Lisa Hilton (1) (1974–)

Fieldnotes:
Renaissance Florence/Forli, 1492-1500

1 Intersex Protagonist of Muddled Age
1 Maybe? Affinity for Wolves
Forbidden Knowledge
The Spanish Inquisition

2 Daring Escapes

The Medici
Savonarola
Selective Mutism
1 Medici Loyalist Bludgeoned by an Angry Mob
1 Ever-Present When Needed Troupe of Acrobats
1 Search for the Philosopher's Stone

Caterina Sforza
Cesare Borgia

1 Ill-Conceived Plague Letter
1 Awful Siege
Weird Flirt Threatening Negotiation
Altogether Too Much Sexual Assault
Apparently Curing Syphilis with Wolf Drool

REVENGE!

1 Improbable Surgery
1 Mind-boggling Resurrection
1 Incomprehensible Romance?

The Short Version:
Mura is an intersex heroine with a morisco father fascinated by the cornucopia of learning from various cultures in Toledo and a Nordic mother who apparently imparted some magical affinity for wolves. Her father falls foul of the Inquisition and Mura (at age 5) is whisked off to a brothel for safe-keeping (???), eventually sold as a slave to the Medici before being taken as an apprentice to their resident alchemist as an alchemical symbol.

She gets cranky at not being treated as a person so is almost relieved when she is given as a gift to Caterina Sforza - the Tigress of Forli. It's a bad time there, too, because Caterina in her pride makes an enemy of the Borgia pope who sends his famously cruel son Cesare (confusingly called that and Il Valentino throughout) to besiege her hometown.

Mura is a confusing character who doesn't actually feel like a real person - her age is written muddled and she sounds no different at 5 than at the end of the book when she is no more than 14-15 (and we are meant to rejoice in the "love" she has found in marriage). As a modern reader, this was extremely jarring. The decision to make her intersex felt more like a gimmick than a considered choice and I never really got a handle on what Mura *wanted*. Book main characters need some sort of thread if I'm expected to trail around in their head for a few hundred pages, especially through the amount of unpleasantness (sexual assault, plague victims, vicious unformed revenge) the book put me through. There wasn't even soap opera drama - on the whole it was just rather dull.

A book about CATERINA SFORZA and the MEDICI and SAVONAROLA and CESARE BORGIA was DULL. WHY???… (more)

An overview of England's medieval queen consorts from Matilda of Flanders to Elizabeth of York. We learn a bit about each queen's background and their rise to power. While I appreciate that each lady's life story was heavily involved in the politics of the times, I wish the book was a little more detail oriented. For instance, several of the queens in the book were said to have had sumptuous and extravagant ceremonies surrounding their weddings and coronations, yet there was really no offering has to how it came to be so described. "Her coronation was grand" is about all we get in some instances. For me, a lot of the writing was very dry, and some details such as mentioned above would've gone a long way in helping to gain a better picture of the ladies.… (more)