Enjoyable

I would have rated it a 5 but it started off slow for me. I stuck with it because I really like this author. The story picked up soon enough and it was interesting to read about a family I was not familiar with. ( )

For the King's Favor is the story of Roger Bigod and Ida de Tosney. Ida was a ward of King Henry II who took her for his mistress. She bore him a child, William, who became William Longespee, half-brother to King Richard the Lionhearted and King John. Roger was the heir to Hugh Bigod, Earl of Norfolk, though he had to fight for his patrimony with his half-brothers Huon and Will. Roger was also a good friend of William the Marshal, the champion of the day in England and Normandy.
Roger married Ida after Henry moved on, and they had many children together. This is their story from the last years of Henry II and the battles with his sons up to the beginning of King John's reign.
Elizabeth Chadwick is one of the great writers of English historical fiction, and this book reflects her mastery of her writing craft as well as her skills in research. It's a great addition to the Marshal series. ( )

This was the first book by Elizabeth Chadwick I have had the privileged to read. Ms. Chadwick's work is beautiful, it reminds me why I love historical fiction in the first place. Most of my historical fiction reading background has been on King Arthur or Henry the 8th...some pretty popular guys, it was really nice to break away from my usual comfort zone and learn something new.

I like the characters in this book, usually historical fiction focuses on certain things, in books on certain European history the book usually revolves around a war or a ruler...this book had a nice twist and focused on something different. I know nothing about this period in history so I could not tell you if her historical data is correct but it seemed plausible enough from just the reading, which is a very important aspect of historical fiction.

I really enjoyed this book and will be looking for many more books by Ms. Chadwick. ( )

The international acclaim I've seen for Elizabeth Chadwick (including the "like" from the superb Sharon Kay Penman) really fooled me. From the cheesy anachronistic picture on the cover, to the unbelievably juvenile writing style (no big words, please), I feel as if I'm trapped in the story of "The Emperor's New Clothes." The kicker was when, at the end of the book, she talks about how she "pieced" together the "threads" of this story and includes the "painstaking genealogical detective work," that went into discovering the actual relationship between Ida and William Longespee. I do genealogy as a hobby, including genealogy for this time period, and I do know of the genealogists who finally found what could be considered the likely "proof" of their relationship after many long years of research, and it certainly had nothing to do with Ms. Chadwick. You could argue that she didn't actually claim literally to have done this work, but she also didn't make it clear that she had not. I believe that at least some of her readers may have been lead to this conclusion. She is supposedly a professional writer, and, thus, must know how to make a fact clear, as opposed to leaving things in a vague fog, open to tantalizing assumptions. The names of the people who actually did do the work are found on the internet.

Just to be absolutely fair, I did read another of Ms. Chadwick's books, "The Greatest Knight," and, unfortunately, it is just as inaccurate and misleading.

Ultimately, if I could rate this book as a negative star, I would. ( )

I've got a hundred pages to go and I can't put it down. I'm surprised more hasn't been written about The Marshal - I've got two biographies of him now because of Ms. Chadwick's excellent writing. Review is forthcoming!
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