A review by ktoumajian
Gloriana's Torch by Patricia Finney

3.0

This was not my favorite of Finney’s Elizabethan series featuring David Beckett and Simon Ames but as always I did enjoy being swept up in her imagined version of the Spanish Armada invasion of England that almost was. This time the main characters are far apart from one another, but both working on behalf of the Queen to understand and thwart the Spanish plans, taking them to Lisbon, Antwerp, Calais and the oar deck of a Spanish warship. It’s Finney’s attention to detail (so glad the life of a galley-slave was not mine) and colorful characters—-two new characters that emerge from the West African slave trade were my two favorites—-that keep me coming back to her writing.