Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Best Historical Novel I've Ever Read, 6 Mar 2008
I recently read Within The Fetterlock for the second time, about three years after my first read. I found it every bit as compelling and downright brilliant as the first time.
Reading this novel is the closest thing to time travel I've ever experienced. It didn't feel as though I was reading, but rather that I was there, in the late 14th/early 15th century, with Constance, Thomas Despenser, Henry of Bolingbroke and the rest. Every time I put the book down, it took me a little while to adjust to the modern world again! I've never read any historical novel that felt so three-dimensional and so utterly real.
The description is just right, the characterisation spot on, the dialogue completely convincing. The characters, Constance especially, feel exactly right, medieval people behaving in medieval ways - not, as you so often find in histfict, modern people with modern attitudes dumped into a medieval setting.
There is a huge cast of characters, and the first chapter can be a little disorientating if you don't know who they all are, but Mr Wainwright trusts his readers' intelligence to get it and go with the flow. I'm not an expert on this time period, but all the characters are the grandchildren and great-grandchildren of the nobility of Edward II's era, my own area of interest, so I was fascinated to read the continuation of the 'family saga'.
What an astonishingly good writer Brian Wainwright is! I am in awe of his talent. I do hope he's planning another novel - preferably lots more, and I'll certainly be pre-ordering anything else he publishes. I urge you to read Within The Fetterlock. Historical novels just don't get any better.
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10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
OUTSTANDING!, 30 Jan 2007
A great read -- not your usual true love and battles and a happy ending -- this is a complicated tale of intrigue, treachery and conspiracy. This is not a quick and easy read. The "cast of characters" is large and complicated, it was well into 100+ pages before a grasped it all but well worth it. The author provided a list of characters to refer to which I found very helpful.
All in all a great read about a period I knew little about. As a side note, this book begins about the period that Katherine leaves off -- but is not related to that book and does not favor Henry of Bolingbrook that well. I did love the final scene between Constance and Henry's Queen. LOL. At the same time, I did enjoy reading about what become of Henry, as well as Katherine and John's two sons. Highly recommended.
As a side note, check out this author's other book, The Adventures of Alianore Audley. An hysterical send up of historical fiction, I doubt that Mel Brooks could have done better. Set in the period of Edward IV and Richard III. I recommend having a passing knowledge of the period or you'll miss half the jokes.
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5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Something very unique and original, 27 May 2007
'Within the Fetterlock' is an unusual novel that stand apart from most other works of this genre. Brian Wainwright has a taste for strong characters, and this is probably what makes his books infinitely superior to a lot of the mushy, affectatious tripe that seems to inhabit a lot of historical fiction. Constance of York is a really cool, feisty, miserable, acid-tongued heroine whose individuality blasts off the page from the word go, and she excites and surprises the reader by being the virtual opposite to the stereotypical female lead - involving herself directly in the deadly politics of the time and emerging as a key player in the major rebellion against Henry IV. Wainwright's love of the history is obvious, and what makes the novel such a refreshing read is that he cares about giving each of the characters their own distinctive personality and traits while weaving their individual experiences into the wider story of 14th century England, making an epic of a novel.
The novel's big drawback and the reason I have given it 3 stars is it's narrative. As an author, Wainwright is far more interested in dialogue than he is in narrative, and much of the novel reads almost like a movie script - pages and pages of speech with very little description or scene setting in between. There is a serious lack of description which is a shame because the medieval period has so many fascinationg sights and sounds on offer that the author could have wrote about in order to flesh out his novel. As it is, someone who doesn't have a strong knowledge of medieval dress or setting will often find it difficult to conjure up an image of what is going on. Even major character like Constance, Edmund Mortimer and Philippa de Mohun are described with only the vaguest physical description and the reader often has to use entirely their own imagination to picture other characters. However, while this is a drawback, 'Within the Fetterlock' is still a really great novel that is miles ahead of other novels in its field. It is a very good appraisal of a fascinating period in history that has yet to be covered by other authors, and very few books stage the events of history as excitingly as this one.
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by Brian Wainwright
by Elizabeth Chadwick
by Sharon Penman
by Elizabeth Chadwick
by Elizabeth Chadwick
