Devil's Brood (Eleanor of Aquitaine Trilogy 3) [Paperback]

I've been waiting quite a few years to read the conclusion of Sharon Kay Penman's trilogy about Henry II of England, and his wife, Eleanor of Aquitaine. When my copy of The Devil's Brood arrived on my doorstep, everything else got set aside as I dove in.

Thomas Becket has been murdered, and Henry has taken himself off to Ireland to bring that troublesome country under control. While he is in Ireland, his wife, Eleanor, is taking the management of her duchy, Aquitaine, into her own hands, as well as raising their numerous brood of children. Her favourite, Richard, is already learning the arts of war and Eleanor has decided that he will be Duke of Aquitaine in time. Their eldest son, Hal, has been crowned king (a custom among the French kings to ensure a smooth succession), and married, but he is proving to have none of his parent's cunning and skill at politics. Quite the opposite in fact. And John, the youngest of the children, is too young to any influence, but he watches and waits, caught as he is between two very strong willed parents.

When the sons are thwarted of any real power, and Eleanor joins them in rebellion, it unleashes consequences that no one can imagine. Especially for Eleanor, who has led a life that most women could only dream of, and having the daring to divorce her first husband and forge with her second husband an empire that was the mightiest in the Europe of its time. Most history of the time tends to blame the rebellion on Eleanor discovering about her husband's mistress, Rosamund Clifford, but the reality is much more different -- Eleanor was far more pragmatic and very much a realist.

And thankfully, so is Ms. Penman. This tale of Eleanor and Henry II and their children goes in a far more different direction than most novels set in this period. And for fans of the film <a href="[...]>The Lion in Winter</a> will find that this book varies quite a bit from the story presented in the movie -- and once I had read Penman's reasoning in her author's afterword, made a great deal of sense to me.

The several sequences in the book really hit me hard. One was of Henry at the tomb of Thomas Becket, doing penance in a night-long vigil; another was Eleanor coping with the reality of being Henry's prisoner, separated from her beloved sons and Aquitaine; the death of the young king, and most surprising of all, the depiction of the third son, Geoffrey, as he marries a woman just as ambitious as he is.

I found this to be a wonderful read, full of just the things I like in a historical novel -- a true sense of time and place that is different than our own; strong, interesting characters; lots of plot and new insights into a history that I knew well, and some very tight storytelling. Fans of Penman's previous novels will like the fact that this dovetails neatly into Here Be Dragons and there are hints that another novel about Eleanor, Richard and John are to come.

While it isn't quite necessary to have read the previous two novels in the trilogy -- Ms. Penman puts in enough background information to fill in the gaps -- it will help to understand more of Henry and Eleanor, and especially why Thomas Becket plays such a pivotal role in the story later.

Sharon Penman is an author that I happily recommend to anyone who wants their historical fiction to be full of adventure, conflict, and some truly amazing events. If you have read her work before, you already know how good she is; if you haven't tried any of her writing yet, this wouldn't be a horrible place to start, so go on ahead, clear some evenings ahead, and prepare to be entertained.

Five stars overall, and I would give it six if I could.

Devil's Brood is the third book in a trilogy that began with When Christ and His Saints Slept and continued with Time and Chance (Ballantine Reader's Circle). Devil's Brood tackles Henry and Eleanor's children, from Prince Hal down to John Lackland. The details of the rift between Henry, Eleanor, and their sons are well-known, but the way in which Sharon Kay Penman presents it here is unique.

In this book, Sharon Kay Penman continues her tradition of writing historical fiction that both tells a good story and educates the reader. The novel opens in 1172, fifteen months after Thomas Becket was murdered and just after Henry returns from a trip to Ireland to pay penance for his unwitting part in it. As with her other novels, the focus is on the interpersonal relationships: between Henry and his sons, Henry and Eleanor, Eleanor and her sons, and between Hal, Richard, and Geoffrey themselves. It's the kind of dysfunctional family you only read about in fiction, the distinction here being that these were, of course, real, living people. And Penman does a fantastic job of bring these people to life, 800 years later: all the little quirks of each of them are here, especially Henry's high energy and uncanny ability to travel hundreds of miles on horseback in short periods of time. .

The book is a bit of a slow read, and no wonder: at over 700 pages, this is a book to take your time over. It's taken six years for Penman to write the third book in the trilogy (on her acknowledgements page, she writes that a reader once remarked, "did Eleanor get lost in Aquitaine?"), but the wait was worth it; I enjoyed the historical detail of this novel, and the way in which the author manages to pull her research together into a comprehensive story that never fails to entertain and educate. Once again, Sharon Kay Penman has given me another reason to go do some research of my own on these fascinating historical figures. And as always, her writing is top-notch. In all, this is a very strong finish to a wonderful trilogy.

I just finished it last night, and oh this was so worth the wait. Penman has what so many other historical fiction writers don't - a sense of how to bring real events to life, and and the ability to draw characters from such a distant time so realistically that we can laugh and cry with them, and miss them when we finally put the book down. She manages to flesh out what they were thinking when they made their decisions, and how they respond to the repercussions of those decisions. The interactions between the characters brought home the complexity of the characters. I was especially intrigued with Eleanor and Henry's relationship after her participation in the rebellion; theirs was a love that somehow managed to survive through rebellions and misdeeds. I was also intrigued with Hal and Geoffrey, two of the sons we don't hear that much about, but who were major players in the history of that time period.

While I really enjoyed it, there were times when I got tired of this family. If this wasn't historical fiction, rather someones idea, it probably would have been a wallbanger about midway through - it would have been hard for me to belive that a family could be this dysfunctional. But that fact that it was historical, based on research of primary sources, made me just shake my head as I read - and made me think many times of that Hepburn line in Lion in Winter 'well, all families have their little ups and downs...'.

I was trying to determine if this was a book I could recommend to people with little or no background of the history. While Penman does an excellent job introducing her characters, I'm just not sure. I think you need to know what happened in the other two books to get the full appreciation of what is going on (either by reading the books or already having the background). I think I'd suggest starting at the trilogy before going here. Which isn't a bad place to start!

Eager for her new book, hope that we don't wait so long! I think that book will dovetail very nicely to her first, Here Be Dragons. That is one of the best historicl fiction books I have ever read, and has led many readers to become fans of all of her books.

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