The Gilded Chamber (Rebecca Kohn)

The Gilded Chamber is a re-telling of the biblical story of Esther, a young Jewish girl who is brought into the harem of King Xerxes, eventually marries him, and is able to prevent him making an order for the execution of the Jewish people. It's full of lush descriptions of life in the harem - beauty treatments, endless banquets of food and wine, and gorgeous costumes. However, it's not really the sort of book you read for strong characters - while Kohn paints some gorgeous visual scenery, Esther and Xerxes move through it rather blankly. Fun, but fairly forgettable.

The Constant Princess (Philippa Gregory)

I like Philippa Gregory's historical novels, especially this loose series of hers which has been revolving around Henry VIII and the powerful families of that time. The Constant Princess is the story of Katherine of Aragon, and we begin by meeting Catalina, Infanta of Spain, when she is a child, watching her parents fight battles and secure their kingdom.

I think Catalina's descriptions of her parents' court are the most beguiling and beautifully written parts of The Constant Princess - I longed to spend my days reclining in a scented bathhouse, and strolling through gardens wearing thin silk robes. Gregory imagines her in love with her first husband, Arthur, and this is a pleasurable little romance. Unfortunately, I think the story finishes a little abruptly - we do not see the birth of Mary, or Katherine's decline in power. I would have liked to see how Gregory portrayed these times in Katherine's life.

The Historian (Elizabeth Kostova)

I read a lot about The Historian on various book blogs, but was a bit unsure about it. I saw it described as the Da Vinci Code with vampires, which didn't really seem like my sort of thing, but I ended up giving it a try.

I can see why it's a little Da Vinci Code-ish - lots of history, lots of information, often narrated to you by various characters. People chasing each other around Europe frantically researching things in libraries. Kostova's characters, however, are much more like people than Brown's info-dumping mechanisms, and her writing is vastly superior. It's a tremendously exciting book - I was quite enthralled in their chase, despite the occasionally clumsy mechanism of letters telling much of the story.

Unfortunately, Kostova's characters suffer a little from the sheer scale of this book - a teenage girl, who is perhaps intended to be the "main" character, simply reads her father's letters to us, and barely becomes a person in her own right. I think that it's very difficult to combine the two though - if you're going to have a novel on an enormous scale and essentially educate your readers about a lot of Eastern European history, it's almost imposssible to create nuanced realistic characters at the same time. Regardless, The Historian is a very enjoyable read, but it's definitely an adventure story rather than a character study.

Life Mask (Emma Donaghue)

The last book I read by Emma Donaghue, Slammerkin, was an enjoyable and melodramatic novel, and I was expecting something similar from Life Mask . However, the style of the two books are very different.

Life Mask tells us an imagined story of the life of three historical characters in the late 18th century - the celebrated actress, Eliza Farren, the sculptor, Anne Damer, and the twelfth Earl of Derby, a Whig politician. I must admit, due to my lack of historical knowledge, I couldn't say whether it was accurate, but it felt like I reading something written at the time (although, probably, with much more modern language - but not jarringly modern). The correspondence which the characters exchange with each other are fantastic - the glimpse into English politics at that time, and the effect of the French Revolution on England is fascinating.

I was just utterly absorbed in this. The intricate machinations of the society, the delicate steps the citizens of "the World" take around each other - it's fantastic. I loved reading the epilogue and discovering that almost all the characters in the book actually existed - no wonder it feels like stepping into the past. Five out of five.

Wisdom's Daughter (India Edghill)

This novel is set some years after Queenmaker, and focuses on the reign of King Solomon and his encounter with Bilqis, the Queen of Sheba. Edghill begins by pointing out the few paragraphs in the Bible in which the Queen of Sheba appears, and declaring that her offering is a complete imagining with the bare bones of fact. But what a fun imagining it is.

The narrative is what I disliked most about Wisdom's Daughter - it switches wildly, from Solomon's daughter, to Bilqis, to Solomon's dead wife, to many of his living wives... at one point, where many of the wives tell their own stories, it becomes almost farcical. We veer madly off the main plot, but eventually it settles down to a few storytellers, and we move along. The novel circles mostly around the Queen of Sheba and Solomon's only daughter, and the relationship they develop throughout the story. It's a fun, mildly feminist, mildly mystical novel, and I loved her descriptions of the streets and the people of Jerusalem, which are done beautifully. 4 out of 5.

Queenmaker (India Edghill)

I don't know much about Biblical stories, and so this novel about King David and his many wives was all new to me (although I don't think the author claims to be totally accurate with the Biblical tradition). This is the story of Michal, daughter of King Saul, wife to King David, and is a wonderful story. Michal is a wonderfully realised character, and her strong voice narrates her story, that of David, and his later wife, Bathsheba.

The period, what little I know of it, is realised well, and I could picture Jerusalem, its crowded streets, and the roofs of the houses where the women bathed. It's a well-written story, Michal's emotions and decisions are well realised. However, it wasn't a completely gripping book - if I was going to be incredibly pedantic, I'd give it 3.75/5.

The Red Tent (Anita Diamant)

I get the impression that this book is something of a feminist classic - it's a retelling of the Biblical story of Dinah, the daughter of Leah and Jacob, sister of Joseph. Well, when I say a retelling, I don't think there's that much about Dinah in the Bible in the first place - as far as I know, it focusses on Jacob's sons rather than his daughter.

I loved the rich culture that Diamant imagines in this book - the red tent where the women gather once a month, letting their menstrual blood seep into the earth, sharing stories, laughter and tears. I found that I became less involved in the story in the last quarter, where Dinah grows older in Egypt - it somehow felt less powerful than the earlier parts of the story, although I liked it when she encountered Joseph.

Diamant's language has an attractive rhythm to it which fits the story perfectly, although towards the end, I found it somewhat stilted (although this was probably because my interest in the novel was waning). Despite that, I enjoyed this very much - a 4/5 book.

Outlander (Diana Gabaldon)

Gabaldon is well-known for writing romance novels, although I hear that she dislikes the label. I don't know why - although Outlander involves time travel (briefly), and historical aspects, it revolves chiefly around the romance of Claire and Jamie in 18th century Scotland.

Claire travels several hundred years into the past through a stone circle. She seems relatively undisturbed about this occurrence, which irritated me. She very swiftly settles down, and seems to forget entirely her husband whom she has left behind in the future. She meets Jamie when he saves her from being raped and she nurses him from a bullet wound. They progress to madly having sex everywhere, at anytime of day, and having what I found to be a strangely abusive relationship with each other.

I enjoyed the pace of this novel, but various elements of the characters were most unrealistic - Claire's happily settling down in the past, for example. I found the scene where Jamie beats Claire extremely off-putting, and his nickname for her - "Sassenach" - began to drive me crazy about halfway through the book.

I enjoyed the rollicking haphazardness of the story though, and I'll be reading one or two of the sequels to see if the characterisation improves. I'd say this was a 3 out of 5, occasionally verging on a 2.

The Red Queen (Margaret Drabble)

About halfway through this book, the Red Queen of the title narrates one of the most horrifying death scenes I've read for a while. I put this down for a day until I felt removed enough from it to continue.

The Red Queen is a fictionalised look at the life of the Queen of Korea in the eighteenth century, and the royal family that surrounds her. The story is based on the memoirs of the Queen, and is therefore based quite strongly, I think, in fact. It begins with the Queen as a young child longing intensely for a red silk skirt, and this memory continues to reappear throughout the book. I must say, reading it has invoked a strong desire for red things. I'm very fond of red, generally, but I don't usually gravitate towards such prosaic items as red pens, murmuring "Aaaah! So pretty!"

Perhaps I've been gently taken over by the spirit of the Red Queen. This story did affect me quite strongly, and certainly not simply because of the death I've mentioned. I enjoyed the writing, which isn't a surprise, as I like Drabble. But the characters seemed particularly vibrant, perhaps because they were based on fact. I was quite drawn in by the idea of this iron-willed woman living hundreds of years ago, riding through the Korean countryside in a covered carriage. An excellent book, for all sorts of reasons - highly recommended.

Doomsday Book (Connie Willis)

This was a bloody good book. The sort of book you put down, and sigh, and simultaniously wish there was more of it and feel satisfied at the whole of it. (That was a convoluted sentence. One day I'm going to become more sophisticated at saying exactly why I enjoy things.)

This is technically a novel about time travel, but involves much more than that. The narrative is split fairly equally between a student sent back to the Middle Ages, and one of her professors in the future, dealing with an epidemic. The story set in the Middle Ages is utterly engrossing, and wonderfully done. Not having a very great knowledge of the Middle Ages, I'm assuming that most of the historical details were accurate, but in the end, it doesn't really matter. It feels convincingly realistic, which is more important.

This is a ridiculously short review for such a wonderful book. Let me recap. It's a great read. The parts set in the Middle Ages are amazing. The characterisation is fantastic. It made me cry. I'm kind of low on iron this week, so that may have contributed, but, irregardless, read it.

Locked Rooms (Laurie R King)

This novel is the latest from Laurie R King, and continues her series revolving around her Sherlock Holmes and his wife, Mary Russell.

The reason I like these books is King's Sherlock Holmes. I wouldn't call myself a mad fan of Arthur Conan Doyle, but I did read all his Sherlock Holmes stories when I was younger, and I think King captures Holmes perfectly, and also makes him a far more interesting and sympathetic character than Doyle ever did.

Mary, though, is what makes the books. Mary is a wonderful character. I like her enormously, and her relationship with the prickly Holmes is fantastic.

The mysteries - for these novels are all mysteries - are secondary, to me. I enjoy the characters, first and foremost. The mystery in Locked Rooms is rather disappointing. While it delves a great deal into Mary's history, which is interesting, the villian revealed at the end was a bit of a let down. The motivation was rather unrealistic.

Despite that, I enjoyed this - King alternates Mary's first person with a third person narration, and I really liked that. You get to know Holmes' better, I think, rather than purely through Mary's eyes. The let-down of the mystery doesn't ruin the book, but it's a little disappointing to imagine what it might have been. Oh, and it's not really worth reading as a stand alone novel - you need to start at the beginning, with The Beekeeper's Apprentice.

Jane Eyre (Charlotte Bronte)

Rather than reading this classic, I listened to it on about 16 CDs over several weeks on the train to and from work. I'd heard of Jane Eyre, of course, and had watched a movie version, so the general sweep of the story wasn't a surprise to me. But it's the sort of dense, description heavy book that I avoid reading, knowing that I'll skim read sections, and spoil the book.

I'd never listened to an audio book before, and I loved this one. Listening to someone read to me means that I get swept up in Bronte's lengthy passages on the weather sweeping across the moors, rather than skimming past them to get to the action. I found my writing altered a little while I was doing my listening - it was more formal and structured, just like the voice I listened to for two hours a day. It was a great experience, and I loved knitting away on the train as Jane gradually fell in love with Mr Rochester.

I loved the Gothic, throbbing romance of the story, and its dramatic ebb and flow. And Jane, of course - Jane is a wonderful character. So determined and independent, that despite growing a little weary of her emotional highs and lows towards the end, I still felt greatly affectionate towards her.

I rather surprised myself in enjoying this book so much. I mean, it's esentially a romance story - an enormously dramatic romance, but still a romance. And I've never been interested in romance stories - I find it rather dull when the process of two people falling in love is the entire focus of the novel, and you know they're going to get together in the end, because that's the whole point. But perhaps I've been reading bad romance novels. Because all those criticisms apply to Jane Eyre, and it's still wonderful.

I imagine that people have written reams on the underlying themes and meanings of Jane Eyre, and I can't possibly add to that. It was just a wonderful story, with great pace, and a heroine who has stuck in my mind, dark and small, walking away down a country path with Mr Rochester striding beside her.