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A review by annabellee
The Thistle and the Rose by Jean Plaidy
2.0
This is the story of Margaret Stuart, née Tudor, Princess of England and Queen of Scotland. It is very poorly written.
Firstly, the writing style is deplorable. it feels like a summary - 314 pages of summary - glossing over events that, rightly, should have had pages devoted to them. Episodes that could have been compelling and exciting were delivered in an almost sterile fashion. And it is repetitive; you cannot go 20 pages without the author harping back on a theme. The foreshadowing is pitiful, made all the worse because it is there at all.
The characterization is a joke. There is far too much "tell" and almost no "show" whatsoever. Repetitiveness, again - every time we are privy to Margaret's thoughts (the one place where artistic license belongs in a historical novel that holds itself out as being well-researched), they are incessantly dull, monotonous, and fickle. A great personality change is trumpeted all about by the narrator, only to have the characters' thoughts revert back to boring vapidity within the paragraph.
I was disappointed by this novel. I expected more from Jean Plaidy - of course, it has been some time since I had read a novel by her, so perhaps her writing simply doesn't hold up as well as I had thought.
There is little graphic violence or language, and though there are allusions to sex none is graphically described. I would recommend this for middle-school level readers. Two stars.
Firstly, the writing style is deplorable. it feels like a summary - 314 pages of summary - glossing over events that, rightly, should have had pages devoted to them. Episodes that could have been compelling and exciting were delivered in an almost sterile fashion. And it is repetitive; you cannot go 20 pages without the author harping back on a theme. The foreshadowing is pitiful, made all the worse because it is there at all.
The characterization is a joke. There is far too much "tell" and almost no "show" whatsoever. Repetitiveness, again - every time we are privy to Margaret's thoughts (the one place where artistic license belongs in a historical novel that holds itself out as being well-researched), they are incessantly dull, monotonous, and fickle. A great personality change is trumpeted all about by the narrator, only to have the characters' thoughts revert back to boring vapidity within the paragraph.
I was disappointed by this novel. I expected more from Jean Plaidy - of course, it has been some time since I had read a novel by her, so perhaps her writing simply doesn't hold up as well as I had thought.
There is little graphic violence or language, and though there are allusions to sex none is graphically described. I would recommend this for middle-school level readers. Two stars.