A royal tale enlivened by imaginative drama but burdened with excessive religiosity.
A historical novel based on the life and marriage of an uncrowned queen of England, Scotland, and Ireland during the 17th century.
Henriette-Marie, the youngest child of King Henri IV of France and his queen, Marie de Médicis, is just 15 when she marries King Charles I of England in 1625—just a month after he assumes the English throne following the death of King James. It’s taken a year of political negotiations with various royals and the Vatican to get a papal dispensation for a union between the Catholic princess and the Anglican king; however, as a Catholic, she’ll never have a coronation. Still, Henriette-Marie, who’s also known as “Henrietta Maria,” declares her advantages with considerable merriment: “I had many offers for my hand, since my dowry was generous. Moreover, I was comely, as princesses go, and it was known that I had a straight back, all my teeth, clear skin and was a nimble dancer.” With naïve romantic idealism and a conviction that she’ll eventually convert her husband and offer protection to persecuted Catholics, she sets sail for her new home across the English Channel. Vidal’s expansive tale—the first installment of a projected three-volume series devoted to the life of Henriette-Marie—offers palace intrigue, international conflict, and personal turmoil. But at its heart, it’s a poignant and often charming love story. The author’s extensive research has resulted in pages that brim with vivid descriptions of all things royal, including wardrobe minutiae, architecture, interior palace décor, and an abundance of servants—some who are devoutly loyal, others decidedly less so. The warmongering Duke of Buckingham, an influential favorite of the king, serves ably as the novel’s villain, as he poses threats to the kingdom as a whole and to the royal marriage in particular. However, the narrative pace slows considerably each time Vidal dwells on the young queen’s repetitious religious devotionals, complete with liturgical passages. It’s also quite challenging to keep track of the names, nicknames, and changing titles of the numerous secondary characters. Nonetheless, a final surprise should leave many readers smiling.
A royal tale enlivened by imaginative drama but burdened with excessive religiosity.Pub Date: Nov. 25, 2021
ISBN: 979-8756784169
Page Count: 287
Publisher: Mayapple Books
Review Posted Online: Jan. 4, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
An engaging, imaginative narrative hampered by its lack of subtlety.
The Medusa myth, reimagined as an Afrocentric, feminist tale with the Gorgon recast as avenging hero.
In mythological Greece, where gods still have a hand in the lives of humans, 17-year-old Medusa lives on an island with her parents, old sea gods who were overthrown at the rise of the Olympians, and her sisters, Euryale and Stheno. The elder sisters dote on Medusa and bond over the care of her “locs...my dearest physical possession.” Their idyll is broken when Euryale is engaged to be married to a cruel demi-god. Medusa intervenes, and a chain of events leads her to a meeting with the goddess Athena, who sees in her intelligence, curiosity, and a useful bit of rage. Athena chooses Medusa for training in Athens to become a priestess at the Parthenon. She joins the other acolytes, a group of teenage girls who bond, bicker, and compete in various challenges for their place at the temple. As an outsider, Medusa is bullied (even in ancient Athens white girls rudely grab a Black girl’s hair) and finds a best friend in Apollonia. She also meets a nameless boy who always seems to be there whenever she is in need; this turns out to be Poseidon, who is grooming the inexplicably naïve Medusa. When he rapes her, Athena finds out and punishes Medusa and her sisters by transforming their locs into snakes. The sisters become Gorgons, and when colonizing men try to claim their island, the killing begins. Telling a story of Black female power through the lens of ancient myth is conceptually appealing, but this novel published as adult fiction reads as though intended for a younger audience.
An engaging, imaginative narrative hampered by its lack of subtlety.Pub Date: Nov. 18, 2025
ISBN: 9780593733769
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Aug. 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2025
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.
Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II.
In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring passeurs: people who aided the escape of others during the war. Cut to spring, 1940: Viann has said goodbye to husband Antoine, who's off to hold the Maginot line against invading Germans. She returns to tending her small farm, Le Jardin, in the Loire Valley, teaching at the local school and coping with daughter Sophie’s adolescent rebellion. Soon, that world is upended: The Germans march into Paris and refugees flee south, overrunning Viann’s land. Her long-estranged younger sister, Isabelle, who has been kicked out of multiple convent schools, is sent to Le Jardin by Julien, their father in Paris, a drunken, decidedly unpaternal Great War veteran. As the depredations increase in the occupied zone—food rationing, systematic looting, and the billeting of a German officer, Capt. Beck, at Le Jardin—Isabelle’s outspokenness is a liability. She joins the Resistance, volunteering for dangerous duty: shepherding downed Allied airmen across the Pyrenees to Spain. Code-named the Nightingale, Isabelle will rescue many before she's captured. Meanwhile, Viann’s journey from passive to active resistance is less dramatic but no less wrenching. Hannah vividly demonstrates how the Nazis, through starvation, intimidation and barbarity both casual and calculated, demoralized the French, engineering a community collapse that enabled the deportations and deaths of more than 70,000 Jews. Hannah’s proven storytelling skills are ideally suited to depicting such cataclysmic events, but her tendency to sentimentalize undermines the gravitas of this tale.
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-57722-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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