The never-ending story.

Lady of the Roses
Sandra Worth

That's it. I'm done. I can't take it anymore.

I absolutely cannot read another book about the Wars of the Roses. Possibly ever.

In the past six months, I have read two other 400-page-plus books about this bloody period of civil wars in Merry Old England (The White Queen and A Secret Alchemy), and I didn't love either of them, I found them too dry and complicated and just too chock-full of battles and short on plot. When I reviewed each I got comments about how I should read The Sunne in Splendor, or else Lady of the Roses, instead. Sunne is out of print and hard to get, but I did come across Lady in the used book store, and so I snapped it up.

Disclosure: I actually started reading this book way back in October before setting it down. I picked it back up again to take home over the Thanksgiving holiday and you know, I was right in October. I should have left it on the shelf. Oh, it's not Sandra Worth's fault. She's a talented writer who knows her Yorks from her Lancasters, but I just. Cannot. Deal with feuding royals. ANYMORE.

Lord love her, Worth tries so hard to make this book unique among its kith. Most everybody who writes historical fiction about this time period writes from the perspective of Richard III or Elizabeth Woodville, but Worth picks the lesser known Isobel Ingoldsthorpe, ward of Queen Marguerite d'Anjou, a Lancastrian lady who marries John Neville, Yorkist leader. It's a refreshing twist (it's not Lizzy Woodville!) but in the end, it's not refreshing enough. I read for a hundred pages about Isobel and John's complicated courtship--and then it was just battles, battles, battles. And more battles. On and on and on. It never ends.

"And then Edward of York went to Wakefield, and then he was captured, and then he escaped and then he was captured again, and then he went to Bosworth, and he was captured..."

And if Worth took some care with her plot, I just have to say this: I would so so so so SO love to read a book about a woman in this time period who is not all sweetness and light. Back then women were treated like utter and complete shit and every heroine of every book like this just doesn't seem to mind. And like, they wouldn't know any other way, but there's got to be at least one of them who is like, FTS, FML. They were also pretty much sold off to the highest bidder, women were, where matrimony was concerned, but these heroes and heroines also have such passionate, heartfelt feelings for one another. They write each other sonnets. They say things like, "Thou art my angel, dearest one!" Just once I would like the lady of the roses I am reading about to be pissed off and not fond of her oafish husband. "That rat bastard's gone to Bosworth--good riddance!"

The whole point of historical fiction is to acquaint you with a time period by making it palatable, and disguising history as something entertaining, by making you like and relate to these characters. But so often in these books, the author slips, and reveals that really it's not about them but their history, instead. Worth does this a little. I have to call her on it. You think you're reading a love story, or an account of someone's life, but then you get breezy chapters that gloss over the span of five years in a few paragraphs, like, "1487 was a peaceful year. 1488 dawned chilly and cold and then went out in splendor. In 1489, trouble returned in the form of forces massing on Blore Heath." Like, I know the battles and the history drive the plot, but don't try to play me like that. You just omitted three years in the protagonist's life, and that reminds you that it's not about the character, after all, and distances you from them. I mean, something happened to them in those years. But it's not important I guess, so why am I supposed to care? You're reminded that the character is just a vessel for this story.

I couldn't finish this book. BECAUSE I DON'T CARE. Because in the end, as interesting as the idea of one family of royals feuding against the other is, in the end they're just made up of two groups of people who think that, for some reason, by virtue of their birth, they can set themselves up over everybody else, and command them, and execute them at will. I think I was supposed to weep bitter tears when a person in this book met his untimely end (query: I'm trying not to spoil you, but can you spoil somebody about something that's in a textbook?) but all I could think about was the three thousand poor commoners who were roped into fighting for this bama and also died, and whom I wasn't supposed to cry for, I guess. Because their parents weren't Plantagenets. Or something.

It could just be that I'm burnt out on this topic. I don't know. I can't think anymore. Maybe I'll give this book another chance sometime, after enough time has passed so that the story seems fresh to me. So like, when I'm seventy. I'll finish it then.

Rating: abandoned