Granted, some of the voices the reader uses to portray various actors were not the best, but the reader's own standard voice was excellent. You’ll also get nice overviews of modern scholarly debates about the period, and also asides about revisionist movements like the Ricardians, in addition to the author’s own perspective which is woven out of an account of the lives of some of the period’s key side players, like William Hastings and Margaret Beaufort. Part of its appeal is that it frequently talks back to Shakespeare’s portrayals of the period’s key actors as heroes and villains and the extent to which such portrayals were a product of Shakespeare’s Tudor world. If you have that minimum starting point I think you will enjoy this book. The author does assume that the reader knows the key events of the period and the various rulers and their allies and antagonists, and also Shakespeare’s portrayal of them. It is probably true that if you are not already familiar with the Wars of the Roses and its main actors that you may get a little lost.
I really enjoyed this title and the voice of the reader. You didn’t love this book-but did it have any redeeming qualities? I am reminded of a great review of a book that I read which basically said a great narrator can turn a poor book into a good one this one didn't really give a great contribution. It was a bit flat in the way it was narrated almost suggesting the narrator didn't get it either. How could the performance have been better? Hard copy of the family tree and a note pad to write some sort of diagram of what's going on! How would you have changed the story to make it more enjoyable?
I was inspired to 'read' the book by the White Queen on TV which I also found hard to follow because we watched it spaced over a long period of time. I suspect the hard copy book is quite interesting as it might be easier to flick back and see the family tree and refer to earlier incidents with the same cast of characters. If you sit down with this and a family tree of the British monarchy of the period you might have a chance of grasping it but if like me you like to walk around pruning roses and listening it's just too complicated to grasp.
If this book wasn’t for you, who do you think might enjoy it more?
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