Two books and a death
A few days ago, I found out from 
misbegotten that Sharon Penman had died, of pneumonia, which made me very sad. I loved the majority of her books; not all in the same degree, of course, and maybe if I would now read her first novel, The Sunne in Splendour (about the York kings, Edward IV and Richard III), for the first time, I would be far more critical, but back then it had a tremendous impact on me. I loved her trilogy of Welsh princes and messed up Plantagenets, "Here Be Dragons", "Falls the Shadow" and "The Reckoning", her take on the Maude vs Stephen civil war, "When Christ and his Saints Slept", is still the definite one for me (and has a fantastic version of the first meeting of future Henry II with Eleanor of Acquitaine), and several of her mystery novels are charming and entertaining. Once or twice a year, I checked out her blog, and her entries were always good humored, informative and very supportive of other authors, so as a person, too, she came across as very sympathetic.
The last time I'd checked had been a while, though, and thus I hadn't realised her novel about Outremer, - the medieval Kingdom created by the Crusaders in Palestine and parts of Syria - , The Land beyond the Sea, had been published. Learning this via the obituary
misbegotten had linked, I acquired the novel, and found it to be immensely readable, with Sharon Penman in fine form. (BTW, I also suspect it was liberating for her that not a single Plantagenet shows up; her Richard the Lionheart novels had come across as somewhat exhausted on that front.) The main focus is on two specific decades, the reign of Baldwin IV., the "leper king", followed by his sister Sybilla and her husband Guy de Lusignan, and the eventual fall of Jerusalem. While there is the usual huge cast that goes with a Penman novel, here it feels better structured than in the previous two, and the main characters - Balian d'Ibelin (who as Penman notes tongue in- cheek in her afterword would be transformed from Outremer nobility to illegitimate French blacksmith played by Orlando Bloom in "Kingdom of Heaven), Maria Commena, Agnes de Courtenay and her son the tragic and brave "leper king" Baldwin - are all compelling to follow. The Muslim side is well represented with chapters with mainly Saladin's brother Al-Adil as the (very sympathetic) pov character instead of being described through Christian eyes as in her previous two books, and to me, it felt like Penman managed to get the medieval mindset - and very specifically the subsection of the Outremer Christians who had all already been born and raised in these Kingdoms and didn't know France except by story - across without either glorifying or demonizing it. For me as a reader, it's still very sad there won't be anymore books by her, but this is a good final one.
Another book I read recently was Piranesi by Susanna Clarke of Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell fame. It was, as advertised, beautifully written, gorgeous language, sweeping descriptions, and completely independent and different from her previous success, a true original. It's also full of homages to, of all the things, the Narnia novels. And yet, there's one thing it does share with Strange & Norrell - in both cases, I feel a bit guilty that I can admire but not love the result, when I am able to love a great many books objectively worse written. But there it is. This entry was originally posted at https://selenak.dreamwidth.org/1435626.html. Comment there or here, as you wish.
misbegotten that Sharon Penman had died, of pneumonia, which made me very sad. I loved the majority of her books; not all in the same degree, of course, and maybe if I would now read her first novel, The Sunne in Splendour (about the York kings, Edward IV and Richard III), for the first time, I would be far more critical, but back then it had a tremendous impact on me. I loved her trilogy of Welsh princes and messed up Plantagenets, "Here Be Dragons", "Falls the Shadow" and "The Reckoning", her take on the Maude vs Stephen civil war, "When Christ and his Saints Slept", is still the definite one for me (and has a fantastic version of the first meeting of future Henry II with Eleanor of Acquitaine), and several of her mystery novels are charming and entertaining. Once or twice a year, I checked out her blog, and her entries were always good humored, informative and very supportive of other authors, so as a person, too, she came across as very sympathetic.
The last time I'd checked had been a while, though, and thus I hadn't realised her novel about Outremer, - the medieval Kingdom created by the Crusaders in Palestine and parts of Syria - , The Land beyond the Sea, had been published. Learning this via the obituary
misbegotten had linked, I acquired the novel, and found it to be immensely readable, with Sharon Penman in fine form. (BTW, I also suspect it was liberating for her that not a single Plantagenet shows up; her Richard the Lionheart novels had come across as somewhat exhausted on that front.) The main focus is on two specific decades, the reign of Baldwin IV., the "leper king", followed by his sister Sybilla and her husband Guy de Lusignan, and the eventual fall of Jerusalem. While there is the usual huge cast that goes with a Penman novel, here it feels better structured than in the previous two, and the main characters - Balian d'Ibelin (who as Penman notes tongue in- cheek in her afterword would be transformed from Outremer nobility to illegitimate French blacksmith played by Orlando Bloom in "Kingdom of Heaven), Maria Commena, Agnes de Courtenay and her son the tragic and brave "leper king" Baldwin - are all compelling to follow. The Muslim side is well represented with chapters with mainly Saladin's brother Al-Adil as the (very sympathetic) pov character instead of being described through Christian eyes as in her previous two books, and to me, it felt like Penman managed to get the medieval mindset - and very specifically the subsection of the Outremer Christians who had all already been born and raised in these Kingdoms and didn't know France except by story - across without either glorifying or demonizing it. For me as a reader, it's still very sad there won't be anymore books by her, but this is a good final one.
Another book I read recently was Piranesi by Susanna Clarke of Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell fame. It was, as advertised, beautifully written, gorgeous language, sweeping descriptions, and completely independent and different from her previous success, a true original. It's also full of homages to, of all the things, the Narnia novels. And yet, there's one thing it does share with Strange & Norrell - in both cases, I feel a bit guilty that I can admire but not love the result, when I am able to love a great many books objectively worse written. But there it is. This entry was originally posted at https://selenak.dreamwidth.org/1435626.html. Comment there or here, as you wish.