Take a photo of a barcode or cover
A review by antithesis90
The Fool's Tale by Nicole Galland
4.0
I debated between rating the book a 3 or a 4 and landed on 4 simply because it did hold my interest and I found it a good read. The characters were engaging and it opened up an area of history I haven't spent much time in (excepting Penman's Welsh novels).
The reason I was debating a 3 is that it felt very long and, particularly for a historical novel that is less rooted in the historical as novel, it didn't need to be; it wasn't covering historical events that took years to march through but rather had peaks and troughs that felt silly at times and were boring at others. At several points I considered putting it aside to start something a bit more brisk and fun but ultimately did not, as I was engaged in the story, so that's another point in its favor.
However, as the author herself notes, this is not to be taken as a Welsh history so read it rather as a story of three people (and their peripheral characters) set against the Welsh landscape in a politically troublesome time.
The reason I was debating a 3 is that it felt very long and, particularly for a historical novel that is less rooted in the historical as novel, it didn't need to be; it wasn't covering historical events that took years to march through but rather had peaks and troughs that felt silly at times and were boring at others. At several points I considered putting it aside to start something a bit more brisk and fun but ultimately did not, as I was engaged in the story, so that's another point in its favor.
However, as the author herself notes, this is not to be taken as a Welsh history so read it rather as a story of three people (and their peripheral characters) set against the Welsh landscape in a politically troublesome time.