Innocent Traitor

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Innocent Traitor: I couldn't put it down - Rated
I loved this book all the way through. I have read quite a lot of historical novels and this was just as good as all the others I have read. I love the tudor period especially.
The only thing that I feel could have been left out were the modern day swear words and Lady Jane's husbands explicit sexual dealings with her. I would have enjoyed it just as much.
I must admit I filled up at the end and have never done that before in all the historical novels I have read.
I was bought this book as a gift Amazon and am very glad I was.

A GOOD READ - Rated
I bought this book having read the six wives of henry the eigth and I thought it was a good read. I did not have alot of knowledge about Lady Jane Grey and this was a good introduction.

Fantabulosa! - Rated
Oh Wow, what a book! Alison Weir is such a great writer. I just couldn't put this down and even though i knew how it was going to end, i prayed it would be different. Superb and a must read book.

Disappointing and trivial - Rated
Deeply disappointing read to anyone genuinely interested in history and definately not one of Alison Weir's more successful works. here ius no depth to the book and the characters are shallow; there is some basis in historical fact but much of the book is conjecture. The style is stilted and uses the device of several different people taking up the tale to carry the story along. This patently does not work in this book as none of the characters develop a believable or sufficiently diiferentiated voice. The modernisation of the language and sentiment makes the book anachronistic and is rather patronising to the reader. It was so vacuous and trite that I nearly gave up on the book in boredom but the second half does gain some pace as it moves to it's inescapable conclusion and there are some little insights into Queen Mary's character that could bear further development.
Is this book trying to be reportage or a boddice ripper ? Whatever the genre it really does not work. Perhaps I should not have read it after Ives' excellent piece of scholarship on Anne Boleyn which really is well researched, highly entertaining and rewarding.

Sadly disappointed - Rated
History is my favorite subject and this author came highly recommended.
This is the first book I have read by her and was extremely disappointed.
It lacked a true atmosphere of the time,that this was set in.
I really could not picture any exacutioner, living during Mary's reign, thinking the thoughts that this author had written.
The terminology was all wrong, the dialogue sounded 1970's.
The characters all appeared wishy washy.
It is far more a type of Barbara Cartland for the history lover, than any serious attempt to understand or explain how these events really played out.
It is an easy light read, ideal for train travel or just before going to sleep.
The Tudor/War of the Roses have been far better written as stories by Rosemay Hawley Jarman, amoungest others, who REALLY make you smell the candle wax and hear the rustle of cloth of gold.
This book is not, in my opinion, true history at all. Just another story book.