Tarnish (Royal Circle 2) Paperback – 20 Jun 2013

Enjoyable book about Anne Boleyn before she was Queen. The author understandably put her own,"take" on the "formative years" using poetic licence as no one knows for certain how her life really started. I didn't completely agree but you must choose for yourself. Recommended.

great story get this book its full of history and suprises thankyou gillian

Great read

Bit disappointing.

I recently read Brazen by Katherine Longshore, which was the story of Mary Howard’s marriage to the illegitimate son of King Henry VIII, Henry FitzRoy, the son of Bessie Blount.This book, Tarnish is again set in Tudor times, and tells of Anne Boleyn between 1523 and 1525. The story is told by Anne herself, and is set years before the later part of her life which has become the more well-known. Yet even so she has already earned herself a reputation at Court, as the sister of the King’s mistress Mary, and the daughter of a grasping political and social climber, Thomas Boleyn who had successfully married into the Howard family, marrying Lady Elizabeth Howard, daughter of the 2nd Duke of Norfolk.Born probably in 1501, Anne had spent her youth at court in Europe, firstly with the household of Archduchess Margaret of Austria, and then in France at the court of Queen Mary, Henry VIII’s sister and wife of Louis XII, and then at the court of his successor Francois. Anne returned to England in 1522 and was likely to be wed to James Butler as part of her father’s plan to settle the succession of the Earldom of Ormond. But that marriage never took place. Instead, Anne’s life took unexpected turns towards her ultimately tragic destiny. But this book doesn’t touch on her tragedy; it leaves Anne looking to a future which she feels holds hope, and love; the things she considers important for her.Told in the first person, the narrative is from within Anne’s own life; her thoughts, her fears, her hopes and dreams. How she makes her way through the treacherous Tudor court, always an outsider yet integral to that web of deceit and lies, is the tale told her, and told in Anne’s own way. The author has given Anne Boleyn, about whom many books have been written, a fresh and surprisingly ‘honest’ viewpoint on her own life as a young woman, and the result is a remarkably good historical novel. I’ve read a lot (!) of fictional and non-fictional accounts of Anne Boleyn’s life, and her times in the Tudor world, and this really is a great read; refreshingly open, historically involved, and insightful into Anne herself.I’d have to say, though that whoever designed the cover of this book is doing the author no favours; while the hardcover is fine, the book cover on the paperback edition would lead a passing potential reader to consider it a ‘romantic chick-lit’ type book; it is nothing of the sort, and the cover really needs to be redesigned with more respect for the contents, and the potential reader.

It must have been frustrating to be a woman at the time of Henry VII. With no outlet for self expression, other than needlework and fashion, the women that inhabit Katherine Longshore's Tarnish turn to malicious gossip and betrayals to subtly manoeuvre themselves to positions of power. Or at least, as much power as it was possible for a woman to possess.Which sounds all dreadfully anti-feminist, quick let's burn some bras to cancel out the degradation, but Anne Boleyn is actually a refreshingly strong female character - realistic within her time frame, but feisty and modern enough for modern girls to relate and look up to. Only not too much, she does get her head chopped off for witchcraft, after all.Anne's drive to be her own woman - a near impossible task for the time - is admirable, and makes her an excellent topic for historical fiction. I guess her tragic end means she's more often explored in a tragic way, but here she's very much alive and on the cusp of greatness, her sordid end a shadow on the horizon, but never reached. At least, not in this book.The pageantry of court life is wonderfully brought to life, and Anne's position as an outsider, her disdain for it all and yet her desperation to fit in amongst it, because to fit in gives her power, make reading the novel like walking on a tightrope. You can see clearly as Anne can that it's not the sort of place you'd want to spend any time in, but at the same time the glamourousness of it all is an ever present temptation, leaving you to wonder if you would have done any differently.Like all the best historical fiction, it creates a world that sucks you in and makes you want to hang around, explore, and when you run out of pages to perhaps find some more in another book, perhaps one that isn't fiction this time.Rating: 4/5