Bingo Square: This is the End As much as I have enjoyed reading Penman’s Welsh Princes trilogy, it also took that extra push from CBR10Bingo to finally build up the motivation to dig into the final novel. What can I say? Her books are a commitment, and there is something rather daunting about them because being based on history, there is very little justice or sense of people getting the ending or lives they deserved. The last novel showed how Simon de Montfort, a flawed […]
Human Fallibility, Fathers and Sons, Love and Medieval Politics
While this novel actually covers a shorter time period than its predecessor, Here Be Dragons, this novel feels even more sprawling. I think this is partially due to the number of characters and leaders in Wales. While the English part of this narrative is centered around Simon de Montfort, his wife Nell and King Henry III, in that time, the Welsh have three separate rulers: the final years of Llewellyn the Great’s reign, his son Davydd’s short rule, and finally, Llewellyn, Dafydd’s nephew and Llewellyn […]
Wales Finally Gets Its Due
From the time I was a teenager through a good portion of my twenties, historical fiction was my go to genre. John Jakes, James Michener, Edward Rutherford and others were among some my most reliable authors. Michener and Rutherford would take one location, and use one or two families across the centuries (or millennia) to hit the highlights of English, Polish or Hawaiian history in one comprehensive tome, while John Jakes wrote sweeping family dramas spanning several books. I also loved novels like The Mists […]
Dear Authors of the World: ‘Dangerous’ doesn’t have to mean ‘Femme Fatale Sex Stripper.’ There are other options.
This was pretty good for an anthology, but I really prefer longer stories, as it really takes a talented author to make me care for characters in such a short period of time, or to have a plot immediately interesting enough to trump my interest in the characters. Short stories also tend more towards the self-important and annoying. Anyway, this was worth it just for the Martin and Sanderson stories alone, and there were several others I really enjoyed as well including ones from Robin […]