Edward Rutherford writes mammoth books where the central character is a place and the people in them are incidental and used to drive the plot across a given time period (usually several thousand years). It is a formula that has worked well and gained critical and popular acclaim. ‘London’ is the...
I love this book.It takes time. But it rewards. It helps if you know the area.I live within a mile of Hale on the edge of the New Forest, and daily walk Charlie there. When we moved here 18 years ago, from London, it was like being born into a new world. What brought us here was, we used to borro...
I stopped reading this book in Chapter 7 because I just couldn't take it anymore - it was mostly dull stories with some interesting tidbits thrown in every once in a while.The beginning of this novel was alright. The best parts of the book for me were the descriptions about that time period in ge...
This is the first book of its kind I've read, and probably the only book I've ever read that I think can properly be called 'epic'. It's a series of chronologically ordered short stories about the people and history of Salisbury in England, starting around 10,000 BC and ending around 2000 AD. I e...
Russia is a country far too infrequently written about by Western novelists, but with Russka, Edward Rutherfurd helps remedy that lack. This book is practically a class in Russian history (and fun besides). I wasn't sure about the format, which is best described as ten novellas and three short st...
A wholehearted four stars for the sequel to the very good The Princes of Ireland. I probably enjoyed Rebels slightly more than Princes because I had Princes to warm up with and become accustomed to Rutherfurd's style and storytelling method.This book covers the period between 1534 and the 1920s, ...
The High King of Ireland was about to take a ceremonial bath. So it proved. Before they had finished filling the tub, the first patrols started to return. There seemed to be even more of them this time. Peter guessed that at least two hundred were going down into the river, and others were st...
As they passed, the clouds assumed many forms. One resembled a fish, open-mouthed as it crossed the azure sky; another a horse and rider; a third, perhaps, the witch Baba Yaga sweeping by. They came from the east, in a leisurely procession, past the old frontier city of Ni...
Le Sourd. It meant “the Deaf One.” Not that Jean Le Sourd was deaf. Not at all. He could have heard a pin drop in the street outside. It was said he could hear men’s thoughts. Certainly, if a man even thought of reaching for a knife, Le Sourd’s own knife would be at that man’s throat before he ha...
For in the year of Our Lord 1265, the main central body of the new cathedral was almost completed. The church, with its simple cruciform design, its long nave, and its light and airy transepts, stood peacefully in the silence of the close – eighty-seven feet tall, nearly f...