Thursday, January 5, 2012

The Cousins' War, #1

The White Queen
The White Queen
Philippa Gregory

This is the third Philippa Gregory books I've read, and the second in 2011. Several years ago I read The Queen's Fool. It was a gift, and not anything I'd usually pick out for myself. I ended up enjoying it more than I thought I would. Then back in April I read A Respectable Trade and thought it was one of the worst books EVER. I thought that I might giver her another try, but only when she was writing about old dead English people. I couldn't deal with her talking about Africans.

Hence, The White Queen, aka Elizabeth Woodville/Rivers/etc. For a book that talks about more battles than I could try to count, wow is it boring. It's all husband goes to war, comes home, goes to war, comes home, goes to war. All while the Queen sits around, twiddling  her thumbs and having babies (she had ten children by this guy!). If you're going to have the Queen hanging out in the castle all the time, at least tell me what she's doing. She can't just be sitting around, breathlessly waiting for news all the time. Her husband had time to bed half the women in London, so at least one of them had leisure time.

Elizabeth was the mother of the infamous princes in the Tower of London, who mysteriously disappeared without a trace. Gregory has her own theory about what may have happened to them, and shares it here. It's kinda interesting, but it doesn't make it worth reading the whole book.

Well, whatever. I won't be reading any more Philippa Gregory anytime soon. I don't feel the need to pick up the next book in the series. The one thing I do like about historical fiction is learning more about the real stories and people involved. Somehow I can keep all the players straighter in my head if I read about them in novel form. The when I read nonfiction, it makes more sense to me. So that's something, I guess.

No comments: