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Carregando... Gloriana's Torchde Patricia Finney
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Registre-se no LibraryThing tpara descobrir se gostará deste livro. Ainda não há conversas na Discussão sobre este livro. Another one that I couldn't get into, so I might as well just return it to the library. I read this without the benefit of the other books in the series, which likely would have changed my impressions had I read them first. That being said, I found the multiple story-lines confusing and struggled to get through certain sections. I did enjoy the imagining of life aboard the Spanish Armada of 1588, but this story has been told (dare I say, better told?) many times before and little stands out with this volume. Finney's protagonists, David Becket and Simon Ames/Anriques, spies for Walsingham, and Merula, an African woman who I believe appears first in this novel, are fictional. I think fictional protagonists are one of the more successful strategies for grounding a novel in a historical period, and Finney uses it to advantage. She also portrays historical figures like Walsingham, Burghley, Leicester, Raleigh, Robert Cecil, and Elizabeth I. However, it is the unique viewpoint of her fictional characters, from their varied positions in life, that make the historical characters come alive. Who was Elizabeth in relation to those who worked for her? How might a woman from a completely different culture perceive her? There are the angles Finney explores, avenues that we can't follow historically, that might not even have occurred in history, but shed light still on ideas we have about who these people were. The arrival of the Spanish Armada in England is imminent, but no one knows exactly when or where it will arrive. Rumors have come in about a "Miracle of Beauty," a secret plan or weapon that will bring the English to their knees. Simon Anriques, also known as Ames, and his wife Rebecca embark on a slaving ship to Africa and then New Spain, to exchange slaves for a sweeter cargo, sugar. All this is a cover for Simon's attempt to get in touch with his brother, who poses as a Spanish clerk, and decipher the message that the royal court eagerly awaits. Instead, Simon is apprehended and subjected to the Inquisition, ultimately convicted as a Jew. Rebecca escapes, along with their new African slave Merula, who has a mission of her own, to find her son. Simon winds up a galley slave in the new Armada, along with Merula's son Snake. Meanwhile, David Becket, Simon's colleague and friend, is assigned a dangerous mission that will lead him to Spain to try to find out what Simon was captured doing and rescue Simon if he can. He is followed by Rebecca and Merula, both determined to find their men. Becket also has dream sequences, some as himself and some as the Queen, where he envisions a post-Spanish invasion England, where London burns and Walter Raleigh marries his Warrior Queen. I found myself wishing there were more of these sequences, and while I admire Finney's embedding them into the story, I almost wished those were the story instead. But the duality of the historical events unfolding along with the alternative history allows the reader to experience viscerally how different history could have been and reflect that, in the fictional realm, both series of events are equally valid. This book is truly a feat of imagination, Finney admits in her Author's Note that she had to invent many of the details of the life of a galley slave, which by the way feel horrifyingly realistic. She imagines cross-cultural interactions that may or may not have occurred, with Merula who is immersed in a strange spirit-oriented African culture, and a one-time POV character, Suleiman, a captured Turk turned galley slavemaster, but bring weird and wonderful perspectives to Anglo-Saxon Elizabethan England. Finney's message is overtly modern, though rooted in a historical period, it speaks of clashing cultures and religions, human curiosity about the other, and the strange permutations of human love. This book is written in a style more common to fantasy and science fiction, with multiple viewpoints and meta-commentary, but it's also somehow the most appropriate, wide-ranging, and original tableau of the sixteenth century that I've read in recent memory. Warmly recommended to fans of historical fiction, science fiction, and yes, literature. sem resenhas | adicionar uma resenha
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1587 and the Spanish are preparing to launch the Armada, their Holy Enterprise of England, to rescue the English from heresy and Elizabeth, their Witch-Queen. Ex-soldier David Becket, now responsible for the Queen's Ordnance but struggling to deal with his tortured past in the Tower of London and on the battlefields of Europe, discovers that large quantities of gunpowder are going astray. Can someone in the heart of the English government be selling it to the Spanish? Unaccountably he is plagued by vivid dreams of England invaded, an alternative story where the Armada is victorious. Simon Ames, Becket's old friend, has been captured by the Inquisition in Lisbon as he attempts to elicit vital information for the Queen. His wife, Rebecca; a black slave, Merula, and Becket are permitted to rescue him on one condition. They must also infiltrate the Spanish fleet and unravel the riddle of the Miracle of Beauty. But Simon has been sentenced to work as a galley slave on the Armada and, chained to an oarbench, is now bound for England. Patricia Finney's brilliant reworking of the Armada legend is an imaginative tour de force and illustrates how different England's history could have been had the Spanish landed. Thrilling, intricate and inspiring, this is a tale of gods, of courage, of love, and, ultimately, of redemption. Não foram encontradas descrições de bibliotecas. |
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Google Books — Carregando... GênerosClassificação decimal de Dewey (CDD)823.914Literature English & Old English literatures English fiction Modern Period 1901-1999 1945-1999Classificação da Biblioteca do Congresso dos E.U.A. (LCC)AvaliaçãoMédia:
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