Scan barcode
A review by tessisreading2
A Mortal Bane by Roberta Gellis
4.0
Roberta Gellis is right up there with Ellis Peters/Edith Pargeter in terms of writing a believable middle ages: her characters are sympathetic but not ahistorical and there are a million tiny details which make the setting feel lived-in and real. Romance, which Gellis usually writes, can be a very constricting genre - medieval marriages were almost never made for love, and historical romance readers have very clear expectations of what they want to be reading, whether or not that matches how things would have played out in history - and the fact that this one is a mystery gives her a lot more space for realism.
The heroine, Magdalene le Batarde, is a whore (actually a madam), which allows her a great deal of latitude in her actions (she is, after all, a businesswoman) while keeping this freedom realistic. That said, the fact that every other whore in the brothel is somehow different (blind, mute, developmentally delayed) is a little ridiculous, and the plot did have a tendency to plod at points. Overall, however, an engrossing read which feels like reading fiction about an actual historical event.
One warning note, however, is that while I think the level of realism is at Peters/Pargeter's, the overall feel is much grittier; there is more violence (or, properly, more frightening violence: it is sometimes directed at the main characters, often casually, rather than kept at a safe investigatory remove) and because several of the main characters are whores, there is much more attention devoted to how medieval attitudes towards women were harmful and awful. The Brother Cadfael novels are much more soothing, and the genre of medieval mysteries they spawned have a tendency to be cozy and pleasant, with less attention devoted to the dirt, violence, and (literally) cutthroat politics of the early middle ages. That cannot be said of Gellis' work, so readers should know what they're getting into.
The heroine, Magdalene le Batarde, is a whore (actually a madam), which allows her a great deal of latitude in her actions (she is, after all, a businesswoman) while keeping this freedom realistic. That said, the fact that every other whore in the brothel is somehow different (blind, mute, developmentally delayed) is a little ridiculous, and the plot did have a tendency to plod at points. Overall, however, an engrossing read which feels like reading fiction about an actual historical event.
One warning note, however, is that while I think the level of realism is at Peters/Pargeter's, the overall feel is much grittier; there is more violence (or, properly, more frightening violence: it is sometimes directed at the main characters, often casually, rather than kept at a safe investigatory remove) and because several of the main characters are whores, there is much more attention devoted to how medieval attitudes towards women were harmful and awful. The Brother Cadfael novels are much more soothing, and the genre of medieval mysteries they spawned have a tendency to be cozy and pleasant, with less attention devoted to the dirt, violence, and (literally) cutthroat politics of the early middle ages. That cannot be said of Gellis' work, so readers should know what they're getting into.