On the whole, they are extremely well-researched and the attention to detail is gratifying: with very few exceptions that Penman herself admits, if she puts a monarch at a certain castle on a certain day, you can be sure that there are plenty of primary sources that confirm it.
I have a few bones to pick with her style, but otherwise I find her novels engaging and even romantic, which I realize is an odd word to attach to a survey of England’s bloody and sordid royal misdeeds.
This is the second Penman novel I’ve read the first, The Sunne in Splendour, I picked up on a recommendation after they dug up Richard III in a car park. And we all know what that means: the Eleanor of Aquitaine! Richard the Lionhearted! War of the Roses! Lancaster versus York! Richard III and the princes in the tower! At 748 pages, it spans over 20 years of the 12th century and imagines the war of succession between Countess Maude of Anjou and Count Stephen of Blois as they battle for the crown of England, which would usher in the Plantagenet dynasty. Yesterday, I finished Sharon Kay Penman’s When Christ and His Saints Slept.
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