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Siren Song #4
A Silver Mirror
When Power and Desire Ruled Men's Hearts...
In the turbulent age when hearts knew no surrender, willful King Henry III waged a scheming war, setting the lords of England and France in bloody opposition. Within this raging conflict, two indomitable hearts would cling to an eternal passion...
Lady Barbara Bigod -- The determined and beautiful daughter of an English earl, she struggled to keep peace within her divided family -- and secretly yearned for the man who sparked her first hidden passions...
Alphonse d'Aix -- The reputed bastard son of a French lord, he had to risk his life -- and prove his honor -- to win the heart of the fiery Lady Barbara...
The passions of youth sparked their first desire, but their bond would endure -- for Lady Barbara held dear a token of her lover's eternal devotion: a silver mirror, a symbol of victory and a reflection of love that would withstand the trials of war and the winds of change...
In the turbulent age when hearts knew no surrender, willful King Henry III waged a scheming war, setting the lords of England and France in bloody opposition. Within this raging conflict, two indomitable hearts would cling to an eternal passion...
Lady Barbara Bigod -- The determined and beautiful daughter of an English earl, she struggled to keep peace within her divided family -- and secretly yearned for the man who sparked her first hidden passions...
Alphonse d'Aix -- The reputed bastard son of a French lord, he had to risk his life -- and prove his honor -- to win the heart of the fiery Lady Barbara...
The passions of youth sparked their first desire, but their bond would endure -- for Lady Barbara held dear a token of her lover's eternal devotion: a silver mirror, a symbol of victory and a reflection of love that would withstand the trials of war and the winds of change...
505 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published January 1, 1989
22 people are currently reading
149 people want to read
About the author
Roberta Gellis
56 books185 followersRoberta Gellis has been one of the most successful writers of historical fiction of the last few decades, having published about 25 meticulously researched historical novels since 1964. She was married to her husband Charles for over 50 years and they lived together in Lafayette, Indiana with a lively Lakeland terrier called Taffy. She has one child called Mark.
Her page at the Internet Speculative Fiction DataBase
Her page at the Internet Speculative Fiction DataBase
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
December 25, 2008
Barbara is the "natural" daughter of Roger Bigod, Earl of Norfolk and the story is set during the latter years of Henry III's reign during the conflict between Henry and his barons, most specifically Simon de Montfort, Earl of Leicester. Barbara's father Roger sides with Leicester while his brother sides with the royalists. Leicester's younger son Guy aims to make Barbara his mistress against her will and to avoid exacerbating the political situation she sails for France.
Married and widowed at a very young age (although the marriage was never consummated), Barbara has carried a torch for knight Alphonse d'Aix and still carries the silver mirror he won in a tourney and gave to a very young Barbara. When the two meet again, they are instantly attracted to each other and decide to wed -- although neither are willing to admit their true feelings for each other. The rest of the story evolves around the growing conflict between Henry and his son Edward and Leicester and the rebellious barons as Barbara and Alphonse return to England and are constantly involved in the thick of all the intrigue and treachery as the two warring factions battle for supremacy, until that final and fateful battle at Evesham.
Gellis does a good job (as usual) setting up the back story and history of the period and although this is billed as a romance there's quite a bit more to it than that - if you're looking for a bodice ripper I suggest you look elsewhere - you'll probably be bored to tears with all the history. Barbara and Alphonse were really rather adorable with their fears of revealing their true feelings to each other and the crossed purposes on the path to true love - Barbara always thinking Alphonse is off chasing other women while Alphonse discovers the silver mirror Barbara treasures above all else and thinks she is hiding a secret lover. Although a bit slow at times as the history of this period is a bit complex, I did enjoy it and found it just right for a snow bound winter's afternoon. 3.5/5 stars.
Married and widowed at a very young age (although the marriage was never consummated), Barbara has carried a torch for knight Alphonse d'Aix and still carries the silver mirror he won in a tourney and gave to a very young Barbara. When the two meet again, they are instantly attracted to each other and decide to wed -- although neither are willing to admit their true feelings for each other. The rest of the story evolves around the growing conflict between Henry and his son Edward and Leicester and the rebellious barons as Barbara and Alphonse return to England and are constantly involved in the thick of all the intrigue and treachery as the two warring factions battle for supremacy, until that final and fateful battle at Evesham.
Gellis does a good job (as usual) setting up the back story and history of the period and although this is billed as a romance there's quite a bit more to it than that - if you're looking for a bodice ripper I suggest you look elsewhere - you'll probably be bored to tears with all the history. Barbara and Alphonse were really rather adorable with their fears of revealing their true feelings to each other and the crossed purposes on the path to true love - Barbara always thinking Alphonse is off chasing other women while Alphonse discovers the silver mirror Barbara treasures above all else and thinks she is hiding a secret lover. Although a bit slow at times as the history of this period is a bit complex, I did enjoy it and found it just right for a snow bound winter's afternoon. 3.5/5 stars.
May 4, 2023
The hero is the brother of the d'Aix lord. He's spent most of his life in the court of the king of France to protect the family interests. The heroine is the only child of the earl of Norfolk, though not the daughter of his wife. He acknowledged her, and sent her to the French court to find a husband. The husband died before they even met (married by proxy) and she went back to England because if she can't have the hero, she'll have no one. Much of the story is wrapped around the doings of the kings and queens of the era because Barbara and Alphonse are courtiers. It's an interesting, entertaining, informative read. I liked it a lot.
September 3, 2023
My brain is melting out of my ears right now. How can I find an author alternately enthralling and boring?
The original cover art by Pino Daeni is lush, gorgeous and painterly. There's a tournament, a hot guy, a chick with lots of nice jewelry, it looks action packed and romantic. I often stared at it as a child, thinking it would be the coolest book ever, but I would glance through the book and be put off by the subject matter. Reader, I'm glad I did, because young me would have HATED this book.
Suffice to say, this artwork does not represent the book faithfully.
So this book is about this French courtier/politician named Alphonse and an English lady named Barbara who is headstrong yet very canny. They marry and deal with the Second Baron's War. If you're like me, who had no idea what the Second Baron's war was, it was a civil war in 13th century England where several noblemen rebelled against King John's son Henry III, because, like his dad, he was a shitty ruler. The lead rebel nobleman tried to enact reforms. But this didn't go anywhere, because you can't just ignore/badger/imprison the king, even if he does completely suck-- since this is the middle ages we're talking about, and rich nobles thought he was appointed by God. (A lot of poorer folks were less convinced of this apparently, but they weren't able to do anything about it yet.)
Anyway. If you don't care about any of this, don't read this book. It takes two semi-interesting characters and then puts them in this sub-Dorothy Dunnett medieval talking heads CSPAN historical drama. Gellis has done some amazing work, but she does much better with a tighter focus on the hero and heroine. I kept losing interest-- I would often put the book down and do something, anything else-- because a lot of the story revolves around what nobleman supports who and what about the king or the prince and not to mention all the troop movements, and God, I just did not care. Gellis excels at thrilling adventure, atmosphere and action sequences, but there wasn't much here. It was just... the hero and heroine deal with a historical event. That's decent enough basis for a historical novel, but still, it's up to the author to make it emotional enough and gripping for the reader-- to try to get the reader to care. I did not. I finished it because I hoped the ending would be as exciting as the ending of The Rope Dancer or Enchanted Fire, but the rebellion is just put down, the bad guy runs off, and the hero and heroine sort out their relationship.
*yawns*
This is not going to put me off Gellis, because I've read more good books by her than bad, yet TL;DR: I still don't give a shit about this typical kings-and-knights bog standard view of medieval history. There's cool and interesting stories about the medieval era, but holy shit this is not one of them.
I leave you guys with a Monty Python sketch, one which is actually based on a real medieval republic that existed in Germany at the time.
The original cover art by Pino Daeni is lush, gorgeous and painterly. There's a tournament, a hot guy, a chick with lots of nice jewelry, it looks action packed and romantic. I often stared at it as a child, thinking it would be the coolest book ever, but I would glance through the book and be put off by the subject matter. Reader, I'm glad I did, because young me would have HATED this book.
Suffice to say, this artwork does not represent the book faithfully.
So this book is about this French courtier/politician named Alphonse and an English lady named Barbara who is headstrong yet very canny. They marry and deal with the Second Baron's War. If you're like me, who had no idea what the Second Baron's war was, it was a civil war in 13th century England where several noblemen rebelled against King John's son Henry III, because, like his dad, he was a shitty ruler. The lead rebel nobleman tried to enact reforms. But this didn't go anywhere, because you can't just ignore/badger/imprison the king, even if he does completely suck-- since this is the middle ages we're talking about, and rich nobles thought he was appointed by God. (A lot of poorer folks were less convinced of this apparently, but they weren't able to do anything about it yet.)
Anyway. If you don't care about any of this, don't read this book. It takes two semi-interesting characters and then puts them in this sub-Dorothy Dunnett medieval talking heads CSPAN historical drama. Gellis has done some amazing work, but she does much better with a tighter focus on the hero and heroine. I kept losing interest-- I would often put the book down and do something, anything else-- because a lot of the story revolves around what nobleman supports who and what about the king or the prince and not to mention all the troop movements, and God, I just did not care. Gellis excels at thrilling adventure, atmosphere and action sequences, but there wasn't much here. It was just... the hero and heroine deal with a historical event. That's decent enough basis for a historical novel, but still, it's up to the author to make it emotional enough and gripping for the reader-- to try to get the reader to care. I did not. I finished it because I hoped the ending would be as exciting as the ending of The Rope Dancer or Enchanted Fire, but the rebellion is just put down, the bad guy runs off, and the hero and heroine sort out their relationship.
*yawns*
This is not going to put me off Gellis, because I've read more good books by her than bad, yet TL;DR: I still don't give a shit about this typical kings-and-knights bog standard view of medieval history. There's cool and interesting stories about the medieval era, but holy shit this is not one of them.
I leave you guys with a Monty Python sketch, one which is actually based on a real medieval republic that existed in Germany at the time.
May 25, 2021
I am a tedious reader. I read this book with my smart phone in one hand checking every single person and where they were, what they were doing, what happened to them, etc. etc. etc. Fact checking everything, I only found one mistake in the entire book. She had a quote by the Earl of Norfolk that was not done by him, but by his nephew, who was his heir. This is the best example of learning history by reading a really good historical novel.
June 7, 2022
I really like this series and the historical backdrop is very fun.
September 13, 2016
I have rather mixed feelings about this one. First of all, it's BY FAR the best of this four-book series, at least in terms of the male lead not being an utter and total asshole (I hope it's not a spoiler to say that he doesn't ever beat, rape, or berate his wife, and actually ACTS like he loves her) while the female lead is both clever and politically astute, not shrewish, and also doesn't do horrible things to her underlings. So that already sets the two characters head and shoulders above their counterparts in the other three books of the series.
HOWEVER ... the romance and the history sit rather awkwardly together, because much of the book is just a straight-up retelling of the end of Simon de Montfort's rule over England, from the perspective of those who are more or less bound to his enemies (Henry III and Prince Edward who will become Edward I.) So there are pages, and page, and pages, of the movement of armies etc., and while that's no bad thing, it's also not ... really a novel at this point? (For sure, Gellis doesn't have the skill of Dorothy Dunnett, who makes the politics as interesting as the other stuff, because we don't have reams of exposition.) I LOVE history, and historical fiction, but I prefer that my fiction have some fiction in it, rather than just being a retelling of historical events with no reference to the characters in the novels.
Meanwhile, the romance "plot" such as it is, hinges on one of my least favorite tropes ever - people who just DON'T TALK TO EACH OTHER and stupid misunderstandings that continue to be perpetuated, and goddamn, just stop it, you two!! Because I really did like Alphonse AND Barbara, but I was also super annoyed with both of them until the last two chapters of the book, which were great.
Oh, and the third dimension is the increasingly awkward erotic scenes because they just seem shoehorned in there to show us that Barbara and Alphonse desire and love each other, but ... by the 10th one, it would have sufficed to just say they had some fun sexy times, because the scenes aren't particularly erotic, and they just don't gel with the long paragraphs of actual history so this book ends up as a weird hybrid.
HOWEVER ... I do still really like Gellis's much less unrealistic-than-most-historical-romance-novels (I'm looking at you, all those books with "Highland ..." in their title!) view of history, and Barbara and Alphonse are both quite charming and I liked some of the secondary characters, so I'm glad I kept reading through to the end of the series. I may even try some of her others.
HOWEVER ... the romance and the history sit rather awkwardly together, because much of the book is just a straight-up retelling of the end of Simon de Montfort's rule over England, from the perspective of those who are more or less bound to his enemies (Henry III and Prince Edward who will become Edward I.) So there are pages, and page, and pages, of the movement of armies etc., and while that's no bad thing, it's also not ... really a novel at this point? (For sure, Gellis doesn't have the skill of Dorothy Dunnett, who makes the politics as interesting as the other stuff, because we don't have reams of exposition.) I LOVE history, and historical fiction, but I prefer that my fiction have some fiction in it, rather than just being a retelling of historical events with no reference to the characters in the novels.
Meanwhile, the romance "plot" such as it is, hinges on one of my least favorite tropes ever - people who just DON'T TALK TO EACH OTHER and stupid misunderstandings that continue to be perpetuated, and goddamn, just stop it, you two!! Because I really did like Alphonse AND Barbara, but I was also super annoyed with both of them until the last two chapters of the book, which were great.
Oh, and the third dimension is the increasingly awkward erotic scenes because they just seem shoehorned in there to show us that Barbara and Alphonse desire and love each other, but ... by the 10th one, it would have sufficed to just say they had some fun sexy times, because the scenes aren't particularly erotic, and they just don't gel with the long paragraphs of actual history so this book ends up as a weird hybrid.
HOWEVER ... I do still really like Gellis's much less unrealistic-than-most-historical-romance-novels (I'm looking at you, all those books with "Highland ..." in their title!) view of history, and Barbara and Alphonse are both quite charming and I liked some of the secondary characters, so I'm glad I kept reading through to the end of the series. I may even try some of her others.
November 28, 2023
This looks like a bodice ripper but is actually a pretty fabulous look at late thirteenth century England, with a side trip to Louis IX's France. It's not that there isn't a romance - sort of- at the center of the tale, but the details of everyday life, including discomforts, are at the heart of this story. You will also learn quite a bit about King Henry III and Edward I while you are at it, not to mention medieval tournaments, court etiquette and food. Roberta Gellis really knows her stuff and wrote a series of engaging medieval tales in the 1980s before she shifted to sci fi.
October 17, 2014
quite an enjoyable book
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews