Sunne in Splendour

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Summary: A wonderful tale of Medieval England
Review:
I picked this book up at random one dull afternoon and could not put it down. Penman made Medieval England come alive for me in a way no one else ever had. You can completely lose yourself in the past with her books and feel like you are there. This book started my love of Penman's works.

Penman's Richard is a wonderful character that you cannot help but fall in love with and feel for. He is a man before his time who sees power as an obligation and a burden rather than a right and something to abuse for his own amusement. His struggle to do the right thing amidst power and glory hungry nobles is made even more tragic since you already know how it ends. Still, you find yourself hoping that he will win out in the end.

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Summary: The best author of historical fiction around.
Review: Penman's books (all of which I have read and enjoyed immensely) are among the best reads I have experienced. They are impossible to put down. She has the gift of creating vivid, lovable (and often dispicable) characters out of the great figures of British history. Glorious and bloody battles, great alliances and viscious betrayals, abundant wealth and abject poverty, romance and heartbreak -- this is the England that Penman creates for us, and in writing that is often mesmerizing. When friends ask me for recommendations for vacation reading, Penman tops my list. It is a true puzzlement to me that she is not a bestseller.

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Summary: Compulsive reading, a brilliant book.
Review: A wonderful, very historically authentic, book. This was the first historical fiction work I read, and now MANY MANY novels later, I have found few or none to match it. The characters and dialogue are wonderfully believable, the atmosphere is just right ... after reading this book, I was sure that Richard III was innocent ... I haven't been fully convinced otherwise as yet, despite all the learned texts to the contrary..

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Summary: Riveting historical fiction, marvelous characterizations.
Review: Members of the White Rose Society (those who believe Richard III was a good guy maligned by history) rejoice at this fresh look at the turbulent mid-15th century English power struggle. My all-time favorite novel

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Summary: worth a second, third and fourth read
Review: There are few books I'd be willing to read more than once, but this is one I keep reading year after year. If your only source of information about this King is through Shakespeare, this historical novel may surprise you with its sympathetic interpretation of the historical information Ms. Penman has within her grasp. Extremely readable, believable and, so far as I can tell from other reading on Richard, very close to the mark historically. This was my introduction to Penman's work...I've not missed a book of hers since. She is an accomplished storyteller

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Summary: A magnificent work for history lovers and romantics alike.
Review: I read this book straight through on a long flight overseas. I could not put it down. A lover of history and one always for the underdog I found myself drawn to Richard III in this book. Maligned by history through the ages, he is now seen in a heroic and beloved light. I prefer this Richard to the one history so often portrays. Fast paced, even the battle scenes kept me drawn into the story and transported back into the 15th centruy. Sharon Kay Penman is a master story teller of medieval England. I look forward to reading her other novels. She is tops on my list and I recommend this book as a robust read!!!!!

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Summary: One of the best romantic historical fiction books around.
Review: I read this book on a trip to India about 12 years ago. I started reading it at my hotel in Bombay where I had a 2 day stopover. Read straight through (2 days and one night). It is the most entertaining, spellbinding fictional book I've ever read. Gene Seley

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Summary: Still amazing, years later
Review: This is my all-time favorite book; I re-read it every year. Besides being responsible for me changing my major at university and falling absolutely in love with medieval history, this book is thoroughly entertaining to those who may not have a history passion or even passing knowledge of the time period. Penman is detailed enough to help along readers with little to no knowledge of medieval British history, but enthusiasts will delight in her detail and character development. If you have even a remote interest in history, Richard III, or murder, intrigue and deceit, read this book!!

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Summary: Never 900+ pages read better!
Review: Most of us have a preconceived opinion of Richard III. Be it of a good man, victim of the circumstances, or of an evil being who wouldn't hesitate to murder his own flesh and blood to usurp a throne that didn't belong to him. But the truth is that Richard was a man of his time, one who, to his misfortune, lacked the "sun" personality, character and appearance of his brother Edward. Is this a crime? To Richard it was.
But this book is not only about Richard, the last of the Plantagenet kings. It is also about Edward IV, George of Clarence, the Earl of Warwick, Anne Neville . . . It is about a fascinating time in history.
I read this book a long time ago (I have read everything Ms. Penman has written) and enjoyed it so much that I would like every reader out there to share in my experience. Don't miss this book, it is the best of the historic fiction genre.


Rating:
Summary: Sunne in Splendour
Review: I know a lot of people are going to be mad at me. Perhaps this book just isn't for me. Other reviewers commented on the storyline, so I'll just add the things that struck me while I was reading it.

Not only is the subject matter complex, but history requires that the story contain an excessive number of characters. Furthermore, they're referred to not only by their given names, but by their titles or the geographic locations they're "Earl of", or "Duke of". So "Edmond" is also "Rutland", and "Richard Neville" is also "Warwick" and so forth. Too many people have two or more names, including nicknames, or names that are very similar. This may be historically accurate, but it makes for confusion anyway. If you can't sit down and focus for extended periods of time, you're going to get lost each time you're interrupted. Perhaps it was the fact that my life is busy that made this a difficult book to get into. This is not to say that I prefer a beach read or a shorter book. I just think complex subject matter and a large number of characters can sometimes be managed to make the reading flow more easily, and to make picking up where you left off less of a chore. I would have begun by taking literary license and referring to characters consistently, and by their given names only. I might also have elimimated some of the minor characters to simplify the structure.

So this is merely a warning to someone who doesn't have hours at a stretch to sit down with this book. It's a lot of work, if your attention is frequently pulled elsewhere.

The author makes repeated grammatical errors as well; incomplete sentences and comma splices are everywhere. These can be used VERY sparingly to set the tone. However, in this book I found myself not only trying to settle back in after an interruption and gather up all my thoughts, but getting stopped short by incorrect sentence structure in nearly every paragraph. As a result, I kept rereading sentences because I thought that surely I must have misread them the first time. It bogged me down and distracted me from the story. An editor should have addressed that, in my opinion.

Though admittedly most of the reviewers neither recognized or noticed the writing technicalities, nor did they care, so for most people this shouldn't a problem. Ignore this observation if you know you're one of those and focus on the story, which is great!

The author is a fantastic storyteller - and it's certainly a fascinating story - but the technical issues were distracting to me. I feel that, out of a five-star rating, writing technicalities comprise two of the stars. That is why I opted for a three-star rating. I give her full credit for storytelling!