ALL THE KINGS BASTARDS by Gemma Lawrence @TudorTweep

 5 GOLD stars

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How I discovered this book: A favourite author.

In a Nutshell: Alternative history: what if Henry VIII had died from his jousting accident in 1536?  Book #1 of a series.

I love 'what if' discussions and stories, and alternative history generally - I've read a few novels of the genre but this is easily the best.  Gemma Lawrence has excelled herself with this vision of how 16th Century life would have played out had Henry VIII died in the jousting accident that caused a gruesome injury to his leg; in the real world, this plagued him for the rest of his life.  Anne Boleyn was pregnant at the time and Henry had recently began his courtship of Jane Seymour.  Imagine: Anne did not miscarry her baby and he didn't live to marry Jane Seymour, so Edward VI never existed.  Catherines Howard and Parr had a lucky escape - and what of Anne of Cleves?  Most importantly, of course, Anne Boleyn, brother George and various others were not executed as a result of Cromwell's dastardly plot to remove them.

...and there is so much more.  The battle for succession: Elizabeth, Henry Fitzroy, Anne's unborn child, Mary Tudor.  By the end of this book Anne has not yet given birth but already the country is in uproar, with riots and violent divisions.

Ms Lawrence's historical novels are generally told from one first person point of view, but this is totally different, with each chapter focusing on one of a variety of players.  Anne, Mary, Jane Seymour, Spanish Ambassador Chapuys, Thomas Wyatt, Fitzroy and many others.  Insight into the world of the common man is provided through the eyes of Magpye Grey, the young daughter of an innkeeper, and also Thomas Blank, a Moor who once fought alongside Magpye's father; in her notes at the back of the book Ms Lawrence provides an eye-opening insight about the population of people of colour in England in the 16th century, little of which I knew about.  Throughout, there is much more detail about the day to day life of the time, which I loved finding out about (particularly the origin of the term 'straight-laced'!).

What I admired so much about this novel is that Ms Lawrence has considered every aspect of the court and beyond - altered fortunes for Robert Aske, Margaret Douglas, Margaret Plantagenet, Countess of Salisbury and the rest of the Pole family.  Will Fitzroy still die young, now he is in a different place?  The beginning of the book is fairly quiet, but the fall-out from Henry's death means that it soon gathers momentum, and it got better and better as it went on.  I think that the more you know about the history of this time, the more you will enjoy it; I kept thinking, 'oh, clever!'

Well done, Gemma Lawrence, you have mastered a new genre, and I cannot wait to read the next book!

THE MIND'S EVIL TOY (The Life and Death of Amy Dudley) by Gemma Lawrence @TudorTweep

5 out of 5 stars

On Amazon (universal link)
On Goodreads

How I discovered this book: A favourite author, was looking forward to it.

In a Nutshell: Historical fiction with a fantastical element.

Amy Dudley, neglected wife of Lord Robert Dudley, walks through the story of her life with him ... after she has departed this world.  She is led from place to place, from situation to situation, by her companion: Death.  The purpose of this journey is to uncover the truth, and thus allow her to rest in peace, behind not only her mysterious passing, but the crumbling of her once happy marriage, as the love between Dudley and Queen Elizabeth I deepens.

I'm not into the genre of fantasy at all, but this book worked for me so well.  I loved it.  It didn't feel like fantasy as such, I think because the events portrayed really did happen. 

Amy and Death discuss the machinations of her husband and his ill-fated relationship with the queen, shown to them via their invisible presence in scenes from the past.  I found this a perfect way to tell such a story; a straight fiction from the points of view of Elizabeth, Robert and Amy would not have been half so compelling.

The twist on the likely truth behind Amy's demise is clever and interesting, written in the mode of any good murder mystery, though the notes at the back of the book reveal the author's actual thoughts on the matter (I too am in agreement with the general opinion).  However, this is not all the book is about.  It's the story of a love that couldn't be, of ambition and deceit, of the Queen's triumph of sense over passion; it makes one ponder an abandoned woman's lot in such times, and also the value of life itself, with some wise observations from the not-at-all-demonic Death.

'The wisdom of others should never be ignored, but it should also never be followed with such slavish abandon that we forget to use the matter of our own minds'

'All things must end, that is the way of things. But other beings than me, grief, bitterness, resentment, these are the true enemies, for they steal life still there to live.  They make people think life, this precious and unlikely gift, is not worth living, and the worst of it is, it is a lie and people are tricked into believing it.  I am not the enemy, just the end.  Those who steal away life from those still living, they are the enemy'

It is observations such as these that reiterate to me why Gemma Lawrence is so successful at her chosen profession.  Well done.

NEANDER by Harald Johnson #RBRT

4.5 out of 5 stars

On Amazon UK
On Amazon.com
On Goodreads
On BookBub

How I discovered this book: it was submitted to Rosie's Book Review Team, of which I am a member; I offered to review it for the team, though I had already bought it after reading the author's previous publication, New York 1609.

In a Nutshell: A time travel adventure (modern day to Neanderthal times) that ponders questions of an anthropological nature.

Tom Cook is a science journalist working on an archaeological dig in Gibraltar, when disaster strikes in the form of a boat accident—his pregnant fiancée is missing.  When Tom goes searching for her, he slips through a time portal that takes him back.... way back, to 40,000 years ago.  Neanderthal man has yet to become extinct, though the threat of Homo Sapiens is on the horizon.

Tom finds ways to communicate with them and become part of their world.  Quite early on, I saw that this was not just a time travel adventure, and that Tom's actions would have repercussions, which added interest, as I looked forward to finding out how great these would be.  Tom has a wealth of knowledge to teach his new family, and draws on his own research about Neanderthal man to find the best methods to help them, especially when they come face to face with the more ruthless Sapiens.

In the notes at the back, the author mentions having read Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari; I've read three books by Harari and could feel the influence; I actually thought 'ah, he's been reading Sapiens' a couple of times, before I read the notes, but this wasn't a negative; I liked it.  

Neander held my interest all the way through; of course time travel stories always depend on disbelief suspension on the part of the reader, but the fantasy must be believeable within the fiction, and for the most part this was; I'd give it about seven out of ten, because I needed to know more about how he communicated with these prehistoric people in order to be completely convinced by the fact that he did.  Also, I was so looking forward to finding out how Tom's actions of 40K years ago impacted on the world we know now, but there was less detail than I'd hoped for.  On the whole, though, this book is fun and an easy read, an inventive, interesting and original story, as well as providing questions and ideas on which to ponder, which makes it a win-win as far as I'm concerned; yes, I recommend it!

THE USURPER KING by Zeb Haradon #RBRT

4.5 out of 5 stars

On Amazon UK
On Amazon.com
On Goodreads

How I discovered this book: it was submitted to Rosie's Book Review Team, of which I am a member.

Genre: Alternative history, dark humour, Scifi, crime, fantasy, adventure....

I chose this book from the review team submissions list because I liked the idea: an alternative present, in which the crimes of Ted Bundy have not been discovered, and he is now running for president, as a Republican.  Senator Bundy is facist, sexist, you-name-it-ist, and pro-guns; in this alternative reality, active shooters (who number amongst his supporters) are a force to be reckoned with on a day-to-day basis, rather than an occasional horror. 

Zeb Haradon is a terrific writer with a real story-telling spark that's superbly dry, and his humour is absolutely up my street.  The book is clever, unusual, touching, funny and in parts made me laugh out loud, a rare occurrence; I was heard to mutter 'Brilliant!' in a couple of places.  I read it in 48 hours.

The Usurper King is told from the first person point of view of Jim Galesh, a 40 year old who has always struggled to find his place in the world.  He has a broken marriage, a drink problem, and suffers from a disease called TAP: Technologically Acquired Progeria.  This was acquired via 'some sociopathic prankster who decided to write the first hybrid biological/computer virus'.  Basically, he is ageing much more quickly than he should be (and the stuff about his time working in computer journalism, where he got this disease, is hilarious).   

Jim is on the way to winning big money when he stars on the game show Guts!, on which contestants practice extispicy - predicting the future by studying animal entrails.  Via the show he meets super-intelligent hillbilly Nick, who introduces him to the idea that Bundy is a serial killer, and that many of the murders attributed to the Green River Killer were actually committed by Bundy.

One of the high spots was discovering, half way through, the identity of 'JW', Bundy's Democratic rival, which explained some things like Chicago's high murder rate - it was dropped in so smoothly.  Elsewhere, some of the parts I loved best were those about Jim's family: his son Reg, who he adores, and neurotic ex-wife Agatha and her control freak family.  There are a wonderful few pages about his in-laws:

"Do you remember Clippy?  That's the cartoon paper clip in Microsoft from the late 1990s.  You would open a new document and start writing and it would just up and force its fucking self into your writing and say "it looks like you're writing a letter" and try to offer these unhelpful writing tips while you look for the X button to shut it down.. I think they call it Office Assistant.... anyway, Agatha's mother was like a cross between Clippy and Nurse Ratched... then there was her father.  As you might imagine, the years with Clippy Ratched have left him a shell of a human."

Often, it was just the day-to-day observations that I loved the most, or odd sentences; I highlighted so many.

"They had the kind of faces you see in an illustrated dictionary next to the definition of the word 'loser'." 

"Some other dork trying to look like a thug came in carrying a baseball bat.  'I understand you don't want to co-operate.  I'm the guy they bring in to help people co-operate.  They call me Mr Co-operation'."

Nick:  "You got a phone?  I mean one of them fancy ones with the internet on."

Jim goes to a doctor to try and get more of the medicine that helps him cut down drinking, the doctor is reluctant to give it, and tries to steer him, instead, towards the Twelve Steps.  Jim: "The only criticism of it I read came from these AA lunkheads and websites for rehabs who stood to lose a bundle if people found something that actually worked."

I'm giving this 4.5* because there are a fair few proofreading errors (missing vocative commas, argh!), particularly in one section around the middle that wasn't as well put together as the rest of the book (it's when Jim is trying to get Bundy looked into), to the extent that I wondered if it had been written in a hurry, an afterthought, but I'll still round that 4.5* up to 5* on Amazon, because it really is a great book.  Another proofread, a bit of a tidying up in places, and it would be outstanding.  I recommend it wholeheartedly to anyone who likes clever observational humour of the dry American kind.  The end is totally, totally unexpected, by the way.

Whether or not some of it is a comment on the current political situation in the US, I really couldn't say.

"...like the old British class system, where mediocre people get special privileges because they were born into wealth.  But it does seem there is a natural aristocracy - one which comes from intelligence, acquired ability, self-education, a natural curiosity about the world, an independence of thought, or maybe just a vigor for life - and which cleaves society into the winners and the losers.  The losers, finding themselves impotent in mastering the art of life, are naturally going to be envious and bitter, and voting for Bundy was their revenge against the world."