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Queen of Swords [Hardcover]

Sara Donati (Author)
4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (42 customer reviews)


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Book Description

October 31, 2006
It is the late summer of 1814, and Hannah Bonner and her half brother Luke have spent more than a year searching the islands of the Caribbean for Luke’s wife and the man who abducted her. But Jennet’s rescue, so long in coming, is not the resolution they’d hoped for. In the spring she had given birth to Luke’s son, and in the summer Jennet had found herself compelled to surrender the infant to a stranger in the hope of keeping him safe.

To claim the child, Hannah, Luke, and Jennet must journey first to Pensacola. There they learn a great deal about the family that has the baby. The Poiterins are a very rich, very powerful Creole family, totally without scruple. The matriarch of the family has left Pensacola for New Orleans and taken the child she now claims as her great-grandson with her.

New Orleans is a city on the brink of war, a city where prejudice thrives and where Hannah, half Mohawk, must tread softly. Careful plans are made as the Bonners set out to find and reclaim young Nathaniel Bonner. Plans that go terribly awry, isolating them from each other in a dangerous city at the worst of times.

Sure that all is lost, and sick unto death, Hannah finds herself in the care of a family and a friend from her past, Dr. Paul de Guise Savard dit Saint-d’Uzet. It is Dr. Savard and his wife who save Hannah’s life, but Dr. Savard’s half brother who offers her real hope. Jean-Benoit Savard, the great-grandson of French settlers, slaves, and Choctaw and Seminole Indians, is the one man who knows the city well enough to engineer the miracle that will reunite the Bonners and send them home to Lake in the Clouds. With Ben Savard’s guidance, allies are drawn from every segment of New Orleans’s population and from Andrew Jackson’s army, now pouring into the city in preparation for what will be the last major battle of the War of 1812.


Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The fourth in Donati's popular Wilderness series (Into The Wilderness, etc.) takes the Scott family on a perilous journey to New Orleans on the eve of one of the War of 1812's climactic battles. The action begins with the dramatic rescue of Jennet Scott from captivity in the French Antilles. Her saviors include her husband, Luke, a prominent Montreal merchant, and Luke's Mohawk half-sister, Hannah, a physician. Jennet had given birth to a son, Nathaniel, during her captivity and enlisted Honoré Poiterin, a shady Creole merchant, to smuggle him to safety. The Scotts trek to New Orleans after discovering Poiterin and his grandmother have taken the child there and are claiming him as their own. In a city surrounded by two opposing armies, the Scotts find an ally in Ben Savard, the well-connected half-brother of a plantation owner. Out of a surfeit of characters (there are over 30 "primary characters" listed at the book's beginning), Hannah is the star—surviving two brushes with death, saving countless lives and still finding time to fall in love. The conclusion is predictable and the pacing uneven, but fans of epic historical adventures will be captivated by the exotic setting and intriguing story line. (Oct. 31)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

In the fifth volume of her popular Wilderness series, after Fire along the Sky (2004), Donati sweeps readers into two strong women's personal journeys of rescue and redemption. It is 1814 in the French Antilles, where Scots noblewoman Jennet Scott Huntar is being held captive. But when her future husband, Luke, and his half-sister, Hannah, finally locate and free her, their troubles have just begun. To ensure the safety of her son, born during her imprisonment, Jennet had made a devil's bargain with a dissolute, untrustworthy man. As the trio travels from Pensacola to New Orleans in their attempts to learn the child's whereabouts, Jennet struggles to heal herself and her marriage, while Hannah, half-Mohawk, uses her medical training to help the city's Indian populace and faces deadly illness herself. It's both a smoothly written, engrossing adventure about an early American family and a vivid depiction of the little-explored War of 1812, yet it's more than that. Donati also delves into much deeper realities, such as race and prejudice in one of America's famously multicultural cities, the complex patterns of revenge, the price of loyalty during wartime, and the transformative power of love. Avid historical fiction and romance readers will devour it. Sarah Johnson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Product Details

  • Hardcover: 576 pages
  • Publisher: Bantam (October 31, 2006)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 055380149X
  • ISBN-13: 978-0553801491
  • Product Dimensions: 6.3 x 1.4 x 9.5 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
  • Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (42 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #580,890 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Sara Donati is the pen name of Rosina Lippi. She lives with her husband, daughter, and various pets in an area between the Cascade Mountains and the Puget Sound.

 

Customer Reviews

42 Reviews
5 star:
 (30)
4 star:
 (9)
3 star:    (0)
2 star:
 (1)
1 star:
 (2)
 
 
 
 
 
Average Customer Review
4.5 out of 5 stars (42 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

27 of 27 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Queen of Swords, November 2, 2006
This review is from: Queen of Swords (Hardcover)
Queen of Swords is the fifth book of the Into the Wilderness series, where Sara Donati continues her historical fiction account of the Bonner family. Fans of the series will not be disappointed. However, you do not have to read the first four novels to get the most from this sequel. It is fresh with new setting and new characters and the author brings up what is important to know for you to understand and enjoy the novel.

Luke and Hannah's search for their beloved Jennet, who has been abducted, takes them to New Orleans during the war of 1812. Through their adventure you will have your emotions stirred up by the situations created by war, racism, prejudice, dominating power and slavery.

The setting is so well described, that you can just close your eyes to picture it. The characters are good, convincing, strong and likable. The author is very skillful in keeping the story intriguing, suspenseful and interesting. Very well written and leaves space for readers to imagine the details.

It is a great book. I highly recommended it.
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20 of 21 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars Shifting Gears, December 9, 2006
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This review is from: Queen of Swords (Hardcover)
The fifth book in Sara Donati's excellent series is a departure from the main characters of Nathaniel and Elizabeth, focusing instead on Hannah Bonner, Luke Bonner, and his wife Jennet and their trials after the abduction of Jennet at the end of Book 4. Picking up with the party finding Jennet, we are thrown into the world of New Orleans as the group attempts to discover the whereabouts of the infant son of Luke and Jennet. The British are plotting to take the city but that is only one small part of the separate world the Bonners face far from home and the ones they love.

While this is a good entry in the series, I found myself frustrated at times with the feeling that Donati wanted to write about the Battle of New Orleans and let the situation take precedence over the characters. At times the action was fast and furious and I found myself enveloped with new characters, both real and fictitious, but at other times I felt the spark that Donati brings to her writing was secondary to getting through the siege and showing the lives of the citizens. While circumstances demanded that Jennet be shrill at times, and that Hannah be stoic and strong, there were moments when I missed their interactions with more familiar surroundings.

Overall this is an excellent book, still head and shoulders above most of the historical fiction out there. While I look forward to my beloved characters returning to Paradise and taking up their lives, this one is a worthy installment, if at times a bit frustrating in that I wanted these characters home! Still, it's written in Donati's usual compelling style, and can be recommended to all lovers of good historical fiction.
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15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars Book 5 is a bit different from the earlier 4, November 10, 2006
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This review is from: Queen of Swords (Hardcover)
Book 5 (this book) is a bit different from the earlier 4 books in that the entire book focuses on Hannah, Luke, and Jennet in New Orleans. You hear nothing of Paradise or Lake in the Clouds until more than half way through the book, and then it is only through a letter. Elizabeth, Simon, Lily, Curiousity, and all the others at Lake in the Clouds are only discussed in letters in this book. Nathaniel shows up in the final chapters of the book to rescue the crew in New Orleans.

The book is very descriptive - both with New Orleans scenery and battles. So if you like description, you'll love this book. If you were more looking for finding out what happens next with many of the characters you love from books 1-4, you really only find out details on Hannah, Luke, and Jennet. I had a bit of a hard time connecting with the characters in this book - Jennet was distant and hard to understand at the start (due to her ordeal), and Hannah was in a relationship that didn't seem true to her character.

I do look forward to book 6 to find out what's happening back in Paradise...
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Inside This Book (learn more)
Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
hawk woman, grand nez, little clinic, uniformed militia, post rider
Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
New Orleans, Ben Savard, Paul Savard, Kit Wyndham, Mme Poiterin, Maman Zuzu, Nathaniel Bonner, Major General Jackson, Lady Jennet, Mama Dounie, Bayou St John, Julia Savard, Edward Livingston, New York, Levee Road, Valerie Maurepas, Strikes the Sky, Noelle Soileau, Mme Soileau, Hannah Bonner, Cedar Grove, Exploring Officer, Andrew Jackson, Rattling Gourd, Pea Island
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