Azrael & Phoebe's Kitty Critics' Corner Book Reviews

Sharon Kay Penman, Here Be Dragons (1985) - the first novel in a trilogy of thirteenth-century England and Wales - focusing on the reigns of John I of England and his son-in-law Llewelyn, Prince of North Wales. Order Here Be Dragons today!

Judith Merkle Riley's A Vision of Light and In Pursuit of the Green Lion (1988?, 1990) bring her main character Margaret of Ashbury and her fourteenth century world to vivid life in all its mystery, danger and wonder.

Margaret Ball, A Bridge To The Sky (1990) - an adventurous story of medieval architecture spanning from the thirteenth century Benedictine monasteries of England, the great cities of Italy, France and Hungary to the Holy Land and back.

Ken Follet, Pillars of the Earth is a masterful novel of medieval architecture, commerce, love, suspense and intrigue.

Scarlet Music:  Hildegard of Bingen A Novel by Joan Ohanneson (1997) this fictional biography of the 12th century visionary saint brings the woman, her music, her visions and her time to life.

Part I of Nobel Prize Winner, Sigrid Undset's epic novel, Kristin Lavransdatter, a novel that has not gone out of print since its first publication in English translation in 1927, has finally been released in a long-awaited new tra,nslation (by Tiina Nunnally, Panguin Twentieth-Century Classics). Gone is the archaic vocabulary typical of early 20th century translations of historical novels. Now you can read the tale of the headstrong and passionate young Kristin set against the backdrop of medieval Norway in a version closer to the Norwegian original. Order today!

Jan Fridegård's Land of Wooden Gods (Trägudarsland) is the first of a remarkable trilogy about the Viking age from the perspective of a thrall at the time of the first contacts with Christianity in Sweden.

Connie Willis, Doomsday Book (1992), winner of the Hugo and Nebula awards, is a time travel novel with parallel 21^st and 14^th century plot lines. A 21^stcentury historian is trapped in the 14^thcentury but a dangerous unknown epidemic in the 21^st century prevents her return to the 'present'.

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Medieval Mysteries

At the International Medieval Congress at Kalamazoo, Michigan Tony and Crystal were inspired to buy and read more medieval mysteries. There was a session on "Cadfael's sisters: Writing Women into History through History-Mysteries" and another session where Sharan Newman, Candace Robb and Caroline Roe talked about their experiences writing medieval detective fiction. We plan to include several new titles to this list very soon. While on the subject, we have to credit the wonderful women from Deadly Passions Book Store in Kalamazoo, who not only sponsored these sessions, but also are the ones who first suggested medieval mysteries to us. We're generally much more "into" historical fiction than mysteries and these books will satisfy lovers of both genres.

Fans of PBS' Mystery Theater are familiar with Sir Derek Jacobi's brilliant Cadfael. Although we actually prefer the depth of this production in some ways to the novels, Elis Peters' Brother Cadfael Mysteries are nevertheless delightful to read.

A few of our favorites are: One Corpse too Many,(the fourth episode in the first PBS series) involving a murder entangled in the politics of the civil war waging between the Empress Maud and her cousin Stephen of Blois, introduces the character of Hugh Beringar (whom we love and were terribly disappointed by the change in casting for the second Cadfael series). The Holy Thief involves the theft of Shrewsbury's Abbey of St. Peter and St. Paul's most sacred relic, the remains of St. Winifred (or are they?). In Dead Man's Ransom what begins as a lucky chance for Hugh Beringar to exchange a Welsh prisoner for his captured sheriff proves a test of Cadfael's sense of justice and heart when he discovers that the Welsh youth and the sheriff's daughter have been struck by Cupid's arrow -- and the youth is later suspected of murdering his beloved's father.....

Candace M. Robb, The Apothecary Rose (1993) is the first of her Owen Archer Mysteries. Set in the fourteenth century, The Welsh Owen Archer who has lost one eye to the wars in France must make a new career as an honest spy, but difficulties arise when he falls in love with the woman he believes might be the murderer he was sent to find.

Sharan Newman is our newest favorite in this genre and is Azrael's "boo-award" winner for May 1998. Beginning with Death Comes as Ephiphany and The Devil's Door (1994) Newman's protagonist, Catherine LeVendeur, the most learned young novice-scholar of the Paraclete (under the tutelage of the famous Heloise), finds love, questions her vocation and discovers a dangerous family secret - all while becoming embroiled in (and naturally solving) a mysterious murder.
Begin your own romance with Sharan Newman's characters, Order Death Comes as Ephiphany today!

Sharon Kay Penman - The Queen's Man. Already beloved in the genre of historical fiction, Penman tries her hand at medieval mystery. A young and destitute Justin de Quincy falls heir to a bloodstained letter, pressed into his hand by a dying man. As a result, de Quincy soon finds himself embroiled in a mystery of murder, political intrigue and answerable only to the Queen, Eleanor of Aquitaine. In Justin de Quincy, Penman has created a detective we hope to see a lot more of in the future.

Order Penman's The Queen's Man today!

Sheri Holman's A Stolen Tongue, also picked up at Kalamazoo, is possilby more of interest to medieval buffs than those in search of great mysteries. The novel is based on the journals of Friar Felix Fabri (1441-1502) describing his pilgrimage to the holy land -- and in particular to St. Katherine of Alexandrian's tomb at Mt. Sinai. She does a great job of bringing the peculiar theological, philosophical and practical problems associated with medieval cults of saints and their relics. An especially fine (and apt) poetic comparison of saint's cults to the spice trade is one of our favorite passages in the novel.

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