Colin Falconer

Note: this book is listed under the incorrect name on librarything. The review is for "Dark Lady", not "The School of Night".

This is book #2 in the continuing story of William Shakespeare...no, not that one. William is a strapping young man from the country who is bunking with his not-quite-famous-yet cousin Will who is struggling to make a name for himself. William just wants to stay in London, find employment & try to forget the lovely Lady Elizabeth Walsall.
She stole his heart in the show more previous book but this is 1590's England & there are rules. She must marry someone from her own class & that does not include a penniless country bumpkin. now if she could just get her heart to see sense.
William has accidentally become a "discoverer", a sort of Elizabethan PI. It seems the rich have just as many secrets as the poor. The difference is they can pay handsomely to have them quietly dealt with.
And so William takes the job of retrieving a letter for a wealthy foreigner. But it's soon clear he wasn't given all the facts as the trail leads to Poley, friend of the cruel Lord Essex & spy master to the royal court.
It's only 182 pages so I won't give away more of the plot. Adding to William's problems are frequent run-ins with a young pickpocket, helping Will with his career (while dodging his frisky mistress) & the reappearance of Lady Elizabeth in London. It's well written in language suitable for the time but very readable.
William is a sympathetic & likeable character with a self deprecating wit & surprising insight into the human condition. In a clever twist, he's actually the one prone to spouting poetic comments & cousin Will doesn't hesitate to steal his best lines.
Descriptions of the gritty slums & desperate lives of the poor are wonderfully evocative. It makes for an atmospheric read as the teeming streets & rat infested back alleys come to life. The prevailing xenophobia of the time is also touched on but lightened with a running gag of William being mistaken for a frenchman.
This fast paced & frequently humorous shortie will transport you from your favourite reading chair for a couple of hours & keep you entertained. A big twist at the end guarantees I'll be on the lookout for book #3 to see where William's adventures take him next. show less

To me, few things are better than a great stand alone historical novel. I knew that the author had a talent for the historical fiction craft way back when I read, When We Were Gods: A Novel of Cleopatra, (in my pre-blogging days). And he does not disappoint with East India.

What the author does best in this novel is to really bring out the true grit of what travel by sea must have been like in the 17th century. I certainly can't imagine being on board a ship, in cramped and less than hygienic show more conditions, for seven to eight months at a time. And yet, this book had me feeling uncomfortable because it did make me imagine what it was like and I was thankful that when I was able to tear myself away from reading it, I was safely in my comfy home. And not only was there far from ideal comfort on board the ship, but there were constant undertones of danger and gossip. Mutiny seemed to always be a possibility among the ship's crew.

The main character, Cornelia, is a high ranking lady and beautiful as well. So, of course, she is admired by some and vilified by others, thinking she's haughty and high minded. What struck me about her was that she was just really unhappy. A loveless marriage and the thought of travelling to be with the man she did not love, coupled with the arduous sea journey could not have been a happy time for anyone. What befalls her only makes matters worse.

What we learn in East India is that a good portion of the seven deadly sins are very present aboard ship and this leads to a very tragic outcome. Not only is East India historically accurate (am I the only one who has never heard of a bosun or a provost?), but it also does an excellent job of showing us human nature through the vivid characterization and action. As I was reading, I could picture each character - what they looked like and what they were about. It was like watching a movie in my head.

The author has quite a back list of novels, some of which are sitting on my 'to be read/to be reviewed' stack, and after reading East India, I know I'm in for a treat in my future reading. show less

One of my great pleasures is to curl up with a historical detective novel. And, of course we all know that they are purely a work of fiction and that things were never quite like the novel, no matter how much effort the author has put into ensuring authenticity.

All novels in this genre follow the same model - some unknown person becomes involved with one or more historical personages via employment or family connections, there's a dead body or a missing person and a mystery to solve, and show more it's all somehow tied to some historical events. You could just as well use the same formula for a mystery novel set in Tudor London as one set during the dotcom crash in Silicon Valley.

What distinguishes a good historical mystery from an indifferent one is the quality of writing and how easily you suspend your disbelief. In this case the writing is witty, fluid and enjoyable. The historical background is accurate - the author has certainly done his research.

The plot is a variant on the classic model - William Shakespeare's cousin of the same name gets bored with life in Stratford as a glove maker, comes to London to stay with his successful cousin and make his fortune. Along the way, he gets involved with a beautiful, if sharp tongued, lady, and there's a missing husband and a twist ...

This is a highly enjoyable book, and ideal for curling up with when you want to escape the world for an afternoon ... show less

Six-word review: Absorbing adventure-romance spanning medieval Asia.

Extended review:

Silk Road is an exciting action tale that makes the most of its dramatic social, cultural, and topographical settings, which are well integrated into the story.

In the mid-thirteenth century a Knight Templar named Josseran Sarrazini sets off eastward from the Mediterranean across Asia on a mission for his order. The ancient Silk Road, though well traveled, was still a rugged route that took months to traverse show more through terrain beset by dangers of every kind. The warrior daughter of a Tatar chieftain is assigned to guide the knight across a portion of the treacherous domain controlled by her people at a time when the vast empire of the Khans is threatened by political upheaval.

As Josseran's progressive disenchantment with his mission comes into conflict with his pragmatic commitment to the Templar order, he begins to see that he has nothing to go home for. Meanwhile, his attention is occupied by the daily battle for survival and the allure of the chieftain's daughter.

This well-researched blend of history and geography with romance and adventure delivers a strong sense of time and place and cultural diversity. Set in a time of transition, when the rivalry between brothers (grandsons of Genghis Khan) for the title of Khan of Khans causes the breakdown of a united empire, the novel vividly depicts two strains of the race of Tatars: the traditional nomadic peoples of Central Asia and the Chinese-acculturated khans. It is culturally nonjudgmental for the most part, although the Dominican friars look bad, and so do the Chinese Tatars.

I'm not much of a reader of romances, but there is enough else going on to keep that aspect of the story from dominating it. Instead, it weaves in and out and adds an intimate dimension to a story that is in many other respects a rich sensory experience with an inherently cinematic quality. This is, in fact, one of those novels that clamor to be a movie. I can't help suspecting that the author kept the screenplay in mind as he set down his scenes and action. The last glimpse of Josseran is an extreme long shot that gives us just enough to carry forward in our imagination.

Oddly, there is a strange shift at the end. The plot takes a sudden turn that completes one storyline well enough but nevertheless seems to throw the structure off balance, like adding that one last log to the woodpile, the one that turns out to be one too many.

As I sometimes like to do, I read this novel in tandem with a related work of nonfiction, in this case Valerie Hansen's The Silk Road: A New History. I found that each amplified the other, one supplying context and concrete detail and the other lending much color and movement. By now, two months later, the two have merged and mellowed nicely in my mind, leaving me with a luminous mental picture of a time and place that had thitherto been dark to me.

What else I happened to be reading at the same time was The Martian, and there I found unlooked-for parallels. Like Mark Watney on Mars, Josseran embodies both of the two basic plot structures: "someone takes a trip" and "a stranger comes to town." He is compelled to take an unexpected journey, and for some long part of it all he wants is to get home. He must be resourceful and adaptive to meet changing conditions and survive mortal challenges in a harsh environment. In both, the setting is crucial to story. Unlike Mark, Josseran finds guides all along the way; but Mark has all of NASA in his corner, as well as an arsenal of equipment. Also unlike Mark, Josseran loses his impetus to accomplish his mission when it becomes meaningless. In both, however, there is a strong echo of the classic hero's journey described by Campbell, the mythic quest to reach the goal and return with the elixir. No matter how many times we hear it, it always makes a good story.

(Kindle edition) show less