Capturing the stink and gore, violence and romance of medieval life, Iggulden makes real those grand characters who live in...
Iggulden (The Blood of Gods, 2013, etc.) rallies dukes and barons, archers and peasants, schemers and warriors in this first in a trilogy chronicling the 15th-century War of the Roses.
Henry VI, only 22, assumes England’s crown; he's "a dear white lamb to lead us in prayer"—the opposite of his warrior father—and he mystically believes hours of prayer keep France at bay. "Bring me a truce, Derry," he commands Master Derihew Brewer, once an archer and now the king’s spymaster. Brewer brokers a treaty with France’s King Charles and Duke René of Anjou for the marriage of the duke’s daughter, 14-year-old Margaret, to Henry in return for the English-held lands of Anjou and Maine. Powerful warrior royals like Richard, Duke of York, are opposed. Others, like William, Lord Suffolk, are ambivalent but loyal to the crown. The marriage is made, English protection is withdrawn, and the farms and settlements in Maine and Anjou become prey to the French. Worse, the collapse of those betrayed English bastions causes violent unrest in England. Giving color to various scenes and schemes, Iggulden skillfully depicts bloody clashes as English settlers fight, then retreat from Maine, Anjou and Normandy into Calais, followed by action-packed and nerve-racking street fighting when rebellious Kentish Freemen march into London. With Suffolk dead, the precociously intelligent and courageous Queen Margaret, along with other loyal lords, relies on Brewer’s scheming to secure the physically weak and emotionally damaged Henry. An heir is needed. Other lords conspire to name York Protector and Defender of the Realm. Iggulden superbly dissects the dogfight among Edward Longshanks’ descendants, but he also creates memorable fictional characters—in addition to Brewer, there's Thomas Woodchurch, an English archer–turned–Anjou wool merchant drawn back to the bow.
Capturing the stink and gore, violence and romance of medieval life, Iggulden makes real those grand characters who live in the collective memory. A page-turner sure to have readers eager for the next in the series.Pub Date: July 8, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-399-16536-8
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 6, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2014
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.
Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II.
In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring passeurs: people who aided the escape of others during the war. Cut to spring, 1940: Viann has said goodbye to husband Antoine, who's off to hold the Maginot line against invading Germans. She returns to tending her small farm, Le Jardin, in the Loire Valley, teaching at the local school and coping with daughter Sophie’s adolescent rebellion. Soon, that world is upended: The Germans march into Paris and refugees flee south, overrunning Viann’s land. Her long-estranged younger sister, Isabelle, who has been kicked out of multiple convent schools, is sent to Le Jardin by Julien, their father in Paris, a drunken, decidedly unpaternal Great War veteran. As the depredations increase in the occupied zone—food rationing, systematic looting, and the billeting of a German officer, Capt. Beck, at Le Jardin—Isabelle’s outspokenness is a liability. She joins the Resistance, volunteering for dangerous duty: shepherding downed Allied airmen across the Pyrenees to Spain. Code-named the Nightingale, Isabelle will rescue many before she's captured. Meanwhile, Viann’s journey from passive to active resistance is less dramatic but no less wrenching. Hannah vividly demonstrates how the Nazis, through starvation, intimidation and barbarity both casual and calculated, demoralized the French, engineering a community collapse that enabled the deportations and deaths of more than 70,000 Jews. Hannah’s proven storytelling skills are ideally suited to depicting such cataclysmic events, but her tendency to sentimentalize undermines the gravitas of this tale.
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-57722-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
Doerr captures the sights and sounds of wartime and focuses, refreshingly, on the innate goodness of his major characters.
Doerr presents us with two intricate stories, both of which take place during World War II; late in the novel, inevitably, they intersect.
In August 1944, Marie-Laure LeBlanc is a blind 16-year-old living in the walled port city of Saint-Malo in Brittany and hoping to escape the effects of Allied bombing. D-Day took place two months earlier, and Cherbourg, Caen and Rennes have already been liberated. She’s taken refuge in this city with her great-uncle Etienne, at first a fairly frightening figure to her. Marie-Laure’s father was a locksmith and craftsman who made scale models of cities that Marie-Laure studied so she could travel around on her own. He also crafted clever and intricate boxes, within which treasures could be hidden. Parallel to the story of Marie-Laure we meet Werner and Jutta Pfennig, a brother and sister, both orphans who have been raised in the Children’s House outside Essen, in Germany. Through flashbacks we learn that Werner had been a curious and bright child who developed an obsession with radio transmitters and receivers, both in their infancies during this period. Eventually, Werner goes to a select technical school and then, at 18, into the Wehrmacht, where his technical aptitudes are recognized and he’s put on a team trying to track down illegal radio transmissions. Etienne and Marie-Laure are responsible for some of these transmissions, but Werner is intrigued since what she’s broadcasting is innocent—she shares her passion for Jules Verne by reading aloud 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. A further subplot involves Marie-Laure’s father’s having hidden a valuable diamond, one being tracked down by Reinhold von Rumpel, a relentless German sergeant-major.
Doerr captures the sights and sounds of wartime and focuses, refreshingly, on the innate goodness of his major characters.Pub Date: May 6, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4767-4658-6
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: March 5, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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