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The Countess And The King: A Novel Of The Countess Of Dorchester And King James II (2010)

by Susan Holloway Scott(Favorite Author)

3.92 of 5 Votes: 5

ISBN

0451231155 (ISBN13: 9780451231154)

languge

English

genre

Romance

publisher

NAL Trade

review 1: I was in the mood to return to Charles II's court and I was not really familiar with Ms Sedley. I enjoyed reading about someone new and returning to familiar characters. On the other hand the book dragged at times as Scott's novels can do. Ms. Sedley was a witty, non-conformist, which to me summed up Charles II's reign (free lovin...money spending, no responsibility age.) I enjoyed it. It just wasn't a page turner.
review 2: I haven't read as much on the Stuarts as I have most of the other royal families of England, so I was looking forward to being enlightened on this Countess of whom I had not heard. I will readily admit that I am far more interested in the people, places & events of any period of history than I am in what took place in someone's bedroom, but... more this book had a surfeit of clandestine couplings and pillow talk. Although the author was not as lurid in the details of the physical relationships and individual encounters as others have been, I came away feeling that the book was nothing so much as a vehicle to get from one dalliance to another once Mrs. Katherine Sedley comes of age and gets herself into the Court circle. At that point, any real charcter development stopped, and though I read the book to the end, I found myself merely pushing through the second half of the book in (vain) hopes of gleaning something of historical significance beyond the bedroom shenanigans of the various characters. The fact that Katherine Sedley is crude and bawdy (yet witty) wears thin when that is all there seems to be to her existence outside the King's bed. The tale ends with the temporary/somewhat voluntary exile of Mrs. Sedley/Countess of Dorchester to Ireland, shortly before James II is deposed in favor of his daughter Mary and her husband William of Orange. The Epilogue by the author implies that Mrs. Sedley/Countess of Dorchester was involved in the life of the Court during the reigns of both of James II's daughters (as her exile to Ireland was both temporary and short-lived), but provides no details. While I realize the title is "The Countess and the King," and that interaction is fully terminated by her exile (followed shortly by his own permanent exile to France), it would have been nice to have finished out her history as it related to her country, since the author states throughout the story that this was her first loyalty, even above loyalty to her lover, King James II. less

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