My reviewer criteria. I like light, entertaining novels. I like smaller scale stories rather than epics. I like character focused novels featuring pleasant characters, with a minimum number of unpleasant ones. I greatly value clever and witty writing. I like first person, or close third person narratives. I dislike a lot of "head jumping" between POVs and flashbacks. I want a story, not a puzzle. While I am not opposed to violence, I dislike gore for the sake of gore. I find long and elaborate fight, action, and battle sequences tedious. Plot holes and things that happen for the convenience of the author annoy me. And I fear I'm a born critic in that I don't mind pointing out what I don't like in a story. However, I lay no claim to be the final arbitrator of style and taste, you need to decide for yourself what you like or dislike in a book.
Your opinions are always welcome. Comment below.
The Heretic's Apprentice by Ellis Peters A-
Another story that is up to her very high standard. In this one she takes on some Catholic beliefs in this story, such as do unbaptized babies going to hell, are you born with original sin, can you get to heaven by your own efforts, and are the number of people who get to go to heaven predetermined.
The premise is that a very rigid senior churchman is staying at the abbey, when a young man arrives with the casket of his patron with whom he has traveled to the Holy Land and back. It was his patron who raised these questions, and was advised to make a pilgrimage to the Holy Lands to ponder his questions. He died in France shorty before reaching home in Shrewsbury, and this young man is seeing his body returned, with the aim of burying him in the Abbey's graveyard. As a good patron of the abbey, the abbot would welcome this. But when the senior churchman learns of the dead man's heresy - for questioning these beliefs can be seen as heresy - he objects, but is over ruled. So far so good. But when this churchman learns that the young man also has these questions, the young man gets in trouble with this powerful churchman.
There is a mystery, of course. Along with the body of his patron, the young man has brought along an ornate box as the dowry for his patron's adopted daughter. What is in it which brings with it, the usual murder. She hints that there is a real life historical basis in this story that is related to the content of box, but I'll say no more about that.
There are only four more novels to go in this series, and three short stories that might cover his life before he joined the monastery. What am I going to turn to when I want something reliable to read?
No comments:
Post a Comment