The book that made me stop reading about Richard III ...
925252
The book that made me stop reading about Richard III. The author's anti-Ricardian bias is obvious from the words he uses right from the beginning. Not what one expects from a serious scholar.
2225556
Carolly Erickson has been writing biographies since I was pretty young, and I've always had a lot of respect for her, although I have to admit that the last couple I've read have seemed pretty insubstantial compared to her earlier work, whether due to carelessness or an attempt to appeal to a broader readership by "dumbing down" her writing. I haven't read her previous novel, but this one was a terrible disappointment.

I would like to explain my expectations of historical fiction, and this novel in particular. Obviously, since there is a lot we don't know about people's lives and, after all, it _is_ fiction, I personally will give the novelist a lot of leeway. We don't know that Catherine Parr didn't have an ongoing friendship with Henry, and it's certainly possible. We don't know when she met Thomas Seymour or exactly what her and her second husband's roles in the Pilgrimage of Grace were, so my attitude on those things is, "Go for it! Imagine to your heart's content." However, unless there is good reason for it, a historical novelist shouldn't _contradict_ history or the known character of a real person. Some of the innaccuracies of fact and inconsistencies of character in this book are downright painful for anyone who knows _anything_ at all about the real history, and there are people who will take this for a realistic portrayal of historical figures and events.

The book was well written but as it went further on I was more and more distracted and annoyed by the author's flights of fancy, and I agree with other reviewers that at times it read more like a tacky romance than the story of one of the most truly pious, well-educated and level-headed queens that England ever had.
2714635
Looking, as I was, for the definitive volume on Henry VIII and his wives, Starkey's book was ultimately disappointing in spite of its heft.  To spend two-thirds of the book on Catherine of Aragon and Anne Boleyn, although Starkey clearly found them the most worthy of interest, left the other fours wives' personalities and histories  undeveloped and colorless.  Thanks to Starkey, we now know every possible detail of the Henry/Catherine divorce, both from Catherine's and Anne's perspective. but very little about their relationships with Henry. For example, with all the pages devoted to Anne, why do we not have a clearer understanding of the disintegration of the Boleyn marriage?  How did a woman who was the object of Henry's unbridled passion come to be beheaded a mere three years after marriage?  I, for one, would much rather know more of their personal history.  How can a book on such a fascinating subject be so dry?
2645522
I am not sure what draws people to writing semi-biographical books about people for whom not much information is available.  To tell the story of the events surrounding the lives of the family of Henry II is a worthwhile enterprise; to attempt to probe the psychology of these people is pointless and misleading.  The only sources we have for the personality of John were people who had reason to hate him, and the only real source for the personality of Richard is by accounts from people who never interacted with him.  This sort of book may spark sensation, it may promote medieval history in general, but it does NOTHING to advance real insight into this period.  Too much of what the author asserts is opinion, and not clearly stated as such.  If you want more thoughtful insight into Richard, read Gillingham, who, while biased in Richard's favor, better shows his flaws.  For John, Warren's biography is a far better source.  For the events of the "Magna Carta" war the recent book Blood Cries Afar is a far better read and presents a more balanced picture.  I am a scholar of this period, and was tremendously disappointed by this book.
3354673
A guy I work with read this book and it seemed like he was reading it for three years!  Every day he sat there with his legs crossed sipping his tea and reading Great Expectations, spending about an hour on every page!  What an aristocrat.  It was brutal!
Than I tried to read the book.
I couldn't get past the first stage or the first part or whatever because it was so f*cking boring i thought my f*cking head was going to explode!  NOTHING HAPPENED!
That freak I work with didn't like it either.
I'm just surprised he could read the whole thing without completely losing his mind.
3720400
There was a lot of historical information in the book and from what I've read and seen it seems to be factual and consistent.  This made it somewhat interesting; however, the bias this author has for Diane de Poitiers makes the book almost painful to read.  I couldn't make it through the epilogue because this bias was even worse than in the book, which was almost more than I could stomach.  Diane de Poitiers was not the perfect "goddess" as depicted in the book.  No one, no matter how wonderful they were could be this perfect much less a mistress of the king who used him and her position to the fullest.  Who could blame Catherine de Medici for her anger, humiliation and pain, even in those times where mistresses were common?  She is described horribly and it is known that she was not a horrible person.  I can't believe I was able to read the entire thing but once I was invested I had to finish it.
1214409
I have had to stop part way they this book. She has used the lords name so many times I should have stopped it sooner. One time even saying him on a pogo stick i mean really?! Really in truely? That's terrible. It really sounded like it would be a great book I hate to not see what happens
3525482
I'm not going to beat around the bush. I don't like this particular author, Jonathan Glancey. Why? I've picked up a few books by him based on all the rave reviews, and every time there are little things he says here and there in them that rub me the wrong way. Sometimes he makes flippant marks, expresses some kind of bias, says something historically inaccurate or makes an obnoxious comment that lends you to think that he's kind of a jerk in real life.

This book of his is the one that kind of confirmed why I've always gotten some kind of unpleasant vibe from him. He casually mentions that one day when he was traveling in Egypt, he saw a man with a cart beating a donkey. He then went to "rescue" the donkey by punching the driver in the face. It's bad enough that Glancey relays this completely irrelevant story in a book about the history of cars, but he does it with a mixture of faux remorse and self-congratulation. This is the classic "jerkiness" of Glancey's personality coming through to the fore, something I always sensed in his other books but was in full display in this particular one. Once I read that story, I was completely turned off by the book and ever since then have been looking to unload it on someone else. It's not that he's a bad writer. He's such an unpleasant person to read, and the unpleasantness takes away from whatever merit he has as an author.

If there's anything good I can say about this book, it's that it has beautiful photographs and is nicely designed. But the text itself, forget it. You can find a better, more enjoyable writer to read than this one on the history of cars.
1746571
The book features, among other things, an attempt at murdering the archbishop of Canterbury which is completely invented; an apocryphal incident where Richard supposedly threw a hissy fit and pitched his shoes out the window (which is based on a mistranslation--he didn't actually do that); and general dissing of everyone not John of Gaunt...even Richard's queen, Anne of Bohemia, who deservedly earned the sobriquet "Good Queen Anne" quite young. Here, she's presented as Richard's enabler, a flatterer who is too ignorant to realize that she IS flattering. (The part about Robert de Vere deliberately spoiling birthday parties as a child by "organizing factions" is very funny--I was quite amused at the image of Tiny Evil Robbie--but I don't think that it was supposed to be humorous.)

Your mileage may vary on this...but I prefer historicals to be accurate, and I find it most irksome when they are not.
2627408
After waiting three years for this book to come out, it felt like it took three years to read it!!!  Highly disappointing.  I love Diana's books, but this one was painful to read.  It seemed filled with uninteresting, unimportant details, and it was choppy throughout the whole book.  Some of the events didn't even make sense to me.  Maybe that's because there was too much time between books.  I seriously could only read one chapter at a time, and it was not until the very last couple of pages that I got excited.  Unfortunately I thought the end was predictable, but nevertheless it gave me some excitement.  I'm thinking maybe she was under pressure to finish this book while filming the Outlander Series (which is GREAT by the way).
I definitely won't give up on Diana, but I'm hoping her next book will be one I cannot put down.
4808599
I know most of the reviews here are positive, and I was almost afraid to post one of the few negative viewpoints, but if a review like this had been here when I bought the book, I might have saved my money. So for those who are like me, hope this helps.

I'm almost embarrassed I read this.

I mean, I'm no stranger to trashy Tudor fiction -- I have read everything Philipa Gregory has had to say on the subject, for instance. I'm certainly no stranger to actual Tudor history, having been fascinated by the dynamic Henry VIII for as long as I can remember.

This was, without a doubt, the worst, most lurid, and poorly-researched piece of fiction I have every read about the Tudors.

I was so excited by the idea of this book -- who ever tells this story from Jane Boleyn's perspective? -- that even though I requested that my local library order it, I then went out and bought it for myself so i wouldn't have to wait. I was really hoping the author could add some facets to a historical figure that is usually propped up like a cardboard villain.

Instead, I got cardboard villain from inside the head of cardboard villain. Her motivations were unclear even as she's explaining them.

But that's not all. There was a serious lack of accuracy in the book, from the usage of nicknames that were not extant at the time, incorrect time lines, alterations of famous speeches, placing historical figures in the wrong place at the wrong time, and a few brazen passages that couldn't have been mistakes. They must have been intentionally incorrect.

I would describe how absolutely pornographic this book was, but I'm afraid this isn't the venue for it. I've read coyer erotica. By the time I got to the ludicrous sex scene between Catherine Howard and Anna of Cleves (no really!), who kept shouting "Ya Liebchen!" (And don't get me started on the whole line about giving the "Flanders Mare" the ride of her life) it just got funny. I was reading passages aloud to my howling friends, tears streaming down our faces.

And yet, it might have gotten away with it all, or at least some of it, if the writing quality was any better than that of your average internet fan fiction. Really, I swear people did not constantly refer to each other as "Bluff King Hal," "The Rose Without a Thorn," "The Goggle-Eyed Whore," and so forth. It's as if the author was so proud of having unearthed these well-known nicknames, she had to use them as frequently as possible. And the dialect of Anna of Cleves (particularly in the aforementioned sex scene) was... oh there are no words. There were tense shifts, point of view shifts, and if anything else could be shifted, it probably was.

I'm just so terribly disappointed to see such and interesting subject treated so badly. Although it is non-fiction, and therefore less speculative and exploratory, I guess I'll have to be satisfied with Julia Fox's biography. (I know she appears in Gregory's Boleyn Inheritance, but she is not the sole focus of the novel.)

For the connoisseur of Tudor history, even the fluffier fiction sort, stay away. There are much better things out there that, even when they aren't 100% accurate, are at least better told.
2671843
This is certainly one of the most interesting books I've ever read and changed my thinking about what actually happened to the two little princes in the Tower and about Thomas Moore as a historian.  The first 3/4 of the book are very interesting and excellent in every way.  It's the last quarter of the book that bogs down and gets just difficult to plow through. After establishing the point that Richard III couldn't have had the little princes killed due to the evidence that was found by further research, Ms Tey just belabors the point over and over again like she was trying to make the book longer. But, it certainly a book that is worth the time for anyone even remotely interested in English History.
3569324
Alright so I purchased this, hoping it would help in my reading of Richard III.  Boy was I wrong!  In the first part during Richard's initial monologue the creators add a bunch of lines then completely skip the scene with Richard, Brackenbury, and Clarence and go right into scene 2.  This item should tell possible customers that it is not accurate to the play because now it's just money down the drain.
3466841
I couldn't stop reading the first two books but I stopped reading this one. Weeks later, I jumped to the last pages, and I'm grateful I skipped the awful part.
3235592
After reading the author`s comments at the end of the book, I can only believe that I didn't read the book that she believes she wrote!  My first comment is that it is 600 pages long - but has the subject matter for 200 pages maximum.  Where was the editor?  Page after page is filled with the ever repeated lament concerning the fact that the Plantagents were the true heirs to the throne.  I couldn't agree more strongly - but I believe that those of us who buy books of this genre do not need to be hit over the head again and time again. Most of the rest of the material is devoted to Margaret Pole`s excuses for her cowardice and greed as depicted by the author.  If the author`s depiction Is anywhere close to the truth, it is laughable that she is the Blessed Margaret Pole!!  The only praise that I can give is that this book does portray Henry VIII as the evil, crazed, vile man that he was.
1558119
The book came highly recommended by a couple friends, and since I had to wait for my wife to finish George RR Martin's Dance with Dragons, I thought I would give it a shot.  I made it to page 38.  In an early scene, Tom and his family are walking through the woods when their young daughter who is walking a pig, gets clubbed on the head and knocked out by an "outlaw". The outlaw proceeds to spirit away the pig. Tom, prompted by his wife, takes off to retrieve the pig.  Tom finally catches up with guy and with the help of his son, beats him senseless and retrieves the pig.  At this point, with pig in hand, you'd expect Tom to be thinking about one thing only - his gravely injured daughter.  Instead, Tom refects about his sons ability to outrun him, "How long ago was it, Tom thought, when I could run like the wind and hardly feel my heart race?  Since I was that age...twenty years.  Twenty years.  It seemed like yesterday"

Hmmm. It seemed like 10 minutes ago that your daughter was clubbed on the head and lay bleeding on the side of the road.

Two other gems in the first 38 pages:

- At one point Tom refers to his wife as his "soul mate".  Shouldn't that be, "ye olde soule mate"?

and this,

- We learn Ellen spent time in a convent. "Life in the convent was not so bad, in the end.  It was a single sex community with its own peculiar rules and rituals" Sounds like a lesbian coven to me.

Seriously, the thing (rather the first 38 pages) reads like a cross between the Hardy Boys, a circa 1980 dictionary, and Let's Go travel book for England.

I hope Dance with Dragons is half as good as Feast of Crows...and I hope my wife finishes it soon.
1086104
I read this way back in the 1970s when I was devouring everything I could find in the library about Lord Peter, and found this mystery to be so convoluted that I couldn't keep the characters or the facts straight.  I hated it then.
I am now on a delightful course of rereading everything Wimsey, and I have to say that I was right the first time.  This novel is not the typical Dorothy L. Sayers, loaded with lighthearted witticisms, Shakespearean quotations, and a mystery.  This story is a quagmire of Scottish railway schedules and characters without soul that one cannot keep straight.
Chronologically, it follows the delightful Strong Poison, where Lord Peter meets the woman of his dreams, Harriet Vane.  But she isn't even mentioned in The Five Red Herrings, nor is what he just went through emotionally in trying to get her released from goal.  This story can be skipped, if the reader is caught up in following their romance, because it adds nothing to that mystery of "will she or won't she".  I'm sorry I bothered to reread it.