The Embroidered Book, a review

The Embroidered Book by Kate Heartfield is a historical fantasy starting in the 1760s, following sisters Charlotte and Marie Antoinette. Both who become Queens and have a major impact on their respective new countries. But in this world, people can do magic, if they know the ingredients, and are willing to pay the price.

Historical fiction used to be very much my thing when I was younger, but in recent years I’ve moved away from it. Meaning that without this being the Goldsboro GSFF pick I probably wouldn’t have read it. And boy oh boy am I so glad that I was influenced to pick this up!!

This book is incredibly historically accurate. Every friendship, every enemy, every political move and alliance, can all be backed up by historians. Heartfield did an incredible job in the research for this book. This book made me so interested in these two women that I went to research them myself, thinking that surely there would be things that were missed and/or not factually accurate. In reality it just confirmed everything that had been shown in the book.

The only historical inaccuracy I could find in this book? The magic! (obvs) And I thought the magic was done so well and was a magic system I’d never come across before! Individuals have to sacrifice something important to them (specified for the spell) at each point of a five pointed star, to make the magic work. This can be a physical object, or they can write down a hope/dream/love and this will be taken from them and sacrificed. I thought it was done fantastically and was such an interesting aspect of the story.

On CAWPILE I rated this book: Characters: 10, Atmosphere: 9, Writing: 8, Plot: 8, Intrigue: 8, Logic: 10, and enjoyment: 10. Giving an average score of 9 and a 5* rating!

I won’t lie to you folks, I did struggle a little to get through this book at first. Purely because it’s just so big! (it’s around 700 pages and my copy is hardback) and when I first finished it, I thought it was a 4 star read. But I just couldn’t stop thinking about it and every time I mentioned it I started gushing! And for me? Well that’s easily the signs of a five star read!

Highlight here for trigger warnings: death, violence, domestic abuse, misogyny, murder, arranged marriage, partner violence, child illness and death, miscarriage, endemic disease, racism, colonialism, imperialism, accusations of paedophilia, and mutilation of corpses.

Have you read The Embroidered Book, or would you consider reading it after this? I’m so so glad that I delved into this book and I’m very much here for more historical fantasies!

Fall of Giants, a review

IT IS FINALLY DONE!!! This huge book took me 1139 days to read, starting in January of 2019 and not finishing until February of 2022!! Now I did take at least a year long break in the middle, but still. That’s a bit of a ridiculous amount of time for me to get through Fall of Giants by Ken Follett.

This is a historical fiction that starts not long before the First World War broke out. We follow a large number of POVs from various locations, Wales, London, Germany, France, Russia, and the US. Not exactly all over the world (and a penny chew to whoever guesses first the race of every one of these characters) but from some varying viewpoints non-the-less.

It was really interesting to learn a little more about WWI in this way, it’s clearly a well researched book by Follett and it was genuinely interesting. This historical accuracy throughout this really saved the day for me, for the war itself, as well as events around it.

Something that I can’t avoid, however, is just how strong the male gaze was in this book. I’ve not read a book that was so clearly written by a man in a long while and it was difficult to adjust to this. There was actually some interesting and nuanced discussions around women gaining the vote, so it’s not that the writing itself was sexist. But every sex scene and interaction between men and women was just so clearly written for the male gaze and so obviously didn’t have any influence from any women.

In CAWPILE I rated this: Characters: 6, Atmosphere: 6, Writing: 6, Plot: 8, Intrigue: 7, Logic: 8, and Enjoyment: 7, which gives a score of 6.86 and a rating of 3.5*.

It’s not the highest rating, I know, but I do still want to continue with this series. Book 2 is based around WWII and book 3 around the Cold War. I think I could learn quite a bit from both of these and fingers crossed the representation of the female characters will be better.

Highlight here for trigger warnings: alcohol, death, family rejection, misogyny, murder, sexual content, sexual assault, rape, war.