Rating: WARTY!
Here's another middle grade book which disappointed me. The main problem is that it was set in 1569 yet it read like it could have been written about events taking place yesterday. Obviously you don't want to write a novel in the actual language which was used over four hundred years ago, but you do want to try and imbue your writing with a little bit of antiquity. This one didn't feel that way. Worse than this, it's written in first person PoV, and worse than that, it's written as diary entries. These never work for me because they're patently unrealistic, recounting exact details and word-for-word conversations. It constantly throws me out of the story in disbelief. Worse than this, the author is so focused on including all her research in detailing daily events in Elizabethan times that the story loses all immediacy and urgency which is the whole point of using first person PoV (not that I agree there is a point!).
This is a series which, judged by the titles (Assassin, Betrayal, Conspiracy, Deception, and so on), is intended to run to twenty six volumes. I can't think of anything more tedious than that. It's penned (and I mean that in both senses of the word) by anonymous writers who all contribute under the pseudonym of 'Grace Cavendish', the main character. She's a young maid of honor who is supposedly a pursuivant - an investigator for Queen Elizabeth. 'Pursuivant' didn't actually mean that, and in Elizabeth's time was far more likely to have still been used in its French version, poursuivant.
Even if it were as the writer claims, and while the head of state was a woman, in 1569, they didn't even have adult women in any positions of responsibility, much less running around investigating anything. They would certainly never have had a young girl doing so, especially one who was so dis-empowered that she had to sneak around deceptively to get anything done instead of being allowed to pursue her investigations, None of this made any sense. Neither did it make sense that a woman of nobility, such as Lady Cavendish supposedly was, would have to kow-tow to, and live in fear of the "common" women who were employed on the palace staff.
In 1569, Elizabeth was in her mid-thirties and had been queen for over a decade, yet here she's portrayed as a petulant, ill-tempered brat who lacks control, and who has less maturity than the youthful story teller! Nonsense! Elizabeth was coolly navigating the waters of avoiding marriage - at this point to a French Valois - and dealing with the Pope's rejection of her as a valid monarch. She was hardly the spoiled child we see here.
Though this is supposedly set in late 1569, in the grip of an icy winter, at this time in that year, three Earls from the north of England were leading a rebellion against Elizabeth. They were trying to install Mary, Queen of Scots, on the throne in England, yet we're expected to believe that the sole thing bothering a petulant and spoiled Elizabeth was the introduction of a new silver coin? I'm sorry, but I cannot take this series seriously or pursue it. I guess I'm just not pursuivant enough!
