Book Review: Fatal Throne by Candace Fleming & More

Fatal Throne by Candace Fleming, M.T. Anderson, Jennifer Donnelly, Stephanie Hemphill, Deborah Hopkinson, Linda Sue Park, and Lisa Ann Sandell

**This e-ARC was provided to me for review purposes through NetGalley!**

What it's about:

     In this book, a collection of authors tell-all from the point of view of Henry VIII and his Six Wives.  Though fictional, the stories of each woman are steeped in history and well-researched. 

What I thought:
      I enjoyed this book, though is not my usual type of read.  However, being a pretty big Anglophile (can't help it, I grew up with an English Nana--it's in my blood, literally), I find myself always having been very interested in the lives of Henry VIII and his many wives (and actually, in real life, I've been in the cathedral in which Henry VIII is buried!).  I've read a few other books on the subject, though most of them have been from the pov of Mary or Elizabeth (Henry's daughters, for those not in The Know), so it was quite different for me to see povs directly of Henry and the Wives.

No lie, I actually own this mug.

     I also very much enjoyed seeing how the lives of the wives intermingled before Henry was involved.  Most texts, I find, rely on either the narrative of Catherine of Aragon or Anne Boleyn, so it was refreshing and interesting to to see/learn more about the other 4 wives.

     We additionally get to see a bit about each wife from Henry's pov, which, though interesting, gave me an even lowered opinion of him. Guy was a douchebro. And his "motto"? "Sir Loyal Heart"?! Don't even get me started about how *not* true it is.

Yeah yeah yeah, Henry, you're, like, soooo great. Except when you have your wives killed mostly because you found a new hot girl to marry. NOT.

     I think my favorite section of the book was that of Anne of Cleves.  She was one of the few wives/ex wives that survived Henry, and her section was told through memories/hallucinations as her cancer kills her.  Morbid, yes, but also very vivid and imaginative, which broke up the other wives' more monotonous, "Here's what's happening/ what happened" storylines. 
     There's also a really cool bit at the end from Elizabeth's pov, which really "sticks it to the man", since Henry's last dying entry in the book mentions how glad he is to have a son who will be a great King, and that neither of his daughters will ever be on the throne.

Take THAT, you misogynist!

     I also liked Catherine Parr's section.  Since she survived Henry while still married to him, it was interesting to see how exactly she managed to *stay* his wife, even though he tried to do away with her.

     Overall, I really liked seeing the process of a not necessarily powerful woman suddenly being thrust into the Top Female Spot and seeing how each woman dealt with it, as well as dealing with Henry and his terrible conduct and eventually failing health.  There's definitely something regal and yet sort of sad about this book, much like the queens themselves.  It's a modern-day obituary that brings to light the feelings, hopes, and dreams of the deceased.  

Rating:  3.5 stars.  

Book Review: Night by Elie Wiesel

Night by Elie Wiesel

What it's about:

A Holocaust survivor relates his experiences before and during the events that changed his life while enduring the hardships and horror of Nazi concentration camps.

What I thought:

“Human suffering anywhere concerns men and women everywhere.”

Did I love this book? No. It was hard to read and impossible to imagine going through any of the things Elie Wiesel (or any other victim of the Holocaust) experienced. It made me sad and worried and disheartened in many ways. I didn't love the way it was written, either, but that may have been the fault of multi-language translation.  (And that's not really very important in the long run.)

But I do think it's an important thing to read. 

“We cannot indefinitely avoid depressing subject matter, particularly it it is true, and in the subsequent quarter century the world has had to hear a story it would have preferred not to hear - the story of how a cultured people turned to genocide, and how the rest of the world, also composed of cultured people, remained silent in the face of genocide.”

The fact that people--to this day--still deny that the Holocaust happened makes me so confused and utterly heartbroken. Genocide of any kind is a terrible loss of humanity--both in numbers and in spirit--and to deny something that ruined (or ended) the lives of generations of a certain group of people in an unnatural, horrifying, and absolutely inhuman way is completely abhorrent to me. 

Some people suggest that this work is partly fictional, but to me it doesn't matter what happened down to every last detail--the fact that any of it happened in any way even close to the events of this book is disgusting, and the multitude of other accounts that corroborate said events makes me wonder why people are hung up on the details and not focused instead on the meaning and the lessons we can learn from these accounts.

In this day and age, with much more information on the Holocaust in a variety of mediums, this book doesn't stand out as much as it used to (hence my not ending up reading it before now), but I think it's still a valuable work that can help those without such an experience to understand and sympathize and maybe even be inspired to actively work against such events being repeated. 

“For in the end, it is all about memory, its sources and its magnitude, and, of course, its consequences.”

Rating: 4 stars