Latest Amazon Book Review

Hi. I'm sorry to be so late in posting this month, but I have been sick with the flu most of the month. It seems at this age, along with a compromised immune system, I get hit hard and once the coughing starts, it's difficult to get past it. Never mind. It's all part of the aging process and we just deal with it to the best of our ability.

Here is a book I found most enjoyable. I've posted this review in my Amazon Vine Account.

"A historical fiction writer has a definite edge over a true historian and this is where some readers of historical fiction tend to get confused. The writer of historical fiction has the versatility of verisimilitude: the appearance or semblance of truth. As Mark Twain once said, "the difference between history and fiction is that fiction has to (only) be believable." In other words, it doesn't have to be exact historical truth. In his new novel, "The Tudor Secret," author, C.W. Gortner uses this device to good effect and makes an unlikely plot seem plausible.

Brendan Perscott is an orphan reared in the household of the dangerous and cunning family of Lord Robert Dudley. He has never known who his parents were and is eager to find the secret of his ancestry. As well, he wonders what ever happened to the warm and loving household servant who raised him and was, according to Lady Dudley, killed in a roadside ambush.

Now twenty years of age, he is sent to the court of Edward VI to serve as a square to the young Robert Dudley. However, as soon as he meets the Lady Elizabeth, King Edward's sister by Anne Boleyn, he knows he is her liegeman. He would serve only her and to shield her from the Dudley Family, he joins forces with William Cecil, Elizabeth's protector.

With the exception of what I consider to be Philippa Gregory's revisionist history, I have a great fondness for books set in the Tudor era and especially about members of the royal family. I found Mr. Gortner's writing quite compelling and I quickly was caught up both with the characters he introduces and his young hero's dilemma.

Only towards the end of the book, in a scene with Cecil William, did I find the writing went a little overboard and the young man's outbursts rather exaggerated. What had happened didn't seem to warrant his reaction. Nevertheless, I enjoyed the book and found it an engrossing read."