The Half Has Never Been Told
Book
Americans tend to cast slavery as a pre-modern institution--the nation's original sin, perhaps, but...
BarX Stock-Up Beverages Online
Food & Drink
App
BarX lets you explore old favourites, new surprises and limitless choices. A Step ahead towards...
Brave New World: Inside Pochettino's Spurs
Book
The exclusive behind-the-scenes story of the Mauricio Pochettino revolution at Spurs, told in his...
sports
God's Rough Drafts
Book
What if nothing changes?What if government and industry plow, unchecked, through the twenty-first...
Newton
Tabletop Game
Around the middle of the 17th century with the advent of the scientific method, a period of great...
Boardgames 2018Games ScienceGames BrainGames ComplexGames
Rebecca's Children: A saga of love and betrayal in 19th century Wales
Book
A heart-wrenching saga of revolution, regret and family secrets... For fans of Nadine Dorries, Maeve...
Historical Fiction Wales
Persepolis 2: The Story of a Return
Book
In Persepolis, heralded by the Los Angeles Times as “one of the freshest and most original memoirs...
horse/man
Book
What happens when your entire identity revolves around a way of life that is becoming obsolete? ...
Literary Fiction
The Glutton
Book
One man with an insatiable hunger: a novel of desire and destruction in Revolutionary France, based...
Historical fiction France
David McK (3425 KP) rated Blood's Game in Books
Jan 30, 2019
This, however, would be the first time I had read one of Donald's novels that concerned a different central character, and that had a different setting: would it, I wondered, be more of the same, or would it have it's own 'feel'?
The answer, I can now say, is the latter.
Replacing Alan-a-Dale with Holcroft Blood, and told in the more traditional her-and-know third-person narrative (instead of the conceit of an elderly Alan recalling his youthful adventures with Robin Hood), this particular novel deals with the (attempted) theft of the Crown Jewels from the Tower of England during the reign of King Charles II, not long after the restoration.
While that (attempted) theft is carried out by Thomas Blood - who was caught red-handed but later, incredibly, was granted a pardon by Charles II - this novel does not have Thomas as the central character: rather, instead, we follow the fortunes of his youngest son Holcroft: a son who, throughout the course of this novel, becomes friends with Sir John Churchill, the future Duke of Marlborough (and Winston Churchill's direct descendant).
Whether true or not, young Holcroft is portrayed in this as suffering from a mild form of Asperger's Syndrome, able to easily code and decode correspondence sent to his master The Duke of Buckingham from his various spies and informants: a skill that comes in handy in this tale! I have to say, too, that the court of King Charles II comes across as incredibly decadent, full of scheming and back-stabbing rivals out wholly for themselves ...
I'd be interested in seeing where this series goes, especially as the next entry ([b:Blood's Revolution|36146468|Blood's Revolution|Angus Donald|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1504033386s/36146468.jpg|57749834]) concerns itself - at least, according to the blurb at the back of this - with what is (in this country - Northern Ireland - at least) a very divisive and pivotal moment in English history.