You know I love my historical fiction, and I am a fan of Kate Quinn, so of course I bought The Phoenix Crown, the joint endeavour of Kate Quinn and Janie Chang. I like The Phoenix Crown. It is an easy, fast-paced read that I breezed through in one day.
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I wanted to read Lone Women by Victor Lavalle as it is inspired by the women homesteaders who took advantage of the government’s offer of free land in the American mid-west to anyone who could turn the harsh, inhabitable landscape into a working farm. I love it when women are badass and prove that they can survive without men. Lone Women is also supposed to be a horror novel, and I like the horror genre, but I would say the horror in this novel is underwhelming. As compulsively readable as I found Lone Women to be, I did not find it to be very horrifying.
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The Armor of Light is the latest beast of a book by Ken Follett set in the fictional town of Kingsbridge, England. It is amazing how quickly he churns out these books! As I suggested in my review of the last novel in the Kingsbridge series, The Evening and the Morning, if you like historical fiction and have not yet read any of Follett’s historical novels, I highly recommend that you rectify that situation and read the Kingsbridge series.
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The only reason I would bother to read a novel about a group of 7th century Irish monks who sail to a remote island to start their own monastery is because Emma Donoghue wrote it. Haven is a well-written story, but it is one of the most infuriating novels I have ever read. I have never wanted to reach into a novel and bitch slap a character as badly as I did while reading this book.
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The Temple of Fortuna is the final novel of Elodie Harper’s Wolf Den Trilogy, preceded by The Wolf Den and The House with the Golden Door. I like The Temple of Fortuna better than The House with the Golden Door, but the first novel in the trilogy, The Wolf Den, is definitely the best one (as is usually the case). Overall, I think the Wolf Den Trilogy is worth reading. As disappointing as Amara’s character development is, I appreciate Harper’s efforts to recreate Pompeii for her readers. Do not read any further if you have not read the first two novels of the Wolf Den Trilogy yet.
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The Witch and the Tsar has all the makings of a novel that I would like: historical fiction, magical realism, an interesting back story featuring a mythology I am not familiar with, and a strong female protagonist; however, I just was not that into it. I did not think about not finishing The Witch and the Tsar, but I was not excited to get back to reading it every night before bedtime.
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I really should make more of an effort to read Lyndsay Faye’s novels because I usually end up enjoying them. The first novel of hers that I read was The Gods of Gotham, which is set in mid-19th century New York and is about a police officer who investigates a serial killer. It is a fascinating story about the Five Points district, but I will admit I was not a fan of the ending. I have also read Jane Steele, which reimagines Jane Eyre as a serial killer. Sounds like something that would make Charlotte Brontë roll over in her grave, but I thought it was really good. Now I have read The Paragon Hotel, which is set in one of my favourite time periods, the 1920s Prohibition Era, and is about the Italian mafia in New York and Black people living in Portland, Oregon as the Ku Klux Klan begins to make its presence known.
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The Vaster Wilds is Lauren Groff’s latest novel. It is a beautifully written but bleak story about a girl trying to survive on her own in the wilderness. Compared to Groff’s other novels, The Vaster Wilds is a despairing read.
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For those of you who have never heard of Anne Lister, she was a woman who lived in the early 19th century and who is known today as a very famous lesbian. She kept diaries written in code, and when the diaries were decrypted after her death, they revealed graphic details of her many lesbian relationships. I first learned of Anne Lister when I watched the BBC series Gentleman Jack, which focused on her relationship with Ann Walker, whom she “married” and was her partner until her death in 1840. Gentleman Jack is a fantastic series, and Anne Lister is a fascinating historical figure in how she openly lived an unconventional life for a woman of her time. She is what drew me to read Emma Donoghue’s latest novel, Learned by Heart, which is a fictional account of one of Anne Lister’s earliest relationships as a teenager with a girl she went to school with named Eliza Raine.
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