BLOG TOUR: The Queen’s Vow by C W Gortner

Title: The Queen’s Vow
Author: C W Gortner
ISBN: 978-1444720808
Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton
First Published: 12 June 2012 (hardback) / 3 January 2013 (paperback)
No .of pages: 400

Rating: 4/5

Synopsis (from Amazon):
“No one believed I was destined for greatness.”
 
So begins Isabella’s story, in this evocative, vividly imagined novel about one of history’s most famous and controversial queens—the warrior who united a fractured country, the champion of the faith whose reign gave rise to the Inquisition, and the visionary who sent Columbus to discover a New World. Acclaimed author C. W. Gortner envisages the turbulent early years of a woman whose mythic rise to power would go on to transform a monarchy, a nation, and the world.

Young Isabella is barely a teenager when she and her brother are taken from their mother’s home to live under the watchful eye of their half-brother, King Enrique, and his sultry, conniving queen. There, Isabella is thrust into danger when she becomes an unwitting pawn in a plot to dethrone Enrique. Suspected of treason and held captive, she treads a perilous path, torn between loyalties, until at age seventeen she suddenly finds herself heiress of Castile, the largest kingdom in Spain. Plunged into a deadly conflict to secure her crown, she is determined to wed the one man she loves yet who is forbidden to her—Fernando, prince of Aragon.

Review:
Fans of historical fiction, get ready to jump up and down, shouting with glee, because Gortner has given us a fascinating account of one of history’s strongest women.

In a world where women are largely marginalised and married off to advantage, while the politics are all left to the menfolk, Isabella bucked the trend by choosing her own husband and deciding to rule her country in her own right.

Isabella of Castile is quite possibly one of the most controversial female figures in history, ordering the conversion or exile of Muslims and Jews in Spain, and causing widespread destruction throughout her Reconquista, but she and her husband, Ferdinand II of Aragon, are also credited with creating stability and the unification of Spain, and Gortner’s novel portrays a very real and sympathetic character who faces not only the difficulties of ruling fairly, but also of doing so as a woman in what was still very much a man’s world.

Gortner has woven an exquisite tale, fraught with peril, where a woman who dares to go up against men (and beats them at their own game), is beset on all sides by traitors and untrustworthy advisors who would take control of her country for themselves. There is real edge-of-the-seat stuff here, and even if you are already familiar with this period of history and the major players in it, readers will be biting their nails in excited anticipation.

If you’re looking for a dramatic tale of politics, expertly interwoven with one of romance, then this is the novel you have been waiting for. The writing flows so beautifully you could almost believe you’re seeing it first hand and will be almost completely immersed in a world of deception, deceit, danger, love, passion, power and politics.

See my interview with CW Gortner HERE.