Wonderfully evocative of the period and added a great deal of context and background to my studying and viewing of Shakespeare's history plays

I am in a minority here but I have been underwhelmed by this whole series. Iggulden is fantastic at writing battle scenes. He is the first writer who really made me appreciate the chaos of those situations. He is also really good at explaining the over-arching political context of the Wars of the Roses. Where he falls down, in my eyes, is that he is not good at characterisation. All of these compelling and complicated characters come across as flat as pancakes and about as individually distinctive. Except for maybe his Ray Winstone substitute character Derry Brewer who I take issue with for separate reasons. I also felt it was a missed opportunity in this book to look at some of the main mysteries of the period such as the Princes in the Tower. Iggulden is a gifted writer and this was a different way of looking at the conflict but it has never really engaged my interest.

I have really enjoyed this series about the Wars of the Roses and this book does bring the saga to a satisfying conclusion in terms of narrative. I felt that there were real pacing issues with the novel however. We spend a lot of time in Part One focuses on Edward and his machinations, which is great, but then in Part Two, we rush through Richard as King very quickly. Given that Iggulden is a great prose writer, I think it's a shame that this closing chapter in the Wars of the Roses wasn't given more time to breathe. To me, I would have preferred a fifth book detailing the rise of the Tudors, giving this part of the story the depth of exploration that we found in the earlier books. The author has crafted his characters incredibly well and I for one would have enjoyed spending just a little more time with them.

As a history lover I always appreciate a well researched account such as the one I found in Ravenspur. This was my first from this particular author, and even though I was disappointed to begin at the end of the series since my copy came from the publisher in advance of publication, I couldn't be more pleased to have found a new voice in historical fiction to follow.

The War of the Roses is well documented, and it takes skill to undertake a retelling that offers up anything new. Most fictionalized accounts today insert unnecessary romantic themes or other such fluff and for me this can really undermine the work. Ravenspur is a masterstroke, being both informative but also deeply compelling. The characters are vividly realised, from the unstoppable Edward IV, a veteran war hero who seemingly could only be undone by his own excesses, to Margaret Beaufort, who dedicated her entire life, and several marriages, to seeing her son crowned the future King Henry VII. Even the descriptions of now legendary battles practically leap from the page, both from a technical standpoint as we learn more about how tactical victories were won but also in rich, detailed prose.

I've immensely enjoyed such a critical look at the motivations of these men and women who shaped the course of the monarchy that still stands today. I can't wait to explore more of Conn Iggulden's work, including what I missed in this very series, and I recommend this book absolutely as I couldn't put it down until I'd finished. Many thanks to both Penguin Books and NetGalley for my ARC.

I enjoyed this book, even though it is not a genre that I would typically read.
Although it is the last of a series of four telling the story of the Wars of the Roses, and therefore I thought would be about Henry VII (who appears as a boy in the first chapter) and the battle of Bosworth, it is actually mostly about Edward IV and Richard III. There is a lot of battle description throughout the book, which was very well done but not really my kind of thing. I preferred the parts which developed the human side of a great historical story. I find historical facts hard to remember and knowing more about the people involved helps to cement the story in my mind by providing a sense of context. This book had obviously been very well researched and there was a sense of authenticity to the story-telling which was pleasing. I wish I had read the previous three novels before reading this one, as I think I would have enjoyed it even more then and have given it the four stars it probably deserves as the culmination of what, from reading the reviews, seems to be an excellent series of books.

Ravenspur, by Conn Iggulden, the fourth book in a series about the Rise of the Tudors, suffers, from the very beginning, with pacing issues, and an apparent unease from the author to actually tell the story of the battles of the War of the Roses, even though this novel 'hooks' itself onto the important battles of the period, ending with the Battle of Bosworth Field. The author goes to a great deal of trouble to set up each and every battle, and the reader is left wanting greater details of the battle, only for the author to almost gloss over the entire thing and move onto the next chapter in the long-running civil war.

Furthermore, the desire of the author to get to the Battle of Bosworth in this novel means that the novel is uneven - 80% of the novel takes place over the space of a single year, and to all intents and purposes, looks as though it will stop there, only for it to leap forward eleven or twelve years and continue telling its story. It would perhaps have been better to split this novel into two books and allow Richard III a little more time on the throne.

The characters of the period are told with little flare and with absolutely no sympathy for their plight. The main women in the story - Margaret of Anjou and Elizabeth Woodville barely have any pages to themselves and when they do appear it is more often that not only as objects for the male characters of the story to complain about or belittle. And this continues with Richard III's poor wife.

The male characters of the story are equally presented with little or no understanding of their characters and not a single one of them elicited any sort of emotional response. Edward IV is a swaggering idiot (and fat for quite a bit of it), Earl Warwick is indecisive and stupid, Richard III (or Gloucester) is a simpleton following his brother where ever he takes him and then turning into some sort of possessed maniac, and poor old Edward, son of Margaret of Anjou, just gets to look pretty and make a fool of himself in battle.

Overall, the story moves very slowly, and without any emotional connection with the characters, it is a slog to get to the end, which many will already know. And that's another problem. With good historical fiction, even the inevitable conclusion is often presented as only one possible outcome, with this novel there is never any (apart from briefly before the Battle of Barnet) moment where I wondered if the author had managed to present a possible alternative, which would ultimately fail, but would still give a little bit of hope to the reader and the characters in the story both. Sadly, I was disappointed with such a drab retelling of the end of the War of the Roses.

This was an excellent novel. With brilliant main characters and a wonderful plot, this book is a real page turner. I would highly recommend this book.