meguuun

** spoiler alert ** Hmm, well, to be perfectly honest this was a bit of a let down. It's a perfectly good story for what it is, but it isn't anything that I was expecting, or what it was suggesting to be. Had I known it was going to be a lukewarm historical romance where the characters spend a lot of time doing nothing and just simper after each other, I wouldn't have bothered with it. This is set during the reign of Mary Tudor, her phantom pregnancy and the persecution of the non-Catholic heretics. I thought it was going to be about her, and if not directly following her, then at least someone in her court. But she barely features in this book. The main character is a Spaniard called Rafael, who has come over to make a sundial, as a present from the prince to his queen. Except it never gets made because of funding, blah blah blah, so you don't hear anything of the art of sundials, courtly gardens or whatever. And this guy ends up spending a year in London just hanging around. And there's generally a negative picture of London - it's always raining, it's always cold, people always have colds and the food is crap.I have a couple of her other books to read and I hope they are better. I hold out, because I've seen some reviews where people have read a few of her books and they thought the others were much better than this one.

2023-06-16 22:30