Many romance readers enjoy historical fiction like Dorothy Dunnett’s Lymond Chronicles and Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey Maturin series (both series were reviewed at AAR). The main characters in those books may act the anti-hero at times, but they are ultimately true heroes. You can’t say that about Sir Harry Flashman, the protagonist of George MacDonald Fraser’s…
The Winter Mantle is by turns fascinating, brutal, and romantic. The writing is consistently top-notch, the historical details are accurate and thorough, and the characters are flawed in an intriguing way. It also reminded me completely of why I started reading much more romance (and much less historical fiction) nearly ten years ago. As much…
The Blessing Stone makes those sprawling intergenerational sagas and inscrutable epics seem like rank amateurs with the sheer scope of its coverage spanning over 100,000 years. Barbara Wood is an engaging writer, but her themes, played out in the history of a precious stone, are not. Her research is superb, some of her stories are…
This book took me entirely too long to read. Or maybe it just seemed that way, because the main character we’re stuck with is simply no one with whom I had any wish to spend time. Combine that with the fact that out of the many plot threads, most are resolved rather abruptly, and almost…
What to say, what to say? I’ve been waiting to read Tatiana and Alexander since September 23, 2001 at 4:35 PM, give or take a few minutes. That’s when I finished Simon’s wonderful, heartbreaking epic story The Bronze Horseman. If you’ve read that book, you’ll know why I immediately needed to get my hands on…
One can argue that this is but one of a million love stories ever written. A tall, brave soldier and a diminutive blonde nurse; the heartbreak and terror of World War II; sex, partings and reunions, deaths. And yet to say that Tatiana and Alexander is a love story is like saying that Niagara is…
If you haven’t yet read Tracy Grant’s Daughter of the Game, I have a suggestion I hope you’ll consider. Before you go any further in reading this review, I recommend that you take a look instead at Colleen McMahon’s DIK Review of that incredible book. To be honest, it’s not essential to have read the…
Feathered Serpent tells the story of the Mexican conquest and definitely has its romantic threads, particularly those concerning Hernan Cortés and his Mexica consort and interpreter, Malinali Tenepal. It’s not a romance, however, and as history tells us, there is no Happily Ever After for this couple, or for any of the conquistadores or those…
A recent ATBF discussion centered around “books that were popular when you came of age.” One of those books that seemed to be on everyone’s night stand when I was in college was Rosamunde Pilcher’s The Shell Seekers, a British novel set partly during World War II and partly in the present (then the late…
Okay, I admit it: I can be as shallow as the next gal. When I learned that Russell Crowe was set to star in a movie based on the seafaring adventure stories by Patrick O’Brian, I decided it was time to strap on a life preserver and take the plunge into the 20-volume series. By…
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