Review:One of Heyer's finest. Very interesting (and painstakingly researched) account of Waterloo mixed with a classic Heyer love plot. This time Heyer flips her script by making the woman more of the "rake". Sort of the ultimate period piece but don't read if you aren't ready for extensive details of the battles and movements of the British army. Also, in my limited opinion, its an extremely flattering portrayal of Wellington. For Heyer readers, she manages to weave in characters from 3 earlier b... Read more

Review:Tthis could have been called Joshua as easily as Beauvallet. I fell in love with his character. It was a grand swords and horses with a little swashbuckling. The love story was central to the plot but definitely not overriding. There was grand passion and heroic escapades. There was much in the was of overtones of Shakespeare. Read it an enjoy. I will warn you though, it takes a little bit to become comfortable with the archaics speach of the 1500s, but once you do you won't be able to pu... Read more

Review:I was looking for a lighthearted romance but this is not it. it is just SILLY. I was totally turned off by the people who are supposed to be best of the best, ie the TON, richest folks in town who continue to use words like ain't, and don't, and other slang. the explanation that it was all the rage is just sad. and detracts from the story for me. the hero and heroine are both the stupidest people around. rich yes, but stupid with it. AND it keeps getting worse and worse as they kept doing stup... Read more

Review:I have been hearing about this book for years, as something unique and transformative. It was a brilliant idea of Rhys, certainly, to imagine the life of the first Mrs. Rochester, the madwoman in the attic of JANE EYRE. Antoinette Cosway (the birth name of Bertha Mason in the book), is a Creole like the author herself, born of white parents in the Caribbean. Rhys suffuses the book with remembered beauty: the lush profusion of the Cosway estate at Coulibri, between the river and the sea, shaded b... Read more

Review:This is an absolutely enchanting revision of the traditional "Bluebeard" folktale. The story is dark and its characters are engaging.Although it follows the original story somewhat it has its own unique ending that makes this a great novella all on its own. I highly recommend this story for anyone interested in modern fairy/folktale revisions. Read more

Review:First, let me say, this book will require patience and quite a bit of time in order to make your way through it. Not that it's not enjoyable, but simply put, it is long.

Susanna Clark does a lovely job of using the preexisting mythic character of the Raven King to create a central mythology that the book revolves around.

The setting of the book is England around the time of the Napoleonic wars. The difference is that magic actually exists, though it has subsided into something tha... Read more

Review:As always, Kay's writing is almost poetic, smooth, with interesting twists and subtexts. The story is not as compelling as some others he's written, but interesting with insights into changes in societies after a major event such as the fall of an empire. With his usual placement of his writings into a world slightly offset from our own you get a combination of history and fiction that satisfies the historical novel requirements without jarring with events and people that didn't occur in "real" ... Read more

Review:Really well done research for the time period, a good mystery, and all of it REALLY well written!
The main character is realistically portrayed, and immediately likable. Mystery turns into a political plot, and back to a mystery again ;-) in quite unexpected plot turns. Read more

Review:Philippa Gregory's historical novels are powerful and bring personal perspective to the period. I read "The Red Queen" out of order which actually worked out well. When I read "The White Queen" afterward I knew who the people were that were going to have an effect on Elizabeth's life and how her actions were going to create consequences for her. I have enjoyed every Philippa Gregory book I have read ... in particular "Queen's Fool". Read more

Review:An enjoyable novel with a creepy atmosphere and believable characters. Only critique is the implausibility of the historical timeline - the author is Australian and I get the overall impression that the story is supposed to be set there, yet the family’s and manor house’s history don’t sync with the fact that NSW only saw European immigrants arrive in 1788, and life was very much frontier-like for the next few decades. There was never any explanation as to how a grande British manor house and ... Read more