adventurous challenging informative fast-paced
informative reflective medium-paced
informative medium-paced

A very good book that covers mainly Henry I's life. One part for before, another for the incident, and a final one for the aftermath of losing a son and heir. Definitely one I want for my shelf to flesh out the start of the Plantagenets.
adventurous dark informative medium-paced
adventurous challenging informative medium-paced
adventurous challenging dark informative fast-paced
informative reflective sad medium-paced
adventurous challenging dark tense medium-paced
dark emotional informative slow-paced

This is a solid history book, written for a non-academic audience but still engaging and informative.  The book is divided into three sections; Henry I's life up to the disaster:  a close examination of what happened, as much as possible: the aftermath and the succession crisis that destroyed Henry's legacy within months of his death.  I'm mostly familiar with this time period through the Brother Cadfael historical fiction series which has a pro-Stephen slant so it was interesting to see how well Maud actually did and how her husband might have been the major factor behind Stephen's opportunity to seize the throne.  

I wasn't blown away by this book but I enjoyed reading it and it was very informative read.  Solid.