Tag: 16th century

Day 345: The Chalice

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Cover for The ChaliceI am not sure why I found this novel so irritating. Possibly it is because it is a sequel, but nowhere on the cover is that indicated, and this novel is definitely one that requires knowledge of the previous book, which I have not read.

Joanna Stafford is a former Dominican novice after the dissolution of the monasteries by Henry VIII. At the beginning of the novel she is in Canterbury with some ex-monks about to commit some serious act, but then the action turns back several months.

Joanna is living in Dartford with her young cousin and her friends Brother Edmund and Sister Winifred, a former monk and nun who are sister and brother. Some of the townspeople are suspicious of the former residents of the priory, but Joanna has plans to continue there and set up a loom to weave tapestries.

Soon, however, her cousins Gertrude and Henry Courtenay arrive to invite her and her cousin Arthur for a visit. Little does Joanna know that Gertrude is aware that Joanna is the subject of a prophecy, which a group of Catholics believe will save Catholicism in England. Apparently, in the previous novel she received a prophecy and was told she would learn it in full after she received three prophecies. Since her family was destroyed as the result of a prophecy, however, she has promised never to dabble in it again. She is soon subject to immense pressure from Gertrude Courtenay and others, including the Lady Mary Tudor and the Spanish ambassador Chapuys, to see a seer.

The novel does not seem very coherent. Joanna is told she must hear the prophecies of her own free will, yet all kinds of pressures and threats are applied to make her hear them. She is refusing to hear the prophecy, then she isn’t. Then we go through the same thing with the next prophecy. Some of her decisions seem completely unlikely for a person who is extremely religious and was previously a novice. At one point in the book she throws herself at two different men within the space of weeks.

It takes an incredibly long time to feel certain that we’ve learned of everything revealed in the first book–new facts keep popping up until nearly halfway through the volume. This is not a stand-alone novel by any means. Whether it would be more satisfying for someone who has read the first book I cannot answer.

Day 334: Pawn in Frankincense

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Cover for Pawn in FrankincenseBest Book of the Week!

In the fourth exciting book of the Lymond Chronicles, Francis Crawford of Lymond sets out to find his two-year-old child by Oonagh O’Dwyer, hidden somewhere in the vast Ottoman Empire. He disguises his personal mission with the official one of delivering an elaborately decorated piano from the King of France to the Sultan in Constantinople. Another goal is to find and kill the traitor Graham Mallet Reid, who has the child in his power. The problem of the child is complicated because Lymond doesn’t know which of two boys, one Reid’s by his sister Joleta, is his own. Another complication is that if any harm comes to Reid, the boys, under the protection of Sulieman, will both be murdered.

Accompanying him and his household are a couple of merchants, including the mysterious Marthe. Raised in the household of the Dame de Doubtance, Marthe, except for her sex, could be Lymond’s identical twin.

After some disastrous adventures, Lymond believes he has sent home the redoubtable fifteen-year-old Philippa Somerville, who foisted herself upon him thinking he would need her help to care for the child. However, she is actually on her way to join the seraglio to find one of the boys, Kuzum, while Lymond searches in the stews of the city for the other one, Khaireddin. Philippa’s role in this novel is a major one, with her character and her opinion of Lymond changing and maturing as their adventures continue.

Aside from the intrigues taking place in an empire that is Byzantine in its complexity (not to make a pun), Lymond is hampered in his activities because of sabotage by a member of his own household staff. He also suffers from his usual problem of failing to explain his actions to his adherents, such as Jerrott Blyth, so that they become angry and occasionally work against him.

In action that moves from Marseilles across Europe to North Africa and finally to Constantinople, Lymond’s concerns grow to involve the fate of nations.

Day 320: The Malice of Fortune

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Cover for The Malice of FortuneThe Malice of Fortune follows a current trend of mystery fiction to use actual historical people as detectives. In this case, the novel is set in 16th century Italy, and the historical detective is Niccolò Machiavelli, assisted at times by Leonardo da Vinci.

It is 1502 in the Papal States of Italy, and the infamous Pope Alexander VI, the former Rodrigo Borgia, has received word of his beloved son Juan, who was murdered years before. A woman was found butchered in Imola, and with her body was an amulet Juan always kept with him. The Pope summons the courtesan Damiata, whom he suspects of complicity in Juan’s death, and takes her little son hostage while he dispatches her to investigate.

In Imola, Damiata finds that someone has been murdering and butchering women and then leaving quarters of their bodies around the city. When she travels out to the scene of the latest discovery, she finds that Juan’s brother, the dangerous Duke Cesare (nicknamed Valentino) Borgia, has Leonardo da Vinci on the scene as his investigator. Da Vinci thinks that the killer is playing a game by constructing puzzles for him. At the scene some masked men provide an additional clue by fleeing the investigators.

Damiata also meets Niccolò Machiavelli, who is in town representing the city of Florence, which is afraid that Duke Valentino and his condottieri, or mercenaries, are planning to attack the city. Damiata suspects one of the three condottieri generals of being the murderer, but she does not know which one.

Machiavelli provides a different insight into the murderer. He has made a study of what he calls “the necessity” for each man–what drives him–and he begins trying to discover the murderer’s necessity. Machiavelli and Damiata team up to find the murderer.

This novel has interesting characters and situations, but at some point I felt as if the characters are chasing around too much with little result. Instead of building suspense, the plot seems unplanned and disorganized.

Michael Ennis is a historian, and the historical background is convincing and seems accurate. Compared to his previous novel about medieval Italy, The Duchess of Milan, a straight historical fiction novel about the powerful d’Este family, The Malice of Fortune is a little disappointing.

Day 265: Here Was a Man: A Novel of Sir Walter Raleigh and Elizabeth I

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Cover for Here Was a ManI don’t think I’ve read anything by Norah Lofts before, but even though she was a prolific historical novelist, I would rate this effort as mediocre.

Here Was a Man attempts to draw most of Raleigh’s life in a short space and does so by a series of vignettes illustrating important events. Although I am not completely familiar with his career, I know that Lofts  has chosen to portray a couple of apocryphal events, in particular the cloak in the mud story, which I believe has no basis in fact. The other serious lack of the novel is any depth of characterization.

The novel begins with Raleigh as a teenager, listening to sailors’ tales and dreaming of traveling the seas. He is also full of ambition for worldly success, an ambition that sometimes works to his disadvantage.

We are told many times about Raleigh’s sense of adventure, but we don’t really feel it. In fact, he seems to spend more time in prison than on his adventures. It is curious, too, that although he has many enemies at court, at least in this novel he has done nothing to earn their enmity. I would doubt that was really the case.

Raleigh is probably a character who could support an interesting and exciting novel, but this is not it. To be fair, it looks like it may have been one of Lofts’ first works.

Day 251: The Disorderly Knights

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Cover for The Disorderly KnightsBest Book of the Week!
The Disorderly Knights is the third novel in Dorothy Dunnett’s rousing Lymond Chronicles series. I previously reviewed the first two novels, The Game of Kings and Queen’s Play.

Upon his return to Scotland from his adventures in France, Francis Crawford of Lymond establishes a small fighting force of independent knights and begins training them. As their reputation spreads, the band begins to attract more knights, and he hears that they are to be joined by a renowned fighter, Sir Graham Reid Mallett, Knight Grand Cross of the Order of St. John. Many of the men who know Reid Mallet consider him almost a living saint. In disposition and talents he seems to be a perfect foil for Lymond, but they clash, and some of Lymond’s men begin to turn against him. As usual, Lymond’s behavior appears to put him in the wrong, and Reid Mallett seems to want to usurp the fighting force.

This conflict eventually leads to Malta, where Lymond arrives just before the Ottoman Turks attack. During the siege, Lymond becomes involved in the political maneuvering and feuds among the various national factions of the declining Order of St. John. He also hears that Oonagh O’Dwyer, the beautiful Irish rebel he encountered in Queen’s Play, is captive in another city on the island. After the siege, he follows her to North Africa in an attempt to free her.

It is difficult to write more about this novel because of spoilers, but also because the plot becomes increasingly complex from this point on, with threads that are not all explained until the sixth book. Suffice it to say that, although this is a slow-starting series, if you get this far, you will be hooked. The novel is suspenseful and exciting, and Lymond makes a complicated and compelling main character, almost an anti-hero at times. These books were written in the 1960’s and 1970’s, and I think the only series to compare with them might be George R.R. Martin’s Song of Fire and Ice or Dunnett’s own House of Niccolo series.

Day 230: The Candlemass Road

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Cover for The Candlemass RoadBest book of the Week!
At first The Candlemass Road seems like it will be a romantic adventure story similar to Lorna Doone, but George MacDonald Fraser was an expert on the border counties of England and Scotland and far too cynical for that, so it is an adventure certainly, but not a romance.

Lady Margaret Dacre has not been home to Askerton Hall in Cumberland since she was four years old, but now her grandfather Lord Ralph Dacre has been murdered and rumor has it that Lady Margaret has been sent away from court by Elizabeth I herself. At the beginning of the novel, all of the hall’s servants, including the narrator Frey Luis Guevara, a Catholic priest, are frantically preparing for her arrival.

Young and beautiful, she arrives in a temper. She has been accosted on the road by George Bell, one of her tenants, who has come to complain that he has received no help from her bailiff about the dreaded Nixon clan, who has demanded blackmail. None of Lord Dacre’s tenants have had to pay blackmail because he protected them, but after his death, his men at arms all departed.

When Lady Margaret asks Land Sergeant Carleton for protection for her people, he says the problem lays outside of his purview–he has merely come to pick up a prisoner. Incensed, Lady Margaret refuses to give him the prisoner, who was caught stealing bread and cheese from the kitchen.

The thief is a broken man–that is, one who has no master or clan–named Archie Noble the Waitabout. Lady Margaret is about to let him go free when she finds he got his horse from a famous villain, who tried to murder him in his camp. Already angered by Archie’s impudence, Lady Margaret declares him a murderer and threatens to hang him unless he goes by himself to aid the Bells, whose blackmailers return that night.

The short novel is beautifully written with dialog in a northern dialect that is still understandable, with Elizabethan expressions thrown in. The novel is an exciting yet chilling and occasionally humorous picture of the time and place.

Day 176: Queens’ Play

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Cover for Queen's PlayBest Book of the Week!

Queens’ Play is the second book of Dorothy Dunnett’s excellent historical fiction series, the Lymond Chronicles. Although it is not absolutely necessary to read the first book, Game of Kings, you will enjoy the other books more if you do. If you decide to continue this series, it is important to read them in order after this one.

Francis Crawford of Lymond enters the scene disguised, and it is some time before we figure out which of two characters he is. Francis has been asked by Mary de Guise, Queen Dowager of Scotland and mother of Mary Queen of Scots, to travel to France and protect Mary. Although Mary is still a little girl, plots revolve around her, and her mother is afraid her life is at risk.

The Irish prince Phelim O’Liam Roe’s arrival into France is a spectacular one, as his ship almost crashes into another one when entering the harbor. This incident is perhaps not an accident, as evidence mounts that someone is trying to kill the prince. To the French court, O’Liam Roe is unbelievably provincial, and he is immediately the butt of ridicule. He is attracted to Oonagh O’Dwyer, an Irish woman living on the borders of society, but she disdains him. In fact, she is the mistress of the Irish rebel Cormac O’Connor.

O’Liam Roe has brought with him Thady Boy Ballagh, an ollav, or trained master poet. Untidy, fat Thady Boy is gaining popularity with the decadent French court through a series of reckless deeds and his brilliant musical performances.

It seems that the Queen Dowager’s fears are correct. During a hunt that employs the king’s leopards as hunting animals, someone lets Mary’s pet hare out in front of the cat near her pony. As she struggles to save her pet, the cat turns its sights on Mary.

As always, Dunnett combines heart-stopping action and suspense with a detailed knowledge of the period. This book begins some of the plot threads that will continue throughout the series.

Day 141: Shadow of Night

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Cover for Shadow of NightAs with most second books of a trilogy, Shadow of Night is transitional and therefore harder to describe than the first book.

At the end of the A Discovery of Witches, the first book of Deborah Harkness’s “All Souls Trilogy,” Diana Bishop, an Oxford scholar and nonpracticing witch, and her husband Matthew Clairmont, a geneticist and vampire, were forced to flee because a union between a witch and a vampire is forbidden. Using Diana’s newly discovered time-travel skills, they have arrived in Elizabethan England so that Diana can find a witch to help her learn her powers. Even more importantly, they want to look for Ashmole 782, an enchanted manuscript that Matthew believes may hold the secret to the existence of witches, vampires, and daemons. This decision proves potentially hazardous, though, as the age they’ve chosen is one of persecution of witches and Diana has a tendency to draw attention to herself.

In Tudor England Matthew of the past is part of an intellectual group called the School of Night, the members of which include Sir Walter Raleigh and Kit Marlowe. Kit is a deeply disturbed daemon who is insanely jealous of Diana. Another hazard is that Matthew’s acquaintances may realize he is not the same person as the person from the past. In the meantime, both Diana and Matthew’s friends and enemies back in the present time watch for clues to their existence in the past.

Although this novel is a great sequel that propels you to the next book, it has the typical middle book problem of furthering the plot without arriving anywhere. Strictly because of personal taste, I could also have done without some of the heavy romantic passages, although other readers will like them. Nevertheless, I am extremely interested to see how Diana and Matthew will resolve all their problems in the final book.

Day 122: The Tudor Secret

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The Tudor SecretI have heard about C. W. Gortner before, but The Tudor Secret is the first book of his I have read. My overall impression is that the book reflects some knowledge of Tudor times and some research, but is generally on the light side, with a fairly predictable plot.

Brendan Prescott is a servant of the powerful Dudley family, a foundling who has been mistreated by the Dudleys all of his life. He is surprised when he is removed from the stables and given training as a body servant. He is dismayed when he is sent to court to wait on the cruel Robert Dudley.

He is almost immediately thrust into dangerous circumstances as he tries to help the Princess Elizabeth see her dying brother, King Edward. Edward’s regent Northumberland, Robert’s father, is trying to keep everyone away from the king.

Elizabeth is in contention for the throne against her half-sister Mary. But Northumberland is trying to manipulate his daughter-in-law, Lady Jane Grey, and his son Lord Guildford Dudley, onto the throne. Soon, Brendan finds himself spying for William Cecil to help Princess Elizabeth.

Although the Tudor era was a turbulent time, involving much intrigue and a lot of paranoia, I felt that some of the plots suggested in the book were absurd, such as Northumberland poisoning Edward so that he can put himself on the throne. I understand from reading one of the reviews on Amazon that this was an early book by Gortner and not up to his usual level, so perhaps I will try another.

Day 84: Bring Up the Bodies

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Cover for Bring Up the BodiesBest Book of the Week! Year!

If Wolf Hall was a wonderful historical novel, Bring Up the Bodies is masterly. In this second of a trilogy, Hilary Mantel continues the story of Thomas Cromwell. Bring Up the Bodies is more focused than the last book, because it deals with a much shorter time period and defined subject–the downfall of Anne Boleyn.

The writing is elegant and impeccable. I have read a few comments that Wolf Hall was sometimes difficult to follow because the readers could not always tell who was meant by “him” or “he.” Mantel has written both books using a strict third person limited point of view, from that of Cromwell, and people don’t think of themselves by their first names. Hence, the difficulty, which I did not notice as a problem in Bring Up the Bodies. This technique is very difficult to employ successfully–we are much more used to a third person that changes from character to character or even to third person omniscient. But Mantel uses it effortlessly to create a memorable character in Cromwell–kind but implacable, one who fosters the growth of others but does not forget the crimes and indignities committed against Cardinal Wolsey, whom he loved as as a father.

Henry VIII has already decided he wants to rid himself of Anne Boleyn and marry Jane Seymour, but Anne has one more chance. She is carrying a child, and if it is born alive and is a boy, she is safe. Henry must have an heir, and he has decided that if he hasn’t been given one, God must have found some fault with his marriage to Anne just as there was one for his marriage to Katherine of Aragon. Thomas Cromwell must find him some way out of his difficulties.

Of course, Cromwell helped Anne to her position in the first place, but the Boleyns have made many enemies in their enjoyment of power, and they have treated him with disdain. More importantly, Anne Boleyn destroyed the Cardinal, and her brother mocked him in his downfall.

From the moment you begin reading, you find yourself plunged into the Tudor world of shifting politics and intrigue. Of course, we know what happens to Anne Boleyn, yet the novel maintains its suspense. The Boleyn and Howard families are going to suffer a huge defeat, but they will go down fighting.