I first came across her work with the Sunne in Splendour. She write hard historical fiction: The history always comes first, and the fiction is sprinkled in just enough to make the real events and people of that time period into a novel. Her specialty is the Middle Ages of Great Britain and France, and her attention to detail in that time period is every bit as impressive as Colleen McCullough’s Masters of Rome series.
I love historical fiction, and she is one of the shining lights of the genre today. It is Penman at her best.Sharon Kay Penman has recently cemented her place in my pantheon of favourite authors. What Becket saw as a holy mission-to protect the Church against State encroachments-Henry saw as arrant betrayal, and they were launched inevitably on the road to murder.Rich in character and color, true to the historical details, sensitive to the complex emotions of these men and women, Time and Chance recreates their story with all the drama, pain, and passion of the moment. But the once worldly Becket suddenly discovered God, and their alliance withered in the heat of his newfound zeal. Only in one instance did Henry err: Elevating his good friend and confidant Thomas Becket to be Archbishop of Canterbury, he thought to gain control over the Church itself. Within two years, Henry had made his, winning the throne of England and exercising extraordinary statecraft skills to control his unruly barons, expand his own powers, and restore peace to a land long torn by banditry and bloodshed. It was said he was Fortune's favorite, but he said a man makes his own luck. She was beautiful, headstrong, intelligent, and rich. The long-awaited sequel to Sharon Kay Penman's acclaimed novel When Christ and His Saints Slept, Time and Chance recounts the tempestuous marriage of Eleanor of Aquitaine and Henry II in a magnificent story of love, power, ambition-and betrayal.He was nineteen when they married, she eleven years his senior, newly divorced from the King of France.
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