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3.88 AVERAGE
3.88 AVERAGE
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I love everything she writes! Less invested in the characters this time but it was interesting to learn about new characters in the history
dark
emotional
informative
sad
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
slow-paced
The King's Curse tells the story of Margaret Pole. Margaret is connected to the throne of England in so many ways. Her father once tried to take the throne. Both her paternal uncles were king. Her maternal grandfather was referred to as the Kingmaker and got her eldest uncle onto the throne to begin with. Her cousin, Elizabeth, was queen. She was friends with Queen Katherine of Aragon and was the nanny of Elizabeth's children and subsequently her grandchildren. That is a lot of problems brewing.
And, boy, does Margaret have a lot of problems. Either people she loves are being executed for conspiring against the throne or she's hoping and praying that King Henry (yeah, that King Henry) doesn't change his mind and decide he doesn't like her anymore. And, he changes his mind more than a toddler because he's nothing more than a manchild with near absolute power.
Watching Margaret's rise and fall (and rise and fall and rise and fall, etc) is interesting. Women often don't have a lot of power in the Tudors court besides hoping that the men they're related to don't fuck everything up for them and that hopefully Henry doesn't want to fuck them because when he changes his mind, they're pretty much screwed. Margaret has her own power and she gets to make decisions, and it's intriguing watching her tiptoe around probably one of the shittiest kings England has had.
The book kind of loses its luster partway through as everything keeps getting repeated. Her situation keeps flip flopping so constantly that you eventually just don't care. It sure likes repeating things over and over again, making parts of the book seem padded as it rehashes information for you that you just read about a couple of pages ago. Keeping track of her numerous kinsmen who are going to get their heads chopped off can be difficult. After a time, I was just kind of hoping she'd die early like everyone else in this era but home girl goes on to be sixty-seven years old (where she's apparently the oldest person Henry ever had executed or something, which is interesting; she also got declared a martyr later on by the Pope; fun facts brought to you by Wikipedia).
Margaret is more interesting than some other Gregory protagonists. She's greedy, which is the thing that stands out to me the most. It wasn't just the entitlement because of the name she was born with, but she's outright greedy for things and is almost more obsessively with making sure her family gets everything than other leading characters in this series. It kind of made me like her more because there's only so much of dainty Tudor princesses one can take.
In short, the King's Curse has interesting parts to it but it does get draggy after a time. If you can't take reading 100+ pages of an elderly woman wondering if she's going to be killed by a fat bastard she used to babysit, this book is not for you.
For quite some chapters I thought that I would enjoy this novel, but found that repetition, poor pacing and misplaced emotion ruined the sense of tension and diluted how compelling I found it.
I wanted the chapters to be filled with Margaret watching Arthur and Katherine fall in love, their tragedy and then the stark relationship with Henry. There lay the emotion and the tension, instead we just heard how Plantagenet's were superior but thwarted, and how rich Margaret was, oh no, how poor she was, oh rich again...
Could have been brilliant but fell short.
I wanted the chapters to be filled with Margaret watching Arthur and Katherine fall in love, their tragedy and then the stark relationship with Henry. There lay the emotion and the tension, instead we just heard how Plantagenet's were superior but thwarted, and how rich Margaret was, oh no, how poor she was, oh rich again...
Could have been brilliant but fell short.
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
dark
sad
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
challenging
dark
emotional
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
Content Warnings
Graphic: Child death, Confinement, Death, Miscarriage, Violence, Religious bigotry, Pregnancy, Injury/Injury detail
An absolutely amazing read. All the characters are given life be it historical or fictional. The strong women are given their own voice and feelings about the life and times they live in especially when the kings mood grows ever dangerously mad.