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 Eleanor of Aquitaine’s life is turbulent almost from the start. At age fifteen she comes into her inheritance as Duchess of Aquitaine and Countess of Poitiers; while she holds both of these titles in her own right, her husband will still be the one who rules them, and as such she’s the most eligible bride in Europe. For three months, anyway, until the French king Louis VII marries her and makes her Queen of France. Eleanor’s adventures don’t stop there, however; her marriage with Louis is annulled after her failure to give him sons (and after a crusade), after which she promptly marries the future Henry II of England, and gives birth to a proper devil’s brood of sons who later change the face of Europe.
Older historical fiction, in my mind, has one big problem; it romanticizes everything. This book was written in the fifties and it’s glaringly obvious to any reader of historical fiction (or student of history). Everyone is, naturally, noble and kind and beautiful, loyal to the king, and even the merest of peasants can spout long sentences of astonishing fealty when prompted. Eleanor, despite being lauded, rarely shows any example of her will here. She seems afloat on the seas of fate; about the only thing she decides to do herself, and which she actually controls, is her decision to go on crusade. Otherwise, it’s always the men. I wanted to go back in history and tell Norah Lofts that it’s okay for women to take initiative; pointing out the influence that women may have had, which is almost never recorded, is what historical fiction is for.
Anyway, that doesn’t erase all the problems with the story either. Most of the book reads like a listing of facts, especially in the beginning. The few times that Eleanor speaks up, we’re mostly told she does, like when she explains things out to Louis about her lands. We don’t know what they are, we’re just told that she makes all things clear to him, and that later he’s persuaded otherwise. The whole book is a lesson in how to write a story by telling and not showing. Eleanor’s life was long and it’s compressed so much that there’s not space for anything else for most of the book.
Surprisingly enough, the book did pick up towards the end. I still noticed irritating things, like the fact that Geoffrey is mostly ignored until he dies. I’m pretty sure that, in real life, Eleanor and Henry wouldn’t ignore one of their children so flagrantly, though I guess I could be wrong. Richard and John are the bad kids that grew to manhood and kinghood, so I guess when you have only 300 pages, you talk about them. But the story did get interesting, Eleanor started to stand up for herself a bit more after she got out of prison.
Eleanor of Aquitaine was a fascinating woman and she deserves all the attention she’s getting these days. Unfortunately, Eleanor the Queen is definitely not the first book I’d recommend reading on her. Choose Sharon Kay Penman’s books, starting with When Christ and His Saints Slept, or for non-fiction, Alison Weir’s Eleanor Of Aquitaine is both interesting and accessible. Word on the street is to avoid her fiction title about Eleanor, which I have managed so far!
I am an Amazon Associate. I received this book for free from the publisher for review.
 Nine travelers find themselves banding together, seeking escape from the Black Death that has just arrived in England for the first time. These nine are not just travelers; they have stories to tell and secrets to hide. As they increasingly lie to one another while telling their stories, it becomes clear that what’s after them is not the plague, but their own pasts. Unfortunately for these nine wanderers, the past is not something so easily avoided.
I wanted to like this book more than I think I ended up liking it. I’ve had it for a couple years, and reading it definitely revealed to me why I was waiting; it’s very dark. It was certainly gripping at times, especially in the beginning. I enjoyed how each traveler had a story; I knew they were all lying about some aspect of their story and at first it wasn’t easy to figure out what was really going on. As the story progressed, however, the lies become fairly obvious and the plot starts to unravel a bit. Even I, who never puts any effort at all into guessing the outcome of a book, found myself predicting what was going to happen.
The story is just very grim and occasionally hard to take. This is a book set during the Black Death about a bunch of liars, so I suppose this could be expected, but the problem is that the book is also quite long. Maitland’s writing is very good and she’s quite a storyteller, but there’s only so much Black Death and murders anyone can actually take. As a result, the book felt like it started to drag, particularly towards the end. I could mainly see what was going to happen and everything was quite dark and grim – after a few days of reading one book, I felt like I needed a break before it was even over.
That said, there is also much to enjoy with this one. In particular, I loved the details that Maitland included, and I certainly felt I got a sense of how the Black Death demolished the countryside, turned people against one another, and brought out the worst in some and the best in others. Other books also do this well, and it’s something that, morbid as it is, I am very interested in. Doomsday Book by Connie Willis is also an excellent choice if you share my peculiar fascination with the plague and how people reacted to it. I also liked the main character here, who has plenty of secrets to share over the course of the book. I figured out the secret, but I liked watching him figure out the other characters’ secrets as the story moved along.
All in all, I expect I’d have liked Company of Liars better if it was shorter, with a tighter plot, rather than the rambling that seems to match how the company traveled. Still, I think Maitland has talent, and of course the Middle Ages always appeal to me, so I’m looking forward to picking up future books by her.
I am an Amazon Associate. I purchased this book.
 Luis de Santangel has risen far as a converso. He’s the Chancellor of Aragon and an advisor to King Ferdinand; he has power, influence, and money, all anyone would need to succeed in the Middle Ages. That’s until the Inquisition comes to town, and with it Thomas Torquemada, a priest who very much has it in for Santangel. That’s because after years of Christianity, Santangel finds himself longing to learn about his Jewish past, about the secret rituals his parents kept, despite the danger he knows it brings to him and his family. The threat is not an idle one, and as Santangel begins to lose those close to him, so he begins to lose the trappings of power and influence that shaped his life so clearly.
I really liked this book, and for so many reasons that I’m not sure I’m even capable of spelling them out in a review! I haven’t read much fiction set around the Inquisition, at least not that I can think of right now; it’s a dark time, and those facing the consequences of the church’s zeal for reform faced that darkness full on. Santangel is one such unfortunate soul; a man who simply wants to learn more about the faith of his family is destroyed piece by piece. This is not a light-hearted, frothy novel; this is a close look at what such torture actually did to people. It’s also a very thoughtful perspective on the need some people have for faith and spirituality; Christianity isn’t what calls to Santangel’s heart, it seems, as Judaism is at the very core of his history.
Of course, Kaplan doesn’t miss out on the suffering which practicing Jews themselves suffered. The story’s alternate narrator is Judith, a Jewish woman who never married but now cares for her nephew and his aging grandfather, Baba Shlomo. Grieving for the loss of her brother, Judith becomes determined to be a silversmith, the craft which Baba Shlomo and her brother both practiced. After much persuasion, she finally attains the knowledge, only to be faced with incredible difficulties selling her ware. Her work and travels bring her into contact with Luis de Santangel, encounters which flesh out the plot and make these two characters seem even more human.
Through Judith’s eyes, we see the intense difficulties of life for Jews under the Inquisition. Judith and her family live in Muslim Granada, where Jews were permitted to live. Though they’re not tortured and killed as they were under the Christians, their lives still aren’t easy, and when Ferdinand and Isabella come with their Reconquista, the Jews are left to fend for themselves. I had actually learned about this previously in studying medieval Spain, but never had we covered so closely how it must have felt for the Jews, thrust from the land in which generations of their ancestors had lived, robbed of all their possessions, and sent away to somehow live. Judith’s choices are many and difficult, but I sympathized with her throughout and believed what she did was the right thing.
And then, finally, there was the interesting perspective on Christopher Columbus. My own opinion of the man is not very rosy. I can’t forgive him the crimes he committed. But it was nevertheless very interesting to read a depiction of him before all of that happened on his quest for funding. I think many American children retain a bit of a fascination with Columbus; even after knowing that he was quite terrible in actuality, all the little bits about the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria that I learned in second grade still sticks in my head. I liked how he fit in the story; I thought using such a well-known figure firmly landed the story in its historical period, for those who know little about Spain’s past, and widened it beyond a single country.
I found By Fire, By Water to be an incredibly satisfying historical novel. It was dark, but it held me spellbound as the tale of Santangel unravelled. I would definitely recommend it to anyone who enjoys historical fiction set in the late Middle Ages.
I am an Amazon Associate. I received this book for free from the author for review.
 Tacy’s life in Gettysburg is thrown into turmoil by the Civil War. Two of her brothers are off fighting and her father, a doctor, is doing all he can to save soldiers on both sides; at home with her is her brother David, crippled just enough to be ineligible for war service, and her mother. David loves Tacy but is bitter about his inability to fight, meaning that tensions often run high in the family home. Things only get worse when the Confederate army invades the town and Tacy has to hide her free black friend Marvelous and her family from the soldiers. The Battle of Gettysburg, when it occurs, shocks the town and changes Tacy’s life forever.
I’d only ever read one book by Ann Rinaldi before, when I was much younger, but I knew she wrote great historical fiction for young adults. I’m not normally a fan of Civil War fiction, but I knew I liked In My Father’s House, so I thought I’d give this new book a try, which turned out to be a great decision. The Last Full Measure is not a story about a girl who does extraordinary things for the war effort; instead it’s about a girl who just tries to get by, who is affected by the war just as deeply as everyone else, who reacts in perfect human ways to circumstances which could tear some of us apart.
In Tacy, Rinaldi creates a wonderful, real heroine who is forced to question the world around her due to a war. She gets confused and she struggles, but her core values are the same as all of ours. She adores her family and her friends, and even fighting with one of these cherished few makes her desperately unhappy. Her joy when her brothers arrive safely for a visit is transformed into the reader’s joy as we can’t help but feel for her and her pain. She doesn’t go onto the battlefield and save lives, but she does what little she can to protect those who she loves, which is more than others have done in the past. In fact, I think that was what I liked most about it, that Tacy was very ordinary but strong-willed and loving. I could imagine myself in her shoes, both in good and bad ways. This book is written for a younger audience and I do think that Tacy matches that description. In some ways, she is wise, but in others, she is still very much a young girl with a young girl’s thoughts.
I also really liked that, in her mission for the book, Rinaldi tried to aim for something that wasn’t really covered in most fiction books about the Civil War; namely, that Gettysburg had a reasonable population of free blacks and what happened when Confederate soldiers invaded. By making it personal and giving Tacy a close friend whose family was facing these very challenges, Rinaldi made the struggle personal and both educated me about the situation in Gettysburg and moved me as Tacy tried desperately to save her friend from slavery.
The Last Full Measure is an excellent young adult book about the Civil War. It deals with important complex historical situations but its best feature is its heroine, because Tacy is a believable, fully fleshed out young girl that many readers will find easy to relate to.
I am an Amazon Associate. I received this book for free for review from Netgalley.
 In the midst of Nazi Germany, passions can become more important than ever. Young Daniel had a promising career as a luthier, a violin maker, before he was seized from his home and incarcerated in a concentration camp. He volunteered as a carpenter, knowing it was one of the better “jobs” he could have in the camp. One day he hears a violin playing in the camp, but there’s something wrong with it. He volunteers to fix it and suddenly finds himself creating a violin for the commander, his success quite possibly a situation of life or death, his work a reminder of the life he lived before the Nazis.
Though this book started off slow, it was rewarding in the end. It begins in the present day with the story of a woman with an incredible violin. Only after we realize that this violin must have been created by Daniel in the camp does it become interesting and moving. Daniel’s appreciation for his life and his music, juxtaposed with the struggles of the prisoners, is touching and hands down the best part of the book. He’s a truly passionate character and his story is inspiring.
On the other hand, I did feel this book was just a little too short to develop the connections I personally needed to really fall in love with the book. It’s less than two hundred pages long, which for me is not really enough time to develop many feelings about a book. I felt like the author also held back a little with the horrors of the Holocaust, though whether that was her or the translator I couldn’t honestly tell you. I can’t say I need more horror in my life, but it made it somewhat hard to connect and feel the sympathy that other books have inspired, if that makes sense. Still terrible, still gruesome things going on, but there’s a level of detachment here that isn’t necessarily present in other books. It may be because the only character we ever get to know is Daniel – so I liked him, but I had no idea about what other characters might be thinking or feeling.
While The Auschwitz Violin is good at what it does, it wound up being too short for me – and as a result I don’t even have much more to say about it! It’s a touching and inspiring story about passion beating oppression, but it never really captured my emotions the way I expected it to. I would still definitely recommend it to someone looking for a relatively simple story that gets its point across very well.
I am an Amazon Associate. I received this book for free from the publisher for review.
 A rare female doctor, trained in Salerno, is recruited to head to England along with two men in order to solve an important crime. Adelia is a mistress of the art of the death; she “reads” bodies in order to find out exactly what happened to them. In short, she does autopsies, and her skills are essential to try and find out who has been taking and killing small children in Cambridge. The Jews have been blamed, of course, despite the fact that they’re obviously innocent, and they have even been killed by townspeople, so they are all holed up in the center of town. Adelia’s job is to find the murderer, without getting murdered herself.
Sometimes being unfamiliar with mysteries is useful, because I just loved this book. I mean, I’m probably going to spend this entire review gushing about it mostly because I can’t help myself. I’ve done what I normally don’t do and read reviews prior to composing my own, and have discovered that quite a few people thought the mystery was too predictable for the book to be interesting. I suppose that some aspects were predictable – the character who commits the murders is always a suspicious character though I didn’t guess which one – but I never read mysteries for the whodunnit aspect. I usually don’t even guess. Taking this solely as historical fiction, I just adored it.
I liked it so much that I didn’t even particularly care that Adelia seemed so anachronistic to me. After all, there were female doctors trained at Salerno (which I knew, but the author kindly clarifies as well) and it’s not outside the realm of imagination that one would develop as independent a spirit as Adelia does, even if it was unlikely. As a modern reader, I thought she was fantastic all around, and I loved the romance that developed and her eventual response to it. I loved even more that it was a romance between two imperfect people who never planned on it happening, but were so drawn in by one another that they simply could not resist.
I also enjoyed all the little medieval details that Franklin sprinkles throughout the narrative. I really felt the atmosphere, which doesn’t always happen when reading historical fiction. I was particularly pleased with her depiction of Henry II, who she describes pretty much precisely as I’d imagined him to be, as a clever man with an unfortunate temper that betrays his intellect. He doesn’t show up often, but when he does he quite steals the show, as I think the king would have done in the Middle Ages.
I can easily say that this is the first medieval novel I’ve read in over a year that I wasn’t ready to pick apart with inaccuracies. The simple truth is that I enjoyed it far too much. Since everyone in the novel was fictional, apart from Henry II, I didn’t have to worry that something was wrong and I didn’t know about it. The case itself was fictional. Even the small details that Franklin includes which didn’t happen she explains in her afterword – including the origin of her idea for the book, a case which genuinely did occur.
I absolutely can’t wait to get to the next book in this series – I’ve already requested it from the library. I loved Mistress of the Art of Death and would recommend it to anyone interested in historical fiction or historical mysteries.
I am an Amazon associate. I purchased this book.
 Emmett Conn has lived a long, normal, and moderately happy life. A veteran of the First World War, he’s now 92 years old and regrettably suffering from a brain tumor which has a strong chance of ending his life. An injury in battle erased his memory from before the war, but thanks to a combination of drugs and the tumor, flashbacks emerge, where Emmett (then known as Ahmet Khan) was a gendarme during the Armenian genocide in the Ottoman Empire during the very beginning of World War I. None of this fits with Emmett’s knowledge of his past, but as the scenes continue to play out in his head, he begins to believe that he was that man and question the entire basis of his American life.
This was such a powerful book. I thought the reflections were the perfect way to tell the story; it’s an amazing contrast between Emmett’s settled US life and his job forcing the Armenians out of the country. It’s impossible to like him at first, and I’d say it remains difficult throughout the book, simply because he is brutal. He, like so many young impulsive people, seems almost addicted to the feeling of power. The Armenians become faceless evil to him, an “other” that has committed crimes against his people; thus he can commit crimes against them without thinking. It’s a tale that you can find throughout history, still going on in the present day; if we can dehumanize our enemies, it appears easier to watch them suffer or even kill them, for most people. I knew (and know) virtually nothing about the Armenian genocide, regrettably, but it is surely this type of thinking which allows such unspeakable crimes to happen. Even now, we can happily stereotype people based on their age, their race, their gender, their religion, but if you know anyone at all you’ll realize that each and every person is different.
So Emmett discovers when he gets to know Araxie. He finds himself drawn to her without realizing why, and then when he comes to know her, he struggles more with the atrocities he’s committed. He knows they’re wrong. He knows he doesn’t want to hurt her, feels guilty for killing people she knows and loves. He learns precisely that lesson; that each person, no matter where they come from or what they look like, is still just a person. That’s why this book, for me, was so powerful and moving. It was not just an incredible story, but it had that anti-prejudice theme running through it so strongly. I can’t stand people who discriminate against others for any reason; so I struggled to like Emmett. Sure, he doesn’t look evil in the present day, but then how many murderers astonish their family and friends with the crimes they’ve committed? But then he started to realize what he’d done, and I appreciated him more along with the book as the story continued.
Make no mistake, at times this is a violent and disturbing book, but these things happened. Turks did rape, assault, and murder Armenians as they deported them. Mustian doesn’t really shield us from the atrocities committed and at times, the parts in the present come as a relief because the parts in the past are hard to take. It wouldn’t be as meaningful without this, though, and in the end I think a more accurate and detailed depiction is necessary.
The Gendarme is a powerful portrait of and a cry against prejudice. It’s also a really good, gripping story, as Emmett’s past is revealed through his memories and has an increasing impact on his future. Highly recommended.
I am an Amazon Associate. Many many thanks to Candace at Beth Fish Reads for sending this to me for our book club!
 In the county of Basque, in northern Spain, three men stop at a bar before a wedding. In the bar resides Maria Antonia Etxarri, a teenager whose life is due to be intimately, if reluctantly, intertwined with the bride’s, Isabel Cruces. Told alternately through flashbacks to the past, including the war which occurred shortly after the wedding, and from a doctor’s viewpoint in the present day, The Wrong Blood slowly reveals to us a story of love and need. Two women, lives irrevocably altered by the war, find something that they need in one another, and find some degree of fulfilment even if their lives don’t turn out as they’d originally planned.
This is one book that demonstrates beautifully the reason I rarely stop reading books – I almost always finish them, and whether you agree that’s a good idea or not, it does mean I discover some gems I’d otherwise have stuck on the DNF pile. I have a history of disliking historical fiction set in Spain, but this sounded so appealing I just had to give it a try. At first I thought this was going to be another book I didn’t really like that much – I didn’t really understand what the three men were doing in the bar, the language felt distant and peculiar, and I just didn’t like the doctor. While I never really liked the doctor, I eventually grew to find the language poetic as I got further into the story and treasured the connections made in the rather strange beginning, as it all came together amazingly well by the end.
It was when the war began that things got interesting, because those events set off the huge changes that beset Maria Antonia and Isabel. When the novel starts, we know that Maria Antonia has inherited Isabel’s house in the present, even though Isabel has a grandson who is coming to stay there and Maria Antonia appears to have been the housekeeper. This immediately made me wonder what had happened, what connection bound these two women that Maria Antonia would be favored over Isabel’s own progeny? It took the whole novel to get there, but I finally found out, and it all made sense in the end, even the title. And along the way we’re treated to lovely prose (the translator did an excellent job here) and a very atmospheric story. I even loved that the time flipped from the past to the present because the contrast between the earlier Spain and the current Spain was marked and fascinating.
This particular novel fits perfectly the type of historical fiction that’s occupying me these days; set in a slightly unusual (for me) location and time with a compelling story to tell and great writing to back it up. It was such a wonderful read that I’m still thinking about it, and I am enthusiastically recommending The Wrong Blood to anyone who enjoys historical fiction. I don’t think you’ll be sorry if you give it a shot.
I am an Amazon Associate. I received this book for free through Netgalley for review.
 Bartholomew Fortuno is one of several regular acts at P T Barnum’s American Museum in New York City. He is the stereotypical thin man; he eats virtually nothing to the point where his bones and organs are clearly delineated beneath his skin. He doesn’t see his act as mere human fascination with the grotesque; instead he hopes to connect with those in the audience by showing them their true nature. When a mysterious new act, a woman with a beard, arrives at the museum, Bartholomew finds himself enthralled and abandons his old friends in favor of the new woman. When he discovers that she isn’t what she seems, he’s forced to reevaluate his entire life and career.
Unfortunately this is a book I just felt rather “meh” about. It’s made it very difficult to write this review. I was quite excited by the prospect of it at first. I’m really interested in the history of the circus and just read quite an interesting non-fiction YA book on Tom Thumb, who was a figure at the American Museum, so I was eager to enjoy this exciting era through fiction. I wasn’t quite as enthralled as I’d hoped, but I did enjoy the book overall.
In some ways, it did live up to what I expected of it. I was fascinated by the way that Bartholomew defines himself through his physical self, the way his thinness and unnatural lack of hunger has changed the way he’s lived his life. He almost gets arrogant about his body, convinced that he’s truly something special, rather than a man who starves himself to become a freak that is gawked at by countless people every day. It led me to wonder if that was how I’d cope, should this have been my life. Would I too ascribe such importance to my physical dimensions and give myself airs because I exposed some part of human nature others couldn’t see in themselves? I don’t know, but it was quite fascinating.
As a result of his arrogance, though, I didn’t really ever come to like Fortuno. I hated his fixation with the bearded lady, his refusal to see the world as it really was. He truly gets airs about himself and neglects his friends – people who genuinely care about him – in favor of this woman who really doesn’t care what happens to him. He is completely out of touch with reality, which is an essential facet of his character but made him so hard to like.
There isn’t much else to this novel beyond Fortuno’s slow reevaluation of the world around him, which makes it a bit of a slow read, but it is nevertheless interesting. I particularly enjoyed the thorough imagining of the American Museum. It really helped me picture what it might have been to live there, especially as one of the exhibits. I felt for many of those who weren’t Bartholomew, and I wished for their lives to get better and for them to escape the exploitation.
Though I think The Transformation of Bartholomew Fortuno could have been more, it was still an enjoyable read. I would recommend it to anyone else who is interested in thinking about the origins of the circus or New York City in the mid 19th century.
I am an Amazon Associate. I received this book for free from the publisher for review.
 Empress Orchid, formerly known as Lady Yehonala, has truly become the ruler of all China. Despite her desire to retire, she’s forced to train more than one young emperor, and regularly finds herself resuming rule. She faces opposition from virtually all sides, not only from within the court and from the public but also from a variety of hostile nations who wish to invade and capture parts of China. Meanwhile, she’s forced to deny herself the love she desperately craves as she watches her empire slowly begin to collapse.
This is the follow-up to Empress Orchid, which if you’ll recall (or click back to my review) I really enjoyed. I loved the Chinese atmosphere, the intricacy and intrigue of the court, and Orchid herself. I liked this book less. Orchid’s position, while not completely firm throughout the book, is now relatively solid and she finds herself instead dealing with an ever changing rotation of men and women who come in and out of her life.
This is an incredibly detailed time in China and I felt that, for my tastes, the book rushed through it in the interest of getting to the end of Orchid’s life. It’s also darker in character, if that’s even possible, simply because history in China in this period is very dark. The empire is clearly collapsing, and it’s obvious even if you aren’t aware of the general history of China. Foreign powers are regularly invading, even to the point of leveling the empress’s home and driving her out to exile. Still, we unfortunately miss a lot of the background history going on in China at this point simply because she isn’t there, which makes it harder to get a complete picture of the era, and means the reader feels a bit detached.
It’s clear that her way of life is unsustainable, which should lend an air of nostalgia to the work, but instead it just feels corrupt. Even though Orchid is suffering, and it’s painful to see China fall, one can’t help but feel that a better government is genuinely necessary, even if not the one that China eventually ended up with. Orchid can’t even speak with the Western leaders and hardly has any idea of her own country – how is she meant to rule, let alone the privileged boys who are called emperor and then completely spoiled with no responsibilities?
Overall, though, I still enjoyed Min’s writing and I enjoyed The Last Empress overall. I didn’t feel it was quite as strong as the first in this duology, but it hasn’t put me off reading the rest of her work at all. I’m at present especially interested in delving more into a wider history of China in this period; I think it’s absolutely fascinating, so don’t expect my China fixation to stop any time soon!
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