Reviews

The Peacock's Eye by Jay Lewis Taylor

lindzmace's review

5.0

I actually love a book where I spend most of it slightly confused because the worldbuilding is both slightly too complex and also not enough and that is what I got out of this? Like I felt like I was in a fog the whole time I was reading and it was wonderful. There is a happy ending, so I don't have to feel too sad about everything that happened in the middle. Anyways I did in fact like this book quite a lot and think it is a shame that it seems more people haven't read it.

alisonalisonalison's review

4.0

This is a fascinating story about a pair of actors in Elizabethan England. I felt really immersed in the time period and it's much more historical fiction than a romance, though the love story bubbles along in the background, behind all the political intrigues. It takes place in London over several years, beginning in 1597, and features many real historical figures (like Philip Henslowe, Ben Jonson, Thomas Dekker, and even Shakespeare makes a brief appearance). It's a really interesting book, especially if you have any interest in theatre history or Tudor era-England, and I definitely enjoyed reading it. It's a gentle, straightforward, realistic book full of rich detail and description that tells the story of the lives of two men over the course of about seven years. You get a good sense of what life may have been like for working London actors at the time and how political, and how tenuous, an existence it was. I didn't find the romance to be super engaging, personally, but this book has other, bigger strengths.