Susie Helme

Award-winning novelist and editorial consultant

Tag: historical-fiction

  • Review: The Bewitching

    Review: The Bewitching

    Jill Dawson, The Bewitching (Sceptre 2022)

    https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/60038658-the-bewitching?ref=nav_sb_ss_1_21

    This 16th century tale tells the true story of a woman accused by her neighbours of witchcraft.

    Visiting her new neighbours in the Fenland village of Warboys, Alice Samuels meets the daughters of Squire Throckmorton, gifted the position by Sir Henry Cromwell.

    One of the girls, Jane, is experiencing terrifying fits. Jane points to Alice and calls her an ‘old witch’.

    Martha, the servant whose mother was a nun, looks after the Throckmorton children. Martha senses that there is some kind of ‘wrongness’ in the Throckmorton household. The son, Gabriel is in disgrace and is being sent away, and nobody knows why. She watches all this going on, but feels her position as servant doesn’t entitle her to say anything. The master is strangely keen to ask her counsel about things.

    The fits spread to the other girls, and the doctor says the cause is ‘sorcery’. More ‘signs’ of Alice’s witchery arise—many of them simply tricks the girls use to get attention—many simply made up. Even the lice in Bessie’s hair are a ‘sign’. High-born as they are, their word is taken as evidence.

    This is a credible account of a conspiracy theory gaining traction and snowballing, but the narrator, Martha, never actually denies the craziness, so the reader is swept along. It’s a bygone time, when life centred around the master’s great house. The local abbey lies in ruins; the black-hooded monks with their silver incense burners gone, the nuns told to get married. The old herbs are considered witchery, the old prayers popery. The dynamics between the servants, their masters and the children make the story all the more tragic.

    It’s well written, and there are some lovely agricultural metaphors. I found it quite effective that the story was told from a servant’s point of view.

    This review first appeared in Historical Novels Review.

  • Review: Skullduggery at Downtown Medicine Mound

    Review: Skullduggery at Downtown Medicine Mound

    Dennis Boyd Call, Skullduggery at Downtown Medicine Mound (Kindle 2021)

    https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/57979802-skullduggery-at-downtown-medicine-mound

    This is the second book in the series, the first book, Quanah, told the story of Quanah Parker, the son of the historical Comanche Chief Peta Nocona and Cynthia Ann Parker. It’s aimed at a YA readership.

    Jonathan, with the help of his spirit guide Prairie Flower, has unified the five generations of descendants of Chief Nocona, who had been driven apart by the To-sah-wi Alliance. Prairie Flower informs him that the Alliance still plans to destroy the Comanche Nation. Jonathan has 14 days before the next Tribal Council Meeting atop Medicine Mound to thwart their plans. To do so, he needs to consult the Apache prophetess Ōn-ah-wa Hastings.

    Silver Bear, self-proclaimed leader of the To-sah-wi Alliance wants to rule all Native Americans. Jonathan’s father is offered a job by the Herring brothers, but can he trust them? Has Sir returned to the Alliance?

    The style is a bit simple; perhaps this is suitable for a YA audience. But it’s too long for 13-14 year olds. It would have benefitted from a tight editing. A lot of the action takes place in the spirit world.

  • Review: Ranger

    Review: Ranger

    Timothy Ashby, Ranger (Sharpe Books 2022)

    https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/60548893-ranger?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=5kKJqQCoVb&rank=1

    1796 Arthur Charteris inherits a baronetcy and comes from Granada to Leicestershire to claim it. With him are two servants and his child Alexander (Chart) by his recently deceased slavewoman Weju. Half-caste Chart is raised as a gentleman alongside his cousin, the hunchbacked Pemberton, until Pemb commits a crime and is banished from the household.

    Chart goes to boarding school where Pemb is already studying and is violently bullied by his cousin. He falls in love with Arabella, but they are separated when he joins the East India Company.

    Upon the death of his father, Chart returns home to find not only that Pemb has thoroughly usurped him and married Arabella, but legally he is considered Pemb’s chattel. He is seized and taken to Grenada to be worked as a field slave on the sugar plantation where he grew up.

    Chart ‘feels like an Anglo-Saxon’ inside, a ‘man caught between two worlds’, and despite being helped by prominent abolitionists, he tends to look upon his case as a property dispute rather than a manumission issue.

    The French Revolution comes to the island in the form of a slave revolt, but Chart’s position is ambiguous. The revolt gives him his freedom, but he refuses to join in the violent reprisals against the British landowners. Instead, he joins the Black Rangers and fights against the French, to crush the rebellion. But he still has to face his cousin.

    The interplay between class interests, race interests, and national—even tribal—interests is complex, aggravated by the hypocrisy of the French Revolution, betrayed before it could truly deliver liberté, egalité, fraternité.

    The events in this book and many of the people were real. Unfortunately, the horrific depictions of abuse and degradation of the slaves were taken from true accounts.

    Book One in the Storm of War series.

    This review first appeared in Historical Novels Review.

  • Review: How To Play Mah Jong: Essential Guide For Beginners

    Review: How To Play Mah Jong: Essential Guide For Beginners

    Charles Nathan, How To Play Mah Jong: Essential Guide For Beginners (Kindle 2022)

    https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/60148554-how-to-play-mahjong?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=MLR37tGssH&rank=1

    I love playing Mah Jong with my son Genji and Chinese daughter in law Guo, and whenever I visit their house, there’s an argument—shall we play Monopoly (Genji wants) Mah Jong (Mummy and Guo want). Now that I’ve purchased a gorgeous Mah Jong set ordered all the way from China, I think Mah Jong will be winning out, so I want to ‘bone up’, so Guo won’t have to instruct us all the time. I played Mah Jong when I lived in Japan, but never learned how to score.
    Kindle offered me this for £0.00, so what’s not to like?
    The rules are different from the rules Guo taught us. According to Guo you can only pick up a tile from the person to your left who just discarded, but only to meld a ‘pong’ (3 of the same) or a ‘kong’ (4 of the same); according to this book, you can pick up from anyone’s discard; and you can also pick up and meld for a ‘chow’ (straight), though chows don’t win you any points. And if someone interrupts the rotation order by picking a discard, the rotation continues anew with the player to their right.
    It also says you pile the tiles willy-nilly in the centre of the table; whereas, as everyone knows, you’re supposed to create a square wall of double rows of 13 from which the players draw their hands of 13, 14 for the one who’s going to play first. The last tile to be drawn is called the ‘hor’ (joker) and is displayed face up on top of the wall. In Japan, fights will erupt if this protocol is not observed to the letter.
    This book covers the basic play (according to somebody’s rules) and how to score, but does not include any points on strategy.

  • Review: The Warrior Gene

    Review: The Warrior Gene

    Neil Staley, The Warrior Gene (Kindle 2023)

    https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/77776478-the-warrior-gene?ref=nav_sb_ss_1_31

    Apex Labs agents Reg Thompson and Harry Caine are on a security stake-out, and a Fed from the FBI, Joshua Smith, is on a case nearby. He introduces himself, then shoots them in the head.
    Back at the lab, Dr Alex Bishop’s boss Henry Drexler calls him to take a look at Batch DD-401A. ‘incomplete data utility’. Yet the client is moving forward the launch of Phase One.
    A rhesus monkey named Jimmy is injected with ‘the Icarus particle’, and the moneymen watch as Jimmy viciously destroys an uninjected monkey.
    There are numerous characters and minor inter-woven plotlines—the secret commemorative reward in the box, James Devlin’s promotion and abduction by his father and Blakenstock, two security agents murdered outside Alex’s lodgings, Mrs Galasky’s witness statement, the investigation against the religious cult leader, the fire at the lab, the flash drive and the other-worldly voice, Audrey’s backstabbing, the Mamluks and The Overwatch in the desert, Harun the Invisible Light—and that’s only up to chapter 16. At the final hour the ritual in the desert, Klick’s abusive religious cult and the warrior gene storylines converge.
    The multiplicity of characters makes it hard to keep track—my brain protested at being introduced to a whole new set of characters in chapter 20. The ‘head-hopping’ (switching of Points of View) may be confusing, but it adds intrigue and gives the reader a chance to piece things together without having everything explained.
    This novel is brilliant at creating suspense, using various skilful techniques as well as the old cliff-hanger. The science appears spot on—indeed, MAO-A has been called the ‘warrior gene’. The dialogue includes a perfect comeback to ‘age before beauty’—‘assholes before angels’.
    I couldn’t understand the timeline of: James and his father’s boss Blakenstock giving him a big promotion, Blakenstock catching him in flagrante with a woman, and his massage (‘two hours later’ than the in flagrante). And what was the ‘giant fist smashing the building to the ground’ on page 161? And after Alex knew how evil the code was, why did he still want to save it?
    The Concept—a techno/detective thriller involving the so-called ‘warrior gene’ is great. This follows in the tradition of techno-thrillers about scientifically engineered super-soldiers (Frank Herbert, Dune; Robert A Heinlein, Starship Troopers; Jeff Vintar, ‘Hardwired’ [iRobot]) and borrows the elite troop of Mamluks guarding secrets in the desert from ‘The Mummy’, the hole in the centre of the ceiling from ‘The Fifth Element’ and the ‘bloodline’ idea from The Da Vinci Code—all tropes too good to exclude.
    The action is well paced using scene-setting and dialogue; the final chapters are a rollercoaster of excitement with a marvellous twist at the end. It would make a great action film.
    This review first appeared in Reedsy Discovery.

  • Review: The Sinner’s Mark

    Review: The Sinner’s Mark

    S. W. Perry, The Sinner’s Mark (Corvus 2023)

    https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/74836672-the-sinner-s-mark

    Elizabethan mystery full of period character

    Nicholas Shelby, the queens’ physician, is summoned. Queen Elizabeth is fading but is nevertheless still interested in ‘young men with good calves and passable looks’.

    Shelby’s father is accused of distributing a seditious tract, and he is determined to clear his name. One of the suppliers of ingredients for wife Bianca’s simples, Aksel Leezen, has willed to her his house in the Steelyard. There, Leezen has left plaster casts of bones—écorché models, for studying anatomy, explains Nicholas—and a gruesome wooded effigy of a dead girl with half a face. Three young boys go missing.

    An old war-buddy arrives—his marvellous name is Petrus Eusebius Schenk.

    As Shakespeare’s players act the assassination of Julius Caesar, actors in another plot are laying dastardly plans. As well as the nods to the Gunpowder Plot, which would happen five years after the events in this story, there are bits that were inspired by real occurrences in Elizabethan London.

    Dialogue is good, but we don’t really hear the voices of the characters. The Voice is that of omniscient narrator.

    This is sixth in Perry’s Elizabethan Jackdaw Mysteries series, and we know Nicholas, Bianca, Rose and Ned from the earlier books. Their characters are further developed here, and necessary backstory is well handled.

    The plot develops languidly, and the slow pace allows for character development and scene-setting and gives one a feeling of the period, when even a trip across London required a horse ride, a wherry across the river, a stay in an inn.

    Another element comes across as true to the period—the schizophrenic and precarious nature of the religious ups and downs and the shifting goalposts on what was considered heresy. The character Ned voices the experience of someone newly inspired by revolutionary Protestant sermons, and Schenk’s zealotry is believable.

    This review first appeared in Historical Novels Review.

  • Review: The Priest’s Wife

    Review: The Priest’s Wife

    A. G. Rivett, The Priest’s Wife (Pantolwen Press 2023)

    https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/198910874-the-priest-s-wife?ref=nav_sb_ss_1_24

    When her husband Hugh the parish priest dies, her adopted son Dhion—a time-traveller from the future introduced in Book One, The Seaborne—his wife Shinane and the other villagers help Morag with her loss. Shinane is carrying new life—twins.

    Morag has lost her husband and come Bride’s Day will have to vacate the priests’ house. She has lost her place in the mediaeval Scottish/Irish island’s society and even feels alienated from her new grandchildren. She travels to Kimmoil, her birthplace two days north, on a quest to discover the identity of her own mother. Aided by the mystical Guardians of the Island, she embarks on a spiritual awakening.

    She finds the welcome in Kimmoil less than warm; the town is suffering from an outbreak of scurvy. She meets the daughter of her half-brother, Sorcha, unloved as she had been, and Morag brings the girl back with her.

    After Hugh’s death, the villagers look to Morag for pastoral and ritual care. ‘Ye’re the priestess, Auntie,’ says Sorcha. But when the new priest Aidan arrives, he tries to pull the parish away from their traditional druidic beliefs and customs, now deemed heretical, and butts head with the shareg (headman). The lives of Aidan and Morag reach a crisis point.

    Beautifully written and evocative of the culture of the time. No anachronistic language intrudes upon the beautiful picture. We see a misty, green world, where the Otherworld of the Sidhe is not so distant from life among the living.

    A doctor, crofter and ordained minister himself, Rivett understands well the tight relationship of the peasants to the land and the seasons, and the religious ideas and practices of the period. The contrast between the ‘nature-affirming’ Celtic faith and the ‘nature-denying’ Catholic is very much part of the dynamic between Aidan and Morag.

    The review first appeared in Historical Novels Review.

  • Review: St Francis: An Instrument of Peace

    Review: St Francis: An Instrument of Peace

    Wendy Mason, St Francis (novum pro 2018)

    https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/42850145-st-francis—an-instrument-of-peace?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=hxdce2AC0F&rank=1

    Francesco Bernardone grows up in Assisi, the son of a wealthy cloth merchant. From an early age, he seems ill disposed toward a life of business, instead preferring drinking and singing. He is influenced by a literary diet of troubadour’s romances and longs to be a great knight like Roland. He was not particularly religious.

    One day, keeping shop for his father, he gives the entire day’s takings to a beggar, and feels spiritually enriched by the act, despite fierce scolding from his father.

    Defeated in battle, he is held for ransom at Pelugia for one year. In his small cell, he develops his method of ‘walking and praying’. He hears the voice of God, and repents his past lifestyle, beginning with the penance of a pilgrimage to Rome.

    On his return, he repairs the church of St Damiano. He hides to escape his father’s wrath but has to leave home to finally be safe. He becomes an itinerant repairer of churches, dedicated to teaching others ‘how it feels to love and support one another, to bathe in God’s grace and live in anticipation of everlasting life’ and founds an order of friars.

    The story is fictional but woven around what we do know of the historical St Francis. It is told in first person, and we walk alongside him. Mason really manages to bring the saint to life. His character arc, also, is interesting: the influences in his life and how they shape him and how he changes his life in order to fulfil his mission. The stories of St Francis’ life are absolutely beautiful. His travels feature some gorgeous, loving descriptions of nature, affection for which St Francis is so legendary.

    There is just enough of his early family life to explain how he was motivated by his father’s disapproval, and just enough action to keep the pace up.

    An enjoyable and informative read, and spiritually uplifting.

    I received an ARC from the author.

  • Review: The Way of all Flesh

    Review: The Way of all Flesh

    Samuel Butler, The Way of all Flesh (1903; this edition Dover Publications 2004)

    https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/126512.The_Way_of_All_Flesh

    This novel is Samuel Butler’s protest against Victorian-era hypocrisy. It centers around four generations of the Pontifex family.

    The narrator, Edward Overton, is godfather to Ernest, eldest child of Theobald and Christina.

    Theobald doubts whether he is suited to the ministry, but his father warms him against ‘the restless desire for change’ and threatens to cut him off, and he is ordained. The Misses Allaby play cards to see who will be matched to Theobald, and Christina wins.

    Overton remembers, as a child, the deaths of old Mrs. Pontifex and her husband John a year later. Their son George inherits a fortune from his aunt Alethea, and he is quite comfortable in doing so. The estate is to be overseen by Overton, who loved Alethea but never married her, until Ernest is twenty-eight.

    Ernest, a fourth generation Pontifex, becomes a clergyman, but his faith is sorely tested by controversies and unscrupulous individuals. He attempts a sexual assault on a woman he mistakenly believes to be of loose morals and is imprisoned. On leaving prison, he marries his parents’ former housemaid Ellen; they have two children and start a second hand clothing business. He discovers that Ellen is a bigamist and an alcoholic. Overton pays Ellen off and gives Ernest a job.

    It is full of very erudite humour, jokes about people getting Latin phrases wrong, that sort of thing, which provides a charming picture of what life was like for a certain class of people like the Pontifexes. Theobald is probably one of the most horrible parents in the history of literature. There are seven pages on the difficulty Ernest had applying himself to his studies, entire chapters on Alethea’s will.

    The writer George Orwell praised Butler as ‘courageous. He would say things that other people knew but didn’t dare to say.’[1] The society he paints is not picture-perfect. It’s full of adultery and illegitimate births. Even the clergymen are wicked.

    We read these classics to understand why they were considered masterpieces at their time, to appreciate the beautiful, verbose language, writing style which we would not use, today, and to understand thinking and cultural assumptions that we have forgotten, helping us to understand history.

    [1] George Orwell, BBC Home Service, Talks for Schools, 15 June 1945, reprinted in Collected Works, I Belong to the Left, p. 186

  • Review: The Mirror of Simple Souls

    Review: The Mirror of Simple Souls

    Aline Kiner, The Mirror of Simple Souls (Pushkin Press 2023)

    https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/62014708-the-mirror-of-simple-souls?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=fts2fss5Oa&rank=2

    1310 Paris. Ysabel runs the infirmary in the Royal Beguinage where she was raised, the religious women shut away from the fumes of burning Templars. Now old, she takes in a little beggar, a red-haired girl, Maheut. She does what she can to nurse the girl, but what was the cure for anger? She gives the wild child a gift, an aquamarine. The stone will absorb her anger, Ysabel says.

    Franciscan Humbert has brought messages from his master Jean de Querayn to Marguerite Porete, imprisoned by the Inquisition. Humbert is looking for the red-headed girl.

    Maheut’s red hair—’the colour of the devil’—gets her trouble. And worse trouble—she’s pregnant. Ysabel foists Maheut on the widow Ade, unwillingly, and the widow and girl do not warm to one another. Maheut’s daughter Leonor connects with Ade in a way her mother never did.

    Next Maheut is foisted upon silk merchant Jeanne du Faut. Marguerite is burned at the stake. Ade translates Maguerite’s heretical book, The Mirror of Simple Souls, into Latin and in the course of the work comes closer to Humbert, and their indiscretion is witnessed by Clémence.

    The vengeful fingers of the Inquisition shatter the peaceful life of the Beguinage.

    This rich historical drama is beautiful and unpretentious, a wonderful piece of historical fiction, fluidly capturing the feel of the period. Though it holds interest, the plot is slow, like the pace of life probably was back then. No one is murdered until page 247. It is told in present tense, bringing the reader right down into the story. Despite the wealth of detail, the Voice—14th century Ysabel, Ade, Maheut and Humbert—remains authentic, the characters completely sympathetic. It paints a wonderful picture of the world of the beguines, neither lay nor cloistered, ‘neither Martha, nor Mary’.

    This review first appeared in Historical Novels Review.