Rating: 
Summary: Does not measure up to George's other books.
Review: Margaret George is a great writer and her novels are fabulous--but read Henry VIII and Cleopatra first. If you skip one of the three, this is the one to skip. It has numerous dull stretches and Mary, unlike George's other two title characters, remains somewhat remote and unsympathetic.
Rating: 
Summary: An amazing example of wonderful storytelling and research.
Review: When I read Margaret George for the first time, I read an author's note at the end that said that she had spent fourteen years researching her book. Mary Queen of Scotland and the Isles took her four years - I can believe it! But even though it's long, it's a fabulously exciting read. It's full of war and deception and romance and treachery and focuses on Mary's loss of innocence during her short life. It also has my undying gratitude for helping me in school; I was supposed to learn about Mary for my history class and thanks to this book, I knew more about her than anyone in my class!
Rating: 
Summary: Fascinating book
Review: I recently saw the movie "Elizabeth" at the theater, and it sparked my interest in 16th and 17th century royalty. I picked this book up at the library, and have been engrossed in it ever since. I am at the point where Mary has just fled to England, and because I know how it will end, I want so desperately to tell her, "Don't go!" because I feel like I know her. Yes, the book is long, but it is thoroughly enjoyable so the length doesn't matter. George portrays Mary as unrealistically saint-like and innocent, so the predicaments she gets herself into stir up sympathy. But what was Mary REALLY like? This is the question that I've been eating and breathing since I've started reading the book. Although I have learned a lot, it's those nagging, intriguing, unanswered questions that drive one to insanity!
Rating:
Summary: Definitely worth your time
Review: This book is very well-written and is really interesting. So I say it's a book worth reading.
Rating:
Summary: Good historical fiction, but with a frustrating heroine
Review: I enjoyed this book very much; it had wonderful detail, and I particularly enjoyed how George portrayed Mary's years in Scotland. I felt like I was learning more about history as I read the story.However, I found George's Mary to be very frustrating. I suppose the reader is supposed to sympathize with her, but I found it hard to. She was a Queen, and didn't act like a Queen, but like a giddy girl. I feel like the bad decisions she made, despite advisors' efforts to dissuade her, put her in the positions she ended up in. I also felt like George was trying far too hard to make her into some sort of saint by the end of the book, dying for her religion, but the way I saw it, she was being executed because she was involved in a plot to assassinate Elizabeth. Once again, she acted against her closest confidantes' advice, and once again she was punished for it. But, I guess for me to become so involved in the story meant it was written well. OVerall, I recommend it!
Rating:
Summary: An excellent read!
Review: I felt this to be one of the most detailed books on a historical figure that I have yet read. Margaret George really makes the characters come to life in this novel. A special thanks for writing such a true to life account on such a facinating woman!
Rating:
Summary: Excellence in Historical Fiction
Review: I had read "Elizabeth I" by Anne Sommerset many years before, and I happened to stumble upon "Mary" in a book store. I bought it and was very engrossed the entire time!!! It was a delight to read Mary's story and to put a personality with the name I had read barely mentioned years ago! How fasinating to read the origional soap Operas!!! May there be a bit of Mary and Elizabeth in each of us! Highly recommended...
Rating:
Summary: A slightly disappointing effort.
Review: The life of Mary Queen of Scots is perhaps history's greatest soap opera. It is impossible to make her story dull, although, when reading this novel, I sometimes had the feeling that George was trying her hardest to disprove that fact. True, Mary was a prisoner for twenty years, but did George have to spend what felt like twenty years describing it? I wish the author had spent less time on the latter half of Mary's life, and more on her years in Scotland, particularly where her relationship with the Earl of Bothwell is concerned. Bothwell, to me, is one of history's more fascinating personalities, and I felt that, even though he is the book's hero, George rather gave him short shrift. I also felt she made numerous factual errors, that, though mostly minor, were distracting. For instance, while I agree with her that Darnley himself was responsible for mining his house at Kirk o'field with gunpowder, her overall scenario for his murder is unconvincing. Also, it is annoying that she seems to dither about the authorship of the Casket Letters. Before she wrote the book, she should have made up her mind on the subject, one way or another. All this aside, however, George is not untalented as a writer, and as a look at Mary's life and times, it is still an improvement over Antonia Fraser's book, which is one of the stupidest biographies I have ever read.
Rating:
Summary: A very well written and well researched novel, a bit long...
Review: This is the first book I've read of George's, and prior to reading it, I had no knowledge of the Queen of Scots. I have learned a lot from the read, yet found it somewhat too long. While it was all very good, it did drag at times, and as another has said, Mary's character is slightly unrealistic. Overall it was a very good book.
Rating:
Summary: good book
Review: This was a gripping novel. The epilogue especially was quite moving. Yet I cannot say I admire Mary, as I do Elizabeth I. Plainly speaking she was a silly woman. She was a shocking judge of character and did some very stupid things. Had she not been so stupid she may well have survived. Anyway it was a good book and that's what matters.
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