A thoughtful, dramatically gripping work of historical fiction.
In Johnson’s historical novel set in 16th-century England, a popular musician in King Henry VIII’s court becomes dangerously caught in a thicket of political intrigue.
Mark Smeaton is born into inauspicious circumstances; his father is a poor carpenter, which, for most, would set one’s destiny in stone. However, he’s also a prodigiously talented musician—a composer, singer, and lutenist—and becomes a court musician for the king, who admires his abilities. He impresses Anne Boleyn as well, a beautiful woman of “silken faultlessness” who becomes the monarch’s second wife, and as her star rises, so does his. However, after Anne falls out of favor with the king, his own status is threatened, and he finds himself ensnared in a plot, manufactured by the king’s cunning chief minister, Thomas Cromwell, to discard her. Meanwhile, Mark engages in an imprudent flirtation with Anne’s cousin Madge Shelton, who lives in a rarefied world that no amount of success would ever allow him to enter—a predicament he grasps with both sadness and pragmatic resignation, captured intelligently by author Johnson: “I wasn’t a friend of the king. I was a lowborn commoner who was perhaps exceptionally skilled in music. In the eyes of the world, my worth had barely changed even with my new duties and responsibilities.” The story is told from the perspectives of both Madge and Mark, and she also resolutely accepts that their love is a mere “fairy tale.” The author astutely depicts a seedy world in which “politics seeped into every act”; even as Mark becomes famous and wealthy, Mark realizes the precariousness of his fortune, and the way in which he is “floating above a cesspool of terror and death.” The protagonist is a real historical figure, though little is known about him, which makes him a perfect point of departure for a dramatic and engrossing reimagining of history. It’s an era that both historians and novelists have extensively covered, but Johnson’s work remains an original and worthwhile effort.
A thoughtful, dramatically gripping work of historical fiction.Pub Date: May 27, 2025
ISBN: 9781684633104
Page Count: 256
Publisher: SparkPress
Review Posted Online: Dec. 11, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Vintage Follett. His fans will be pleased.
A dramatic, complex imagining of the origins of Stonehenge.
In about 2500 B.C.E. on the Great Plain, Seft and his family collect flints in a mine. He dislikes the work, and the motherless lad hates the abuse he gets from his father and brothers. He leaves them and arrives at a wooden monument where sacred events such as the Midsummer Rite take place. There are also circles of stones that help predict equinoxes, solstices, even eclipses. This is a world where the customary greeting is “May the Sun God smile on you,” and everyone is a year older on Midsummer Day. Except for a priestess or two, no one can count beyond fingers and toes—to indicate 30, they show both hands, point to both feet, then show both hands again. Casual sex is common, and sex between women is less common but not taboo. Joia, a young woman who becomes a priestess, wonders about her sexuality. After a fire destroys the Monument, she leads a bold effort to rebuild it in stone. To please the gods, they must haul 10 giant stones from distant Stony Valley. Of course neither machinery nor roads exist, so the difficulties are extraordinary. Although the project has its detractors, hundreds of able-bodied people are willing to help. Craftspeople known as cleverhands construct a sled and a road, and they make the rope to wrap around the stones. Many, many others pull. And pull. Meanwhile, the three principal groups—farmers, woodlanders, and herders—all have their separate interests. There is talk of war, which Joia has never seen in her lifetime. Soon it seems inevitable that the powerful farmers will not only start one but win it, unless heroes like Seft and Joia can come up with a creative plan. But there is also the matter of love for Joia in this well-plotted and well-told yarn. The story has a lot of characters from multiple tribes, and they can be hard to keep track of. A page in the front of the book listing who’s who would be helpful.
Vintage Follett. His fans will be pleased.Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2025
ISBN: 9781538772775
Page Count: 704
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 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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