Summaries and Customer Reviews are supplied by Amazon.com

Average Customer Rating:

Fantabulosa!	Customer Rating:
Oh Wow, what a book! Alison Weir is such a great writer. I just couldn't put this down and even though i knew how it was going to end, i prayed it would be different. Superb and a must read book.

Disappointing and trivial

Customer Rating:

Deeply disappointing read to anyone genuinely interested in history and definately not one of Alison Weir's more successful works. here ius no depth to the book and the characters are shallow; there is some basis in historical fact but much of the book is conjecture. The style is stilted and uses the device of several different people taking up the tale to carry the story along. This patently does not work in this book as none of the characters develop a believable or sufficiently diiferentiated voice. The modernisation of the language and sentiment makes the book anachronistic and is rather patronising to the reader. It was so vacuous and trite that I nearly gave up on the book in boredom but the second half does gain some pace as it moves to it's inescapable conclusion and there are some little insights into Queen Mary's character that could bear further development. Is this book trying to be reportage or a boddice ripper ? Whatever the genre it really does not work. Perhaps I should not have read it after Ives' excellent piece of scholarship on Anne Boleyn which really is well researched, highly entertaining and rewarding.

Sadly disappointed

Customer Rating:

History is my favorite subject and this author came highly recommended. This is the first book I have read by her and was extremely disappointed. It lacked a true atmosphere of the time,that this was set in. I really could not picture any exacutioner, living during Mary's reign, thinking the thoughts that this author had written. The terminology was all wrong, the dialogue sounded 1970's. The characters all appeared wishy washy. It is far more a type of Barbara Cartland for the history lover, than any serious attempt to understand or explain how these events really played out. It is an easy light read, ideal for train travel or just before going to sleep. The Tudor/War of the Roses have been far better written as stories by Rosemay Hawley Jarman, amoungest others, who REALLY make you smell the candle wax and hear the rustle of cloth of gold. This book is not, in my opinion, true history at all. Just another story book.

Suspenseful even with a well-known ending

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Alison Weir is a respected historian who is often recommended as an antidote to inaccurate representations in historical fiction as written by other authors. This is her first novel, and what a novel it is. I was entranced from the first line, and even though I knew how it was going to end, I still hoped that there would be a change at some point near the end. That's the sign of a good writer - someone who can write so compellingly and with such suspense that you hope they can even change historical facts for you. Lady Jane Grey was a pawn in the ambition of her parents and of the Duke of Northumberland, almost from the moment she was born. Never forgiven for the cardinal sin of being born female, she was beaten and tortured into becoming a "lady" suitable for marriage to a monarch. When that ceased to be an option she was beaten into a marriage and a reign she never wanted, protesting even as the crown was being put on her head. These are facts that are known by most who have even read cursory information about this young lady. What is amazing is the way Alison Weir makes it seem like new information. The chorus of different voices in the telling of Jane's tale is exemplary and clever. I kept turning pages wanting to see what spin the next narrator would put on the story. This novel did what historical fiction should do - it made me want to seek out the non-fiction bases for the story and do more reading. Anything that inspires further study can only be praised.

An Excellent Book into a Intresting Woman

Customer Rating:

Having known very little about the main character this book is based on, Lady Jane Grey, it was a refreshing and intresting read. I've been a fan of Philippa Gregory's book's but this surpasses them by leaps and bounds. The characters are very much three dimension each with flaws. A previous reviewer had made the comment that Jane was too perfect, which I didn't find. To me she was flawed in the fact that she was too dogmatic in her views on religion, but this in itself was, at least to me, a form of rebelion against her parents. It was their disappointment in Jane and their ambition for power that ultimately led to her downfall. The author has obviously done her homework and research and by intertwining known facts with certain key points in history that Jane 'Could' have witnessed, it brings it live. I also began to fell for Queen Mary I, who even though knew that in order to give the country security of her marriage to Philip of Spain, and therefor give a heir to the throne, Jane had to die, Mary gave Jane many chances to live. First by trying to get her to convert and then to see if she was with child. By the time that Jane's execution was drawing close, I found I could no longer read this book at bed time. I found myself getting very emotional at the scene. All in all, an excellent book and I can't wait for the next one, which is sitting in my to-read pile.