Katherine, Anne, and Jane

  

Bestselling author and acclaimed historian Alison Weir takes on what no fiction writer has done before: creating a dramatic six-book series in which each novel covers one of King Henry VIII's wives. 

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OK, so... I'm just gunna kinda cheat here. 

First, I'm only posting the first sentence of the description of the first book in this series above, because there is not one description that can cover only these three books in the series, and these are the only ones I want to cover at the moment.

And then there's the fact that I'm reviewing three books at once... also kinda cheating. But there are reasons for this! So let me explain...

This is a series that has not been entirely released yet. The first 4 books (wives) are in softcover, the 5th is in Hardcover, and the 6th isn't out yet. 

As is mentioned in the very short description above, each book follows the life of one of Henry VIII's wives. These first three wives' lives overlap. (eg. both Anne and Jane, 2nd and 3rd wives, were ladies for Katherine, the 1st wife, at some point) this means that each of these books overlap chronologically. So yes, I COULD start reading Katherine's and finish it to completion, and then move on to Anne's and so forth, but... that's not how I like to do things. After starting reading Katherine's, I got far enough in that I realized that Anne would now be alive and I felt I should start reading hers, so that I know what each wife was doing at the same time (or close to the same time) as the others. The chapters were often organized by portions of years, so it wasn't too hard to do, and I really felt it enhanced my reading experience, and also my respect for Alison Weir. There were times that these wives interacted, and reading both perspectives on the same circumstance was really fun! Weir was extremely diligent with this throughout the books. 

Alison Weir is one of my favourite authors, and probably my all time favourite Historical Fiction author. She is a very well respected Historian of British Royalty and she has only relatively recently delved into her works of Fiction. Her first novel was Innocent Traitor (my favourite Historical Fiction of all time, read my post on it here), and these novels have really secured her position as my favourite. Another thing I love about Ms Weir, is that she is SO ingrained as a Historian that at the end of each novel, she then has an Author Note about each of the queens and why she went certain directions with their stories, and when there is some dispute amongst historians about certain aspects of these women's stories, she explains both sides and then defends her choices. I feel that gives her and her story that much more credibility. 

It is really hard for me to review these three books separately, hence, why they are all together in one post, because of how I decided to read them. The flipping back and forth between them really made these three books seem like one. They are all amazing, I recommend them all, you don't have to read them like I did, but if you like the history involving these Tudor Queens, I really suggest giving these a go. 

Note: My plan is to read the next three at the same time too. Anna of Kleve (or more commonly Anne of Cleves) had very little overlap with the first three queens and so I did not feel it was necessary to read her at the same time, however she outlives the following two. So I will likely do a post with all three of those ladies together once the last book is released... or in soft cover... if I can wait that long.