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 As the eldest daughter of Edward IV and wife of Henry VII, Elizabeth of York presents a link of continuity between the extravagant Yorkist rule and the more conservative Tudor dynasty. At one time, two would-be kings competed for England’s crown, and with it Elizabeth’s hand in marriage. The Battle of Bosworth Field changed the course of history and Elizabeth’s role was in the very center of English politics. Margaret Campbell Barnes imagines how Elizabeth may have felt and reacted to her pivotal position, giving this occasionally neglected queen a voice of her own in one of the most recently popular periods in English history.
I’ve mentioned before that the Wars of the Roses are the latest popular trend in historical fiction. I’m fairly pleased with this as it’s my own area of special interest and I like to see how different fiction writers have portrayed all of these characters with whom I am so familiar. Sourcebooks’ release of The Tudor Rose comes at a perfect time and despite the fact that it was written years ago, it isn’t very dated. Interestingly, Barnes interprets history in ways that stray wildly from today’s popular positions. For example, Henry VII’s mother Margaret Beaufort, often portrayed as a tyrant who controlled her son and stifled his wife, is here a friend to Elizabeth, and Elizabeth happily allows Margaret to tend to those nasty administrative tasks that she would rather miss out on. Elizabeth herself is a charming character. She is fairly quiet and submissive but she loves deeply and she has a great deal of courage and strength. As readers, we want her to find love and happiness, because she is clearly so deserving of it.
In terms of plot, The Tudor Rose follows the life of Elizabeth of York from her childhood engagement to the French dauphin to a point within a year of her death. As such, there isn’t really any sort of tension; many readers will know how the story ends. It could feel slow, but it’s a very pleasant journey, and a lovely imagining of the late fifteenth century. The book feels rich with detail, fine gowns and palaces, and will surely appeal to those of us who love to read about royalty. And it’s always worth finding out what another author has done with the Princes in the Tower, particularly given that this book has a long enough timeline to include the revolt against Henry VII by Perkin Warbeck.
In short, The Tudor Rose is a wonderful historical read and well worth curling up with for immersion into another world, if not for those who crave excitement in their books.
Would you like to win a copy of your own? Sourcebooks is sponsoring a giveaway of one copy to a US or Canadian address. No P.O. boxes please! Just leave a comment to enter. This contest will run until midnight on October 20th. The winner of this contest is Stephanie.
 After the Civil War is over, John Bell Hood, defeated Confederate general, moves to New Orleans seeking a future. The war has irreparably scarred him, changing not only his view on life but his very body; he’s missing a leg and the use of one arm. In New Orleans he meets a woman to love, Anna Marie Hennen, has almost a dozen children, and finds himself enmeshed in a society and a history that is not his own, which he finds he must pull apart in order to properly understand, until the yellow fever takes everything.
Civil war fiction is always a tough sell with me and I have no idea why. Fleetingly, I hoped Robert Hicks could buck the trend, as a few notable authors had done before, but unfortunately this book did not strike a chord with me. Strange, because it focuses on a fascinating historical figure and his transformation from an arrogant man into a humanitarian one. New Orleans itself is fascinating and I found myself looking up its history as I went along (only on wikipedia, but still!). I really enjoyed the characters’ forays into the forests and the conflicts between the Creoles and the Americans, not to mention the depiction of changing attitudes towards race. A Separate Country has plenty of interesting hot button topics to consider, even more as the novel moves towards a conclusion.
The book is told through a trio of important characters. The first is Eli Griffin, an iceman, who would never have been in New Orleans or anywhere near General Hood if not for his family’s fate in the war. Eli has been entrusted with Hood’s book, a memoir, ensuring that it makes publication. Fulfilling Hood’s dying requests makes up his part of the book; other sections are told from Hood’s perspective from the war to his death and the rest of the chapters are from Anna Marie’s viewpoint, written to her daughter Lydia as she is on her deathbed. These are not spoilers, we gather this information in the first few pages of the novel.
I think overall the problem for me with the book is that none of these characters were particularly compelling. I find it difficult to sympathize with this Confederate general. His arrogance and blindness at times is overwhelming and even his moves towards a more likeable personality didn’t quite pull off redeeming him in my eyes. The worst, though, was Anna Marie, who admits that she is shallow, finds her children a burden after the first one, and inadvertently causes misery for almost all of her friends. Normally I like when characters are made more human due to their flaws, but to be honest, these had me driven up the wall.
I do think there is a good book here. It just is not a book for me.
 David Martin is an aspiring writer of suspenseful stories in early twentieth century Barcelona. When opportunities to write professionally present themselves, he quickly seizes them, the desire to be published overriding everything, including his common sense. With his earnings, Martin moves into a tower house, abandoned for decades, but with the sentimental value of a place he’s passed every day on his way to success. But when Martin receives an unusual offer and begins to learn more about his strange abode, he realizes that he is playing a far deeper game than he’d ever imagined.
My favorite aspect of Zafon’s writing is the atmosphere he evokes with his works. This was amazingly well done in The Shadow of the Wind, which I read before I began blogging, and I had high hopes here as well. Zafon did not let me down. Almost immediately, he draws us into a world of half-truths in the depths of Barcelona. Impending tragedy always seems to hang over Martin, right from the beginning, and it’s as though the book is clogged with dark, rainy nights and suspenseful midnight meetings. It’s hard to describe, but it’s easy to live in this world. Even Martin’s apartment is compelling and virtually a living part of the mystery.
When not writing, Martin is also obsessed with his love, Cristina, even though it takes years before she recognizes him. This love story goes in a very peculiar direction but adds to the eerie feel of the work. Throughout, we’re uncertain as to whether Martin’s experiences are real or imaginary, particularly as the story gets crazy. By the halfway point, I was surprised by how tense the story was getting; I found myself reading a thriller! The literary touch and the atmosphere, plus the added uncertainty about Martin’s mental state, are really what make this book something special. Towards the end of the book, the plot starts to unravel to some extent, but I was still curious about it.
The Shadow of the Wind was a book for readers. The Angel’s Game is less so; I think it’s much closer to a book for writers, but since I’m not really one, it didn’t draw me in quite the same way. So I can’t say I really liked it more but I definitely enjoyed reading it. I wanted to know what happened next. The ending didn’t answer all of my questions, but that rarely happens. I would recommend this, especially if you enjoyed The Shadow of the Wind.
 Kate Robinson’s life is in tatters. Her long-term boyfriend has dumped her, her fashion career is failing thanks to an incompetent advisor, and her mother has died. Determined to renew herself, Kate departs on a long trip to Ireland, where she and her mother had planned to go before the cancer took away all plans. Inadvertently, she stumbles upon Glenmara and a group of five women who have carried on the hereditary tradition of making lace while their own lives are uncertain and unhappy. Together, Kate and the lace makers of Glenmara strive to not only rediscover their own lives, but to give their fading town a fresh start on the world stage.
I think the key word when it comes to this book is simply “not enough”. The Lace Makers of Glenmara is meant to be inspiring and heart-warming with a simple story about the friendships between women, with one in particular as a focal point. As always, Ireland itself is enchanting, and Glenmara and its generally aging residents are a product of a society long gone. There is a mystical touch on Kate’s journey to Glenmara with William the Traveller. Kate’s need for a new outlook on life is completely understandable. Yet so much of this book rang false for me. It seemed incredibly unlikely that Bernie would offer to let a stranger live with her when they had only met five minutes ago, against the advice of her best friend. The romance was incredibly quick and not at all fleshed out. Kate and Sullivan basically fall into bed together and are immediately serious after that with no real development of the initial relationship, so his panic shortly afterwards just seems strange. This is especially so given that we’re told he sleeps around quite frequently and is never serious about anyone. Kate seems different just because she reminds him of someone else, but that’s an incredibly shaky base for a relationship. Lace making itself is undoubtedly fascinating, but again, few details are really given in the book. The events within could also have been incredibly moving, and the book tries hard to accomplish that, but we haven’t spent enough time with the characters to feel grief on their behalf.
At its core, the story is still a good one. I love how the lace could renew a community by giving it new strength and new visitors. Its effect on the women’s lives is itself slightly magical, which adds to the overall mystical feel of the book. It isn’t that I disliked the book, it is just that I put it down wishing for more story, more detail, more characters, more everything. The Lace Makers of Glenmara is well conceived but poorly executed.
 Edie Swann, formerly known as Eden Swanford, is determined to wreak revenge on the men that she thinks are responsible for her father’s death. She returns to the town of her childhood and starts to send out black angels to scare them and make them remember what they’d done. When the men start dying, Edie becomes a suspect, even in her own mind; she fears she has set in motion a much larger plan than she’d ever bargained for. Meanwhile Sheriff Holt Drennen knows Edie is up to something but can’t stop his attraction and simple liking for her. Even though she is the obvious culprit, he believes in her innocence, and he’s willing to fight.
If this is representative of the romantic suspense genre, I definitely want to read more. The mystery in this book was so engaging. The different threads wove between the two main characters, the men who were implicated in the murder of Edie’s father, and even through Holt’s adorable daughter. There were layers and layers to this story and as they were slowly peeled away, the craving for more knowledge just kept on growing. I’m always bad at guessing the murderer, so I can’t guarantee that this isn’t a predictable read for someone else, but to me the plot felt surprisingly tight, exciting, and suspenseful. That isn’t even discussing the romance, which sizzles right off the page. Edie and Holt are not only a very enticing couple but a believable pair. The book doesn’t end in marriage but in a commitment to try out their relationship, which I really appreciated after they’d been through so much.
Edie as a character really got me into the book. She’s a strong woman, but there are forces beyond her control going on here. It’s so easy to feel for her when she’s lost almost everyone in her life, and it’s perfectly understandable that Holt has to build up her trust in him. She’s actually horrified by the fact that the men start dying, even though she thinks they killed her father. Even if she intends to make them a little anxious, she never intended to do any physical harm, just encourage the truth to come out. Her character really starts to come out when she finds her own life in danger. There were also some great family dynamics in this little novel, mostly centered on Holt’s relationship with his parents and his daughter, which made it feel more realistic and well-rounded.
I really enjoyed One Deadly Sin. It appeals to the part of me that loves this kind of exciting suspense. With both a great plot and fantastic characters to care about, there is no way to go wrong with this one.
 Adam Swann is a soldier, but he’s sick of fighting. Left for dead on a battlefield in India, Adam opens his eyes to spot a ruby necklace, the means for funding his dreams. When he recovers from his illness, he heads to England and decides to start a shipping company after taking the advice of a railroad man and exploring England on his horse. On his way home, he spots a young girl, half-undressed and washing in a puddle. This is Henrietta Rawlinson, daughter of a cotton giant, fleeing from an arranged marriage that makes her feel ill. Adam takes her with him, marries her, and launches Swann-on-Wheels, their brainchild. As the company grows and expands, so do the couple’s fortunes, and this novel is their epic story.
I want to start off by saying that this book took me a week to read but I loved every minute of it. I read a few smaller books in between, but I just adored spending so much time in Victorian England. I felt like I lived in Adam and Henrietta’s world and could understand their issues and problems but also cheer for them to push forward, move past whatever problems they were having, and succeed at everything. This is the kind of book that becomes a favorite, at least for me, because I love huge complex stories like this.
Since this novel was originally written in 1970, I assumed it would feel dated, but it really doesn’t. Even its treatment of women is open-minded; Edith remarks that women could rule companies very easily, were they given a chance, and then Henrietta actually does take the reins of leadership and proves herself an astonishingly capable woman both at home and at work. This may be a bit anachronistic for the mid-19th century, but having smart female characters to care about makes this an immeasurably better novel than it would have been otherwise. I felt a little uneasy with the fact that Henrietta’s character changes because Adam pushes it to do so, but as the novel progressed it became clear that he’d just given her an opportunity rather than actually pushing her at all; that was just how he thought of it.
I loved, loved, loved that this was set in Victorian England and didn’t just focus on London, but the entire country, and more so that specific issues are highlighted and addressed. For example, the use of children as chimney sweeps was a huge dilemma, and it’s brought right home here. The novel also includes workers’ strikes and the changing attitude towards employment going on around this time. The Swanns do have a comparatively cushy life, but we see how hard Adam works and his financial difficulties, so it is vastly different in feel than a book focusing on the aristocracy, for example. We even have mention of the Civil War in the USA and how it affected production in England; there is a sense of history here as historical events happen with Adam and Henrietta and their managers on what feels like the forefront of a new England. It’s a heady feeling; it’s a heady book.
If I had to say one negative thing about the book, though, it would mainly be that the setting up of Adam’s company does bog down at times. The beginning of the book took me much longer because it was more about the logisitics of his company than about the people in the book. I enjoyed the detail about setting up a company and being introduced to all the secondary characters, but I would have been happier with less. By contrast, I loved the sections about the main characters that followed, and once the business got off the ground the book sped much more quickly. I had at first set myself a goal of reading 50 pages each day, but by page 200 I knew I couldn’t go that slowly.
God Is an Englishman was a delightful, absorbing, utterly fascinating read. I could happily have kept on reading more. This is the start of a series, so while this book ended in a nice solid fashion, I know I’m going to seek out the rest of the series as soon as I can.
 Hiroko Tanaka, a young woman living in Nagasaki in World War II, has fallen in love with a German. They know their lives are constantly in danger, but somehow their love has blossomed regardless. On the same day that Konrad proposes, the Americans drop a bomb on Nagasaki. Hiroko’s life changes irrevocably, right down to her skin, on which the birds from her mother’s kimono have been etched in scars. A few years later, Hiroko finds herself at the home of Konrad’s sister in India, where new love awaits. Sweeping onwards through to Pakistan and later the United States, this multi-generational work encompasses the depths of the horror of war and the endurance of the human spirit in the face of unspeakable horror and tragedy.
I’m not sure it’s possible to like this book, although I know I’ve said I do already. It is almost relentless in the danger and the pain it causes for its main characters, particularly Hiroko. In the beginning, it feels too long and it moves very slowly. While I appreciate the messages the book is trying to convey, it takes a great deal of concentration to get through and it might have benefited from a more concise plot. The writing is gorgeous, but doesn’t help matters, although it does feel as though we could live in the settings of the book. Each location feels different, as they should given where they are in the world. Hiroko moves from Nagasaki to India to Pakistan to New York City, all of which are beautifully drawn with Shamsie’s words.
It’s the message that this book has left me with, however, which is certainly both anti-war and almost anti-nation. By taking a large time period, Shamsie can show that as human beings, we haven’t learned from our mistakes, and that war is truly horrible in a way that people who haven’t lived through it don’t properly understand. She also shows us what a lack of education about can do through Hiroko’s son, Raza. Hiroko tries to shield him from the atrocities of the atomic bomb by speaking little about her own experience, but that only means he doesn’t understand what he’s getting into when violence does encroach upon his life and only learns later the meaning and devastation of violence and loss. The mistakes are repeated later with another character, still ignorant of what war truly means. With these characters, it seems to me that the author is trying to express that people are people, by giving voices and faces to those who do cross country boundaries and who may otherwise be considered suspicious. Nationalism only impairs our ability to relate to others as we stereotype them into something Different. It’s unquestionable, in the end, that this book has given me a lot to think about.
As such, I don’t know if I’d call Burnt Shadows an enjoyable book, but it is very deep. I felt that I was left with a lot on my mind and I had learned something about Pakistan in particular in the process (which I did enjoy, I like learning). So I’m undecided as to whether or not I can recommend it, and instead will leave you with just this review to decide for yourselves.
 In the future, Mexico has gone to war against the United States, necessitating the creation of buffer zones. Santa Olivia lies within this buffer zone, the inhabitants stripped of all rights, privileges, and luxuries, no longer citizens of the United States. Carmen Garron is one of those citizens, looking for love against the odds, and temporarily finding it twice. Her second love has been genetically engineered to have superhuman strength, speed, sight, but has a complete lack of fear. He is also infertile, or at least they think so until Carmen conceives a child, named Loup Garron for her fugitive father. As Loup grows to maturity in a church, she takes on the guise of Santa Olivia, providing justice to the town in a way no one else imagined, and taking huge risks to stand up for the rights she knows they deserve.
If this novel had not had Jacqueline Carey emblazoned on the cover, I would never have realized it was her. Her writing is still gorgeous, but in a totally different way from her Kushiel series. It’s rougher, to match this serious urban fantasy, but still retains a beauty and grace that is unmistakably Carey once it’s more carefully examined. When she uses a bird in Carmen’s heart to describe her youthful hope and love in an elegant, but not melodramatic way, I fell in love:
In between the fourth and fifth rounds, Carmen Garron slipped through the crowd, made her way to the outside of the soldier’s corner. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw her.
“Hi there.” He slid one muscled, sweaty arm through the ropes, touched her hand with his gloved fist.
The bird in her heart warbled.
I could read Jacqueline Carey’s books all year and never get bored.
This is a completely different type of urban fantasy than most of what is found on the bookstore shelf. It is a gritty, hard reality, a world in which there is no hope. There are no vampires or witches, just genetically engineered humans who are ostacized from society. Somehow, Loup Garron shines in this world, an enigmatic main character that is different enough to make her special and human enough to make her real. Loup provides not only hope to the people of Santa Olivia, but to readers; she’s the embodiment of determination and spirit. The werewolf, without turning into a wolf, concept is cleverly done even if rarely mentioned. Loup’s strength sets her apart but her desire to be at least mostly normal brings her into a group of orphans who provide the backbone for her inspiring journey. She doesn’t quite fit in, but that just makes us love her all the more. Meanwhile, the town of Santa Olivia is a terrifying potential reality. It’s unlikely but just real enough to strike fear in our hearts and cause us to hope for Loup’s success.
To be honest, I don’t love this book as much as I love any of the Kushiel’s Legacy series. In some sense, though, that is like comparing apples to oranges, since they are so different in feel, setting, scope, and character development. Santa Olivia is a great read all on its own and that is how it should be judged. As such, I think Carey made a wise move in trying out a different kind of fantasy. A sequel has been proposed, but this book, while somewhat open-ended, ends satisfactorily and left me hopeful for the future.
 It is the end of Bess’s junior year at Loretto Academy, a high school for girls run by nuns in the shadow of Niagara Falls. She knows something is wrong when her father doesn’t appear at the graduation ceremony and when the nuns inexplicably present her with farewell gifts; her father has been fired from his job as the director of the Niagara Power Company. Bess must return home, care for her suddenly ill sister Isabel, and assist her mother in dressmaking to keep the family afloat. On the way from Loretto, a young man carries her trunk, and later passes by her house, with the gift of a fish. Bess had counted on hardship, but she hadn’t counted on love with a riverman or the future she would have.
There are many things to love about this book. The prose is gorgeous, for one thing, as are the descriptions. It’s almost possible to feel the cool mist off the falls, as the characters do, or the deadly beauty of the whirlpools. Bess is a strong woman up there with the best of them, coping with her family’s losses and tragedy and somehow managing every single time. Her strength grows over the course of the novel, from a girl afraid of what her mother is thinking to a woman that has her own business and is ready to turn down society ladies regardless of what they think. There is all the innocence and wonder of a first love affair, more so because this one is so explicit, that conflict between duty and desire.
And yet there was somehow a lack of connection. I liked the book, but I didn’t love it. Bess is a sympathetic character but always from a distance; by the end of the novel she has grown so strong that any attempts to empathize with her feel as though they would be pushed away. It felt as though she didn’t experience emotions strongly enough at that point, she just moved on. The book had potential to be one of a series of great, sweeping romances marred with tragedy, but it stopped just short. Or maybe I just was in the mood for something more explicit, or perhaps I’m just lucky that I’ve never had to be that strong. To be honest, I think a lot of it had to do with the fact that the book is in present tense, which always feels more distant to me.
I much preferred the historical bits. I loved learning more about Niagara Falls and that Tom Cole was based on a real man. The pictures evoke a sense of history a little bit stronger than the words themselves and the newspaper articles, fictional or not, fleshed out the history of the story without long or boring exposition. I was interested in the sewing techniques and the dresses Bess described, in the books she was reading, in the new electric appliances that houses had. I was fascinated by the setting and I wouldn’t mind spending a little more time there.
Though I liked and didn’t love The Day the Falls Stood Still, I’d still recommend it for those who enjoy historical fiction or are looking for a compelling love story.
 When Iris’s father dies, she finds that she wants to continue his legacy by establishing his children’s center in Vietnam. The center was not completed and Iris decides to abandon her career as newspaper book reviewer and fly to Vietnam to help. She takes her neighbor Noah with her, a man impaired both physically and mentally from his experience in the Iraq War, in the hopes that a purpose will give his life meaning and direction. In Saigon, Iris and Noah are amazed by the kindness and warmth of the Vietnamese and the clever street children, who quickly realize the goals of the center and wish to be enrolled. In this cutthroat world, however, it isn’t all as easy as it should be, and Iris and Noah find themselves fighting to save the children they come to love.
It seems to me that this is a book about hope. Iris hopes to build a center beyond all the others, to truly educate girls and make them into productive and happy citizens. Noah eventually learns to hope again through Thien, who is at peace with the universe. The children all hope to be let into the center, so they have a chance for a brighter future. Everyone is making something better, whether it’s themselves or society, and the entire book has a bright, cheerful message in the end.
While Iris and Noah are admirable people, it is really the street children who make this book the wonderful read it is. There are three children who are really focused on, Minh, Mai, and Tam. Minh and Mai are brother and sister; Minh doesn’t talk, has only one hand, and plays connect four with tourists to earn money, while Mai acts as his voice and sells fans. They are bright, innovative children and it’s impossible not to completely fall in love with them and hope that they can seize a brighter future through Iris and Noah. Unfortunately, they have a more powerful man who has them under his thumb and who insists on making things difficult. Tam is a very sick girl who is mostly cared for by her grandmother, and it’s here that the tragic aspect of the book makes its mark. Tam is suffering from childhood leukemia and 90% of children survive it if they get care early enough. Unfortunately, Tam did not, given that they live on the street, and while her personality is almost completely obscured by her illness, the love between her and her grandmother is so touching, as is the attitude of all the other characters towards them.
Saigon itself (as it is called in the book) almost acts as a character; since Minh and Mai are poor they move around quite a lot and allow descriptions of most of the city, as well as the hovels in which they and Tam live. I really enjoyed the descriptions in the book and felt that the author did an admirable job contrasting wealth and poverty and getting across the feel of both the city and the Vietnamese people. The plot is not particularly tight, especially in the beginning, but it doesn’t seem to matter because I was too busy enjoying the characters and descriptions and hoping for something better to come their way.
Dragon House is completely different from John Shors’s other work, but I really enjoyed my time spent with it. It is both a charming story and inspires us to do something better in the world by exposing the evils he’s seen. I definitely recommend it.
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