues of honor which bind her so strongly.
Of course, I adored Ai Li, how she was equally capable of being tough and being fragile; she can fight, though she’s never had to use those skills, but she can also be very, very feminine. It’s a nice juxtaposition in a world where I think girls are often judged to be either one or the other. Ai Li is strong and honorable, particularly loyal to her family and her values, but she’s not afraid to acknowledge her love for Ryam and face the consequences of her actions.
If I did ask more of this book, I’d probably wish for it to be a bit richer in its historical detail. The setting is phenomenal and I suppose I’d just like to see more of it and have more detail. In a romance that’s less than 300 pages long, however, I think that’s probably too much to ask, and may have taken away from the main plot for some readers. I also didn’t like that Ai Li was often referred to as Ailey, which was Ryam’s version of her name, even when from her own perspective. Since I don’t know much about the Tang dynasty, I couldn’t judge this book’s historical accuracy for myself, but Jeannie Lin has a section on her website devoted to the historical accuracy in her books – which she calls historical fantasies – for which I am grateful. I rarely expect any real accuracy from historical romance, which has a tendency to plop modern day heroines in Regency settings, but I like when it’s noted!
If you enjoy romance and are looking for a change in your historicals, look no further. Butterfly Swords delivers a compelling story with wonderful characters and a thoroughly exciting setting.
I am an Amazon Associate. I received this book for free for review through Netgalley.
 Hal Montgomery is alive and at war on the Christmas truce during the first World War in 1914. The British and the Germans laid aside their arms for one day and met halfway across No Man’s Land, exchanging gifts and conversation as though they hadn’t just been trying to kill one another and didn’t intend to do so again in a matter of hours. Hal finds himself chatting with a German officer named Wilhelm who is engaged to a British girl. He’d formerly lived in Stratford-upon-Avon and met a schoolteacher, Sam, with whom he fell deeply in love. Wilhelm gives Hal a picture of himself and asks him to let Sam know that he’s alive, still loves her, and still wants to marry her if he ever gets the opportunity.
Shortly afterwards, Hal is shot and crippled in a way that he means he’ll probably never return to the front and may always walk with a limp. This actually gives him the perfect opportunity to find Sam, with whom he’s developed an obsession, and deliver Wilhelm’s picture to her. Instead of honorably fulfilling that request, Hal himself falls in love with Sam and determines to spend the rest of his life loving her, regardless of how she feels about him.
Initially, I really enjoyed this book, and it definitely made me reconsider all the other ARCs on my shelf in which I’ve lost interest. I’m trying to get through them now and this one seemed to declare itself a winner right away. It has a fascinating story, starting with that legendary Christmas truce, and ending up dealing with difficult questions for people living in the early twentieth century. Sam has borne a child out of wedlock, for example, and the scrutiny and discrimination towards her is immense, even leading towards her potential expulsion as a schoolteacher. Her relationship with Hal is frowned upon by all of society and they pretend to be married to escape censure. These are all issues that we no longer have to deal with and the book made me deeply consider how profoundly life has changed.
Throughout the novel, the war goes on, and it ends at about the same time as the book ends. As a result, many of the people Hal knows and loves are off at the front even when he can no longer be there himself. His perspective gives us an insight into the daily stress that people were under but also contrasts the scene of the war with the surprisingly ordinary daily life in Britain. It’s too easy for people to forget that war is happening, even when their lives are consumed with spying and reading intelligence daily as Hal’s is. Still, his losses hit hard, and I found myself regretting all of the deaths that happened.
I had a few disappointments with the book, despite the fact that I did enjoy it and thought it was well-written. First of all, Hal is almost unbearably selfish. I could not believe he didn’t give Sam Wilhelm’s picture, lied to her about meeting him, and then did his very best to make her fall in love with him, mainly because he was so attracted to her. I hated him at times for that. Sam herself wasn’t a particularly standout character and I found her to often be cold and to use Hal in her own ways to get what she wanted. In that respect they deserved each other. My favorite character was probably the child Will, who just doesn’t understand what is going on and wants what a child wants, his parents to be together and happy with him. The ending was also completely unsatisfying. I’m not going to lie, it fit in with the characters’ personalities, but it was not what I wanted out of it, and so I was disappointed even if I should have seen it coming.
So, Gifts of War. It was well-written and interesting, but lacked the spark that would have connected me better to the characters and the story, and I ended up unsatisfied with it as a whole. If Mackenzie Ford were to write another book, I would probably read it, but I would lower my expectations accordingly.
I am an Amazon Associate. I received this book for free for review from the publisher a shamefully long time ago.
September was a bit of a crazy month around here. First of all, my Kindle arrived, and I’ve read quite a few books on it. I’m surprised by how much I like reading on it; I don’t want to give up my books but I definitely haven’t wasted my money. Then I won the Best Historical Fiction Blog award for BBAW 2010, which was really exciting, and I’m still really happy about that. Then, through a few interesting events at work, I’ve landed into a new job, which is by all means a good thing but also has meant that I’ve spent quite a bit of the last week learning things, and I’m not going to stop learning for some time yet. The new job is probably all good for my blog though; it should involve far less writing, which means I may actually be able to blog after work and not feel sick of writing all the time. We’ll see how it goes, but I’m cautiously optimistic.
September was a pretty good month in terms of reading too. I somehow read 22 books.
Historical Fiction
- The Baker Street Phantom, Fabrice Bourland (mystery)
- Ellis Island, Kate Kerrigan
- Splendour, Anna Godbersen (YA)
- Prima Donna, Megan Chance
- Shadow of the Swords, Kamran Pasha
- The Last Empress, Anchee Min
- The Last Full Measure, Ann Rinaldi (YA)
- Gifts of War, Mackenzie Ford
- Dark Road to Darjeeling, Deanna Raybourn
- The Transformation of Bartholomew Fortuno, Ellen Bryson
Non-fiction
- Tom Thumb: The Remarkable True Story of a Man in Miniature, George Sullivan
- Katherine Swynford, Alison Weir
- Geisha of Gion, Mineko Iwasaki
Romance
Fantasy/Sci Fi
Children’s
Contemporary Fiction
Obviously, historical fiction has completed its comeback and now makes up the majority of my reading once again. I mainly enjoyed the books I read this month, but I vastly preferred Warm Bodies by Isaac Marion to the rest. It just completely set itself above much of what I’ve read lately – I found myself marking passages and thinking about it almost constantly. I feel like I love very few books these days, and this was one I loved. I can’t wait to tell you about it later this week.
In the meantime, October looks to be another amazing month, or so I’m hoping! The Read-a-thon is next weekend; I haven’t even begun to think about what I plan on reading and I may join in a bit late, but I will be reading and I’m looking forward to it. Then, towards the end of the month, my husband and I are going to Paris for a short holiday, which I absolutely cannot wait for. Otherwise I’m looking forward to reading a lot of good books and enjoying some nice autumn weather if it ever stops raining!
What do you have planned for October? Will you be reading or cheering during the Read-a-thon next weekend?
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