Las guerras civiles inglesas que azotaron los reinos de Inglaterra, Escocia e Irlanda en el amplio período que va de 1639 a 1651 son el auténtico protagonista de este espectacular fresco histórico. El juicio y ejecución del rey Carlos I, el exilio de su hijo Carlos II, el nacimiento de la Commonwealth y la etapa del protectorado bajo el gobierno de Oliver Cromwell son mojones en un camino en que las luchas están teñidas de enfrentamientos tanto ideológicos y políticos como religiosos.

Well researched but unfortunately I found it a little tedious.
( )

Two and a half stars really. A great improvement to my understanding of the era. A mess of a book which could perhaps have been a friendly history for lay folk rendering of the era. The characters are stretched onto the canvas - good characters and decent writing - but the historical review bones show through too often. Sounds like the author and her husband (who died in '08) enjoyed the construction process for this, and I don't begrudge them that. But here's to the Falco books where she controls the plots much more masterfully! ( )

This book had its moments, especially how it depicted Juliana and to some extent, how it depicted Gideon, but on the whole, I felt that it was a bit shallow and a bit rushed. Especially the end: I reached the final page and had to check if some pages had been torn off at the end. I appreciate that trying to cover various sides of the English Civil War and the length and bredth of it takes a number of characters and some space to do it, but some sections positively rushed through background information. Perhaps I was also expecting a tighter POV focus: the omniscient narrator frequently touched on things the characters didn't experience or would not have known. ( )

I really enjoyed this book although at times I also found it really hard going. I liked that the story focused on ordinary people caught up in the English civil war and that the likes of Charles I, Oliver Cromwell and Thomas Fairfax are essentially bit part players in the story.
I thought that this was well researched and did a good job of showing what life was like for those on both sides of the conflict. I felt the author was unbiased and she didn't just write about atrocities being committed by one side.This book also showed that while fighting for democracy and freedom was the right thing to do nobody on the Roundheads side had given much thought about what would happen after they had won. ( )