Sunday, July 24, 2011

To Dance with Kings

In the mood for a big, well populated, well upholstered, well written historical novel? How about To Dance with Kings by Rosalind Laker? The plot is packed with enough coincidences, bed hopping, riches, poverty, sacrifice, bastards, sleaze, violence, back stabbing, thwarted love, food, ambition and fabulous gowns to keep a reader quite entertained and a little dizzy.

Things don't get much more dramatic or opulent than a novel set at Versailles between the Louies XIV and XVI and Laker makes the most of it. She takes four generations of women from the wrong side of the tracks and lets them loose on the aristocracy. Then all the reader has to do is sit back and enjoy the fulfilling cheesiness of it all.

At 613 pages To Dance With Kings may not be for the faint of heart but it is for the historical fiction fan who likes their history laid on with a light touch, their heroines charismatic and struggling and their storytelling old fashioned and satisfying.

No comments:

Post a Comment