Finished The Other Queen by Phillippa Gregory finally! After two years of owning the book, I eventually got round to reading to the end. It was good, although not as gripping as her other Tudor novels. Don’t know whether it was really the best way to end the series; although one of the previous novels was based during Elizabethan England that came near the beginning of the collection, when Gregory was less well known. I think after the success of The Other Boleyn Girl, the cold, passionless lives of the characters of Other Queen are boring. Gregory’s other novels always heavily featured sex, intrigue, plots and romances and although this novel is big on the plotting, it’s not really big on much else. Although we are given Bess and Talbot’s relationship to ponder over - will Mary seduce George completely and steal him away from Bess? – none of this really compares to the drama of women lying, cheating and sleeping their way to the throne. Henry VIII’s love life was, simply put, a lot more interesting that the petty trifles of an Earl and Countess. Even if the one getting in the way of their relationship is the Queen of Scots.
I love Gregory’s novels but this one just didn’t hold the same thrall for me. Since reading many of her Tudor novels, I picked up her Wideacre trilogy, a set of books so completely astounding that I think the tameness of Other Queen left me bored. Still historical novels, they explore themes of, incest, sadomasochism and murder, to name a few. The books are a revelation and, although possibly not to everyone’s taste, show us the true lengths a woman will travel to claim what is, in her mind, rightfully hers.
If you like historical fiction, give Wideacre a try. Even if you hate it, at least you’ll have opened your eyes to something new. And then you can leave it alone and never read it again.
