What I read this November
Historical Fiction
Death at Wentwater Court by Carola Dunn. As sweet and comfortably domestic as a murder mystery can be. When the Honorable Daisy Dalyrmple visits a school chum's ancestral home to write a magazine article, she does not expect to find a roiling mess of emotions and secrets. The earl's new wife is young, beautiful, and clearly caught up in something with the underhanded Lord Stephen. And when Lord Stephen is found dead, everyone is a suspect.
Daisy and her new friend, Chief Inspector Alec Fletcher, try to sort out the tangled loyalties and motives, and while they do so each finds themselves quite attracted by the other. An unprompted confession and explanation later, the story ends, leaving readers with the memory of some lovable characters and a well-wrought snapshot of 1920s Britain.
Frederica by Georgette Heyer. I've seen this described as one of Heyer's better books, which confuses me. There is nothing new or wonderful about anything in this book. As usual, the heroine is a sensible pretty woman of good breeding with laudable loyalty and family feeling. The hero is sophisticated, physically powerful, fashionable, rich, and very respected in Society. They are brought together by the heroine's funny family (in this case, her rambunctious brothers and beautiful but silly sister--another Heyer trope). The brothers are the best part of this book, particularly Jessamy. His struggle toward maturity is the best subplot this novel could ask for. The main plot is lackluster, however. The love interests feel no heat for each other--after a few chapters of being friends, suddenly each is attracted to the other, but nothing really gets in the way or spurs them on to declare their love. At no point was my interest roused. The rich, handsome Marquis of Alverstroke was clearly going to marry the pretty, thoughtful Frederica after a few amusing scrapes and perhaps an attempted elopement on the part of her beautiful younger sister--and lo, it was so.
I've been reading a regency romance a month for a while now, and I think i need to take a break before I sour on the genre entirely
SF/F
Federations ed by John Joseph Adams. One of the better sf collections I've read lately.
The bad:
"Mazer in Prison" by Orson Scott Card. Mazer Rackham, the first human to defeat the Buggers, is waiting in a near-lightspeed ship for the Buggers to return, or the next human commander to be found. Very disappointing, like most of Card's work in his Ender's Game universe. The story is basically a back and forth of "I knew you knew that I knew that you knew, so I..."
"Life-Suspension" by LE Modesitt, Jr. Ugh.
"Someone Is Stealing the Great Throne Rooms of the Galaxy" by Harry Turtledove. Like when a 13year old gets "high" off of pixie-sticks and posts "hilarious" and "wacky" crackfic on ff.net.
"Twilight of the Gods" by John C Wright. Clunky, melodramatic--like someone took JRR Tolkien and ran his dialog through a stupidizer. Randomly chosen sentence: "Several of the knights stared at the black-cloaked stranger in awe." How did this get published?
The Fine:
"Carthago Delenda Est" by Genevieve Valentine. Interesting, with moments of tragedy and humor. Diplomats wait generations for the Carthago delegation.
"Terra-Exulta" by SL Gilbow. A linguist talks about his work in destroying various alien life-forms.
"Different Day" by K Tempest Bradford. Gets her point across about how average, every-day people and politics would react to aliens. It seems like it tries a little too hard to be folksy--but I expect a lot from KTB's stories, so perhaps I'm judging this to an unreasonable standard.
"Spirey and the Queen" by Alastair Reynolds. War in space is not always what it seems. Far too many double-crosses and plot twists, but I like the science and the ideas he uses.
"Pardon Our Conquest" by Alan Dean Foster. The surrender ceremony of the Empire to the Commonwealth. I would undoubtedly have enjoyed this more if A)I had read Foster's Commonwealth stories or B)the differences between Empire and Commonwealth weren't presented so heavy-handedly.
"Symbiont" by Robert Silverberg. A young soldier is infected with another life form. Years later, he begs an old friend to put him out of his misery. Pretty dated, and there's not much to the characterization or plot, though the world-building is ok.
"The Ship Who Returned" by Anne McCaffrey. Helva-the-brainship has recently lost her brawn, Niall. Stricken with grief, she has created an unreasonably sophisticated holographic replica of him. They banter while they try to save the religious colonists of Ravel from Kolnari pirates. Really heterosexist and unimaginative, but not terrible.
"The Shoulders of Giants" by Robert J Sawyer. A colony ship arrives at a planet to find that while they were in crystasis, Earth already colonized it.
"The Other Side of Jordan" by Allen Steele. A young man reconnects with an old flame after years apart. I have no idea why he wrote this story. There's no point to it: no emotional climax, no character construction, no plot.
"Like They Always Been Free" by Georgina Li. An atypical love story. Hot and well-written, but there's not much to it.
"Eskhara" by Trent Hergenrader. Very clearly inspired/modeled by the US troops' occupation in Iraq.
The Good:
"Aftermaths" by Lois McMaster Bujold. A callow pilot watches as a med tech retrieves and identifies bodies from the recently finished war.
"Prisons" by Kevin J Anderson and Doug Beason. A prison revolt has succeeded, and the former prisoners have stopped all export of a drug that can only be made on their world. The Praesidentrix will stop at nothing to punish the prisoners for their temerity. (This was a weird story, because I felt like we were supposed to root for the Praesidentrix and the Warden, but in point of fact I thought the prisoners were in the right.)
"Warship" by GRR Martin and George Guthridge. The last surviving member of a crew killed by disease must destroy the ship to prevent contagion to reach Earth. A good ending.
"Swanwatch" by Yoon Ha Lee. A young woman is exiled to bear witness to ships that commit honorable suicide into black holes. The only way to escape the exile is to create a masterwork, which she sets out to do.
"My She" by Mary Rosenblum. The unnamed, unnoticed servant of a Speaker begins to realize the danger her Speaker is in--and just what the Speakers do, after all. Really interesting story in which tradition and religion is used to cloak uneven power.
"The Culture Archivist" by Jeremiah Tolbert. A standout of the collection. As he says, "I started thinking about what a realistically capitalistic federation would look like, and the story was born." Hilarious and poignant.
"The One with the Interstellar Group Consciousness" by James Alan Gardner. Very funny, and well thought out.
"Golubash, or Wine-Blood-War-Elegy" by Cathrynne M Valente. A tale of capitalist greed and strangleholds, as told by a wine merchant. Fantastic world building, beautiful language, and an engaging story.
The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror 2008, ed by Ellen Datlow. As with most anthologies, there are two losers for every enjoyable story. In this case, though, I generally disliked stories purely because they did not fit to my personal taste. (A few too many were pretentious stories about the mystical ways of writers.) Still, it was a nice change from disliking stories because they're sloppy cliched messes.
I enjoyed:
"The Cambist and Lord Iron: A fairy tale of economics" by Daniel Abraham. A debauched lord with unlimited wealth and power finds amusement out of setting unsolvable riddles to a humble money-changer.
"The Last Worders" by Karen Joy Fowler. Twin sisters think precisely alike--until a small betrayal that tears them forever assunder.
"Winter's Wife" by Elizabeth Hand. A young boy observes his mysterious neighbor Winter, and Winter's equally fascinating and obscure new wife from Iceland. I love the magic here.
"A Reversal of Fortune" by Holly Black. Black is one of the very few authors who can write believable lower class teenager protagonists. Nikki lives in a trailer park with her erstwhile brother and devoted dog, and spends the summer missing her best friend and getting most of her calories from candy stolen from her job. When her dog is hit by her crush's truck, she challenges the devil to a candy-eating contest: she could win her dog's life, or lose her soul. Luckily, Nikki is as clever and gutsy as she is stubborn.
"The Boulder" by Lucy Kemnitzer is a well-crafted modern perspective on the classic "stolen beneath the Hill" fairy tale.
"The Hill" by Tanith Lee. The only one of the "horror" stories herein to actually have a scary moment. Disturbing imagery and a great concept, but the real strength here is the main character's sensible inner voice. The ending spends a little too much time explaining every bit of the mystery, but Lee does a good job of laying the clues throughout the story.
"Lovers: (Jaafar the Winged)" by Khaled Mattawa is the only poem I liked in this collection, despite Billy Collins's inclusion.
"Sir Hereward and Mister Fitz Go to War Again" by Garth Nix is a great adventure story. Nix is a true adept at creating interesting fantasy worlds and relatable heroes. Hereward is a mercenary knight who likes fine clothes, scarred lovers, and his former nursemaid, current companion, the ensorcelled puppet Fitz.
The anthology ends with the excellent "The Evolution of Trickster Stories Among the Dogs of North Park After the Change" by Kij Johnson. The animals of Earth all learned to speak in the same moment, but their newfound ability to communicate makes their former loving owners wary, shamed, and distrustful. Really interesting meditation on slavery and trust.
From Dead to Worse by Charlaine Harris. This is the eighth book about Sookie Stackhouse, psychic barmaid, and it shows. There is a lot of history and a whole mess of background characters and ex-love interests clogging up the works. But the premise that made these books so popular holds true. Sookie remains a good, though far from perfect, person, and I enjoy reading her adventures from her kind-hearted but slightly catty point of view. Although Sookie's mind-reading gives her an edge in many situations, she's wildly underpowered compared to the rest of the supernatural creatures she rubs elbows with. Sookie worries about the violence and manipulation that comes with being friends with vamps and weres, but her loyalty toward her friends always pulls her back into dangerous situations.
Overall, the plot is wobbly and far from air-tight. Both the weres and the vampires are involved in bloody struggles for power, but each conflict fizzles, with little build or climax. This book is mostly about wrapping up old plot threads.
An Ice Cold Grave by Charlaine Harris. Harper can find dead people. She has a fucked up family and a tragic past, but at least she's got her one talent--and her devoted step-brother, Tolliver. They're a great couple of characters, and the mysteries Harris throws them into are always clever and disturbing. When Harper finds the bodies of eight teenagers, the little southern town is thrown into an uproar. Harris has a true talent for the details of small town life, and even the background characters are fully fleshed out.
Jukebox Bard ed by Verb Noire. A collection of sf/f short stories and poems. Definitely better than most of the genre collections out there, but like most anthologies, there are at least as many misses as hits.
The Good:
"I Know of Snow White and Her Apple" by
Maria Velazquez. Dark poem with a building rhythm to it.
"Nodespace" by Karen J.H. Thistle. Cyberpunk. The standout of the collection. Captain Vex is a fantastic character, and the world building here is top-notch. My only complaint is that I wish this was a novel instead of a short story--it's that good.
"Crawl," by Kate Bachus, is a real novelty in the sf genre. A few hours in the life of a middle-aged, blue-collar woman trying to both survive and make some money in the midst of a terrifying conflagration. Lots of grit and great character details--another stand-out story.
The Bad:
"The Trouble With Dragons" by Joyce Chng. Steampunk set in 1800s China. Clunky writing. The main character was odd--it was told from his perspective, and he very much bought into Victorian ideals of gender and beauty.
"Los Pequenos" by Maria Deira
"Heart of Brass" by AH Jennings would undoubtedly have been enjoyable, but it seems to end in the middle of the action. Later in the collection, there's another story by the same author, with the same characters. Again, it starts in media res and finishes in the middle of the plot, without resolution. Very odd.
"The King of" by AH Jennings makes *no sense.*
Non-Fiction
Latin American Popular Culture ed by Linda A Curcio-Nagy. This is labeled as an introduction to Latin American popular culture, but this is very much not. No one reading this collection could come away with a conception of a single country's culture, let alone an understanding of the ~nine countries mentioned herein. (To read this, one should already have a good understanding of the histories and basic cultures.) Instead, it is 13 academic essays on subjects ranging from medical photographs in Brazil to state funerals in Mexico. The essays themselves are, by and large, both dry and poorly written--I was not impressed by the styles, which were uncomfortably similar to that of first-year grad students'.
However, the material itself is fascinating, which makes up for a lot. The idea that most of the essays touched on was how constructed culture is. What we see as a national identity is often the result of years of revisionist history, bias, and conscious choices.
Mistress of the Monarchy by Alison Weir. We don't know when Katherine Swynford was born, how many siblings she had, what she looked like, what she wrote or spoke like, what her seal looked like, or why she died. In fact, she is a complete cypher to the 21st century. Weir does the best she can to piece together what few documents and sketches of long-gone monuments that are left to give us clues, but there is very little to work with. Katherine was the mistress, and then third wife, of John of Gaunt (son of King Edward III, uncle to King Richard II, and father of King Henry IV). Her illegitimate (although later legitimized) children by John, the Beauforts, were the ancestors of rulers of Scotland, England, and Aragon.
This book helped me understand fourteenth century European politics and the eventual Wars of the Roses, but unfortunately, I still know as little about Katherine as I did at the start
Death at Wentwater Court by Carola Dunn. As sweet and comfortably domestic as a murder mystery can be. When the Honorable Daisy Dalyrmple visits a school chum's ancestral home to write a magazine article, she does not expect to find a roiling mess of emotions and secrets. The earl's new wife is young, beautiful, and clearly caught up in something with the underhanded Lord Stephen. And when Lord Stephen is found dead, everyone is a suspect.
Daisy and her new friend, Chief Inspector Alec Fletcher, try to sort out the tangled loyalties and motives, and while they do so each finds themselves quite attracted by the other. An unprompted confession and explanation later, the story ends, leaving readers with the memory of some lovable characters and a well-wrought snapshot of 1920s Britain.
Frederica by Georgette Heyer. I've seen this described as one of Heyer's better books, which confuses me. There is nothing new or wonderful about anything in this book. As usual, the heroine is a sensible pretty woman of good breeding with laudable loyalty and family feeling. The hero is sophisticated, physically powerful, fashionable, rich, and very respected in Society. They are brought together by the heroine's funny family (in this case, her rambunctious brothers and beautiful but silly sister--another Heyer trope). The brothers are the best part of this book, particularly Jessamy. His struggle toward maturity is the best subplot this novel could ask for. The main plot is lackluster, however. The love interests feel no heat for each other--after a few chapters of being friends, suddenly each is attracted to the other, but nothing really gets in the way or spurs them on to declare their love. At no point was my interest roused. The rich, handsome Marquis of Alverstroke was clearly going to marry the pretty, thoughtful Frederica after a few amusing scrapes and perhaps an attempted elopement on the part of her beautiful younger sister--and lo, it was so.
I've been reading a regency romance a month for a while now, and I think i need to take a break before I sour on the genre entirely
SF/F
Federations ed by John Joseph Adams. One of the better sf collections I've read lately.
The bad:
"Mazer in Prison" by Orson Scott Card. Mazer Rackham, the first human to defeat the Buggers, is waiting in a near-lightspeed ship for the Buggers to return, or the next human commander to be found. Very disappointing, like most of Card's work in his Ender's Game universe. The story is basically a back and forth of "I knew you knew that I knew that you knew, so I..."
"Life-Suspension" by LE Modesitt, Jr. Ugh.
"Someone Is Stealing the Great Throne Rooms of the Galaxy" by Harry Turtledove. Like when a 13year old gets "high" off of pixie-sticks and posts "hilarious" and "wacky" crackfic on ff.net.
"Twilight of the Gods" by John C Wright. Clunky, melodramatic--like someone took JRR Tolkien and ran his dialog through a stupidizer. Randomly chosen sentence: "Several of the knights stared at the black-cloaked stranger in awe." How did this get published?
The Fine:
"Carthago Delenda Est" by Genevieve Valentine. Interesting, with moments of tragedy and humor. Diplomats wait generations for the Carthago delegation.
"Terra-Exulta" by SL Gilbow. A linguist talks about his work in destroying various alien life-forms.
"Different Day" by K Tempest Bradford. Gets her point across about how average, every-day people and politics would react to aliens. It seems like it tries a little too hard to be folksy--but I expect a lot from KTB's stories, so perhaps I'm judging this to an unreasonable standard.
"Spirey and the Queen" by Alastair Reynolds. War in space is not always what it seems. Far too many double-crosses and plot twists, but I like the science and the ideas he uses.
"Pardon Our Conquest" by Alan Dean Foster. The surrender ceremony of the Empire to the Commonwealth. I would undoubtedly have enjoyed this more if A)I had read Foster's Commonwealth stories or B)the differences between Empire and Commonwealth weren't presented so heavy-handedly.
"Symbiont" by Robert Silverberg. A young soldier is infected with another life form. Years later, he begs an old friend to put him out of his misery. Pretty dated, and there's not much to the characterization or plot, though the world-building is ok.
"The Ship Who Returned" by Anne McCaffrey. Helva-the-brainship has recently lost her brawn, Niall. Stricken with grief, she has created an unreasonably sophisticated holographic replica of him. They banter while they try to save the religious colonists of Ravel from Kolnari pirates. Really heterosexist and unimaginative, but not terrible.
"The Shoulders of Giants" by Robert J Sawyer. A colony ship arrives at a planet to find that while they were in crystasis, Earth already colonized it.
"The Other Side of Jordan" by Allen Steele. A young man reconnects with an old flame after years apart. I have no idea why he wrote this story. There's no point to it: no emotional climax, no character construction, no plot.
"Like They Always Been Free" by Georgina Li. An atypical love story. Hot and well-written, but there's not much to it.
"Eskhara" by Trent Hergenrader. Very clearly inspired/modeled by the US troops' occupation in Iraq.
The Good:
"Aftermaths" by Lois McMaster Bujold. A callow pilot watches as a med tech retrieves and identifies bodies from the recently finished war.
"Prisons" by Kevin J Anderson and Doug Beason. A prison revolt has succeeded, and the former prisoners have stopped all export of a drug that can only be made on their world. The Praesidentrix will stop at nothing to punish the prisoners for their temerity. (This was a weird story, because I felt like we were supposed to root for the Praesidentrix and the Warden, but in point of fact I thought the prisoners were in the right.)
"Warship" by GRR Martin and George Guthridge. The last surviving member of a crew killed by disease must destroy the ship to prevent contagion to reach Earth. A good ending.
"Swanwatch" by Yoon Ha Lee. A young woman is exiled to bear witness to ships that commit honorable suicide into black holes. The only way to escape the exile is to create a masterwork, which she sets out to do.
"My She" by Mary Rosenblum. The unnamed, unnoticed servant of a Speaker begins to realize the danger her Speaker is in--and just what the Speakers do, after all. Really interesting story in which tradition and religion is used to cloak uneven power.
"The Culture Archivist" by Jeremiah Tolbert. A standout of the collection. As he says, "I started thinking about what a realistically capitalistic federation would look like, and the story was born." Hilarious and poignant.
"The One with the Interstellar Group Consciousness" by James Alan Gardner. Very funny, and well thought out.
"Golubash, or Wine-Blood-War-Elegy" by Cathrynne M Valente. A tale of capitalist greed and strangleholds, as told by a wine merchant. Fantastic world building, beautiful language, and an engaging story.
The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror 2008, ed by Ellen Datlow. As with most anthologies, there are two losers for every enjoyable story. In this case, though, I generally disliked stories purely because they did not fit to my personal taste. (A few too many were pretentious stories about the mystical ways of writers.) Still, it was a nice change from disliking stories because they're sloppy cliched messes.
I enjoyed:
"The Cambist and Lord Iron: A fairy tale of economics" by Daniel Abraham. A debauched lord with unlimited wealth and power finds amusement out of setting unsolvable riddles to a humble money-changer.
"The Last Worders" by Karen Joy Fowler. Twin sisters think precisely alike--until a small betrayal that tears them forever assunder.
"Winter's Wife" by Elizabeth Hand. A young boy observes his mysterious neighbor Winter, and Winter's equally fascinating and obscure new wife from Iceland. I love the magic here.
"A Reversal of Fortune" by Holly Black. Black is one of the very few authors who can write believable lower class teenager protagonists. Nikki lives in a trailer park with her erstwhile brother and devoted dog, and spends the summer missing her best friend and getting most of her calories from candy stolen from her job. When her dog is hit by her crush's truck, she challenges the devil to a candy-eating contest: she could win her dog's life, or lose her soul. Luckily, Nikki is as clever and gutsy as she is stubborn.
"The Boulder" by Lucy Kemnitzer is a well-crafted modern perspective on the classic "stolen beneath the Hill" fairy tale.
"The Hill" by Tanith Lee. The only one of the "horror" stories herein to actually have a scary moment. Disturbing imagery and a great concept, but the real strength here is the main character's sensible inner voice. The ending spends a little too much time explaining every bit of the mystery, but Lee does a good job of laying the clues throughout the story.
"Lovers: (Jaafar the Winged)" by Khaled Mattawa is the only poem I liked in this collection, despite Billy Collins's inclusion.
"Sir Hereward and Mister Fitz Go to War Again" by Garth Nix is a great adventure story. Nix is a true adept at creating interesting fantasy worlds and relatable heroes. Hereward is a mercenary knight who likes fine clothes, scarred lovers, and his former nursemaid, current companion, the ensorcelled puppet Fitz.
The anthology ends with the excellent "The Evolution of Trickster Stories Among the Dogs of North Park After the Change" by Kij Johnson. The animals of Earth all learned to speak in the same moment, but their newfound ability to communicate makes their former loving owners wary, shamed, and distrustful. Really interesting meditation on slavery and trust.
From Dead to Worse by Charlaine Harris. This is the eighth book about Sookie Stackhouse, psychic barmaid, and it shows. There is a lot of history and a whole mess of background characters and ex-love interests clogging up the works. But the premise that made these books so popular holds true. Sookie remains a good, though far from perfect, person, and I enjoy reading her adventures from her kind-hearted but slightly catty point of view. Although Sookie's mind-reading gives her an edge in many situations, she's wildly underpowered compared to the rest of the supernatural creatures she rubs elbows with. Sookie worries about the violence and manipulation that comes with being friends with vamps and weres, but her loyalty toward her friends always pulls her back into dangerous situations.
Overall, the plot is wobbly and far from air-tight. Both the weres and the vampires are involved in bloody struggles for power, but each conflict fizzles, with little build or climax. This book is mostly about wrapping up old plot threads.
An Ice Cold Grave by Charlaine Harris. Harper can find dead people. She has a fucked up family and a tragic past, but at least she's got her one talent--and her devoted step-brother, Tolliver. They're a great couple of characters, and the mysteries Harris throws them into are always clever and disturbing. When Harper finds the bodies of eight teenagers, the little southern town is thrown into an uproar. Harris has a true talent for the details of small town life, and even the background characters are fully fleshed out.
Jukebox Bard ed by Verb Noire. A collection of sf/f short stories and poems. Definitely better than most of the genre collections out there, but like most anthologies, there are at least as many misses as hits.
The Good:
"I Know of Snow White and Her Apple" by
Maria Velazquez. Dark poem with a building rhythm to it.
"Nodespace" by Karen J.H. Thistle. Cyberpunk. The standout of the collection. Captain Vex is a fantastic character, and the world building here is top-notch. My only complaint is that I wish this was a novel instead of a short story--it's that good.
"Crawl," by Kate Bachus, is a real novelty in the sf genre. A few hours in the life of a middle-aged, blue-collar woman trying to both survive and make some money in the midst of a terrifying conflagration. Lots of grit and great character details--another stand-out story.
The Bad:
"The Trouble With Dragons" by Joyce Chng. Steampunk set in 1800s China. Clunky writing. The main character was odd--it was told from his perspective, and he very much bought into Victorian ideals of gender and beauty.
"Los Pequenos" by Maria Deira
"Heart of Brass" by AH Jennings would undoubtedly have been enjoyable, but it seems to end in the middle of the action. Later in the collection, there's another story by the same author, with the same characters. Again, it starts in media res and finishes in the middle of the plot, without resolution. Very odd.
"The King of" by AH Jennings makes *no sense.*
Non-Fiction
Latin American Popular Culture ed by Linda A Curcio-Nagy. This is labeled as an introduction to Latin American popular culture, but this is very much not. No one reading this collection could come away with a conception of a single country's culture, let alone an understanding of the ~nine countries mentioned herein. (To read this, one should already have a good understanding of the histories and basic cultures.) Instead, it is 13 academic essays on subjects ranging from medical photographs in Brazil to state funerals in Mexico. The essays themselves are, by and large, both dry and poorly written--I was not impressed by the styles, which were uncomfortably similar to that of first-year grad students'.
However, the material itself is fascinating, which makes up for a lot. The idea that most of the essays touched on was how constructed culture is. What we see as a national identity is often the result of years of revisionist history, bias, and conscious choices.
Mistress of the Monarchy by Alison Weir. We don't know when Katherine Swynford was born, how many siblings she had, what she looked like, what she wrote or spoke like, what her seal looked like, or why she died. In fact, she is a complete cypher to the 21st century. Weir does the best she can to piece together what few documents and sketches of long-gone monuments that are left to give us clues, but there is very little to work with. Katherine was the mistress, and then third wife, of John of Gaunt (son of King Edward III, uncle to King Richard II, and father of King Henry IV). Her illegitimate (although later legitimized) children by John, the Beauforts, were the ancestors of rulers of Scotland, England, and Aragon.
This book helped me understand fourteenth century European politics and the eventual Wars of the Roses, but unfortunately, I still know as little about Katherine as I did at the start