Category: Books

Luck in the Shadows (1996): Lynn Flewelling

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★★★

Nightrunner: Book I

After Angélique, I thought it was time for something slightly more characteristic. Lynn Flewelling has been on the edge of my awareness for a couple of years and, when her books were also recommended by Goodreads, I decided it was time to give her a go. Luck in the Shadows has proven to be an enjoyable start to the Nightrunner series: something of a lighter cross between Swordspoint and The Lies of Locke Lamora. Unlike those, however, this is unashamedly high fantasy, with wizards, magic, the odd centaur, and a definite hint of Dark Lord brewing on the horizon.

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Angélique: Book I (1956): Sergeanne Golon

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★★½

The Marquise of the Angels

I know. I know. This needs some explanation. Angélique was recommended automatically, either by Goodreads or Amazon, with a considerably more innocuous cover. I’d never heard of the series but reviews were glowing, promising wonderful characters and breathless adventure; and one reviewer even suggested that readers looking for something similar should try the Lymond Chronicles. Naturally such a comparison caught my attention and, despite slight misgivings, I went ahead and ordered it.

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Millennium (2008): Tom Holland

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★★★★

The End of the World and the Forging of Christendom

My goodness, it’s been a busy couple of weeks. Now at last the winter frenzy of work has been wrapped up; and today I experienced that most blissful of feelings: clearing my desk, closing down my computer and leaving the office for Christmas. No doubt the holidays will fly by very quickly, but I hope to spend a good proportion of them curled up with a good book. Luckily I have more than enough of those to choose from (though one of the novels on my to-read list is the kind of thing you might be rather surprised to see here; but more of that soon). For the last week or so, however, I’ve been kept occupied by a gripping, dense and rather enjoyable history book – a sweeping panorama of Europe in the two centuries which straddled the end of the first millennium.

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Black Powder War (2006): Naomi Novik

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★★★★

Temeraire: Book III

It’s been a long week at work and so I decided it was time for another Temeraire novel. This series has become my comfort reading of choice at the moment, as it so perfectly combines very good writing with spirited adventure. Opening a new Temeraire book is the literary equivalent of curling up with a warm blanket and a cup of tea. This, the third after Temeraire and Throne of Jade, reunites us with our heroes in China as they prepare to begin the long journey back home to England aboard the Allegiance. However, a destructive fire in the ship’s galley before they have even left port, coupled with the arrival of a dogeared but urgent letter from their commander, forces Laurence to change his original plans.

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The Swerve (2011): Stephen Greenblatt

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★★★

How the Renaissance began

The winner of the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for Non-Fiction, this book was recommended to me during our Sicily trip a year ago, in the course of a rather splendid dinner-table conversation. It tells the story of Poggio Bracciolini, an Italian humanist who worked at the papal curia and who, during the upheavals after the Council of Constance, sought to distract himself by going book-hunting in the monasteries of Germany. Poggio dreamed of finding previously unknown classical texts in these monasteries, preserved by chance through years of copying as part of the monastic discipline. He and his fellow humanists had already uncovered fragments of letters and treatises, but the discovery that Poggio would make in 1417 would come to have a powerful impact on the very roots of Western philosophy: the full text of De rerum natura (On the Nature of Things) by Lucretius.

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The Prisoner of Zenda (1894): Anthony Hope

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★★★½

It’s high time for another swashbuckler, as a busy period looms at work. This time the book in question is a much-loved classic which I should really have read years ago. First published in 1894 (my copy was given to ‘Gladys W. Silva from Dorothy & Jack, Xmas 1895’), this wonderful romp hasn’t aged nearly as much as you might expect. It’s a deliciously fast-paced tale of disguise, secret identities, wicked plots, noble heroes and dastardly villains. Like Scaramouche, this was something that I finally decided to try when I saw that Helen had been reading it (I have to thank Helen for a lot of swashbuckling goodness). That was a full year ago, which gives you some idea of how easily I’m distracted where books are concerned. However, good things come to those who wait…

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The Altarpiece (2013): Sarah Kennedy

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★★½

The Cross and the Crown: Book I

It is 1535 and Henry VIII, bedazzled by a pair of black eyes, has put aside his wife Katherine of Aragon and turned his back on the Catholic Church in favour of Reform. His sentence falls heavily on the kingdom’s monasteries, which are charged with immorality and avarice, and their rich goods and lands seized for the benefit of the king – or more accurately the benefit of the local lord, should he have the courage to take them.

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Earthly Joys (1998): Philippa Gregory

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★★★ ½

Moving away from her usual stamping-ground of the Wars of the Roses and the Tudors, Philippa Gregory turns her attention in this novel to a much less familiar aspect of British history: the development of 17th-century botany and horticulture. At its heart is John Tradescant the Elder, the most celebrated gardener of his time, whose life spanned from the twilight of the Elizabethan age to the brink of the Civil War, and who did more than any of his contemporaries to encourage and enrich the love of gardening in England.

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A Time of Gifts (1977): Patrick Leigh Fermor

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★★★★★

A Time of Gifts: Book I

Back in the summer, when the weather was balmy and the evenings long, I went through a phase of buying travel books (largely because I’d enjoyed Misadventure in the Middle East so much). With their beautifully-designed covers, Patrick Leigh Fermor’s books had caught my eye many a time in Waterstones, but I’d never read any of them. Now, as the wind rattles my sash windows and the nights close in, I took this first book off my shelf, hoping for a bit of escapism. It has turned out to be far, far more than that.

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Lionheart (2011): Sharon Penman

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★★ ½

The Angevin Series: Book IV

This is the fourth instalment in Sharon Penman’s series about Henry II, Eleanor of Aquitaine and their squabbling sons, following on from When Christ And His Saints Slept, Time and Chance, and Devil’s Brood. I’ve read all the earlier novels, and I enjoyed them too, but unfortunately Lionheart didn’t quite live up to my expectations. It’s hard to know whether this genuinely is a heavier, more stilted book than the earlier instalments or whether it’s just that I’ve become more demanding about historical novels since I read Devil’s Brood in 2009.

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