Official Review: The Great Love of Queen Margaret

[memory]

[Following is the official OnlineBookClub.org review of "The Great Love of Queen Margaret" by Anna Faktorovich.]

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1 out of 4 stars

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The Great Love of Queen Margaret by Anna Faktorovich is a sci-fi/fantasy novel telling the story of Margaret D’Anjou. Margaret is born in France in 1430 to the Duke of Anjou. At the age of fourteen, she is married to King Henry VI of England and becomes queen. She remains a dutiful wife for the first several years of her marriage before embarking on an affair with James, Earl of Wiltshire. After she produces a son, the King accuses her of having an affair as he shows signs of metal instability. As she becomes more confident, Margaret is much more involved in court life and politics as the War of the Roses begins. With the metal instability of King Henry worsening, Margaret takes desperate measures to protect the royal legacy for her son. She enlists the help of a witch and Count Knutr who turn her into a vampire. With her immortality, Margaret continually reinvents herself and runs across a collection of historical figures between her conversion and present day.

The premise for the story was a good one with the aspects of both historical fiction and the paranormal. Unfortunately, the author did not take the opportunity to flesh out the premise and seemed more interested in getting through the major events and relationships in Margaret’s long life as quickly as possible. It seemed more important to have Margaret find someone to have a tryst with than to build the story of how she got there.

The character development was very lacking for all of the characters in the book. None of the characters were well fleshed out, leaving all of them to seem trite. Margaret, in particular, was exceedingly unlikeable because she comes off as childish and shallow. The dialogue between characters was stilted and contained a lot of awkward wording and chemistry was lacking between Margaret and all of the male characters in the book. I did not feel that any of the relationships Margaret had in the book could be classified as a "great love."

The book is classified as sci-fi/fantasy, but it would be better suited to the erotica/paranormal romance section as the book seemed to focus mostly on Margaret getting herself into situations where she could have sex with as many different men as possible. I think this would be of more interest to a romance reader than a sci-fi/fantasy reader.

I give this book 1 out of 4 stars. The book has a good premise but lacks a fleshed out story, likeable characters, and fluid dialogue. The book does have potential, but will need a lot of editing.

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The Great Love of Queen Margaret
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[Cee-Jay Aurinko]

This definitely sounds like a romance novel, or CTMH at best. Your review is great though; reads like a great story. You weren't too harsh on the author in your review, considering the rating, and you mentioned everything you didn't like. I like historical fiction almost as much as I like mysteries; I hope the author takes your critique into consideration with her future writing. Published/Self-published books should be of equal quality. Books shouldn't be like the movie industry, where you get blockbusters and low-budgets!

[memory]

Thanks!

[Eyre-thee-well]

Your review is thorough and well-written. I love books during this historical period but then it lost me with the vampire element. I just am not into those types of books. But I am sure vampire fans will love to check this book out.

[AnaphoraLiterary]

This is my 20th book or so (in various genres), and I think I've received the most negative reviews to it. People really have strong feelings about it if they read it through. I should confess, as I previously did on Facebook but this note might have been missed, that I wrote this book in 5 days on a contract for a new independent publisher during a move from the west to the east coast, when I was temporarily having a bed bug problem, and a bunch of other problems with my new apartment. So somewhere in the middle of these 5 days, I also had time (at night) to write this novella. It's about a medieval vampire because the publisher requested this specific genre. Then, I added on top of what I already knew about this part of British history and found the interesting tragi-comic story of Queen Margaret, and this book happened. My second book with this publisher was a medieval magical fantasy, without vampires, and while it received more positive reviews, it got fewer people wanting to write full reviews of it - and I think it's still listed as available for review on OnlineBookClub - if anyone wants to grab it. I previously wrote a satirical story, "Vampire Daichi" about a sumo wrestler that became a vampire, so it was difficult for me to write seriously in this genre. I think most readers didn't appreciate the satire/ humor - one mentioned that there was no "Great Love" anywhere in the story... and since that was my point, I don't know how to answer this criticism. On the bright side, the publisher has set the price very low on this Kindle - so it won't hurt your wallet. I'd be happy to answer questions, if you have them after reading it. Cheers, Anna