A Crowning Mercy

Rating:
Summary: A wonderful combination of historic detail and romance.
Review: Fleeing from her strict Puritan household and an odious arranged marriage, a young woman seeks her fortune in 17th century London and falls in love with a charming aristocrat. As the fragile peace between the Puritan Roundheads and Royalist aristocracy crumbles, however, it becomes apparent that this young woman is not at all what she seems.

Beautifully written by a relatively unknown British author, this novel set during the English Civil War has everything: a heroine with a mysterious past, an engaging hero, an intricate plot, and some truly loathsome villains.

Its companion novel, "The Fallen Angels," is every bit as good.

Rating:
Summary: A wonderful combination of historic detail and romance.
Review: Fleeing from her strict Puritan household and an odious arranged marriage, a young woman seeks her fortune in 17th century London and falls in love with a charming aristocrat. As the fragile peace between the Puritan Roundheads and Royalist aristocracy crumbles, however, it becomes apparent that this young woman is not at all what she seems.

Beautifully written by a relatively unknown British author, this novel set during the English Civil War has everything: a heroine with a mysterious past, an engaging hero, an intricate plot, and some truly loathsome villains.

Its companion novel, "The Fallen Angels," is every bit as good.

Rating:
Summary: An interesting writing exercise from a good craftsman
Review: I heard about this book years ago. Cornwell mentioned on a fan website that he once wrote a romance novel under the pen name Susannah Kells to win a bet made over some Jameson with his mates when he was a journalist in Northern Ireland.

I located a copy and found it a most credible example of the genre.

It has all the proper elements of a historical romance, a heroine who feels alienated from her family, forbidden romance, the presence of titled families, physical danger, secret pasts and great fortunes plus a few unique twists of its own. Romance novelists usually don't write about how the point beats the edge in a sword fight.

The original liner notes said that the author, like the heroine, was raised among members of a very strict religious sect that she rebelled against as an adult. That is true, as Cornwell himself was adopted shortly after birth into an offshoot of 18th century Methodism that called themselves the Peculiar people. As I read A Crowning Mercy, I got the distinct impression this was a more personal books than the author's other works. For that reason alone it is a must read for the true Cornwell fan.

Rating:
Summary: Best read in a long time
Review: I loved this book....a real page turner! It was well written, fast paced and believable, cover to cover. This book was not about war or romance but about people's lives. My first Bernard Cornwell book. I will definitely look for more.

Rating:
Summary: Don't read if you're looking for Sharpe, but . . .
Review: I'm a huge Cornwell fan (and he's not "relatively unknown"; he's huge, hardback releases and all). I've read almost everything he's ever written, so it was nice to find a reissue of this book he co-wrote with his wife. He's most famous for his novels about the 95th Rifles and Richard Sharpe, but his Arthurian novels are also wonderful (why they didn't opt them for the stinker KING AUTHER movie that just came out I'll never understand).

A Crowning Mercy is not a romance novel per se (male fans need not be worried), but it's far more along those lines than his other novels. It has high adventure (a Cornwell staple), war (another hallmark), and a wonderful, well developed love story (something that is usually left well in the background of his novels). Cornwell himself says this is the best of the three he and his wife co-wrote, so I'll probably skip the others, but I'm glad I bought this one.