Monthly Roundup: March 2015

It's been a light reading month for me this March. I have a kind of loose goal each year to read 75 (new) books, which averages out to about 7 per month. But March, poor March... only ended up with 5. Between working full-time at the hospital and school it's been getting harder to squeeze in all the delicious reading time that I want. I did drop a class this week so my workload should be a little lighter here on out.

I expect one of the reasons for my slowdown, however, is the fact that I'm trying to chew through a Dickens novel. Like a hunk of jerky without any water. I find a lot of authors say that if a book doesn't grab them right away they stop reading, because they can't waste time on bad books when there's so many to read, but I just have a hard time setting a book down even if it's the most vile pile of garbage I can think of (and I have finished some incredibly vile books). Even if I don't like it, I feel like I should give a book a whole try. If I had given up, I would never have known how much I liked the end of Ender's Game, for example.

Anyway, what's to look forward to next month?

• Association of Writers and Writing Programs Conference and Bookfair

The AWP Conference & Bookfair is an essential annual destination for writers, teachers, students, editors, and publishers. Each year more than 12,000 attendees join our community for four days of insightful dialogue, networking, and unrivaled access to the organizations and opinion-makers that matter most in contemporary literature. The 2015 conference will feature over 2,000 presenters and 550 readings, panels, and craft lectures. The bookfair hosts over 700 presses, journals, and literary organizations from around the world. AWP’s is now the largest literary conference in North America. Join us in Minneapolis to celebrate the best of what contemporary literature has to offer.

AWP is in Minneapolis April 8-11, and I'm pretty excited. There's SO many readings and lectures that sound really interesting, and there'll be the opportunity to pick up a ton of journals that may be relevant to my interests. Too bad I have to work two of the first days, but at least I can go for a couple hours during the day before having to come home again to sleep. Patients first, people.

On a more personal note, April includes surgery for the spouse (boo!) and a baby shower for a friend (yay!), as well as season premieres for Outlander, Game of Thrones and Orphan Black. The garden beds will get installed in April and the whole state will start greening up. April incoming!

Ringworld - Larry Niven

Part of my self-imposed research study involves reading not just the new or new-ish science fiction, but also that of decades past. This has, shall we say, mixed results. Some of the ideas that I would consider tropes in today's fiction were first engineered in sci-fi from the 1970s and earlier, so it's interesting to see them in their early forms. These are sometimes some of the most imaginative science fiction I've come across, because really these authors were pioneering their way into the genre. Heinlein didn't have decades of Heinlein to draw on like authors today: he pulled it all out of his ass.

But on the other hand, even within the futuristic settings there are prevailing archaic attitudes that make some of these difficult to read. Larry Niven's Ringworld is no exception, certainly, and maybe a bigger offender than others.

Interestingly this book also plays heavily into my hard-vs-soft-science-fiction debate from earlier. The entire plot of the book is built around the concept of a Dyson sphere, or a hypothetical space structure encompassing an entire star at the same distance of that star's zone of habitability, thence able to capture all of that star's energy output. It's hypothetical because, clearly, the size of such a structure is beyond our abilities, and even challenges the limits of our understanding. Niven's universe proposes the existence of a modified Dyson sphere, in the shape of a ring around such a star. While still massive, such a ring would be a fraction of the size and require a fraction of the materials. The main characters, Louis Wu, Teela Brown, and two aliens Speaker to Animals and Nessus, have come to learn about the ringworld and what it might mean for the future of all their species given the 'imminent' (aka, twenty-thousand years in the future) explosion of the galaxy's core.

The focus on the science lands this story squarely in the realm of hard science fiction. Simply put, the characters are all fairly incidental. The addition or subtraction of Louis Wu to the group would make little difference in the general outcome of the story. I find this to be a drawback, personally, though I know some seem to prefer this type of science fiction. There are some minor plot points woven in through the larger narrative related to each specific character that are more interesting, but the overall idea is, essentially: rag-tag group of beings inspects a 'planet' after its highly technological civilization has fallen to ruins; encounters hostile natives and technological malfunctions; must find a way to get home again. Not particularly revolutionary for now, though perhaps moreso for its publication date of 1970, more than forty years ago.

But there are parts of this book that are just downright painful to read. I touched briefly on the group of four that were included in the expedition earlier. Nessus, an alien known as a puppeteer, is the instigator of the expedition, provider of transportation and supplies and information. Speaker to Animals, a cat-like Kzin, is the muscle, well-versed in offense and defense. Louis Wu is an accomplished space traveler and adventurer. Teela Brown? The sole female member of their crew? She has no skills. She's just lucky.

I WISH I was exaggerating this. Literally the only thing she brings to this expedition is her luck (which actually ends up being a plot point for them later in the book, but a weak one). We have two highly skilled and intelligent male characters (and one genderless intelligent character), and then a stupid, beautiful, lucky twenty-two-year-old girl, who is there to periodically sex up Louis and throw tantrums when she steps on something hot.

Later on a second female character is introduced (literally the only other woman with a name, I might point out), but she's a whore. Prill was a member of the human species who built the Ringworld, but she wasn't a scientist, or an engineer, or a pilot, or anything like that. She was the ship's prostitute. She's also there to sex up Louis (because Teela isn't around at the moment, and clearly Louis can't NOT be sexed), but also to sex him like he's never been sexed before. She's not just a hooker with a heart of gold, she's the best hooker to ever hook.She can come back to Earth and teach all them Earth women how to sex their men right.

Lastly, Niven makes a point of stating how the Kzin have sub-sapient females. I feel like I could have just stopped reading right there. Is it any wonder this post is positively dripping with disdain?

But even if you throw aside my feminism objections--which I'm sure some are happy to do, given that it's practically a dirty word these days--the writing is just downright sloppy. At one point Niven uses the phrase "sky-blue sky" to describe.. uh.. the sky. Like, thanks. That was a very helpful description. This odd word repetition is pretty rampant. As another example: "Unending, endlessly changing terrain". Surely there are better ways of phrasing that, that aren't the phonetic equivalent of stumbling over a brick half-buried in the ground.

Lastly, this quote.

"A bandersnatch looked like a cross between Moby Dick and a Caterpillar tractor."

If I have understood this correctly, this seems like a HUGE break in narrative consistency. While written in the third person, the book is written with Louis Wu as the POV character. We are seeing what Louis sees, and also into Louis' head. POV can be difficult for beginning writers, because it's easy to slip out of this third-person limited by accident. But it's important to remember that, with third-person limited, we are LIMITED to only what that character knows. We can't jump to another place where Louis isn't at; we can't jump into anyone else's head; and we can't get a description that Louis Wu would not realistically know. Moby Dick is a reference I might ascribe to Louis, given how classic literature does tend to hold up even over centuries. But a Caterpillar, as in, the brand of construction equipment? If we're far enough ahead in the future to have instantaneous teleportation across the world and 'booster spice' capable of extending human lifespan to centuries, I sincerely doubt we're still using Caterpillar tractors. This is a break in POV and it's sloppy.

Overall, I don't think this book stands the test of time. It may have been good for its era, but it's aged pretty terribly. Niven doesn't exactly stand up to the durability of Heinlein and Asimov. What I do have to say went well for this book is it had a great narrator: Tom Parker, aka Grover Gardner, my hero of Vorkosigan. So at least I enjoyed listening to his voice.

Overall: 2 stars

Amazon: Ringworld

More reviews: Ringworld on Librarything (Average 3.83 stars)

Ringworld on Goodreads (Average 3.94 stars)

Bitterblue - Kristin Cashore

As someone who grew up reading science fiction and fantasy stories written mostly in the 1940s, 1970s and 1990s, sometimes I think about where fantasy as a genre is today. Gone are the days of Tolkien, clearly. Lord of the Rings was supremely brilliant for its time, and definitely holds a place of honor today, but because it's been such a staple of fantasy works feels dated today. Many, many authors try to emulate Tolkien in his style and his worldbuilding (and some, like Terry Brooks, straight down to his plot structure--I'm looking at you, Sword of Shannara). This seems to be a really common genre writer mistake, and one that I'm not exempt from. The next logical question is, what new road, then, do we take our fantasy down? I love the many-varied answers to this question. Nnedi Okorafor moves her fantasy into African roots instead of the medieval European standard. Urban fantasy is a growing market, as is supernatural romance. Magical realism is one that currently fascinates me. It's a question I try to answer for myself with my own pieces, naturally with varying shades of success. Is there still a market for traditional fantasy? Or are publishers and readers all looking for something new, different, exciting?

Every so often I run across an author like Kristin Cashore, who prove to me that traditional fantasy can still have new life. (See also Patrick Rothfuss, a post saved for another day.) Bitterblue is the third book of her Graceling Realm series, and it takes place eight years after the first, aptly titled Graceling. The cover says it is a companion to Fire, though I'm not entirely sure where it falls on the timeline in relation to that novel, because apparently in the year and a half since I read Fire I have completely forgotten the plotline and apparently have to go back to read it again because I apparently gave it four stars. Apparently.

Neat art in this print.

Bitterblue was a lesser protagonist in Graceling, the daughter of the depraved King Leck, who Katsa assassinated. Now she is eighteen, in charge of her kingdom, and learning how to take power in the shadow of the atrocities her father committed.

The backdrop of this novel seems quite traditional. The kind of world with a sketchy map in the front of the Seven Kingdoms, full of kings and wars and uprisings. In a way the world built here feels neutral, without real-world indicators of culture, which signifies to me that is is European based like many traditional fantasies. It's not necessarily bad, but it is the status quo for fantasy today. Cashore's twist on this basic setting is the addition of Graces, special powers that people born with odd-colored eyes have. Similar to Piers Anthony's Xanthian talents, with the exception that not everyone has them, a Grace is a unique skill conferred on the bearer that may be anywhere from as mundane as exceptional wine making or talking backwards, to as martial as Katsa's skill for survival, or those whose bearers' lives depend on them, like Po's mindreading or Hava's disguise. These Graces are what made King Leck's rule so insidious and so difficult for Bitterblue and her kingdom to move forward from: his skill was lying.

What I find the most interesting about this book is that it is less a story of adventure or royal intrigue or inter-kingdom conflict as it is a coming-of-age story about a young woman taking the reins of power for the first time. Bitterblue wants to be a good ruler to her people, but she needs to figure out who around her actually wants to help her grow into her role, and who wants to keep her under their thumb. It's more quiet evolution than grand revolution, and I like it.

On the downside, many of the minor characters are much less developed in this book than in previous. Katsa and Po feel like caricatures of their previous forms and are infinitely less interesting--in fact, most of Katsa's role in this book is to show up, go away, come back, leave again. I feel like if a character does not help drive your story forward, then there's really no point in including them in it. Similarly I think Cashore could have written the book without Po and his mindreading, because some situations resolve themselves just a little bit too easily by being able to 'think' at Po or have him know instantly if a person is telling the truth.

Also can I just point out right now that half the names in this series are ridiculous? They're ridiculous. "Death" that rhymes with teeth! Sapphire/Saf. Fire. Skye. Fox. Spook, Gray, Rood.

“You do trust him, though, Giddon?"
"Holt, who is stealing your sculptures and is of questionable mental health?"
"Yes."
"I trusted him five minutes ago. Now I'm at a bit of a loss."
"Your opinion five minutes ago is good enough for me.”

Overall: 3.5 stars

Amazon: Bitterblue

More reviews: Bitterblue on Librarything (Average 4.08 stars)

Bitterblue on Goodreads (Average 4.01 stars)

My Real Children - Jo Walton

Alzheimer's is a disease that I think most of the modern world is familiar with now, but it's relatively young in terms of the human race. It's only been recognized as a distinct disease since the beginning of the 20th century. I think it's likely that Alzheimer's has existed for much longer than this, but due to two factors, never in such recognizable numbers as those we see today. One factor is that Alzheimer's was likely lumped in with other forms of dementia, but the other being that only within the last century or so have we as the human race been regularly living into our eighties, nineties, and at times beyond. Aging diseases are more prevalent because we're still alive to experience them. Now, as the baby boomer generation moves into the ages when these diseases are cropping up, we're likely to see more and more memoirs of Alzheimer's and its effect on family members, akin to the cancer memoir or the addiction memoir.

It's seems like a logical progression for these themes to then show up in fantasy and science fiction. Jo Walton does this with such an interesting twist: in the modern day, Patricia is in a nursing home. She remembers two different lives: one where she is Trish, married to Mark and has four children, and President Kennedy was killed by a bomb. One where she is Pat, raising three children with her partner Bee, and President Kennedy declines to rerun for office after the nuclear obliteration of Miami and Kiev. She seems to slip between both of these timelines, remembering some days that the bathroom is on the left, and some days that it is on the right.

What I find most interesting about Patricia's dilemma is not just the idea of which timeline is real, but which timeline does she WANT to be real. Logically they can't both be real--although that is somewhat debatable when we're already playing fast and loose with time and reality--but there's severe advantages and disadvantages to each timeline. As Pat she was much more personally happy with her partner and her life, but the world suffers from nuclear fallout and widespread radiation-induced thyroid cancer. As Trish her personal life is significantly more difficult via her terrible marriage, but the world is much more stable overall. And either way, there's children. How could she choose between her children, knowing that any choice would render the others out of existence? And that's assuming she can even make that choice. She may, for as much time as she has left, spend the rest of her days drifting between these two worlds.

I've been thinking a lot about scene vs summary lately, and this book is a excellent example to bring in to that debate. Often it's really easy for people like myself, who want to write sci fi and fantasy, to slip into just a little too much summary, to get across all the worldbuilding information we feel we need. Scene, however, is a lot more powerful way of delivering that, if more difficult. In scene all that information has to feel natural, or we feel like The Real Inspector Hound: "Hello, the drawing-room of Lady Muldoon's country residence one morning in early spring?...I'm afraid there is no one of that name here, this is all very mysterious and I'm sure it's leading up to something, I hope nothing is amiss for we, that is Lady Muldoon and her houseguests, are here cut off from the world, including Magnus, the wheelchair-ridden half-brother of her ladyship's husband Lord Albert Muldoon who ten years ago went out for a walk on the cliffs and was never seen again--and all alone, for they had no children." Yes, that's dialogue. Stoppard's mocking the dialogue-as-exposition and for good reason: it's awkward, clunky, and completely artificial. So it takes a lighter touch to convey this information in scene than it would in summary, where the narrator can just straight out say what happened in the past.

Walton, however, strikes a really pleasant balance between scene and summary. A lot of this story is covering such a vast amount of time--Patricia's entire life--that it's almost required that a good chunk of it would have to be summary. We can skim over her college years without having to be bogged down into any specific instance, for example. And then we can move seamlessly into the exact moment she met Mark and he walked her home, summarize the next few years that they spent apart, and then right back into scene when he asks her to marry him over the phone. "Now or never," he says, and her answer splits her world right in two.

In addition, this is a very 'quiet' story. It's got a kind of understated drama that I think is a really deft, subtle touch. This is a kind of vibe that I want for a particular piece that I've been working on, so it's really helpful to see a successful example. It appears to not be for everyone--I guess some people really want that high-energy drama--but I found it to be a nice departure from the typical.

“Confused today,” they wrote on her notes. “Confused. Less confused. Very confused.” That last was written frequently, sometimes abbreviated by the nurses to just “VC,” which made her smile, as if she were sufficiently confused to be given a medal for it. Her name was on the notes too—just her first name, Patricia, as if in old age she were demoted to childhood, and denied both the dignity of surname and title and the familiarity of the form of her name she preferred.

Full opening excerpt at Tor.

Overall: 5 stars

Amazon: My Real Children

More reviews:My Real Children on Librarything (Average 4.09 stars)

My Real Children on Goodreads (Average 3.73 stars)

 

Brothers in Arms - Lois McMaster Bujold

Lois McMaster Bujold is something of a science fiction legend. She's won five Hugo awards, three Nebula awards, and three Locus awards--but I'm no award snob. She's just an all-around clever and snappy writer, and I marvel at the worlds she creates. Her Vorkosigan Saga is space opera at its finest, and I certainly don't mean that in the derogatory way: it's character-driven science fiction, which is, I think, the bridge between genre and literary fiction.

Hello ma'am I think you are great.

I wait, I think I hear a thousand noses lifting into the air at that phrase. Literary fiction? Surely not!

As I slowly start to dig into the literary world I come across this interesting genre bias. TRUE literature is only realistic! Science fiction and fantasy are always pulp. Obviously I find this to be ludicrous, or I wouldn't make a point of being mildly sarcastic about such a statement. I grew up reading genre, because it was what was interesting. And some of it, sure, was pretty pulpy. But is it too dramatic if I compare it to an addiction, in that it feels really, really good, but not being able to step back from genre to study it objectively can leave the aspiring writer with some severe problems?

Maybe that's a rant for another time (short version: hey stop writing the same stories new writers, please) so I'll get right down to my main point: Genre is fun. Genre is awesome. Genre has so many possibilities and places you can go, limited only by the writer's skill and imagination. But there's a big caveat: the best genre is CHARACTER-driven, not PLOT-driven.

So yes, this kind of focus is what bridges us between poor genre and snobby literary fiction, to create a hybrid that's taking some of the best qualities of both: the fun escapism, the exciting adventure, the strange worlds; and the complex characters and literary chops to pull it off.

So laugh, literature snobs, but Bujold is an amazing writer. Every time I read (or in this case, listen to) one of her stories, I'm astounded at the end at how she's crafted a story that is complex, and yet easy to follow; surprising, and yet logical. At the end, everything just makes sense. I suspect this is the result of deep, intimate knowledge of your characters, your setting and your plot, something that every writer should aspire to. Bujold excels at the aphorism, and her characters and their dialogue are, although distinct from each other, just so damn funny sometimes.

Tangentially related: Meet Grover Gardner, the best damn audiobook narrator ever. He does the whole Vorkosigan series (and I spotted him under a pseudonym doing Ringworld, too.)

Brothers in Arms is the... well, I'm not sure exactly what number in the series it is, to be honest. The chronological and publication orders are substantially different, and while I prefer to read in chronological order, even that is a little complicated. There's a lot of short stories and novellas worked into the saga here and there, and opinions seem to differ about what order to read them in. For myself this is seventh Vorkosigan book I've read. Miles Vorkosigan is a young man leading a double life: He is a member of the Vor of Barrayar, a class of nobility on his home planet, and a low-ranking military officer; but he is also Admiral Naismith, leader of the Dendarii mercenaries, and only his closest associates know that the fleet is secretly under the pay of the Barrayarans. How did Miles acquire this fleet? Though fast talking, a keen mind and sheer luck. In a previous book he essentially talked an entire mercenary fleet into his own power.

In this installment, Miles and the Dendarii are stopped at Earth after the mercenaries' last engagement, and when Miles checks in with the Barrayaran embassy (because hey, they need to get paid!) he gets caught up in a Komarran revenge plot against his famous father. Miles tries to pass off the appearance of both Vorkosigan and Naismith in the same place with a story about a clone, but as it turns out, the Komarrans really do have a clone, and Miles discovers his new 'brother', who he christens Mark. Deep down this is a story about loyalties: Miles to his planet, his fleet, his family; Mark's to the Komarrans; Galeni's to Komarr, his father, and Barrayar. Which of these loyalties are worthy? Which are not?

I feel like this summary is only scratching the surface of what Bujold is setting down. Her stories are just so deliciously complicated, and I don't want to ruin the flavor by boiling it down to its separate parts here. Suffice to say it's a great story; though, perhaps, not the best one to start the series with. It feels so rich to me because I know the history that has led up to this point, and someone entering the series here might not catch quite as much. In a sense I appreciate that Bujold hasn't spoon-fed us recaps with every book, or worked in extraneous information in artificial ways, in the way that some authors do when trying to make a series book stand alone. I don't think the story here suffers without that context, but is certainly enriched by having it.

A few years ago there was a really interesting post on whether or not Bujold can be considered hard science fiction (hard being based on actual science, soft being less true to actual physical possibilities, but both terms have some leeway). I liked what Martin Wisse had to say about the matter:

Much hard science fiction suffers from technofetishism, where the characters go around lovingly describing each type of ship taking part in a space battle or go into the finer details of the ammunition they’re using in the midst of a firefight. Even when the focus is less militaristic, it can sometimes seem the future is entirely populated by geeks. This is not the case with Bujold: her characters are people comfortable with using futuretech, without particularly noticing it or how it influences their society, but this influence is still there. As a reader it means you yourself have to work harder to notice things too, as they’re not pointed out to you.

There's an implication in the argument over hard vs soft science fiction that soft science fiction is somehow inferior to hard. Geek culture likes to rank things like this, in terms of something being better, geekier, more pure or more hardcore than something else; but really I think it comes down to personal preference. While I certainly like stories that are science-plausible, I don't like stories where the science is prioritized over the characters. So in a way, soft science fiction fulfills this need more, but again, there's a certain amount of leeway that makes for successful stories in both categories.

In closing, quotes.

"The costs had been so small, compared to the spectacular results. Except for all the individuals who had paid for the triumph with their lives, for whom the price was something infinite, divided by zero."

"They tilted bed-ward, hungry mouthed."

"Some attitudes couldn't be changed, they just had to be outlived."

 Overall: 5 stars

Amazon: Brothers in Arms

More reviews: Brothers in Arms on Librarything (Average 4.16 stars)

Brothers in Arms on Goodreads (Average 4.18 stars)

 

The White Princess - Philippa Gregory

I have a bit of an obsession with British history, specifically anywhere from the War of the Roses up through the Victorian era. I may have spent a good hour at work one night painstakingly tracing the passage of the crown through British royals from 1327 to the modern day.

I bet you thought I was kidding. I don't joke about history.

(I do joke about history.)

I notice now that I should have changed the display of the Tudor children so they don't all appear to be descended from each other. I'm only human.

I never really get tired of the stories, even when I know them intimately. As such I read a lot of authors who cover the same eras: Alison Weir, Carolly Erickson, Robin Maxwell, and the quintessential royalty-writer herself, Philippa Gregory. With, at my best count, 15 novels specifically featuring British royals, she was the first historical fiction writer that I really got into. (Though, interestingly, my favorite series of hers is actually Georgian and doesn't feature royalty at all--Wideacre) It's pretty much required that I need to pick up each of her new books as she works her way through the Cousin's War.

This is another of my recent reads that has a television adaptation to go along with it. BBC and Starz released the miniseries The White Queen in 2013, based on Gregory's previous books. Now Starz is developing a second miniseries as a sequel, based on this book. I haven't yet seen the first one, but given that I now have both Outlander and these adaptations to be watching, I might have to get Starz on my cable service.

Freya Mavor played Elizabeth of York in the first miniseries, so I wonder if we'll see her return for the titular role of the White Princess. The story covers so much of Elizabeth's life that it may be very difficult to use such a young actor (Mavor is 21).

Summary:

In this, the fifth book of the Cousin's War series, we feature Elizabeth of York. The daughter of the old king Edward IV and Elizabeth Woodville, featured in the previous book The White Queen, Elizabeth of York spent some time as the paramour of her uncle, Richard III, featured in the previous book The Kingmaker's Daughter. Richard III has been overthrown by Henry Tudor, soon to be known as Henry VII, and Elizabeth is to marry him. The White Princess tells the story of their marriage, at turns cold and loving and full of fear and cold again, and that of the mysterious Boy who may or may not be Elizabeth's brother Richard, one of the two boys who disappeared from the Tower.

Elizabeth of York and Henry VII. 

As a reader:

This story is about a mystery at its heart, and we never really get a payoff. Is the Boy Elizabeth's long-lost brother? Or is he really Perkin Warbeck, one of the many names put upon him? Gregory seems to be implying that he is the true Richard of York, but it is never explicitly stated. In this way it seems that Gregory has started the book at a certain tension level, and then just left us there, without amping up or resolving any of it. It's very unsatisfying in this way and I have to wonder if at 60 Gregory is just getting tired of this work. I feel as if I could summarize this entire story as follows:

Henry: "What do you know?"

Elizabeth: "Nothing."

Henry: "But what do you know?? You're a York!"

Elizabeth: "Nothing."

BORING. If the characters never know anything, then the reader looking through their point of view never knows anything either, and then what, exactly, is the point of the story? This story is missing the mysticism and the strong women of Melusina in previous books. It just feels fairly flat.

About the only thing that really grabbed me in this book was the relationship between Elizabeth and Henry. Elizabeth herself is a fairly empty character, but I think that reflects more on what she had to be in context than on Gregory's writing. She was beset with suspicions from her husband's family, and essentially had to withdraw from the world to stay clear of any ill associations. Henry, on the other hand, is a vibrant character, full of fear and uncertainty. Their marriage begins on such terrible ground--Henry insists he must see if Elizabeth can get pregnant before he commits himself to her, and so, premarital rape--but somehow, over time, they come to feel a kind of fondness for each other. For a time, they are happy. But the state of their relationship mirrors the state of the kingdom, and when Henry is on rocky ground, so too are they.

As a writer:

If Gregory's tired of writing, her editor must be tired of proofreading. I'm the type of reader who stumbles over errors like a loose brick: I'm clumsy and I can't help it. I found so many minor errors in this book that, individually are nothing, but they interrupt my flow and it looks unprofessional.

"None of her ladies is[sic] here, her musicians are absent..."

"As the wife of the king, I can kneel to him publicly and ask for clemency for a criminal. Maggie will come forwards[sic] and take off my hood..."

"None of the people of the west is[sic] for Tudor, they are all looking for the prince over the water."

Touching back on the tension, this book really emphasizes for me the importance of the plot structure. I realize that it can be more difficult to use this structure when working with an existing story in history, because you are in some ways limited to what actually happened. However, this is still, at its core, fiction. We don't know enough about these historical figures to say exactly how they would have acted or behaved, and so enough leeway is there to, I think, stay with the basic structure of plot.

The plot structure of this book would be less like a mountain and more like a sound wave. No climax, no resolution, just a series of little ups and down.

It's not all bad, though. It's still Philippa Gregory, and girl knows how to do words.

"Everywhere Henry goes, people fall silent so that no whisper reaches his ears; but before and behind him there is a patter of sound like a warning drizzle before a storm of rain."

Overall: 3 stars.

Amazon: The White Princess

More reviews: The White Princess on Librarything (Average 3.62 stars)

The White Princess on Goodreads (Average 3.77 stars)