picky_04 's review for:

Falls the Shadow by Sharon Kay Penman
5.0

I didn't love this book as much as I loved Here Be Dragons or The Sunne in Splendour, but I still really enjoyed it.

I love the history side of Penman's novels and love that she is such a meticulous researcher. There's a realism to the books through that. And I love her characters; they all have their vices and virtues and she makes sure to never paint one character as a one-sided pantomime villain or hero.

As with her other novels I found that I would have to read good portions of the book at once to get the most out of it- they're not books that I can just pick up and flick through sporadically, I think because of their heavy name/date/historical content. But once I'd start reading I find them hard to put down so it's not a hard thing to read these books for a couple of hours.