Mary is written as a very approachable character and you want to know what's going to happen to her. I love her little band of four Marys, the girls from Scotland that accompanied her to France, where she's grown up. There are a lot of interesting characters running around, too, like Catherine de Medici, Diane de Poitiers and Nostradamus.
My only criticism is that the book hides her fate. It ends when she's still young, of course, before she even marries Francis. But the epilogue is coy and only hints at bad things. Only in tiny print in the family tree section does it say she was beheaded for treason. Be honest about what she did! Don't try to hide it from readers. Let them decide for themselves how they feel about her knowing the full facts. That sneakiness gives the book a bit of a dishonest feel, which I don't care for. But that doesn't take anything away from the main narrative, the diary itself.
No comments:
Post a Comment