Igenlode Wordsmith’s Reviews > We Speak No Treason > Status Update

I have been avoiding reading this last part, but I had forgotten how terribly, bitterly close to home it cuts, for completely different reasons; what an outcry in these almost plot-free pages of desire and despair, and how much it hurt to read

Now *this* is how you write historical fiction!
Bringing in briefly the Pastons and their constant letters and their lawsuits, with the protagonist even supposed to be a friend of the family, but the whole thing only a background mention and feeling quite natural rather than a laboured attempt at a 'period' setting...

End of Part 2

This is the least successful section, I think, with hindsight - a dizzying gallop through too much history in summary, now that I know what all those references actually mean instead of just letting Patch's prattle roll off over my head. And the author has trouble reconciling a longstanding love for Anne Neville with her creation of the Maiden...

End of Book One...

I'm assuming "The Nut-Brown Maid" actually is a extant mediaeval ballad and not a composition of the author's own...?

I'd forgotten just how dense and elusive the prose in this is (and the fact that the whole thing is told in retrospect from the point of view of the Maiden as a very old nun; I think I probably blanked out/skipped that page on first reading, because it is pretty meaningless until you have already reached the end).
It's odd to re-encounter "the bailey beareth the bell away" now, after having sung it!