13 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
(4.5 stars) A review with content!, November 26, 2006
This review is from: Heir Apparent (Paperback)
The other reviews for this book are all very positive-they say it's a great book, best they ever read or something like that, but they have next to no information on the book. I had to go the author's website to find out enough info to decide about purchasing the book. So here is a review with some real info, for those who want to know a little more before they purchase.
This first third of this book is set in 2070. Kaitlyn Rose is the Curator of Hampton Court Palace where she works with her boss and best friend. Colin Wycliffe, who is Curator of all Royal buildings open to the public. They've been flirting around forever and at the beginning of the book finally start to have romantic encounters. At the very beginning of the book Kaitlyn has to go into the Queens champers to let in Stone masons who are going to fix the only original window seat left over from the time of Henry VIII, since the rest of the castle was altered by other kings. She's terrified of the chambers because of something that happened before, but goes in anyway. Inside the window seat a mummy is found, and tests prove that it's about 500 years old and was 2 months pregnant when murdered by a blow to the head. A torn up letter found with her in the window seat leads everyone to believe the child is Henry VIII's. While in the Queens chambers with the archeologists a ghost attacks Kaitlyn. She believes it to be the ghost of Anne Boleyn.
Anyway, then Colin's half brother, Brighton, shows up, and she learns the truth about their family. It turns out that Brighton, along with being a terrible womanizer, has invented time travel, and though the secret service type agency he invented it for won't let his use it, the elderly queen (102 years old) will, to go back in time and fetch the young woman who will end up in the window seat, so her child can be the heir to the throne, since there is none.
So everyone goes back in time. Kaitlyn brings her own PJ's, coke, tampons, ect. (If you're going to time travel, you don't bring stuff from the present with you!) Henry VIII gets the hots for Kaitlyn, and dislikes Colin. Brighton has an affair with just about everyone, and other stuff happens, like Anne hating Kaitlyn because Henry likes her. Anne also acts like a shrew, which is stupid of her considering she recently failed to deliver the promised male heir to the throne.
All and all this is a good book. It's very entertaining. There are some problems. Though I really did like this book I had a lot of fun picking out some problems and making a list of them. This does not mean I disliked this book in any way; this is just me having some fun and being a little nitpicky.
* Anne's behavior makes no sense-she was a brilliant woman in real life who overthrew the most powerful church in the world and kept Henry at bay sexually for years and then attained the most powerful role a woman could have, but in this she is just begging to have her head cut off.
* The future the author invented isn't very convincing, or different from today (except for moments like when Colin says "Dam! I forgot to recharge my cell phones battery plate by zapping it with the ultra-violet light!") For instance breast cancer is still around and killing, which is sad.
* Kaitlyn wears a toe-ring to the Queen's birthday party.
* The author frequently left out sentence modifiers, making some sentences sound really weird.
* Colin and Kaitlyn go from friendship to complete love in about two days.) But otherwise this is an entertaining and fun read.
* The way the people speak in the beginning-the kind of British slang they use sounds totally off from other books I have read set in England. I'm not positive but I don't think the author is British, however this improves over time and she has the medieval language slang down.
* The aforementioned bringing modern items on a time traveling trip to the 1500s when having them found could very easily get you burned for being a witch.
Four point five stars.
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Where was the editor?, July 19, 2007
This review is from: Heir Apparent (Paperback)
This book needed help; it was obvious that the publisher did not provide a decent editor for the author to work with. The plot was interesting, but poorly executed. The characters of Henry and Anne were turned into buffoons and the other major characters did not fare much better. Why use the year 2070 as a starting point if you are not going to have the imagination to envision a world different from today? Time travel is a stretch, but done right it can be very entertaining. The errors in tense and word usage just made the experience of reading this book even more difficult.
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7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Disappointed, January 15, 2007
This review is from: Heir Apparent (Paperback)
I was really looking forward to reading this book, but I have to say that I was very disappointed. The plot was great, but the writing was as inconsistent as the characters. It sometimes seemed as if two or three different people were writing the book and none of them could decide in which direction the book should go. I also noticed a lot of typos.
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