Wars of the Roses

Back to Richard III! You know I can't stay away for long :) This was an interesting collection of firsthand accounts from contemporary sources, both for and against against king in turn. There were also some interesting facts about life in medieval England mixed in for good measure. And lots of pictures. It was nicely put together.

Forbidden Door

The latest Jane Hawk book from Dean Koontz was pretty good. Jane is still on the run. She almost gets caught but kills the bad guy and continues to Borrego Springs to save Travis. Some of her allies from the previous books make guest appearances, which was nice, and a couple of the bad guys died, which was even nicer. No spoilers, but of course her story isn't over yet. I'm really curious how Koontz is going to wrap all this up.

Conan Doyle For the Defense

In addition to writing the popular Sherlock Holmes stories, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was also an amateur armchair detective himself. The case of Oscar Slater touched him and encouraged him to investigate. Slater was convicted of murdering an elderly woman in Scotland. Slater was innocent--it was pretty obvious. The prosecution had no evidence and was forced to browbeat some eyewitnesses into identifying Slater. Conan Doyle worked hard to free Slater, spending his own money on a legal defense, and after almost 20 years in prison Slater was released. Not so much of a happy ending, though--Conan Doyle thought Slater should reimburse him out of the money he got from his wrongful conviction, and Slater felt Conan Doyle was rich enough not to miss the money he fronted him and didn't see any reason to pay him back. The real killer was also never discovered. It was a sad case all the way around.

Under a Dark Sky; City of Bastards

I like Lori Rader-Day, her books are usually pretty good, and this one was no exception. Since her husband, Bix's, death nine months earlier, Eden has developed a crippling fear of the dark. While going through his papers, she finds a reservation for a dark sky park that he made to coincide with what would have been their 10th wedding anniversary. Eden goes, and discovers that Bix made reservations for them in a suite of a house with six other guests: strangers to Eden, they're old college friends. Eden would turn around and drive home, but it's dark, so she's stuck, at least for the evening. She plans to leave first thing in the morning, but then one of the houseguests is murdered during the night and everyone is a suspect. I enjoyed how she teased out the information (I don't want to spoil it, but everyone had motives/secrets/etc.).

"City of Bastards" by Andrew Shvarts is a sequel to "Royal Bastards", which I enjoyed. I liked this one, too. Tilla is staying in the capital city with the Princess Lyriana, enjoying her boyfriend, Zell, going to university and trying to fit in. Hard to do, when you're the bastard daughter of a rebel traitor. Tilla comes home one night and finds her roommate dead from an apparent suicide, but Tilla knows better. She soon discovers her father's forces have infiltrated even the highest levels of power, no one is safe. I'm guessing, by how it ended, that there will be another sequel :)

Anne Neville

I *really* wanted to like this book. There is so little nonfiction out there about Anne Neville. Unfortunately, Hicks is no fan of Richard III and makes no bones about it, so it was tough to read. He was adamant that there's not that much we can verify about Anne, but he jumps to some wild conclusions anyway. For instance, in the end he says that we can safely assume that Anne had a lot of sex in her life. Um, what? How can we assume that? Well, according to Hicks, she was married to Richard for twelve years and they only had one son. Since they shared a room almost constantly, which was unusual at the time (and remarked upon by their servants), Hicks says they must have been trying to conceive again. While I don't disagree, I also don't think we can make such a bold proclamation. Maybe (not that I'm suggesting this, I'm not) Richard was impotent and even though they shared a bed there's no way for us to know that they were having intercourse constantly. Maybe they just liked being together, did you ever think of that, Mr. Hicks? It's not uncommon. He also makes a big deal about the fact that no dispensation has ever been found to account for them being related in the first affinity (brother and sister in law). There's a dispensation to cover them being distant cousins, but Richard and Anne both knew they needed one to cover the fact that their siblings married and they obviously never sought one so therefore their marriage was never valid. Just because no one's ever *found* the dispensation doesn't mean it didn't exist. Good grief, it's been 500 years. Things get lost. They very well might have had one, and we'll never know. At any rate, the book had a little bit about Anne but more about laws and customs at the time. While interesting, not really what I was hoping for.

Last Days of Richard III

John Ashdown-Hill was (sadly, he passed away earlier this year) a terrific writer, he made nonfiction read like fiction. This book's focus was very narrow: just the last few months of King Richard's life (coincidentally, tomorrow is October 2, and King Richard's birthday. I know you were dying to know that!). Rather than fearing Henry Tudor's invasion, Richard was clearly looking forward to it. He had no doubt he would defeat the would be usurper and secure his claim to the throne. He went hunting, visited his mother, made plans to remarry. In short, he was living his normal life until he was tragically cut down on August 22 at Bosworth Field. Ashdown-Hill also gets into the search for Richard's DNA, and how he traced it to Canada. It was the samples taken from Richard's many times over great niece, Joy Isben, that were used to confirm the remains found in 2012 were indeed Richard, although this book was written before that event. All in all it was very interesting, and he paints a Henry Tudor in a much more decent light than I would have, pointing out that he actually treated Richard's remains with respect and had him properly buried.