From public hangings in Victorian England to the harsh life on board a ship headed to the Arctic, this story takes you through every emotion as Maude Horton tries to discover the fate of her younger sister, Constance.

Through her sister's diary, Maude learns that there were sinister goings on during the ship's journey, which led to Constance's death. Determined to uncover the truth, events change her in ways she'd never imagined.

With vivid descriptions of life in the 1800s, and three different points of view that carry the story forward, this was a fantastic read that kept me gripped all the way through. Highly recommend.

Sister’s Maude and Constance live with their grandfather at his apothecary in Victorian London. One day Constance leaves Maude a note telling her she is leaving to go on an adventure and begs her sister not to come after her. Constance disguises herself as a boy and joins the crew of the HMS Makepeace as they head to the Arctic in search of the explorer Sir John Franklin. But the ship contains all sorts of dangers and is no place for Constance.

Maude is informed by the Admiralty that Constance has died in a tragic accident. But when Maude finds Constance’s diary she becomes deeply suspicious and sets out to discover the truth and avenge her horrifying death. Maude’s main suspect is Edison Stowe, the explorer and scientist, who has returned to London and is now trying to revive his fortunes by running tours to public hangings across the country, cashing in on the ‘murder mania’ which has gripped Victorian society. Maude now finds herself in great danger, as Stowe is deeply entrenched in the criminal underworld of Victorian London. Can Maude take her glorious revenge and solve the mystery of Constance’s death?

This book is fantastic, being well researched and with all the elements I love in a gothic thriller, including appropriately evil villains and a wonderful heroine, as well as the theme of sisterly love which was so poignant.

Thanks to NetGalley, Pan Macmillan and Lizzie Pook for this Arc. Maude Horton’s Glorious Revenge is published tomorrow and I highly recommend it to fans of gothic and historical fiction.

Revenge is a dish best served cold, and you don’t find many places colder than the Arctic landmass.
Maude Horton is seeking for answers about the death of her sister Constance, who in the name of adventure had disguised herself as a cabin boy and joined the sailing ship Makepeace, itself having been tasked with trying to find the whereabouts of Sir John Franklin, the polar explorer, and his expedition of ships and men.
This brave and daring trip leads to a tragic accident, but Maude knows the explanation given by the Admiralty isn’t right, there is too much secrecy and the truth won’t come out willingly. When she finds her sister’s diary, she plots a carefully considered and astounding revenge.
This novel is full of morbid curiosities, a man is setting up tours of hanging sites for paying guests, and this is interspersed with details of hunting and killing seals in detail, gory, but essential for the story. Life on board ship was cruel and not for the weak, whether they are male or female.
This novel is so well researched in great detail, there is such a wealth of historical facts you can almost feel the icicles forming in the cold Northern regions.
A slow read at first, but you become gripped by these brave explorers and their thirst for adventure. You admire the resolve and fortitude shown as they leave behind loved ones, knowing they may never return. History comes to life reading this novel. A worthy second book from this author, a five star rating.
My thanks to Netgalley and the publishers Pan MacMillan and Picador books for my advanced digital copy, freely given in exchange for my honest review. I will leave copies to Goodreads and Amazon UK.

This is such a great book. The blurb made is sound just my sort of book and it so was. I started to read and forgot everything else. I was so involved in Maude and 'Jacks' lives and the others around them that everything else was forgotten (chores, food etc). You can almost smell the city, the sea, the people. Wonderfully descriptive, loved it.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an advance copy of this book with no obligation to review.

This starts off very slowly, so much so that you wonder if you can be bothered with yet another book about a feisty heroine solving a disappearance. I kept putting it down and reading something else but I am glad I stuck with it because after about 10% when we get the diary, it gets good.

Maude is a sympathetic heroine and although she does seem a bit obsessed, her quest for the truth takes us to some very interesting places and we meet unusual people. I felt that the descriptions of the ice fields were particularly good and reminded me of the famous Yukon poems of Robert Service. I could just see the aurora, the blinding ice and feel the cold.

Edison Stowe is a good villain (how ironic that his tours to the hangings are called Moral Compass when he has none himself) and although he is cold, self absorbed and violent, his character has been formed by the trauma in his past.

Lots of exciting and believable things happen in the course of the book so it is a good story with a good ending.

I feel, however, that some of the gorier paragraphs about the seal flensing and the skinning and rendering could be omitted with no effect on the story.

4 of 5 stars
https://lynns-books.com/2024/01/29/maude-hortons-glorious-revenge-by-lizzie-pook/
My Five Word TL:DR Review: A Tale of the Macabre

If you enjoy historical fiction, centred on a period where people clamoured for the macabre and you’re not too squeamish about death, be it that of human or animal, then this could be just the book for you, it is certainly an atmospheric story with a level of detail that brings the streets of London to life. Set within the Victorian period this is the story of one woman’s determination to discover what happened to her sister. It is a dark and gothic tale that shines a light on the people of the time and also takes the reader to the cold and unwelcoming Arctic.

This is a story narrated by three povs. We meet Maude, in search of answers over her sister Constance’s death. Constance and Maude are sisters and close frieds, since losing their parents they’ve lived with their grandfather though clearly Constance longed for adventure eventually slipping away to sea disguised as a ship’s cabin boy aboard a Navy vessel bound for the Northwest Passage. Unfortunately, Constance never returns from her venture and the navy are unwilling to investigate her death even though Maude has her suspicions. Armed with Constance’s onboard diary and a large measure of pluck Maude is determined to avenge Constance. The second pov is Constance’s diary wherein the reader will discover the grim goings on aboard the Makepeace. Life is cheap where some people are involved and these diary excerpts gradually build in tension and fear. Finally we follow Edison Stowe, recruited as a scientist for the Makepeace he has ulterior motives for being on board. Constance clearly feared him and Maude soon comes to believe he knows more about her sister’s death than he is telling. It was interesting to read from his perspective. He’s a cruel and greedy man which isn’t a winning combination. On top of this Edison has ran into debt and afoul of a money lender – not known for his cheery disregard for those who owe him money and don’t pay in a timely fashion.

So, on top of the gradually unfolding story from the Makepeace we also have a cloak and dagger operation with Maude following Edison and taking part in a series of ‘tours’ that he arranges in an attempt to make some quick and easy money. The Victorians had a fascination for the macabre. Sceances, anything relating to ghosts and spectres, death, public executions, even down to Madame Tussaud’s chamber of horrors and rather creepy death masks of the most infamous criminals of the time and all of this really plays into the story.

The writing is really good. There are some excellent descriptions of London that are really evocative. Especially the public hangings where the wealthy and the poor alike jostled for the best position to witness the deaths. Similarly the arctic expedition is well described. The fear and regret that Constance comes to feel really shine out from the page, of course, we already know her eventual fate but learning the details is quite the gripping, if somewhat sad, experience.

In terms of criticisms. I don’t have anything that really spoiled the read for me but I would mention that, firstly this isn’t a quick read. I think some readers may find the detail interferes with the pacing, it did slow the read down a little for me and I would suggest that this is a book to be read more slowly, taking a little at a time and savouring the detail. The second thing that, for me, prevented this from being a five star read is – and I don’t want to give away spoilers, but I felt like Maude didn’t really get to experience her ‘glorious revenge’ in some ways. Which isn’t to say that the perpetrators were not brought to justice, only that I felt some of her thunder was stolen. I think I was expecting her to, well, get away with some kind of plot herself – that being said would I have thought less of her if she’d resorted to something really bad? I genuinely don’t know, probably I would have felt disappointed in some ways. At the end of the day justice was served and ghosts were laid to rest.

I received a copy through Netgalley, courtesy of the publisher’s for which my thanks. The above is my own opinion.

This is the first book I have read by this author, but it won't be the last. It was brilliantly written and totally gripping and was an absolute pleasure to read. I would absolutely recommend this book, it was fantastic. Thank you to Netgalley and the publishers for giving me access to an early copy of this novel.

This is an excellent historical mystery set in England in 1850. Maude is desperately trying to find out who was behind the death of her sister Constance who left home to disguise herself as a cabin boy and head to the Arctic on a ship. Loads of factual information about life on board these ships and also the population’s obsession with hangings and the macabre is threaded beautifully throughout the story.
A must if you love your historical fiction.

‘I think of how we laughed, how we read, how we kissed and breathed as one. Just like a pair of lungs rising and falling together.’

This is a love story! I’m flabbergasted! I reached the end of ‘Maude Horton’s Glorious Revenge’, and it whizzed right onto my five-stars shelf, just like ‘Moonlight and the Pearler’s Daughter’, Pook’s debut, did, in 2022.

Certainly, Lizzie Pook’s latest book can be compared with her first: in it, we have a young woman just as self-possessed a protagonist, just as spiritful as Eliza was. And here again is that resolute authorial voice, Pook directing her players. And overall, what really impresses is that comprehensive sense-experience of the narrative. I remember with her first novel, feeling drunk on the physicality of Pook’s depictions, her highly sensorial style.

So here, it’s the vivid language that enamoured me. Those metaphors! Those similes! (I must stop using exclamation marks in this review!):

‘These officers (handsome, clean, wealthy) fringed with gold like ambulant Christmas trees, walk fore to aft at a slow pace, hands clasped behind their backs as if strolling the corridors of a museum.’

Language in ‘Maud Horton’s Glorious Revenge’ reminded me of an Elizabeth Bishop poem. Such phrases as ‘[whitehaired men] recline like lemurs on overstuffed leather, nonchalant’ and ‘as if a woman barging her way into an admiralty boardroom at Whitehall is a common as a mouse crossing the floor’ recall Bishop’s ‘[black-and-white] man-of-war birds’ in her poem ‘The Bight’, as they ‘open their tails like scissors on the curves / or tense them like wishbones, till they tremble.’ Pook's comparisons trip along just as effortlessly and with the same deeply felt naturalism, which exploded my reading experience beyond merely tracking her characters’ actions and construing meaning from their dialogue. Pook amplifies the colour and texture of everything she describes, so that I felt this book in the same part of me where poetry resides.

Lizzie Pook never ever tells her readers what to think; she never does more than present us with what she wants us to see. In fact, this novel excels in the ‘showing’, not ‘telling’. As a reader, I appreciate bearing witness to the plot and being given the space to use my imagination. The only thing that tripped me up a little was the shifts between tenses. The variety of tenses involved with the interspersions of Jack Aldridge's diary require a bit of keeping-track-of. But then, isn’t this just the same as the diary of Eliza’s Father in ‘Moonlight and the Pearler’s Daughter’? I soon settled into it. And that relationship between the protagonist and the author of the diary is something that carries through from Pook’s first novel. It worked brilliantly then, and it works brilliantly here too.

In terms of action and pace, Pook winds up the cogs right away and sets the plot clattering off at once! Then at roughly 40% the two narratives that are being recounted parallel to each other, converge and there’s a delicious locking-into-place of the plot mechanics and from there, ‘Maud Horton’s Glorious Revenge’ is genuinely unputdownable.

Two back-to-back quotes from the novel could render the whole synopsis together:

‘I’ve been considering what it is to be a man. What threads weave together to form the tapestry of who he truly is.’

“For I think we can all agree that there is nothing quite so depraved on this earth as a woman who kills.”

Thank you to the author, and the publishers Picador, Pan Macmillan, for the thrill of reading an advance review copy.

Another delicious adventure from Lizzie Pook; I loved 'Moonlight and the Pearler's Daughter', and this is very much in the same style with more great female characters pushing their places into a man's world.

Set in the mid 19th century, this is the story of Maude and Constance Horton, sisters, and independent women.
Constance has taken the place of a boy and boarded a ship which returns without her; Maude is at home in London, and on discovery of Constance's diary takes it upon herself to find out exactly what has happened to Constance.

This is packed full of energy and adventure, a cracking read.

Maude Horton’s Glorious Revenge is the story of a young woman's quest for justice and the hunt for the truth of what happened to her sister Constance in the snowy wastes of the Arctic.

Constance disguised herself as Jack Aldridge to seek adventure and get a job as a cabin boy on an Arctic expedition vessel, but only her diary and the tale of her accidental death makes the return journey to her sister Maude in London. But was Constance's death accidental or were there sinister happenings on board the ship? Maude is determined to find out and bring any wrongdoer to justice, but to do that she's got to fight Victorian era patriarchy and the might of the Admiralty.

A really enjoyable read for me, recommended for lovers of historical fiction.

After their parents' death, Maude and her sister Constance were brought up by their grandfather and worked together in his apothecary. Constance yearning for adventure runs away from home and disguised as a boy boards an expedition vessel bound for Arctic.
Two years later, Maude receives a letter informing her of her sister death, and her world is shattered. She's determined to find out what has happened to Constance and make the guilty pay.



I enjoyed some aspects of the book, but was disappointed by others.
The story was well written, and the historical facts were well researched, and the plot was interesting. It had quite a brutal and gruesome atmosphere which reflected well  Victorian times.

I felt the book was more focused on Edison Stowe,  the vilian  scientist,  rather than Maude herself. I don't feel like I really got to know Maude. Even her dead sister showed more of her true self through the dairies. I was also hoping for more of victorian apothecary vibe, but there was very little mention of that.
I feel the story had great potential, but it didn't quite deliver.

A gripping story which I couldn't stop reading. Well written and very interesting I finished this quickly. A new author for me and I look forward to reading more in the future. My thanks to Netgalley and the publishers for giving me the opportunity to read this book in return for an honest review.

I do love a thrilling historical fiction novel and - as the title does indicate - Maude Horton's Glorious Revenge is exactly that!

It transported me back to 1850 with ease, some of the detail being quite graphic and some scenes etched in my mind (the surgery-for-fun in a pub scene being one...).

Maude is desperate to find out what happened to her sister Constance. She died at sea - this is a time where women were not on ships, so she disguised herself as a cabin boy to get a place - and due to the dubious reasons to her being there, Maude is convinced she isn't being told the whole truth.

When she gets her hands on her sister's diary, she realises there is far more involved.

A fast paced, well written tale that had me gripped until the last page.

Maude Hortons sister Constance wanted an adventure, so, disguised as a boy, joined the crew of a ship bound for the Arctic. When Maude and her grandfather get a letter from the Admiralty saying she has died, they need to know more. Maude is determined to find out the truth.

Set in Victorian England in 1850, we learn more about how the masses had a gory fascination for the spectacle of a public hanging than we probably want to know. Much though I wanted to like the characters, I found I didn’t really care what happened to them. The authors style of writing is good, a lot of research for the period has been done, such as the life of a ships crew in the Arctic, Madame Tussaud’s waxworks and a fledgling tourist industry. An interesting read, just not the book for me.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for the opportunity to read and review this book.

Love a book that gives nods to historical facts like Thomas Cook's excursions & the era's love of observing public hangings! Especially when written alongside an absorbing story.

This novel set in Victorian London follows Maude as she seeks understanding and then revenge for the loss of her little sister who had snuck on board a sailing ship to the artic disguised as the cabin boy. Maude had gone to the Admiralty for answers about her sister’s death but she was dismissed. A kindly clerk decides to help and with her sister’s diary she goes in search of the truth.

From there in the company of the man she believes to have murdered her sister, Maude embarks on his Murder Tours to see hangings around the country.

I did enjoyed the novel and the ending, but my only qualms about it were that it seemed to show todays understanding/sensibilities of the grizzly cargo of the London docs as what was felt then, and the sisters diary I felt was far to flowery in its description of life of board a ship.

I received this book from Netgalley in return for a honest review.

Set around the time period of 1850 this book sees Miss Maude Horton receiving a brief letter from the admiralty department, informing her of the death of her sister Constance. Her sister has died and she has no closure whatsoever, the only thing Maude believes is that her sister died somewhere in the Artic, where she was aboard a ship at sea.
Maude intends to get some answers.

I struggled with this book as I found it had grisly macabre scenes, but it was the treatment of defenceless animals that I really didn’t like. A nasty bunch of characters mainly.
Some interesting parts to the story, but overall it wasn’t a book for me.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Publisher for an advanced e-book copy. Opinions about the book are entirely my own.

I really enjoyed this book, full of historical fiction, I didn't know murder tours were a thing, also the history of madame tussads. I enjoyed the different characters pov's throughout and that twist near the end! Would recommend.

Maude Horton’s Glorious Revenge is set in the Victorian era of exploration, discovery and entrepreneurship, a period that I really enjoy reading about. Maude’s sister Constance has disappeared whilst onboard a ship bound for the Arctic to look for the missing Franklin expedition. When Constance’s diary is mysteriously delivered to Maude from a mole in the offices of the Admiralty, Maude is determined to find out exactly what happened to her sister. Constance knows and writes about who will kill her, but Maude has to track him down and deliver justice.

This book has a fair amount of gruesomeness: I did not know that Victorian murder tours were a thing, although now that I do, I’m not sure I can ever forget it! I spent a happy hour or so looking up some horrifically grisly murders…

I really wanted to love Maude Horton’s Glorious Revenge, it felt so much like my kind of book, but it never quite came alive for me. The villain felt too villainous, and perhaps a little too unbelievable. I wanted much, much more of the Arctic story and perhaps a little bit more about how Maude plotted her revenge. The concept was good, and the characters were too, but ultimately it didn’t work for me. I wish it had.