If you're looking for a novel about Richard III, then prepare to be underwhelmed. Richard isn't a major player here - he is the sun around which everything else turns, but this book isn't about him, but the various satellites in his orbit. It's still a good novel of the historical genre, although the prose is a bit fanciful and intricate, typical of its time. The dust jacket says that it was pretty much Jarman's unpublished fanfiction, so perhaps she didn't feel confident tackling the man himself and kept herself to fictional characters relating the events. Jarman does have a strong romantic bent - the chapter "The Maiden" seems to be dangerously on the border of self-insert fantasy - but the distance from Richard is perhaps a blessing. Had it been more intimate, the book could have turned into fluffy slush like Anne Smith's "A Rose For the Crown."

Come armed with knowledge of the Houses of York and Lancaster, because Jarman doesn't do a thorough job of acquainting the reader with the various historical figures and the family tree in the front of the book only goes so far. If you've read Penman's "Sunne in Splendour" you should be fine, but having read Penman, be prepared to have this book not measure up in terms of Richard-saturation.

I'd put this book a few notches below Penman, but FAR above Sandra Worth's simplistic, boring trilogy.

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