Review: Road to Reckoning by Robert Lautner

ARC from publisher via NetGalley. My opinions are my own.
Release date: February 4, 2014

Though set in 1837 northern Pennsylvania, this is in the spirit of a true western, during a time when much of rural Pennsylvania was still wild and lawless. Twelve year old Thomas Walker sets out from New York City with his father to sell a new Colt revolver but they hardly make it beyond Milton, PA, just shy of central Pennsylvania, before his father is murdered by a lawless and violent man. In his efforts to return home, Thomas makes his way along the road with a reluctant guide, former Indiana Ranger and War of 1812 Veteran, Henry Stands. Just as they are beginning to bond, danger threatens them.

I was surprised to discover the author is British and still lives in the UK because the American “West” really comes alive so easily with an authentic narrative. That is saying something coming from a born-and-bred Pennsylvanian with a love of local history. Although the short, adventurous plot makes this a fast paced page turner, it’s also quite literary and the character development, in particular Henry Stands, is what really makes this novel shine. Very enjoyable read and I look forward to what the author will have to offer in the future.

Review: The Forbidden Queen by Anne O'Brien

Advanced review copy from publisher via NetGalley.
US release date: January 28, 2014

This biographical novel about Katherine of Valois, queen consort to Henry V of England and later the wife of Owen Tudor, is well written but doesn't have much depth and there is a lot more "telling" than "showing".

It's primarily a romance and though I enjoy some good romance, when there seems to be little to nothing else going on, it feels flat and grows tiresome and dull. It was entirely about Katherine's romantic relationships, even though there was plenty of opportunity to develop a more multidimensional story, it never took fruit. For example, Katherine's childhood is very quickly brushed over. Growing up, her only friend in the whole world is her sister, Michelle, but when Michelle leaves the convent they are being raised in to be married off, it barely gets a mention. What should have been a huge and difficult change and loss for Katherine only gets commented on after the fact, almost as in afterthought. I also found it very convenient (i.e., unrealistic) that Michelle happened to live close enough by to make regular trips to visit Katherine. Even so, Katherine should have missed Michelle a lot more than we get to see, if not when Michelle is married than certainly when Katherine is married and leaves France for England.

There also could have been a lot more development in showing Katherine adjusting to life at the English court and trying to fit in. While she does make a few friends, we don't see much of them. I would have liked to see more of her dealings with her "damsels", especially in the beginning, because they would have been a huge part of her life, regardless of whether her relationships with them were positive or negative. But we really only see few glimpses of this because the focus was so centered on her romantic relationships. Later, we see a little more involvement but no more than is necessary to move the romantic stories forward.

According to Katherine, in her time as an English queen, she makes it a point to learn about the political affairs going on at the time but we don't really get to see that growth, we just have to take her word for it. As time goes on, she only proves just how poor her understanding of politics is and that she clearly did not learn much during her reign as consort.

Most annoying of all was how whiny, immature, and self-absorbed Katherine was. I could excuse it in the beginning because she was young and starved for attention and love. But she never seemed to grow up. While her time with Henry was short lived, I grew frustrated when she could never accept the fact that when you're married to a king, certain things will take priority over you. She could not see beyond her own little world. Her happiness seemed entirely dependent on attention from men, which made her seem shallow and vapid, in addition to immature and self-absorbed. At one point, Katherine even asks herself: "Was every woman as driven to embrace misery as I, when faced with a man who had no desire for her?" The answer, of course, is "no". No, Katherine, not every woman feels that way and the fact that you do is actually rather pathetic. I won't pretend rejection is a barrel of laughs but the degree of misery that it sunk her into was certainly pathetic.

Also annoying was when, by her own admission, she knew nothing about Owen Tudor beyond the fact that he was good at his job, and yet claimed to have fallen in love with him. How can you love someone you don't even know? Even after she professed to have grown up and been wiser, she is still resorting to an immature ideal of love.

The quality of writing is not bad and the characters, though mostly unlikable or underdeveloped, were believable, as was their dialogue. But the story was one-dimensional and Katherine in particular was not a likable main character, which was made all the more annoying by the fact that it was told from her first person point of view.

Review: The Winter Palace by Eva Stachniak

This is an excellently written novel about Catherine the Great, Empress of Russia, told from the first person point of view of a palace maid, Varvara, a fictional character from Poland. After being orphaned, Varvara becomes a ward of the Empress Elizabeth of Russia where she is forgotten about within the Winter Palace until she is discovered by the Chancellor as a potentially good spy. He trains her to spy for him and the Empress, who places her in an ideal position as a maid to her nephew, the Grand Duke and heir to the Russian throne, but when Catherine (initially known as Sophie) arrives to be married to the Grand Duke, Varvara's loyalties are thrown into question.

This is as much Varvara's story as it is Catherine's and truth be told, Catherine is absent for portions of the novel and yet, that doesn't detract from the story. It's so well written and the characters are so well developed that the fictional plot lines are every bit as interesting as the historical ones and only add dimension to the story. However, for those disppointed that the focal point was not more centered on Catherine, the sequel Empress of the Night is told from Catherine's point of view.

From Varvara's point of view, Catherine seemed a little whiny and immature at times, though she would have been in her 20s by the time the scene I'm thinking of in particular would have occured. In fact, Catherine's character sort of regresses; in the beginning, she is shrewed and cautious but as the book goes on, she becomes reckless and immature. I think this was an attempt to show how unhappy she became in the situation she was in and how she reached a point when she just didn't care anymore about the things which she previously thought of the utmost importance.

For a spy novel, the politics sometimes take a back seat to the court gossip but I think it's important to remember that during this time period, court intrigue and politics were so often linked.

I was surprised to learn the author is Polish, because this is so well written in English, I can't believe that it's not the author's first language. It really brings the scenes to life and forms the characters so well, it was hard to put down and I look forward to the sequel.

Review: The Handfasted Wife by Carol McGrath

What happened to Harold Godwinson’s first wife Edith Swaneck (or Elditha as she is known in this novel) after his tragic death during the 1066 Norman Conquest? Too often, women are merely a footnote in history and I love historical fiction which speculates about the unknown, untold stories of women in history. Instead of focusing on Elditha’s life leading up to the conquest, this novel explores the after events. How did this woman cope with losing her husband and the father of her children first to another woman and secondly to death and the Norman invasion? What was her fate and the fate of her children once they were in the hands of the enemy and what did she do improve their chances at safety and happiness?

On one hand, this approach certainly set it apart from other books focusing on the Norman Conquest and allowed for more creative freedom but on the other hand, it wound up being a little anti-climatic to focus on the events following 1066 rather than leading up to it. While the book was very eventful, I didn't really get a sense of the emotional turmoil both Elditha and others would have gone through upon learning the outcome of the Battle of Hastings, not on the scale I expected anyway. What should have been the biggest event of the book was quickly passed over in the beginning and while the following events were thrilling at times, without giving away any specific spoilers, they wound up being all for nothing. The efforts Elditha made to escape and keep her children safe were moot in the end and I struggled to understand how Elditha could abandon her children as many times as she did. Granted, she had many children and they were split up and she always left them in trusted care and sometimes she didn't have a choice - but sometimes she did and I just think if I had been her, I would be doing everything I could to remain with my most vulnerable children, whatever the cost to myself. When she finally attempted to extract one of them, she unnecessarily risked everything she'd spent half the novel accomplishing. So that was a little frustrating.

That said, it was very well written and researched. The dialogue and characters were realistic, even if I didn't always agree their decisions. It was written in third person, mostly from Elditha's point of view but also a few others. When it was told from a male point of view, it was still in relation to the women's world, as this is very much a story about women and we do not get to see the Battle of Hastings in action. The author had a lot of room to work with a creative license since soon after Hastings, Elditha disappears from records so her fate was open to lots of speculation and the author used her knowledge of the times to make believable assumptions. This is the first in a planned trilogy called Daughters of Hastings and I look forward to the second two which are to feature Elditha's daughters Gunnhild and "Thea" (renamed such in the novel because her real name, Gytha, would have caused confusion with more than one character named Gytha), I am interested to see what the author does with these characters.

Review: The Arnifour Affair by Gregory Harris

Received ARC from publisher via NetGalley.
Release date: January 28, 2014

The first in a planned series, this is pretty much a Holmes and Watson mystery with different names. Colin Pendragon is the eccentric and unorthodox but brilliant observationalist and private detective. Ethan Pruitt is the more down-to-earth medical sidekick and roommate who serves as narrator. While he makes a point of clarifying that he’s not a doctor, presumably in attempts to set him apart from Watson, he apparently picked up a lot of medical knowledge during his time as a drug addict in the slums. I’m not really sure how that equates to informally gaining some basic biological understanding but it was obvious the author did not want to lose Watson’s medical training entirely since it’s often beneficial during investigations. However, Pruitt’s fall from grace in the past certainly sets him apart from Watson more than not being a doctor does. Additionally, Pendragon abhors drug useage because of what it did to Pruitt and this sets him apart from Holmes.

There’s been suggestions of a homosexual relationship between Holmes and Watson and the author capitalizes on that with Pendragon and Pruitt. Nothing explicit, of course, but it’s clear from the beginning the two protagonists have a romantic relationship and I do wonder if this was the main reason for not simply writing another Holmes mystery, given that many Holmes fans would object to it.

The story opens around the “turn of the century” and after Pendragon and Pruitt have been together for twelve years already. This also fits with the timeline of Holmes and Watson, who met in 1881 so twelve years later would put us around 1893, roughly turn of the century.

Pendragon and Pruitt live together in a home in London maintained by their maid and cook, a grumpy old woman who I suppose is meant to be Mrs. Hudson. And their investigations mean they frequently clash with Inspector Varcoe, who may take the place of Doyle’s Inspector Lestrade.

On one hand, the fact that it was basically just a Sherlock Holmes novel with different names made it feel unoriginal but on the other hand, the fact that it’s not a Holmes story allowed for a little more creative freedom. It was well written and the dialogue was good, but every once and a while the characters would do something a little unrealistic or out of character. There's a lot going on with a main plot and a subplot which keeps the pace moving and makes it very readable.

Review: The White Princess by Philippa Gregory

It’s no secret that I felt The Other Boleyn Girl was overrated. But I requested a free review copy of The White Princess, a novel based on the life of Elizabeth of York, wife of Henry Tudor (Henry VII) and mother of Henry VIII, because I thought I should give Philippa Gregory another chance. After all, other readers in my family enjoy her novels and I value their opinions.

It’s written in present tense which I’m not a huge fan of because I find more often than not, it comes off sounding pretentious but admittedly, this is well written and it’s the one thing I can’t criticize her for. It’s also written in first person and here again, I can’t criticize Gregory’s ability to write well in first person, but I felt like the nature of it is too restrictive, especially for this complex subject matter. However, what really let this book down was the characterization, mainly of Elizabeth.

For starters, I could not understand how she could be in love with the man who kidnapped and imprisoned her brothers and then declared them, along with herself, illegitimate so he could steal their crown. Elizabeth seems to think he had no other choice but I’m not buying this “woe is Richard” attitude. She also seems to think that if Richard had won at Bosworth, he would have married her but the fact is, he could not marry a bastard and he could not re-legitimize her without admitting that he was wrong to declare her brother illegitimate and thus, admitting that he was a usurper and not the lawful king. I could maybe excuse Elizabeth’s expectations with Richard as youthful ignorance but even her mother seems to agree Richard would have married her had he survived. So this struck me as Gregory not fully understanding the situation or perhaps just choosing to disregard the reality of the situation to suit her fanciful story. I don’t mind using a creative license in novels but it has to be believable and it’s this kind of disregard for realism that makes it difficult to enjoy. For example, I’m okay with Gregory claiming that when Elizabeth’s family took refuge in Westminster Abbey, it was in the dark, damp “crypt under the chapel” even though in reality, they stayed in the luxurious house where the Abbot lived, in his best rooms as his guest. I’m okay with that because while it’s untrue, it’s not completely unbelievable that had the Abbot not been so accommodating, they might have hunkered down in a section of the Abbey where they could secure their safety. So I’m okay with using this idea as dramatic license, but I’m not okay with things that don’t even make sense within the contexts of Gregory’s own fiction. She makes a point of showing how Henry had to legitimize Elizabeth before marrying her because a king can’t marry a bastard so why would this not apply to Richard as well?

What bothered me about The White Queen miniseries (and I suspect of the book as well, which precedes The White Princess) was the portrayal that the women involved were the true engineers of these pivotal moments in history and the men were practically just their pawns. I enjoy stories about strong, influential women in history and how they cope with the turbulent events they often get caught up in, but I feel like Gregory’s portrayal of this is very unrealistic. However, Elizabeth of York was in a very different situation than her mother had been and so The White Princess took the opposite approach and portrayed Elizabeth as a victim and pawn of Henry Tudor and Margaret Beaufort. But Elizabeth does nothing to win favors or gain influence and spends most of the book clueless and passive. Apparently, there's no middle ground with Gregory - women either engineer everything or have no influence at all. Even Henry himself, after Elizabeth responded with “I don’t know” to all his questions, appropriately tells her:

“When I think of the fortune that was spent on your education, Elizabeth, I am really amazed at how little you know.”

I realize that he suspected she knew more than she was admitting but that’s the frustration thing, with one exception, she really didn’t know anything. And while I understand why she doesn’t know anything, the fact that it’s written in first person means the reader doesn’t know anything more than Elizabeth does, which makes for a frustrating read. Here is where third person would have been beneficial and there were many people around Elizabeth whose stories we got tantalizing glimpses of and would had really added more dimension to the story had we been able to see them.

I can also understand why Elizabeth wasn’t scheming and plotting in league with her mother, but I can’t understand why Elizabeth does nothing to improve her own situation. If I were Elizabeth, no matter how much I hated Henry, I’d be doing everything I could to convince him that he can trust me so that perhaps I could have more influence over him. But Elizabeth never even considers this.

Eventually, she does come to care for Henry but I struggled to understand why. He spends most of the book demanding to know what she knows (which is nothing, of course), sulking or throwing a tantrum when yet another “York boy” pops up, and cowering behind an army he has no faith in. He is driven half mad by fear, which is understandable, but it’s hardly going to make a woman fall in love with him. On Henry’s end, he claims to have hoped for Elizabeth’s love from the first moment he met her but again, I’m not really sure why since she is dull and clueless and spends most of the book turning away from him. Henry goes on and on about how she has some kind of inherent likability that all Yorks do and which eludes him, but apart from being pretty and smiling and waving at crowds, I couldn’t see what was so likable about her. It’s not enough to say a character is this or that, if you don’t show me, it falls flat.

I really thought we were going to see a woman who was quietly influential in the shadows of not only her husband but her growing son Henry as well but instead we get a girl who has basically given up on life and is just passively enduring it.

Then there’s Henry. I felt like Gregory’s attempts to paint him as multidimensional missed the mark. On one hand he is cold, calculating, and untrusting but on the other hand he almost immediately begins readily opening up to Elizabeth about his insecurities and fears, despite the fact that she has done nothing to coax this out of him and despite the fact that he never trusts her. Making a character multidimensional doesn’t mean having them do things that don’t make sense.

I get that this is supposed to be a story about a woman who was forced to ride the line between two warring factions and how she was powerless to stop the people she loved on both sides from destroying one another. I get that it’s supposed to be about a man who is barely able to cling to a throne that was never his and how it will haunt him for all his days. In theory, it sounds like a great story but it just wasn’t executed very well.

Review: The Lost Sisterhood by Anne Fortier

Received ARC from publisher via NetGalley.
Release date: March 11, 2014

Philologist Diana Morgan has always had a fascination with the legend of the Amazons from the time her supposedly mentally ill grandmother claimed to be one and even gave her a notebook with a dictionary of a strange, unknown language. So when Diana is approached by a mysterious man with a photograph of an archaeological site covered in the very same language (which I suspect is supposed to be the language from the Phaistos Disc), she can’t resist the offer to investigate.

Running parallel to her story is that of Myrina, a young woman struggling to survive within classic tales from Greek mythology and Homer's Troy, who will stop at nothing to protect her younger sister. But Fortier's retelling is anything but traditional and manages to put realistic spins on The Iliad that link several elements from history and mythology. Though the premise of novels like this can sometimes be a little far-fetched, this was one of the more believable ones.

I love a good treasure hunt/archaeological mystery and the fact that it was based on Greek mythology intrigued me more. From the time I was 12, when I first learned about classical mythology, I've been fascinated by it so this was right up my alley. There's lots of action and adventure as Diana follows clues taking her in Myrina's footsteps across the Mediterranean but the character development isn't neglected either and the personal journeys that both the main characters go through make it difficult to put down. 608 pages may be longish for an action novel but they flew by. The feminism could be a little heavy handed at times but that's to be expected from a novel about a sisterhood and it's important to remember the brutal world the Amazons lived in and particularly how women were often treated.

While Diana's chapters are told in first person, Myrina's are told in third person, which is not normally something I'm fond of but it works well to distinguish the different time periods. Despite being split over thousands of years, the book flows between the two worlds effortlessly.

Review: Sisters of the Bruce, 1292-1314 by J.M. Harvey

Received free review copy from publisher via NetGalley.

Robert the Bruce was King of Scots and a key figure in the Wars of Scottish Independence against the English and as such, he plays a major role in several novels. This book attracted my attention because it’s the first novel I’ve seen devoted to the women of the Bruce family, initially the two eldest sisters of Robert, Isabel and Christina - or Isa and Kirsty as they are called in this novel. A large portion of it is told through letters between the two of them (and occasionally Robert the Bruce himself), and later letters include Matilda, so there is a lot more “telling” than “showing”, not my preferred method of storytelling. When events are described in the letters, however detailed they may be, they still felt as though they were merely glimpses of what should have been so much more, and I kept wishing I could read a scene of the event taking place, hear the dialogue, etc. It meant I never really formed an emotional attachment to what should have been important characters in the sisters lives.

It’s obviously very well researched and portrays the medieval world accurately. However, even once the letters cease being the primary storytelling method, the book continues to tell the story often more as like an overview of events. For example, there is rarely any dialogue, which I found very strange. Though there was internal dialogue, it was too little too late. I couldn’t get into it and spent the second half of the book skimming it. There could have been a great story here and I really wanted to like it but the method of storytelling let it down.

Review: Letters From a Murderer by John Matthews

When the Ripper murders abruptly ceased after the autumn of 1888, the assumption could only be made that the murderer had either died, gone to prison on an unrelated charge, or left London for new grounds. This novel is based on the latter theory, that the Ripper may have continued his slaughters in 1891 NYC. Investigating is a capable Italian-American NYPD detective and a criminal analyst from London who had worked on the original Ripper case.

Naturally, there have been many comparisons to The Gangs of New York but this novel attracted me after recently being obsessed with BBCA's historical drama Copper, which has it's own comparisons to The Gangs of New York as well. Being a gritty 19th century crime novel set in NYC, I thought this sounded like a good, similar type novel to help wean me through my withdraw after Copper was cancelled even after being hailed as the most popular BBCA show ever. However, that's about where the similarities ended. This novel can’t help but stand on its own.

Being a Ripper novel really set it apart from either The Gangs of New York or Copper. Ripper novels have perhaps been a little overdone and though there have been many theories about the Ripper appearing in America, setting this in NYC provided something new and allowed the author more creative freedom.

One thing really bothered me though, and that was the use of the myth about name changes due to immigration officers who couldn't spell or pronounce foreign names. Any knowledgeable genealogist will be able to tell you why this persistent tale is so false. For starters, immigration officers - even in history - were often multilingual. Do people really think immigration departments in history didn't make use of translators? Secondly, immigration officers worked off written documentation compiled at the port of departure. I don't know why people seem to think that in history, documentation wasn't a requirement for immigrants. Lastly, the incorrect recording of one’s name during immigration does not mean one’s name was forcibly changed. When we see this in genealogy, it's considered an error, not a legal name change. Of course, many immigrants did anglicize their names but it was of their own choosing and typically occurred after the point of immigration.

I have seen this myth appear in several novels but this is the first time I've seen it in historical fiction and frankly, a historical novelist should really know better. I don't expect an author writing a contemporary novel to do historical research but I do expect it of a historical fiction author so to include such a myth just strikes me as sloppy. Of course, I was able to get passed this. It was one sentence in the whole book so I got over it and enjoyed the story as a whole.

There's a lot going on in this novel, there's many twists and turns to keep you guessing and many subplots, both the main characters have interesting back stories dealing with issues unrelated to the Ripper case, so it's not just a simple murder mystery or Ripper-hunt. Supposedly the first in a series, I look forward to the next book from this author.

CW's Reign

Ad for 'Reign' showing the fictional
'Bash' character and inaccurately
portrayed Dauphin Francis.

I intended this to be a book review blog but after just watching the CW's pilot on Mary, Queen of Scots, I had a few things to say about it. It does contain a few spoilers, I've written it on the assumption of those reading this have already watched the first episode.

The show opens with a teenage Mary living in a convent in France and, after an assassination attempt, is sent to live at the French court, where she briefly had spent some time before when she'd first arrived in France as a child. This of course is inaccurate, the real Mary never lived in a convent, she grew up at the French court after arriving there at five years old. I could excuse this though, it made some sense to introduce the audience to the story at the same time that Mary was being reintroduced to the French court. It means that we learn things about the court as Mary learns them, which helps us empathize with her. Although she knows many of the people at court, she is learning about them as an adult and therefore, in a way, she is new to the court and still settling in. It's a good starting point, even if not true.

When Mary arrives at the French court, we discover that she is betrothed to the Dauphin of France, the heir to the throne, Francis. Understandably for a teen show, it centers on romantic intrigue when Francis is already involved with a random pretty girl at court, complicating his feelings for Mary, while Mary herself finds some emotional refuge with Francis' half brother, the king's bastard 'Bash' (short for Sebastian). Meanwhile, the romantic interest of one of Mary's ladies fills a sub-plot while another of her ladies gets involved with the king himself when he encounters her masturbating after covertly watching a princess of France lose her virginity on her wedding night. While it's true that the consummation of royal marriages often required witnesses, the idea that the maiden Queen of Scotland and her ladies could sneak a peek from behind a screen is pretty far-fetched. Even more far-fetched is the idea that one of them would masturbate in the middle of a stairwell. The scene was heavily edited down and is really only suggestive, you're left not entirely confident that's what she was doing because apparently, the show's producers felt that showing a young woman discovering and exploring her sexuality on her own is more controversial than a teenage girl having an affair with an grown, married man.

The real Francis and Mary

The other two major inaccuracies I spotted were the introduction of a fictional character, Bash, and the portrayal of Francis. I don't mind storytelling involving fictional characters, even some of the best historical fiction authors make use of them, such as Sharon Kay Penman and Bernard Cornwell. It allows the storyteller greater creative freedom and often creates additional sub-plots, giving the story a more complex and multi-dimensional feel. The danger zone of fictional characters in a historical story is when they get too involved with the main historical characters. If taken too far, it becomes unbelievable that a historical figure had quite so much involvement with someone who never existed, unless there is a good reason they never appeared in the history books despite being a pivotal player. We'll see if 'Reign' goes down that path or not but for now, I can understand why they've created a fictional bastard of the king and his mistress, Diane de Poitiers (historically, Diane had no children by the king, only two daughters who could not have been the king's since they were born around the same time he was). Not only does it involve Diane more in the family politics but Bash also serves as an alternate love interest for Mary, which I guess is practically a necessity when your target audience is teenage girls. In reality, though there's no speculation that Mary was ever involved with a king's bastard, for the sake of a good story, Mary would have been in a prime position to find love elsewhere than with her fiance, not because he was already sleeping with other women, or because he felt it politically unwise to marry her, as the show would have you believe. No, in reality the reason would have been much simpler, though admittedly also much less sexy, because the historical Francis was an underdeveloped, sickly little boy. Already a year younger than the developing and tall Mary, Francis' growth was stunted by his health problems and made the age difference between them seem even greater. Though by all accounts, Mary got along with and cared for Francis, it was probably more as a little brother than as a passionate lover. So it's not unreasonable that a fictional story would speculate on Mary finding love elsewhere, I just don't fully understand the need to make Francis a healthy, handsome, strapping young man when he was anything but. Apparently, everyone in this TV show must be attractive and I find it difficult to believe that today's young women are quite so vain that they couldn't appreciate a well portrayed, if unattractive, character. A beautiful young queen and a handsome forbidden bastard evidently isn't enough, pretty much the entire court must be good looking. Even Diane, who as a mistress of the king you might except to be beautiful, is played by an actress in her 30s when in reality she was 20 years the king's senior and approaching 60 by this point.

Scene showing some of the more inaccurate dresses

Appealing to modern young women brings me to my next complaint, the costumes. Apparently, the CW believe that today's teenagers won't be interested in anything even remotely resembling historically accurate costumes. Strapless dresses? Really? Need I say more?

Another romanticized element of this is how much time Mary conveniently gets to spend alone, which of course allows her to have private conversations with Francis and Bash. For the very reason that, in the show, Mary's reputation was nearly ruined when a young man is found in her bed, she equally would not be able to spend so much time wandering around on her own, running into handsome and dashing young men who, of course, fall hopelessly in love with her. In this way, it is more like a fairy tale than history.

While the show might appeal to many for purely entertainment purposes, it's unsurprisingly an epic fail on historical integrity. Still, I can still the appeal as a guilty-pleasure and I support any mainstream entertainment that encourages people, especially young people, to develop an interest in history. If this show gets young women wanting to learn more or picking up books, even novels, about Mary Stuart or French royalty, I hope it runs for a very long time. Perhaps, in that way, it will do for young people what The Tudors did for so many adults, a show that I admittedly loved and that partially sparked my own interest in royal history, despite it's own numerous inaccuracies. Sometimes, a story doesn't have to be historically accurate to be enjoyable and let's hope 'Reign' proves this to be true. I, for one, will continue to watch it if only to see Torrance Coombs' alarmingly beautiful blue eyes again. I never said I was above a bit of eye candy...