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I found Arabella to be wickedly entertaining; a superb comedy of manners! It is a little slow getting started. A good fifty pages are devoted to simply getting ready to go to London – the hero isn’t even introduced! When you get past that portion the story really picks up and is very exciting.
Arabella Tallant is very cheeky and clever. She has a temper that gets her into trouble and a mouth that often runs away with her. She and her family are impoverished. Her father’s a parson and it is by the ingenuity of her mother that Arabella is able to go to London to have a season. It is very important she makes an excellent match so she can help her family.
Robert Beaumaris is sick and tired of young ladies and their mothers throwing themselves at his feet in hopes he’ll trip over them and into marriage. He is defined repeatedly as a Nonpareil, which means he has no equal and is peerless. Men imitate him in fashion. Persons, male and female, strive for his approval. A glance or comment from Robert can make or break someone socially.
Reading parts of the story from his point of view opens lots of wonderful insight to what's going on and how's he's thinking of things. This novel seemed very modern to me because of the amount of head switching.
When Arabella overhears a flippant remark by Robert to Charles Fleetwood, she’s angered and in a fit of spontaneity affects superior airs and claims to be an heiress. On a whim Robert chooses to put weight behind her story and instantly Arabella is thrust to the top of society. Mamas want their sons to marry her, gentlemen want to woo her, and several fortune hunters start sniffing around her most eagerly.
In too deep, Arabella doesn’t see a way out. She can’t marry any of her suitors; they think she’s wealthy. She can’t tell the truth; it would socially ruin her. Then her brother, Bertram Tallant, shows up in London and makes matters worse by gambling far and above his means. The love of her life could also become her salvation, but how can one tell a man you just married you’re not an heiress and in fact in desperate need of funds?
Rating: 4-4.5 Stars
Buy: Arabella
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Hello Keira – thanks for welcoming me to your Blog!
Keira: How has Gwenhwyfar and Arthur's love evolved from what it was in The Kingmaking to Pendragon's Banner?
Helen Hollick: Things have moved on from the close of The Kingmaking. Gwenhwyfar now has one young son and is expecting another child. Arthur is attempting to consolidate his victories by making peace with the Anglo Saxon English – but not everyone agrees with his ideas, not even Gwenhwyfar. When he insists she goes with him to visit an English settlement she is horrified. Not only is she frightened by not knowing these people, or their customs and traditions, she is about to have her baby.
The relationship between her and Arthur is pushed to the limit – and beyond – in this middle part of the trilogy. Tragedy can either draw a couple together or rip them apart….
Be warned, a box of tissues may be needed!
Keira: What are some challenges that will be put to them to challenge the strength of that love?
Helen Hollick: There are quite a few, some of them tragic, some of them frustrating, some downright infuriating. But sorry I’m not telling you about them as it will spoil the read!
Keira: Arthur is now King – what challenges will he face in Pendragon's Banner? How does he hope to overcome them? How must he change?
Helen Hollick: Arthur’s goal is to unite his Kingdom and bring peace. It is an uphill struggle for him though, as other people seem set on stopping him. Even Gwenhwyfar….
Keira: Arthur’s stubbornness and Gwenhwyfar's temper are sure to cause problems. Outside of their relationship, how do their flaws affect life at court, politics, and situations?
Helen Hollick: There are quite a few exchanges of stubbornness and temper in this one. Arthur is single minded – he knows what he wants and is determined to get it, but members of his Council, especially his uncle, Ambrosius Aurelianus are equally as determined to stop him, which heads disastrously towards what could be an end of the Kingdom and peace.
We find out a lot more about Morgause in Pendragon’s Banner as well – and her daughter, Morgainne, the lady of the Lake. Arthur meets her and the inevitable happens. There are a few scenes where Arthur should have kept his breeches fastened – no doubt Gwenhwyfar feels the same!
Winifred, Arthur’s first wife also has her fingers dabbling in several pies. She wants her son to be the next King.
Gwenhwyfar has her own distractions. Her children, her worry and concern for Arthur – her jealousy of his other women. But then, she has a few male friends too. Friends who spark Arthur’s retaliatory jealousy.
There are several scenes in Pendragon’s Banner that draw from the early Welsh stories of Arthur, you may recognize a few or them. Weaving them into my novel in a plausible and practical way was my own challenge.
Keira: Why do you think people are drawn to King Arthur's story? To Medieval stories?
Helen Hollick: I think people enjoy the familiar Medieval tales of Arthur and the round table, Holy Grail and knights in armour because they conjure up a long-gone era of courtly love, honour, respect and Doing Noble Deeds. The whole chivalric image that brings out our romantic emotions.
But my Arthur is not from those stories. My Arthur is a rough, tough, down-to-earth war lord and soldier. The sort of man who can be an utter b*****d – but will fight to the death to protect you, and will always be there when you need him.
The figure of Arthur, in legend and fiction is one of the most enigmatic and intriguing of all the characters of English history and literature. What is it about him that makes people discuss him, read about him, write about him?
Google for King Arthur, and you will spend weeks going through the links. There are discussion boards, forums, facebook profiles, blog pages, myspace sites. He is there in virtually every genre of fiction, from fantasy to thrillers. There are movies of Arthur, poems about Arthur, plays centred around Arthur – you name it its been done.
People argue about whether he lived in the Iron Age, Roman period, Dark Ages or the 11th Century, the 12th, 13th…..
He was a local warlord in the north of Britain. He fought in Scotland, Wales, Brittany or came from the West Country – Cornwall, Somerset. He is the King of myth and fantasy. Magic and mystery surround Arthur and his deeds.
Was he from the realm of Magic – or was he a real man, a soldier who led a war band into battle? The sad fact is - there is not a shred of evidence to prove he actually existed!
For the truth about Arthur there are no answers.
And it is that which makes him so fascinating, why again and again we write about him, read about him.
I fell in love with Arthur while I was writing the Pendragon’s Banner Trilogy. I intimately knew that man for more than 13 years while writing the Trilogy – it took a long, long while to get him out of my system and move on to creating my next main character (Harold Godwineson in Harold the King. – also to be published soon by Sourcebooks Inc)
But that feeling is not unique to me.
I wrote to the wonderful author Rosemary Sutcliff just before she died. I had completed The Kingmaking, but it was still in the process of being made ready to be published, so I could not send her a copy. I told her all about it though, and my ideas of Arthur. I received back a handwritten letter (complete with her cartoon motif of a dolphin attached to the last ‘f’ of her signature.) She confided that after she had written her novel about Arthur, Sword At Sunset, she had not been able to get him out of her mind for at least six months.
I know what she meant…. And that is why Arthur is so popular. His spirit, his charisma, his presence goes on, living for ever.
No wonder the legends state that he will come again when he is needed. He never left. He is always here, dwelling in the minds of his loyal subjects, those of us who read and write about him!
Helen Hollick
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Buy: Pendragon's Banner: Book Two
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