I thoroughly enjoyed the first book in the series and then jumped to this, the fourth, for the purposes of this review. Yet this wasn’t to my detriment, as any developments to the saga that I had missed by doing this were referred to and explained in this book.
Set in late Elizabethan times, during a time of religious persecution, suspicion and intrigue, we follow Nicholas Shelby and his wife Bianca as they flee from a potential charge of treason in England, on their journey to Padua. But are they truly safe now? And who is the mysterious Hella? S.W. Perry cleverly draws the reader into the story so they understand the fear the central characters are experiencing. The suspense is also aided by the fact the chapters jumped from character to character, place to place.
I love reading novels set in historical time periods and the ability for learning it provides. In this series I have learned more about the very real differences at the time between the professions of physician and barber-surgeons, and how they were perceived. In late Elizabethan times physicians would cast their patient’s horoscope as part of their service to them. Who’d have thought it?
Set in late Elizabethan times, during a time of religious persecution, suspicion and intrigue, we follow Nicholas Shelby and his wife Bianca as they flee from a potential charge of treason in England, on their journey to Padua. But are they truly safe now? And who is the mysterious Hella? S.W. Perry cleverly draws the reader into the story so they understand the fear the central characters are experiencing. The suspense is also aided by the fact the chapters jumped from character to character, place to place.
I love reading novels set in historical time periods and the ability for learning it provides. In this series I have learned more about the very real differences at the time between the professions of physician and barber-surgeons, and how they were perceived. In late Elizabethan times physicians would cast their patient’s horoscope as part of their service to them. Who’d have thought it?