The Other Queen | 
 enlarge | Author: Philippa Gregory
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers Ltd
Category: Book
List Price: £18.99
Buy New: £8.74
You Save: £10.25 (54%)
New (26) Used (8) Collectible (5) from £7.00
Avg. Customer Rating:  3 reviews
Sales Rank: 30
Media: Hardcover
Edition: New title
Pages: 448
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.6
Dimensions (in): 9.2 x 6.5 x 1.7
ISBN: 0007190344
EAN: 9780007190348
ASIN: 0007190344
Publication Date: August 21, 2008 (New: Last 30 Days)
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
Condition: brand new book despatched swiftly from the uk
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| Customer Reviews:
 disappointing, yet still a worthwhile read September 1, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
I was so looking forward to this book, but I found it sadly lacking in... well, passion, I suppose. Mary Queen of Scots is a fascinating historical character, but she comes across as a bit of a wet blanket in this.
While the three voices thing worked well in "The Boleyn Inheritance", it is a bit repetitive here. We get the message early on that Bess is only interested in hanging onto her wealth. We really don't need to be told time after time how worried she is about losing the church silver again.
George and his honour become fairly wearing after the first hundred pages. The only interesting bits for me were the invented dialogues between the characters. But yeah, nice dust jacket and I always like a ribbon thing to keep my place!
 Yet another good read. August 31, 2008
5 out of 6 found this review helpful
I really liked the presentation and the feel of this book - it's large and heavy but has a classy dust jacket and a plain fawn hard cover plus the nice extra of an integral book mark - I know this doesn't contribute to the contents but it is good to handle.
I found it enthralling and read it in a day and a half, couldn't put it down!
I like the way it is written, in individual passages by the three major characters - Mary Queen of Scots and Lord and Lady Shrewsbury - showing the complicated relationship between guest/prisoner and hosts/jailers. I think it succeeds very well in this and also brings to life the court of Queen Elizabeth 1 - not a 'Golden Age' - but a time of cruelty, avarice and intolerance.
It is a complex book, well researched and written, as Philippa Gregory's historical novels always are. As always, a review is a personal thing, but I would recommend this to anyone who enjoys a 'good read'.
It's not a bad book, but nor is it terribly compelling. August 30, 2008
10 out of 10 found this review helpful
"The Other Queen" is about Mary, Queen of Scots' imprisonment in England, focusing on the early years of her imprisonment. The story alternates between three perspectives: George Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury and his wife, Bess of Hardwick who were charged with responsibility for the Queen; the third narrator being Mary, Queen of Scots. Bess is an ambitious social climber who initially thinks that hosting Queen Mary will be a way to advance the family fortunes, but who is dismayed to find that it drains their financial resources instead. George on the other hand becomes infatuated with the Queen, which causes irreparable friction in his own marriage.
I've enjoyed other books by Philippa Gregory, but The Other Queen lacks momentum. It's a long book and not a lot happens (and when things do happen, they're invariably taking place somewhere else). I enjoyed it in a mild way, but it felt so repetitive: countless variations on Bess complaining about money, George idealizing Mary and Mary telling us how charming she is. Bess was actually quite a remarkable woman for her time, but she comes across as being so unpleasant that she failed to elicit my sympathy. You also get the feeling that most of the exciting parts of Mary's life have already taken place, so there is lots of time spent filling in her back story.
As always, Philippa Gregory has done her research. I didn't necessarily agree with her interpretation of Mary's personality, but I couldn't fault it on historical grounds. It did feel however as if she couldn't quite make up her mind what the nature of Mary and Bothwell's relationship had been and why Mary had chosen to marry him, which I think is something that she needed to establish more clearly. Towards the end of the book events also get twisted and compressed, presumably to bring about a neater conclusion. Mary's execution (still 15 years away) is described in a dream sequence: couldn't Philippa Gregory come up with a better way to include it?
I kept waiting for the book to get going, but it never really did. At one stage Bess writes: "I can hardly believe that this nightmare goes on, goes on and on, and we never achieve victory and we never achieve peace". In many ways that reflects how I felt about the book. It's not a bad book, but nor is it terribly compelling.
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