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mes91's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
4.25
Another great yarn, placing a murder in amongst real historical figures and events is so clever.
Bruno is a man in the wrong time and I can't help but admire his views when most of those around him were so aggressively different.
Once again a great page turner, if I'd only had the time I'd have finished it in a day.
Bruno is a man in the wrong time and I can't help but admire his views when most of those around him were so aggressively different.
Once again a great page turner, if I'd only had the time I'd have finished it in a day.
tonyriver's review against another edition
3.0
An interesting detailed historical detective story. I was not keen on the style of the story telling but the story was complex and engaging.
michaelcattigan's review
3.0
This is, I think, the sixth novel featuring Italian heretic Giordano Bruno from S. J. Parris. I've not read the previous ones but that didn't seem to affect my enjoyment of this one. Yes, it mentions the events in previous novels but there is no real prior knowledge needed.
The plot revolves around Giordano Bruno being instructed to infiltrate a plan to execute (or murder depending on your point of view) Elizabeth I and to put Mary Tudor on the throne in her place, returning England to the Catholic faith. A series of coincidences (Bruno arriving in England at the same time as a Spanish Catholic priest who bears enough resemblance to Bruno for their identities to be swapped) allows for the infiltration.
Alongside that, there is the grisly murder of Clara Poole, another one of Walsingham's agents in the plot, to investigate: has the infiltration been compromised? Do the conspirators know they are being spied on? Who murdered Clara? Can we secure enough evidence to trap and put on trial the conspirators, and even Mary Tudor herself?
This was a perfectly adequate enjoyable thrilller - a great fun summer read akin to C. J. Sansom. It suffers from the same issues as a number of these Tudor thrillers: the main character is almost always rather anachronistic and feels like a twentieth century character dropped into the sixteenth. Some of the depictions of characters was a little stereotyped and felt a little box-ticky: we had the somewhat aspergers character, the gay, the moor...
But at the end of the day, this is a great fun read!
The plot revolves around Giordano Bruno being instructed to infiltrate a plan to execute (or murder depending on your point of view) Elizabeth I and to put Mary Tudor on the throne in her place, returning England to the Catholic faith. A series of coincidences (Bruno arriving in England at the same time as a Spanish Catholic priest who bears enough resemblance to Bruno for their identities to be swapped) allows for the infiltration.
Alongside that, there is the grisly murder of Clara Poole, another one of Walsingham's agents in the plot, to investigate: has the infiltration been compromised? Do the conspirators know they are being spied on? Who murdered Clara? Can we secure enough evidence to trap and put on trial the conspirators, and even Mary Tudor herself?
This was a perfectly adequate enjoyable thrilller - a great fun summer read akin to C. J. Sansom. It suffers from the same issues as a number of these Tudor thrillers: the main character is almost always rather anachronistic and feels like a twentieth century character dropped into the sixteenth. Some of the depictions of characters was a little stereotyped and felt a little box-ticky: we had the somewhat aspergers character, the gay, the moor...
But at the end of the day, this is a great fun read!
michaelcattigan's review against another edition
3.0
All it would take – so I believed – was one ruler willing to allow people of different faiths to live alongside one another without persecution, and surely they would begin to recognise that their common humanity superseded the division they had been taught to fear?
Caveat: I received this book free from the publisher, courtesy of NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.
The Tudor period does hold such a firm and rich grasp on our imaginations in this country! From the Tudor detectives of C. J. Sansom’s Shardlake series and Rory Clements John Shakespeare series to the royals of Phillipa Gregory’s The Other Boleyn Girl to – of course – the Wolf Hall trilogy by Hilary Mantel. The Tudor period seems to be our creation myth of modern England, performing the same imaginative role for us as The Trojan War did for Rome. And, I wonder whether, perhaps, the image of a Britain throwing off and contending with the controls imposed on it by a foreign power chimes with our Brexit age? If so, the violence and butchery and fear shown in these novels does not bode well for our future…
Anyway, S. J. Parris has now penned six novels featuring Giordano Bruno set in that period. It is a series I have always intended to read but which, inevitably, have never had time to. So when this came up on NetGalley, I took the opportunity.
Our plot is fairly straightforward and, like much of the novel (its characters and plot and settings), taken from history, in this case the Babington Plot : a group of disaffected Catholic sympathisers are plotting to execute (or murder, depending on your political affiliations) Elizabeth I and replace her with her sister, Mary Tudor, currently under arrest. Frances Walsingham, Elizabeth’s Secretary of State and spymaster, is fully aware of the plot and has already infiltrated it, but is delaying arresting the conspirators because he wants to secure definitive written proof of Mary Tudor’s active involvement in it in order to execute her. One of Walsingham’s spies is brutally murdered, however, and Walsingham recruits Bruno to investigate why: his concern is whether she was murdered because his infiltration was discovered, or perhaps because another of his spies has been turned… Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? as Juvenal might have said.
The conspirators are led by the Catholic Father John Ballard, with his right-hand man Jack Savage, and are funded by Anthony Babington supported by his friend Chidiock Tichborne; the spies are Robert and Clara Poole and Gilbert Gifford and, thanks to the handy arrival of a Spanish Jesuit whose identity Bruno could steal, Bruno himself.
There are almost more spies that conspirators in the conspiracy!
Whilst this is my first foray into S. J. Parris’ novels, there was no sense of being left behind here: previous incidents are alluded to, and characters from previous novels recur, but with either such glancing relevance that they can be skimmed over, or with enough exposition that readers don’t feel adrift without that previous reading.
This scenario leads to some interesting character dynamics: the conspirators were presented as broadly decent and engaging men: young and naive, perhaps, idealistic and innocent, caught up in a game that they didn’t fully understand. Not one of them fell into the trap of being a pantomime villain. Even with Ballard, the most zealous and fanatical, S. J. Parris took care to present as a priest who genuinely cared for his flock and took enormous risks to provide the comfort of Catholic communion in a setting where to do so would risk his own life. At times, perhaps, the feeding of characters’ backstories was a little … clumsily handled and created some slightly unconvincing dialogue. But it at least allowed for some rounding out of the characters.
Spying and subterfuge is a wonderful seam of imaginative potential: the mixed loyalties, the developing of friendships under a false guise, shifting and conflicting loyalties and identities. To some extent these are present here – the very real and gruesome outcome for the conspirators was not flinched away from – and I was left feeling a little uncomfortable with the resolution: for me, I’m not sure that there was much to choose between having Mary or Elizabeth on the throne.
The risk with novels like this is that the protagonist feels a little anachronistic: Matthew Shardlake does, and so does Bruno here. The views he holds, the hopes for an end to religious persecution and a rise of basic human kindness feel like a twenty-first century ideal imposed onto the sixteenth century, and a little show-horned into the narrative. Overall, though, Bruno is a decent companion in the novel if perhaps unsubtle and unsubtly created: his occasional flashes of fighting prowess and his self-interest in Ballard’s assessment of him are perhaps a little clumsy.
Personally, I had more of a problem with the depiction of Thomas Phelippe who, like Bruno, has a real historical counterpart from whom Parris has derived her character. He was Walsingham’s cryptographer and cryptanalist who deciphered the coded letters between Mary and the conspirators – and in Parris’ depiction of him she has clearly put him somewhere ill-defined on the autistic spectrum. And I’m not entirely comfortable with that depiction: he is (mainly) emotionless, humourless and isolated, and disinterested in the politics and theology of the regime – and Bruno assumes him to be capable of ordering and planning the execution of a colleague who had become a liability without a second thought.
In fact, I was a little piqued by Parris’ depiction of minorities generally and she felt a little cliched, a little too tropey for me. Two of her characters are revealed to be homosexual, a fact which contributed nothing to the plot and felt oddly out of place. She has a female Moorish character who grows medicinal herbs and tends to the local whores – she is a great character but the depiction of her as a herbalist / suspected witch felt far too familiar.
The novel’s plot itself is well constructed and gathers pace well: the outcome and final revelation was not entirely a surprise (the cast of characters was rather small, after all) but well structured and the clues that were needed were all there. It did perhaps tend a little towards melodrama in the final chapters, but it was a good decent fun ride.
Will I be looking to pick up the rest of the series? Yes, I probably will when the mood for a light, popcorn novel strikes.
Caveat: I received this book free from the publisher, courtesy of NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.
The Tudor period does hold such a firm and rich grasp on our imaginations in this country! From the Tudor detectives of C. J. Sansom’s Shardlake series and Rory Clements John Shakespeare series to the royals of Phillipa Gregory’s The Other Boleyn Girl to – of course – the Wolf Hall trilogy by Hilary Mantel. The Tudor period seems to be our creation myth of modern England, performing the same imaginative role for us as The Trojan War did for Rome. And, I wonder whether, perhaps, the image of a Britain throwing off and contending with the controls imposed on it by a foreign power chimes with our Brexit age? If so, the violence and butchery and fear shown in these novels does not bode well for our future…
Anyway, S. J. Parris has now penned six novels featuring Giordano Bruno set in that period. It is a series I have always intended to read but which, inevitably, have never had time to. So when this came up on NetGalley, I took the opportunity.
Our plot is fairly straightforward and, like much of the novel (its characters and plot and settings), taken from history, in this case the Babington Plot : a group of disaffected Catholic sympathisers are plotting to execute (or murder, depending on your political affiliations) Elizabeth I and replace her with her sister, Mary Tudor, currently under arrest. Frances Walsingham, Elizabeth’s Secretary of State and spymaster, is fully aware of the plot and has already infiltrated it, but is delaying arresting the conspirators because he wants to secure definitive written proof of Mary Tudor’s active involvement in it in order to execute her. One of Walsingham’s spies is brutally murdered, however, and Walsingham recruits Bruno to investigate why: his concern is whether she was murdered because his infiltration was discovered, or perhaps because another of his spies has been turned… Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? as Juvenal might have said.
The conspirators are led by the Catholic Father John Ballard, with his right-hand man Jack Savage, and are funded by Anthony Babington supported by his friend Chidiock Tichborne; the spies are Robert and Clara Poole and Gilbert Gifford and, thanks to the handy arrival of a Spanish Jesuit whose identity Bruno could steal, Bruno himself.
There are almost more spies that conspirators in the conspiracy!
Whilst this is my first foray into S. J. Parris’ novels, there was no sense of being left behind here: previous incidents are alluded to, and characters from previous novels recur, but with either such glancing relevance that they can be skimmed over, or with enough exposition that readers don’t feel adrift without that previous reading.
This scenario leads to some interesting character dynamics: the conspirators were presented as broadly decent and engaging men: young and naive, perhaps, idealistic and innocent, caught up in a game that they didn’t fully understand. Not one of them fell into the trap of being a pantomime villain. Even with Ballard, the most zealous and fanatical, S. J. Parris took care to present as a priest who genuinely cared for his flock and took enormous risks to provide the comfort of Catholic communion in a setting where to do so would risk his own life. At times, perhaps, the feeding of characters’ backstories was a little … clumsily handled and created some slightly unconvincing dialogue. But it at least allowed for some rounding out of the characters.
Spying and subterfuge is a wonderful seam of imaginative potential: the mixed loyalties, the developing of friendships under a false guise, shifting and conflicting loyalties and identities. To some extent these are present here – the very real and gruesome outcome for the conspirators was not flinched away from – and I was left feeling a little uncomfortable with the resolution: for me, I’m not sure that there was much to choose between having Mary or Elizabeth on the throne.
The risk with novels like this is that the protagonist feels a little anachronistic: Matthew Shardlake does, and so does Bruno here. The views he holds, the hopes for an end to religious persecution and a rise of basic human kindness feel like a twenty-first century ideal imposed onto the sixteenth century, and a little show-horned into the narrative. Overall, though, Bruno is a decent companion in the novel if perhaps unsubtle and unsubtly created: his occasional flashes of fighting prowess and his self-interest in Ballard’s assessment of him are perhaps a little clumsy.
Personally, I had more of a problem with the depiction of Thomas Phelippe who, like Bruno, has a real historical counterpart from whom Parris has derived her character. He was Walsingham’s cryptographer and cryptanalist who deciphered the coded letters between Mary and the conspirators – and in Parris’ depiction of him she has clearly put him somewhere ill-defined on the autistic spectrum. And I’m not entirely comfortable with that depiction: he is (mainly) emotionless, humourless and isolated, and disinterested in the politics and theology of the regime – and Bruno assumes him to be capable of ordering and planning the execution of a colleague who had become a liability without a second thought.
In fact, I was a little piqued by Parris’ depiction of minorities generally and she felt a little cliched, a little too tropey for me. Two of her characters are revealed to be homosexual, a fact which contributed nothing to the plot and felt oddly out of place. She has a female Moorish character who grows medicinal herbs and tends to the local whores – she is a great character but the depiction of her as a herbalist / suspected witch felt far too familiar.
The novel’s plot itself is well constructed and gathers pace well: the outcome and final revelation was not entirely a surprise (the cast of characters was rather small, after all) but well structured and the clues that were needed were all there. It did perhaps tend a little towards melodrama in the final chapters, but it was a good decent fun ride.
Will I be looking to pick up the rest of the series? Yes, I probably will when the mood for a light, popcorn novel strikes.
michaelappleby's review
adventurous
lighthearted
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
4.5
rlesias's review against another edition
2.0
I enjoyed reading the previous books in the series but was disappointed by this one.
One of the appeal of historical fiction is to let the reader escape his own time and place. This opus has too many social justice referrences that do not belong to Elizabethean England in my opinion.
For XVI century England, it's a lot about minorities and progressive ideas, too little about history. Here are a few examples:
"I had met enough Spanish Jesuits to know their view of women."
OK Christians are sexists (unlike other religions)
"I have some experience of how the English treat those who look different"
OK the English are racists (unlike the rest of the world)
"I thought Southwark was full of foreigners?’ ‘That’s why the locals want any chance to give them a kicking."
OK Londoners are xenophobic (unlike the rest of the world)
"...if X wants to be a boy, that’s what he is."
Medieval gender theory
"The service I do for them. He calls it murdering babies in the womb."
OK abortion is bad, we get the point. It was probably the main concern of the average Londoner under Elisabeth.
"I saw X stretched out naked on his bed, head to toe with another man, each of them with the other’s cock in his mouth."
The other sex scenes in the series were not as pictural as this medieval gay porn scene
"you’ve paid your debt." (referring to the expulsion of the Moriscos from Spain ).
This view seems one sided considering that the Moors invaded and occupied Spain for 800 years. But hey, the West must repent.
Despite being the spirit of our modern age, social justice rhetoric sounds anachronic in an historical fiction taking place under the reign of Queen Elizabeth.
One of the appeal of historical fiction is to let the reader escape his own time and place. This opus has too many social justice referrences that do not belong to Elizabethean England in my opinion.
For XVI century England, it's a lot about minorities and progressive ideas, too little about history. Here are a few examples:
"I had met enough Spanish Jesuits to know their view of women."
OK Christians are sexists (unlike other religions)
"I have some experience of how the English treat those who look different"
OK the English are racists (unlike the rest of the world)
"I thought Southwark was full of foreigners?’ ‘That’s why the locals want any chance to give them a kicking."
OK Londoners are xenophobic (unlike the rest of the world)
"...if X wants to be a boy, that’s what he is."
Medieval gender theory
"The service I do for them. He calls it murdering babies in the womb."
OK abortion is bad, we get the point. It was probably the main concern of the average Londoner under Elisabeth.
"I saw X stretched out naked on his bed, head to toe with another man, each of them with the other’s cock in his mouth."
The other sex scenes in the series were not as pictural as this medieval gay porn scene
"you’ve paid your debt." (referring to the expulsion of the Moriscos from Spain ).
This view seems one sided considering that the Moors invaded and occupied Spain for 800 years. But hey, the West must repent.
Despite being the spirit of our modern age, social justice rhetoric sounds anachronic in an historical fiction taking place under the reign of Queen Elizabeth.
avid_d's review
dark
mysterious
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
4.0
jmatkinson1's review against another edition
5.0
After being exiled to Paris, Giordano Bruno is recalled by Walsingham to help in an audacious endeavour. There is another plot against the life of Queen Elisabeth but Walsingham wants it to progress to allow Mary, Queen of Scots, to implicate herself and therefore be guilty of treason. Bruno is asked to infiltrate the plotters in the guise of a priest and also to investigate the death of Walsingham's daughter's friend.
This is another cracking tale from Parris. Her novels combine all that is best about historical fiction, a believable protagonist, a twisty and clever plot which is grounded in truth, a fantastic cast of characters with mercurial ideas and an amazing sense of time and place. Here the lives of women are brought to the fore, the frustrated noblewomen who are not allowed to do anything, the bright but poor and the woman who can do no more than be whores. Add this to a story which races along and you have a great read.
This is another cracking tale from Parris. Her novels combine all that is best about historical fiction, a believable protagonist, a twisty and clever plot which is grounded in truth, a fantastic cast of characters with mercurial ideas and an amazing sense of time and place. Here the lives of women are brought to the fore, the frustrated noblewomen who are not allowed to do anything, the bright but poor and the woman who can do no more than be whores. Add this to a story which races along and you have a great read.
ruth's review
dark
mysterious
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0