I normally adore historical fiction, but Queen of Lions was just really bad and disappointing. Can't give it more than 2 stars.

Queen of Lions was laughably bad. I'm not even going to waste much time reviewing it because I DNF'd it. The writing was in first person, and to me it looked like the entire story was in need of a good set of edits. To me the writing was almost incoherent in places. In the end I gave it 1 star and stopped reading.

This 1994 novel by Christopher Nicole is set during one of my favourite periods of history – the Wars of the Roses – and is narrated by Margaret of Anjou, Henry VI’s queen. I didn’t manage to finish the book (I got to about 40% before deciding that I didn’t want to go any further) but it wasn’t as disappointing as I’d feared, having read other reviews, and in a different mood I might have continued with it.

Margaret of Anjou was a strong and fascinating woman with an interesting story to tell; although I felt that her narrative voice made her sound more like a modern day teenager than a 15th century queen, I thought Christopher Nicole did a good job of conveying Margaret’s feelings at arriving in an unfamiliar country and her frustration when she discovers the nature of her new husband. However, too much attention is given to Margaret’s sexual relationships with various men of the court – and these sex scenes alternate with long, dry passages of factual information describing the politics of the period. My overall impression was that the book couldn’t decide whether it wanted to be a light historical romance or a serious account of the Wars of the Roses; the balance wasn’t right and that’s why it didn’t hold my interest.