Jane Seymour: The Haunted Queen
I’ve said it once and I will say it again and again: hindsight is a wonderful thing and a powerful tool to have and to hold.
When you know what happens next you are reading the story with a certain detachment, wisdom and aloofness. You know who wins and who loses. You know who dies, when and why. You know who makes mistakes…
Jane Seymour was my very first novel by Alison Weir whom I know as a wonderful and entertaining historian. What can I say? I was proud to get invited to write this review. I was very excited. Plus, the story of 3rd Henry VIII wife was unknown to me. I knew Katherine of Aragon, had mixed feelings for Anne Boleyn… but Jane Seymour.
I can safely say that I am still confused as to what I think of Jane after reading this novel. The novel is wonderful, deep, colourful and detailed. Sometimes I even felt like, ‘well, I know what happens next. Just hurry up and make it happen’. But overall, the novel reads well.
The characters are numerous and are richly dressed. And all of them have voices and enough lines in the text to make themselves count. Jane herself felt a bit ‘too modern’. Was she an Angel? Was she a mere woman? I am still undecided. But haunted she was and mostly by her own imaginings.
The third novel in the Tudor Queen series is a very atmospheric read. Would I read others? I do not think so. Would I read Weir as historian. Definitely. To tell you the truth, I enjoyed ‘Author’s afterword’ more than the whole novel.
Svetlana Tishchenko 