Secondary School has never been so eventful.

Publisher: Bloomsbury
Pages: 217
Type: Fiction
Age: Childrens
ISBN: 978-0-747-53274-3
First Published: 1997
Date Reviewed: 6th September 2011
Rating: 5/5

Harry Potter is famous, but he doesn’t know it yet. Instead he lives in emotional poverty in the cupboard under the stairs of his uncle and aunt’s house where he’s constantly picked on by his voluptious cousin, Dudley. He also doesn’t know that these days are soon to be over as in actual fact he belongs in a society where magic is everything. His parents didn’t die in a car crash, and the reason for their death may not have disappeared at all.

Not much can be said now that hasn’t been said about this book. And indeed even though I enjoyed it less this time than I did when I was a child, it would be wrong to rate it lower because after all it was written for children, and I enjoyed it immensely as a child. Rowling’s imagination and the concepts she comes up with are brilliant and the lessons she imparts should surely put paid to those who bemoan the use of magic in children’s literature.

Something that is much emphasised in the book is the fact that school bullies tend to be those who have the most to lose. Rowling explores bullying extensively through the characters of Draco Malfoy, who always gets his comeuppance, and Harry’s cousin Dudley, who gets what he had always deserved (even if being given a pig’s tail wouldn’t happen in the real world). The fact that Rowling places Neville Longbottom, portrayed as weak and easily frightened, in brave and heroic Gryffindor, should give anyone who’s ever doubted themselves reason to rethink their self-image.

Although the book follows the well-trodden path of good versus evil to good triumphing it is not your standard fantasy, being more of a Pratchett novel than a Tolkien. This means that there is far more time to discuss what is going on rather than talking about sights, as well as more time to craft a vivid world full of great differences. And while you couldn’t really say that the book is a comedy, the laughs are top-notch and very inventive.

The mixing of the world of the wizards with the real world has been given a lot of thought. Both exist together in the same space, and so there aren’t that many occasions when stereotypes can be fulfilled completely, because everyone has to keep the magic away from the regular humans, or Muggles as Rowling calls, well, us, the non-magical readers.

The characters are strong as are the principles as is the world building as is the writer.

It’s Harry Potter, enough said.

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Seven teenagers battle against evil to free their friend from her abominable fate.

Publisher: Simon Pulse (Simon & Schuster)
Pages: 746
Type: Fiction
Age: Young Adult
ISBN: 978-1-84738-738-7
First Published: 1994 (as three separate books); 2010 (as one volume)
Date Reviewed: 8th September 2010
Rating: 4/5

The Forbidden Game is a bind-up of three books that form a trilogy: The Hunter, The Chase, and The Kill. Please note that I will be reviewing all three at once and as such will only be providing a bare basic synopsis.

When Jenny runs out of planning time for her boyfriend Tom’s birthday she rushes around trying to find a board game that would interest her sixteen-year-old friends. Upon finding herself chased she comes across what appears to be a mural of a shop drawn on the front of a store that has shut down. But “appears” is the word, for on closer inspection the painted door handle is an actual handle, the door a real door, and she sneaks inside. It’s a game shop, a creepy place, and the gorgeous but strange teenage owner is selling ancient and niche board games. She takes the one he suggests, discovering she’s powerless to resist. But when the guy says he will see her “at nine” he means it. Jenny and her friends have a paper house to create and a game of nightmares to play, one that will literally imprison them in their dreams. And even if they get through it all, who’s to say that that will be the end?

When I picked up this tome, never having heard of Smith before, I was expecting a darker paranormal than Twilight, and while initially I was disappointed it didn’t last for long. Definitely of importance is that this book was written long before Twilight and thus long before the gushy romance paranormal novels. It’s old school dark fantasy, with real horror. You can try to compare it to recent releases but that’s pretty difficult to do, regardless of the fact that Smith couldn’t possibly have been inspired by the stories of today. You could probably compare it to paranormal series of the 1990’s but since I’ve only read this one I’ll leave that discussion to those in the know.

So I was after a dark book. There were always going to be limits on this because of the age recommendation, but apart from the very first part of the very first game (in other words the first round of The Hunter) there is little to be frightened of in a big dark house, evil Shadow Men or not. The teenagers must each conquer their worst nightmares and they are all pretty standard nightmares, handled in a standard way, which makes them just regular reads. They aren’t given enough time and it’s all over too quickly.

This standard has changed by the final book where the setting is a still-predictable but far more spooky place, one which many people are likely to identify with. The gruesome aspects may, again, be somewhat predictable, but the horror factor is far more apparent, as you might expect for a book called The Kill. The scene where the group first come across old arcade games is difficult to read in a very satisfying way, and Smith goes into details, ones that everyone thinks about but then forgets. She makes it more disturbing than usual.

The enemy of the book, the anti-hero, is a Shadow Man, lesser than a demon but a literal world away from not-too-bad. Julian fell in love with human Jenny when she was five years old, and the feelings of being watched that she’s endured all her life turn out to be warranted when Julian admits he has coveted her ever since he laid eyes on her. He is a typical bad guy, and you know what will happen to him, but Smith has included in his personality some traits that make his part readable.

As to the other characters there are less stereotypes. The heroine isn’t an action hero but she’s no clumsy damsel either, she’s realistic and a good antidote for anyone sick of Bella Swans and Luce Prices. You do have your gutsy females, your feminine females, but you don’t have your heroic gallant boys, and the females don’t stick to their personalities. Everyone changes back and forth, they each have their interests and different appearances but there are no strong reasons to prefer one to another which makes a nice change.

Talking of non-heroic males I think I should probably say, before I invite dispute, that Tom is very protective of Jenny and does do some amazing things but he also sulks a bit, in other words he is your average person and for that realistic.

In order to create a different world Smith makes use of various mythology and mystical conventions, blending them together to good effect. She even puts a dark spin on fairy lore.

There are a few spiritual aspects to the trilogy that Smith employs. One is that a person controls who they are and that no one can tell you to do otherwise. She uses this to demonstrate that although Julian, on the face of it, is much more powerful than the teenagers, a little thought can cause his power to crumble. This strength of thought is used in all three books, especially in The Chase where the teenagers must walk through illusions to escape. Smith refers to those who walk on hot coals to illustrate that we can control a lot of things with our minds. A somewhat disguised theme is believing in yourself, in The Hunter it is all about believing in what you’re trying to achieve.

An interesting quotation, not unrelated:

When you get to a certain extreme, the elements all sound like one another – fire sounds like water sounds like wind.

The biggest topic of the trilogy is, of course, good versus evil. Smith blurs the lines that separate them in ways that seem lost to the paranormal genre at present. Julian really is evil, very evil, but he struggles with feelings of love and devotion, and protection. He says he’ll never change – he’s devilish, why would he? – but he keeps that goodness throughout.

I said I couldn’t make a comparison but that’s not strictly true because there is one obvious comparison to be made. The book Jumanji had been released a decade before, though it is not likely that Smith saw the film version because that was released in 1995. The reference, if true, concerns The Hunter, the bringing alive of a board game. I think that’s something each reader has to make their own mind up on.

Smith’s writing is generally simple. The inclusions of cultural elements are great excuses to open up Wikipedia and do some further reading, and the obvious regards to 1990’s life are good reminders that paranormal existed pre-2000. As someone in their twenties I loved reading a book both written and set in the time when I was growing up. Smith doesn’t have any weird literary tendencies, which is nice, and the only thing I could find worthwhile pointing out in this respect was her metaphor of “dandelion fluff” for someone’s hair, which is rather cute.

Here, in one large book, are three related but separate stories thanks to three different games and settings. The only bad thing about the bind-up is that there is never any true danger in the books and because of this I would recommend any would-be readers not to read them in one long haul like I did. Because it does trundle along in a decided pattern, it can become boring in that easy to put down way, which doesn’t happen during the first book. Yes, that is definitely my advice: read plenty of other books in between.

Before there were loved-up vampires, angels, and ghosts, there was L J Smith, a woman who wasn’t afraid to do her own thing. The Forbidden Game may not be perfect but it is a brilliant alternative to what is being produced now and, dare I say, far more worthwhile.

Will I be reading the rest of her books, even those that deal with vampires and love? Hell yes I will, for I’ve definitely been bitten by the bug.

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Twelve years ago a young girl called Charlie bought a book, captivated by the beautiful cover of a gun on a green background and a woman’s silhouette drifting away into the green night. She thought it would make a good candidate for her first “grown-up” book – but then she found out that this was the third in a series so she bought the first two (The Ruby In The Smoke and The Shadow In The North), loving the first but finding the second boring. She never finished the second and so the awesome green book with the gun on it was never read.

Publisher: Point (Scholastic)
Pages: 390
Type: Fiction
Age: YA/Adult
ISBN: 978-1407-11171-1 (a newer version than the one shown)
First Published: 1991
Date Reviewed: 30th June 2010
Rating: 4.5/5

Throughout my older years The Tiger In The Well continued to beckon me from a dusty old shelf and, finally, last year, I decided the time was right – I must re-read the first and finish the second and then read this third book. I liked the first but it wasn’t as compelling as I remembered, however the second was dull, so dull, and I could see why I’d given up on it. And now I’ve read the third and it seems my young intuition was correct – this time Pullman has presented a cracker of a story.

Someone’s after Sally’s money and the daughter fathered by her dead lover, Frederick Garland, claiming that she was married to him (the man after her money) and saying he’d like a divorce due to her scandalous behaviour. Everything seems legit, and it’s starting to eat away at Sally so much that she’s beginning to believe it. At the same time hundreds of Jewish immigrants are being persecuted, and it’s the same faction that are pursuing in both incidences. Sally’s friends Jim and Webster are out of the country but fortunately, due to the plight of the Jews, there are plenty of people who want the faction brought down and unlike her poor excuse for a solicitor these people won’t let them get away with it.

The Tiger In The Well brings the Sally Lockhart Quartet into a new light. Sally is in her mid twenties now and because of this Pullman is able to take the storytelling up a notch, assuming the readers will have grown up too and therefore are old enough to digest the issues he presents without worry. There’s a mass of subplots and extra details in the book, making it a speedy read – there are situations where characters split up and so the narrative has to dart back and forth continuously, but Pullman goes into enough detail before this happens so that you want to hear about each group equally as much and forgetting is impossible. With never a dull moment whatsoever, the long book takes you through chases, hiding places, work in the slums, the high society, the gangs, the big homes, the shabby shelters, the battles, the peace, the sadness, the happiness – it’s all here.

The Victorian setting was good in the last books but Pullman never made the most of it; that’s been rectified here, he describes locations beautifully and makes the past come alive, one can envelope themselves in the plot and although it’s a story centred around hate it’s hard not to wish you were there when Queen Victoria reigned. Orchard House brings pastel greens and white to mind, the streets grey and brown, and the mansion red and gold. Victorian England was a mutely-toned place, but Pullman has pulled out its treasures and put them on display.

Pullman is at his best when writing about women, and he’s on top form here. He likes his women to have guts and be strong of mind but doesn’t load them with the stereotypical sex image you would usually expect. Sally Lockhart is only ever burdened as a woman by the sexist views of her society, away from that she is as good as any man and only ever behaves as men would expect her to when completely overpowered.

Unfortunately the climax is a let-down. After all the preparation Sally has done, when she finally gets to the deepest darkest part, the nucleus of all her problems, the plot is resolved by something outside of anyone’s control. You’re on course, reading swiftly, and then this “thing” happens and suddenly there’s no reason to continue because it’s over and you know you’re never going to get to read about what Pullman had primed you for. The particular setting of this part, a fantastically described house which you can let your imagination go riot on, is magnificent and set the stage perfectly, so why Pullman went for an easy and boring cliché is incomprehensible.

Luckily there is a bit more action to be had after this episode and it’s very funny, so although it doesn’t quite match up it’s worth carrying on. Harriet, Sally’s daughter, goes from posh rich girl to happy average child and the dialogue Pullman gives her is hilarious. Throughout the book Pullman makes a point of giving Harriet a good amount of time and tells us what she’s thinking. And when Sally tells her to be brave, the little two year old remembers it and comes into her own. A toddler being a compelling character all by herself – that’s something you don’t come across every day.

If you are upset by the fact that Jim and Webster are in South America while this is going on never fear. Pullman will more than make up for it by the time you’ve reached the end.

I believe that with a quick bit of research you could read this book without having read the others first, and personally that’s what I would recommend doing. The Tiger In The Well rips it’s claws through the previous books and roars it’s way through from start to finish. It is an excellent book, possibly even surpassing Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy.

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In the new world, known in 1800’s China as the Gold Mountain, fortunes were made by those whose lives were otherwise destined to be laborious. One of those lives was Fong See’s and he changed the make-up and the fortunes of his family forever.

Publisher: Bloomsbury
Pages: 376
Type: Non-Fiction
Age: Adult
ISBN: 978-0-7475-9907-4
First Published: 1995
Date Reviewed: 10th May 2010
Rating: 5/5

Lisa See, author of the later best-selling Snow Flower And The Secret Fan, details the business ventures and lives of her paternal family from the very first venture to America of her great-great-grandfather to the present day.

In 1867, Fong Dun Shung left his family in China to seek his fortunes in America. He soon brought his fourth son, Fong See, over to help him but ended up living out his later years in his home village. Fong See, on the other hand, lived to prosper in the United States, setting up an underwear company and marrying an American woman. The business changed to become an antique supplier. Fong See’s children learned perhaps more than he the injustice in the world, yet managed to be successful in their own right. As a memoir the book focuses on one subject in particular – business success in America – with information (a great amount, actually) about other aspects of family life. Amidst this is the story of the persecution of Chinese Americans and the many laws to dissuade them from doing practically anything other than stay at home.

On Gold Mountain reads like a work of fiction. The story is fascinating by itself but Lisa See (the author, whom I will refer to by first name from now on to avoid any confusion) has made it even better. A few of the dialogues are completely made up, as the amount of detail she goes into just isn’t possible to gather through sources, but instead of detracting from its success as you may think, this adds to the engrossing quality of the book. Lisa hasn’t just doled out dates and factual information about a story that, let’s face it, isn’t going to affect anyone but her own relatives, she’s made it compelling for the casual reader too. She’s used her skills as a writer and plenty of artistic license to create a work that her great-aunt Sissee, the person who proposed the idea of a memoir, would surely approve of.

Talking of Sissee, let’s get straight down to another note I made while reading this book – I, a reader in Britain with only outsider knowledge of Chinese culture, feel as though I’m part of the family. The book isn’t written in a way that entices the reader like this, and of course because the characters are real people they never address the audience, you’re just a fly-on-the-wall – but after all the information I’ve been given and after all the emotions I’ve been made to feel for these people I know I could sit down to lunch with them as boldly as if I’d been invited as kin. I was excited by Fong See and Ticie’s family and very upset as each passed away; even if I knew it was going to happen, I hoped that it wouldn’t. The family is accessible. The rogues of the story are likeable, even as they cause family disputes. No one is condemned, though there are good reasons why they could and perhaps should be. Everyone is described in detail enough that their unique personalities are shown – in the case of the siblings you have Ming and Ray – playboys and business-orientated, Bennie who is loyal, Eddy who wants to do his own thing, and Sissee who just wants freedom. It makes you think, should I be writing my own family’s history before it’s forgotten? No family history is plain and boring, and Lisa, with her incredible yet mostly family-centric story (no one changed the world, for example) proves that you don’t have to be of royal blood to have a good tale to tell.

Lisa makes her great-grandfather, Fong See, incredibly readable. Whether or not some of the events are fabricated to some extent the reader can really move into step with him and become absorbed in the story. For my part I must say that I’ve never felt such a pull from a book before, I was living as an invisible follower of Fong See and, his roguish elements included, I can see why Ticie, Lisa’s great-grandmother, was so drawn to him.

The characters focused on most are Fong See, Ticie, and their children. This creates two points of thought in my mind. The first is that depending on the individual preference of the reader for country or city living, either the first or second half of the book will be more intriguing. As America, at the time, was just forming, there are plenty of descriptions of farmland to whet the appetite of a person who prefers peace, but then as the cities expand there is little greenery and many factories so the detail is in the creation of material goods. Fong See and his first family’s story (he got around a bit) straddle both, but while Fong See and Ticie are together the emphasis is more towards the country. The second thought is that after Fong See and Ticie part ways the story is less engrossing, this can’t be helped of course, as it’s fact, but the interest garnered from the reader because of the story of a mixed-race family in troubled times, the adaptation to another’s culture, and the building up of a business, is lessened immediately following it. There is more to be had in the stories of the children for their number but as American laws are relaxed and life becomes more like our own today the narrative appears to slow down – however it’s not so much the story as the reader’s desire to continue reading. The problem is that the “action” comes in those first years and then of course there is no climax because the story can never end completely because this is the tale of a family still going today.

Lisa writes her account of Fong See crossing to America and then and only then gives all the other reported accounts that she has discovered. She ends the section brilliantly with a little wit, saying that we should probably trust the age and journey times Fong See gave to newspapers and customers. She wants the version she provided first – detailed and probably, by her own admissions of the information, dreamt up by relatives – to be true, but will give us the other accounts anyway. That she uses wit may seem self-absorbing, but the way she words it makes it akin to the usual basic mysteries every family has – as more generations are born and previous ones disappear, information gets blurry.

In relation to this, the wit in the book, I would like to put forward a quote:

Fortunately, the Pruetts were Pennsylvania Dutch and not given to concerns over worldly possessions.

While the initial opinion may be that Lisa is on a moral high ground flaunting her superior ancestry, isn’t it that she’s injecting humour into a relatively arduous subject? Both possibilities are equally possible, but there’s no doubt it’s the latter, the humour.

Irony – the information Lisa provides on reclaimed land. The Chinese reclaimed land from marshes and bogs when no one else would because it was dirty and infested but they were not granted any of that new land because of the Alien Land Act. Aliens? Surely everyone who wasn’t Native American was alien – but the Caucasians didn’t think of that because they thought they were superior. The people who put the act in motion, the invaders, likely British-born or if not at least European, were not natives of the land themselves. It’s disgusting when you think about it. Looking back on one’s country’s ancestors is always a cause for distress at some point, no matter where you’re from, but to read a true account of how your people were so self-righteous is most difficult. In this reader’s humble opinion, yes the Chinese may have been cruel themselves at the time with their foot-binding and treating women as slaves, but it was the Caucasians who were the true aliens, for their actions towards other races rendered them inhuman.

Although the Chinese saw America as a gold mine there was nothing gold about the few dollars the first workers brought home. In retelling the See family story Lisa describes the creation of the original railroads – the meagre pay, the poor living conditions, the perils of the parties using dynamite to blow holes in the hills – and the many shop keepers who struggled to earn their keep. The lucky ones, who had the ideas and ambition to start their own businesses, like Fong See, were those who caused the phrase “gold mountain” to stay in use, but they were few and far between; and, to determine another aspect of this school of thought: as Fong See remarks, one could be a rich man in China from the money they made in America, but in the west they were still poor. What the Chinese didn’t realise was the extent of the difference between quality of life and cost of living. To be truly rich, one had to return to China, making their time in America simply a long sabbatical.

In her fiction work, Lisa uses words brilliantly. Because of the nature of this book there are few incidences for poetic language but they do exist, and they exist in the form of those thoughts Lisa’s family members have. Perhaps this was part of the reason Lisa created those thoughts, to give her a chance to write with more flare and more of the style she employs in her novels.

In early April of 1877, Luscinda Pruett lay dying. Her mind wandered over her life in Oregon, her children, her husband, and God, whom she knew she’d be meeting soon. She’d had a fever for weeks, and now the pneumonia had grabbed hold of her body and wouldn’t let go. Not that it wasn’t peaceful lying here, as Mrs. Peterson sponged her forehead with cool cloths and the Reverend Peterson gave a discourse on the second commission of Christ to his Apostles. Or was he reading from the tenth chapter of First Corinthians? Maybe that wasn’t it at all. She knew she’d heard him give those sermons before, at their Sunday meetings. No matter.

The above is quite possibly exactly what Luscinda Pruett was thinking, safe as her thoughts were from the limitations of a strict outside world. But more to the point Lisa has provided her great-great-grandmother, who has a minor role to play in her story, with a grand final performance.

Lisa’s descriptions are magnificent, again in this you can see the novelist in her trying to climb out of the closet into which she’s stowed it away and blending its fiction skills with fact:

For Choey Lon, China City was a magical place where the fragrant smell of incense wafted from a temple and gentle breezes passed through wind chimes hanging before shops.

In writing On Gold Mountain Lisa fulfilled her objective, to honour her aunt Sissee’s request that their family story be told, and brought into being a commercially available account of a minority living amongst a majority, to a world where it’s likely not many of these events have been written about in such a way and with such filial passion. The stress may be on her family but there is enough material to take away and add to any knowledge you might have had of the period previously.

On Gold Mountain is a lovingly rendered story of adventure, love, and above all triumph. And I’m afraid you just have to love an author who uses the word “shenanigans”.

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I will say now that I believe Richard III to have instigated the murders of Edward V and his brother. But regardless I was after more debate and another’s decision on the subject, someone with more information than me.

Publisher: Vintage
Pages: 258
Type: Non-Fiction
Age: Adult
ISBN: 978-0-099-52696-4
First Published: 1992
Date Reviewed: 25th May 2010
Rating: 2.5/5

What happened to Edward V and his brother the Duke of York has been the subject of speculation for centuries and their purported death in the late 1400’s material for many debates. Richard III, their uncle, wanted the throne – but did he kill them? He had usurped the crown from Edward already – all he had to do was keep the children locked up. Then was it Henry VII who took the crown from Richard, wanting to make sure the old line wouldn’t try to overturn the ruling? Or were the Princes left in the Tower indefinitely and died of natural causes?

I looked to Weir’s book on the subject because I’d read two of her non-fiction works before, The Six Wives Of Henry VIII and Children Of England and even though she has gained from me the nickname “The Hitherto Woman” for her excessive use of the word, I regard her publications as a staple part of my Tudor studies.

In the foreword Weir announces that she will look at the evidence for and against objectively – I relished these words because a debate was just what I was after, but alas it was not to be. At first glance the book shows promise, Weir has grand designs and will do her best to give all the accounts and evidence. She provides a thorough grounding in the background of the family and plenty of information on how Richard could have come to be so cruel. She is definitely right to have assumptions here, Richard’s childhood was full of violence and hatred and as has often been the case throughout history, a background such as this promotes the perversion of an otherwise innocent mind.

The characters are given a lot of space. We hear plenty on Richard, as discussed, Elizabeth Wydville, the heirs of Elizabeth’s union with Edward IV, most of the related gentry, and those first involved with Henry VII. There is detail enough to know quite well the personalities of each. Weir documents the period from Edward IV’s reign (including his own battles for the crown) to the time the rumours died down during the Tudor dynasty, adding information about the discovery of the bodies and the latest forensic work done in modern times – which was in 1930; since then the permission to study the bones has been denied.

But the historian’s winning streak doesn’t continue. Weir, from the first few pages, indicates that she believes Richard guilty, and the reader would be forgiven for listening to her at the time when she says that she will be objective. But from the moment she launches into the heart of the story, until the end, it’s obvious that she has let bias take over. Her voice is centred on her belief that Richard was guilty and although she looks at the opposing evidence she rarely gives it much thought. To her it’s plain and simple – the opposing evidence is worthless – and all this happens while she’s picking and choosing which rumours suit her story, opting at times to suggest that rumours believed by few are reliable and dismissing ones that many more people listened to.

Weir uses Thomas More’s account more often than any other. This she gives reason for – Thomas More was known to have good connections, eye-witnesses, and was able to be truthful (I haven’t said “was truthful” as in some instances his is the only account of an event so we can only take his word for it) because by the time he was writing people didn’t have to fear revenge for what they said. Note my words, “in the time he was writing”. Yes, More may have had his contacts, but he himself was not around at the time.

Another worrying problem is Weir’s total reliance on More. It’s a case of what More says goes. Weir assumes without a doubt that More would have acquired some of his information from his friend, who lived in a nunnery that was opposite the Tower of London. She says that because the nunnery was so close the occupants would have known what was going on. This assumption is, I’m afraid, cause for mirth, because we cannot say for definite that the nuns would have known anything. Do we today know everything about our neighbours’ lives, every one of us? Not often. The final point I will make regarding More is that Weir says he is true because he was writing for himself with no plans to publish his work. He could well have written in this way, but with Henry VIII, a man of irregular mood, on the throne, and More in such a high position at court, would he have been so careless? A sovereign could dispose of a person at the drop of a hat, at the drop of a sword; More’s privacy wouldn’t have been guaranteed. Of course if the account is true there would be no reason for him to lie because as it is there was no content that the Tudors could harass him over but, and amazingly this is a point Weir makes that contradicts her afore mentioned love – his sources may have been lying.

So while More’s account could be deemed reliable it’s the way in which Weir approaches him with starry eyes that’s cause for contention.

Weir often contradicts herself via quotations. As an example she says on one page that Henry VII and his wife were sharing a bed before marriage because their baby arrived eight months after and seemingly at full term, but then on the very next page, the opposite page no less, she quotes Francis Bacon as saying that the baby was born in the eighth month but was strong and able. This quotation suggests that the baby was premature.

Lastly I will examine the writing style. There are too many instances of jumping back and forth along the chronological scale. Weir will start with one date then go back a few years for a number of paragraphs by the end of which you’ve completely forgotten that this was just a short detour from the main path. As well as this she sometimes neglects to point out exactly which person she’s referring to, for example when one paragraph discusses the actions of two Elizabeths. Would it be Elizabeth Wydville who we begun the paragraph with or Elizabeth of York who we moved on to afterwards – the ending sentence would suggest the latter but it really could be the first.

It is quite apt that this book has gathered reviews erring equally on both sides of the coin. It’s fuelled more debate as well as possibly (if Weir read them) making Weir re-assess her ideas once more. But that is all. The blatant rejection of any opposition is very unprofessional, and I say that as someone who agrees with Weir’s conclusion. As a tertiary source the book is useful for essays and the like, and even otherwise it’s interesting as another person’s research, but it should on no account be taken as the definitive conclusion and should form merely a small part of a study into the Princes. This book is biased and badly written and I would advise readers to seek out another historian’s work, if not instead of this then at least as well as.

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