Medieval Bookworm

Mina Murray thinks she’s a lucky woman.  She has a fiance who some may have considered out of her reach, a pair of best friends, and enjoys her time teaching before she’s married.  But she has dreams about a man she can’t identify, dreams that go beyond what a proper lady should be capable of imagining, and her friend Lucy appears to be in serious trouble with the men who wish to court her.  Worst of all, Mina’s fiance goes on a trip to Romania and doesn’t write her, finally emerging seriously ill on the border, making Mina question the future she’s planned for herself and long for the man of her dreams to appear in the flesh.

I’m not sure if this is another case of me being far too fond of the original, but I just didn’t seem to love this one as much as everyone else did.  It was definitely engaging and drew me in, but it kept reminding me of the original Dracula and making me long to read that one instead of continuing to read this story that turned it all upside down.  I appear to have a soft spot for certain favorite books and I don’t always like other authors popping in and changing things.  I have enjoyed Essex’s other books, but this one just didn’t have the same effect on me.

Setting my partiality aside, I did like how Essex turned the sexual stereotypes in Dracula on their head.  Instead of women sitting in the background, having brains like men and not brains in their own right, Mina takes the forefront here, and has perfectly normal feelings and desires that all women share.  Instead of being ashamed of her sexuality, Mina learns to appreciate it and to acknowledge her feelings.  The scenes in the asylum are just heartbreaking; perfectly ordinary women are consigned to terrible lives simply because men decided they were too lustful, something that sadly did happen at the time.

I’ve seen a few complaints floating around about the novel’s sexuality; this isn’t really something I had a problem with.  The thing about vampires is that they have always been sexual – seriously, think about it – we’re just a little more comfortable about admitting it these days.  Saying that, I would definitely not recommend this book if you don’t want any of that in your books, because it is fairly frequent and a major part of the story.

Unfortunately, all the book really inspired me to do was start reading Dracula again.  Dracula in Love may work better for you if you’re not so attached to the original (seriously, a friend and I nicknamed ourselves Mina and Lucy in high school), but I would still recommend Stealing Athena and Leonardo’s Swans first.

I am an Amazon Associate. I received this book for free from the publisher for review.

Ten year old Margaret Beaufort wants to devote her life to prayer, perhaps becoming an abbess in the process, since she can’t ride to the glory of her country like Joan of Arc.  As she grows and gives birth to a son at the age of 13, though, Margaret realizes that she is called to a different purpose, to put her son on the throne of England.  Through three marriages and countless smiles of false loyalty, Margaret never loses sight of her goal, even when it drives away all the people who might once have loved her.

Once again, Philippa Gregory has written a book which has me a little bit torn.  It didn’t start off well.  I didn’t believe Margaret Beaufort would idolize Joan of Arc.  As far as I’m aware, English people at the time merely thought of Joan as an heretic, when they thought of her at all.  I severely doubt a ten year old girl would have ever even heard of her, let alone decided she wanted to be her.  And it got worse when she believed her pregnancy was of paramount importance to England.  The wars were starting, yes, but the king had a son, and even if he didn’t the Yorkists had a better claim since they weren’t descended from a line specifically NOT allowed to take the throne.  Henry did become the Lancastrian claimant, but only because literally every other choice was dead.

Perhaps those are not on the strict factual side like dates, but they stuck out and annoyed me, so I figured I’d include them; they both do enhance the story, so I can’t really blame her.  After that, the plot improved significantly and I didn’t land on anything else that had me really irritated.  I seriously cannot read a book about the Wars of the Roses without picking something out that I don’t like or think is inaccurate – so others are free to ignore my complaints and/or dispute me as they like.

Secondly, Margaret annoyed me beyond belief.  Her stance of declaring her whole life preordained by God, her coldness and selfishness – not at all in line with a woman who truly deserved to be called by God – had me pretty much crossing my fingers that Gregory would change history just so Henry could not become king of England. I wanted to smack her so she would show some sort of emotion besides cold-hearted ambition.  The author did not succeed in making her a sympathetic character in any way.

Negativity aside, though, this was actually quite an enjoyable book to read.  It read quickly and was surprisingly exciting, especially since Margaret saw hardly any action herself.  She’s also a bit of a rare subject for a novel, so I actually enjoyed seeing things from her point of view even if I did want to punch her most of the time.  In fact, she fit my previous perceptions of her pretty closely.  Much as I wanted her to become sympathetic, it’s hard to imagine that woman who had some sort of kindness in her could turn into the Margaret Beaufort who later moved into the palace with Henry VII.  The fact that I could actually enjoy reading a book about such an irritating woman is perhaps a testament to the fact that Gregory can tell a story well.

If you enjoy historical fiction, I do believe you will enjoy The Red Queen.  Gregory does a good job bringing history alive and even the changes she makes that have me annoyed do fit the context of the story.  I wouldn’t say I enjoyed this one quite as much as The White Queen, but I would recommend both.

In conjunction with the Simon & Schuster UK blog tour, I have five copies of this book to give away to UK and Ireland residents!  If you’d like to enter, please fill out the form below. The giveaway is open until midnight UK time Monday August 16th.

I am an Amazon Associate. I received this book for free for review from the publisher.

Margaret Oades isn’t exactly thrilled that she has to move her entire family from England to New Zealand in the late nineteenth century, but she loves her husband and, as a woman with children, has few other options.  And anyway, they will return in two years, or at least that’s the plan; her house is attacked by Maori, native New Zealanders, and she and her children are spirited into the night and enslaved for six years.  In the meantime, Henry Oades, Margaret’s husband, is convinced that his family has perished, and moves to California, where he marries once again.  When Margaret shows up on her doorstep, new wife Nancy Oades has no idea what to do – but the case of the two wives of Mr. Oades incites public scandal and personal difficulty that will impact the lives of all concerned in remarkable ways.

This was such an intriguing historical novel.  First off, the initial setting of New Zealand in the late nineteenth century was fairly new to me in fiction, but New Zealand is one of the places I’ve had to write about at work, so I’ve done some research.  This is the first time I can recall reading about it in fiction and it was marvelous to have it come to life, if only for a few pages before the horror happened.  Throughout, through, I really enjoyed Johanna Moran’s writing, and I found the whole book smooth and atmospheric – the locations felt different and I appreciated each of them differently.

I also loved the characters here, mostly the wives.  I immediately liked Margaret and found it hard to believe that I could like Nancy, too, but somehow I appreciated both wives and their difficulties while loving a single man.  The novel conveys magnificently the strength of women; despite slurs again their reputations, physical violence, and simple jealousy, Nancy and Margaret remain admirable characters and hardly ever miss a step.  While Mr. Oades, despite his seemingly kind and giving nature, remains just a shadow throughout the novel, even when he’s grief stricken about the deaths of his family members, the two women really come to life.  If I couldn’t understand why they loved Henry, I could understand perfectly their reasons for staying with him; this is true of Margaret in particular.  Nancy, it seems, could have easily left despite her recent marriage, but she is still in love with Henry.

The idea of this novel is great, too, in that it covers a little known lawsuit that actually existed in California.  At this point, there appears to have been something of a hysteria against bigamy due to Mormons’ multiple marriages before reliable laws were enacted.  I would find such censure in real life heartbreaking – as if Margaret Oades and her children hadn’t been through enough already – but sadly not unbelievable, especially not at this time.  I was eager to know a few more details about the real life case and I wish someone would write an actual history about it.

Until then, though, The Wives of Henry Oades is a really engaging work of historical fiction – especially recommended if you’re interested in reading about strong women who make the best of what life hands them.

I am an Amazon Associate. I received this book for free from the Amazon Vine program.

Amandine is an aristocratic child born of scandal in Poland just before World War II.  She is born nameless, with a heart condition that means her continued survival is unlikely.  Unable to bear the child’s presence, Amandine’s grandmother sends her to foster in a convent in France, careful to hide all traces of her ancestry bar one, an heirloom necklace.  She even tells her daughter, Amandine’s mother, that her daughter has died while having surgery as an infant.  Instead, miraculously, Amandine grows up dreaming of her mother, finding substitutes along the way, but never losing grasp of the fact that she has a mother who might want her.  When World War II breaks out, Amandine and her guardian Solange set out across France, determined to find a safe haven in a country torn apart by war, and perhaps to find someone who recognizes the peculiar antique necklace Amandine wears.

In terms of plot, Amandine gets off to a painful start.  The first chapters are riddled with the old countess’s (the grandmother’s) memories and the story of Amandine’s birth.  There are pages of description and little to no action.  Once Amandine gets to the convent, things pick up slightly and it’s easy to feel for the poor girl.  When she goes to school, she is constantly mocked and also suffers when she has to watch the other girls reunite each weekend with their families.  She has her long term guardian, Solange, but she’s no substitute for Amandine’s mother, no matter how much they love one another.  Even as a child, Amandine is full of spirit and determined to defend herself and those she cares about, which makes it very easy for us as readers to care for her in turn.  The rest of the characters are very well fleshed out, with believable internal conflicts revealed fairly slowly as the first half goes on.  I really felt that this was a book populated by people, not just characters, if that makes sense.

The plot picks up even more once the war arrives and with a few perspective shifts; the contrast between war-ravaged France and Poland and the initial chapters in the convent is striking.  De Blasi effortlessly conveys the utter pointlessness of the war and the fragility of life at the time with a few well-written passages.  Characters that were built up in the first chapters as complex human beings are struck down with barely a moment’s notice.  The author’s writing is beautifully descriptive and I got a real feel for convent life and the French countryside, which makes the chapters about war even harder to read in comparison.  And throughout, I was constantly hoping for Amandine to find her mother, which adds an extra layer of tension to the book’s concluding chapters.

Despite a slow start, Amandine revealed itself as a complex, engaging historical novel with strong characters and a distinct French atmosphere.  It’s the perfect choice for the historical fiction reader craving a thoughtful read.

I am an Amazon Associate. I received this book for free from the LibraryThing Early Reviewers program.