So, maybe DON'T listen to this one on audio.
I was looking for a story to captivate me on a total 8 hours in the car to the beach and back. This was NOT it.
I usually love historical fiction, especially in a century not often written about (late 12th early 13th c), strong female characters, royal court intrigue, and natural herbal remedies of the times.
But I was bored. I didn't like the narrator, I didn't like the main character, it really was a history of Marie de France's life after she was sent in exile to an abbey to help run it at age 17 because she was an orphan, bastard royal child who was too tall and ugly to marry off. So Eleanor of Aquitaine separated Marie from her female lover, removed her from her court (Marie was also in love with Eleanor apparently), and left her to find a life that she didn't want but of course ended up thriving in. And, wow, she was a Crusader before she was 17? Ok, that is pretty cool, maybe I would have liked it better with more on that phase of her life as compared to living in silence and starvation in a nunnery. Or maybe I just missed the whole thing about her influence as an educated poet whose writings and fables and translations are famous according to Wikipedia (that research I did on my own was more interesting than the book, ha).
Based on a real person in history, I just did not find this version of her life interesting, and I do think the narrator, whose voice was just depressing, had a lot to do with that. Bummer.
I was looking for a story to captivate me on a total 8 hours in the car to the beach and back. This was NOT it.
I usually love historical fiction, especially in a century not often written about (late 12th early 13th c), strong female characters, royal court intrigue, and natural herbal remedies of the times.
But I was bored. I didn't like the narrator, I didn't like the main character, it really was a history of Marie de France's life after she was sent in exile to an abbey to help run it at age 17 because she was an orphan, bastard royal child who was too tall and ugly to marry off. So Eleanor of Aquitaine separated Marie from her female lover, removed her from her court (Marie was also in love with Eleanor apparently), and left her to find a life that she didn't want but of course ended up thriving in. And, wow, she was a Crusader before she was 17? Ok, that is pretty cool, maybe I would have liked it better with more on that phase of her life as compared to living in silence and starvation in a nunnery. Or maybe I just missed the whole thing about her influence as an educated poet whose writings and fables and translations are famous according to Wikipedia (that research I did on my own was more interesting than the book, ha).
Based on a real person in history, I just did not find this version of her life interesting, and I do think the narrator, whose voice was just depressing, had a lot to do with that. Bummer.
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