Book Review
Apr. 24th, 2010 07:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kenjariFiredrake's Eye
by Patricia Finney
This is the first book in a series of espionage and intrigue thrillers set in Elizabethan London. I read the second, Unicorn's Blood a few years ago. I enjoyed Firedrake's Eye even more than I had its sequel. In this one, the two main characters, a roguish freelance swordsman and a clerk working for Walsingham, end up working together to follow the trail of a small group of Catholic traitors allied with Spain and their clever plot to assassinate the queen. In addition to keeping the narrative suspenseful and compelling, Finney is also able to weave in some good reflection on loyalty, motivation, guilt, and justification.
Finney uses several devices that really bring the story and setting to life. First of all, she does a really good job of giving the language and the prose a Shakespearean/Elizabethan feel without going horribly over the top. Second, she uses a madman living on the streets as a mostly-ominiscient narrator, which allows her to give the story an interesting spin (it would be spoilery to explain why this works as well as it does).
by Patricia Finney
This is the first book in a series of espionage and intrigue thrillers set in Elizabethan London. I read the second, Unicorn's Blood a few years ago. I enjoyed Firedrake's Eye even more than I had its sequel. In this one, the two main characters, a roguish freelance swordsman and a clerk working for Walsingham, end up working together to follow the trail of a small group of Catholic traitors allied with Spain and their clever plot to assassinate the queen. In addition to keeping the narrative suspenseful and compelling, Finney is also able to weave in some good reflection on loyalty, motivation, guilt, and justification.
Finney uses several devices that really bring the story and setting to life. First of all, she does a really good job of giving the language and the prose a Shakespearean/Elizabethan feel without going horribly over the top. Second, she uses a madman living on the streets as a mostly-ominiscient narrator, which allows her to give the story an interesting spin (it would be spoilery to explain why this works as well as it does).
