Where I got the book: ARC from the LibraryThing Early Reviewer program.

This is a worthy novel by a popular writer, and yet somehow it leaves me flat. I suspect I'm not the right reader for this book; for one thing, I am rather tired of histfic about the crowned heads of Europe, even if--primed by The Tudors and Wolf Hall--I was receptive to learning some more about the mother of Catherine of Aragon, Henry VIII's first of many. I'd much rather read about an ordinary guy or gal for a change.

First, what was good. Gortner's prose is polished; he kept the huge cast of characters straight in my mind without throwing in obvious identifiers as a less skilled writer would. I felt I learned something about 15th century Spain, and it was clear that the subject had been well researched. The story spanned several years without jarring jumps forward (or backward), and I have no quibbles with the writing or the editing in general.

So why aren't I more excited? I would say reason #1 is that I simply never grew to like any of the characters, even Isabella for whom Gortner obviously has a great deal of sympathy. There was a tiny moment, when Isabella and Fernando first met, that I liked them both, but it didn't last. I felt flat, as if I knew who were the goodies and who were the baddies because Gortner told me so, but I never really felt either their goodness or their badness.

And nobody really seemed to grow. All those years, and they seemed the same at the end of the novel as at the beginning, with a few more lines, sags and gray hairs in their descriptions. Perhaps this was due to Isabella's voice, which was fluid and unvarying, so very rational and blameless and ironed out. Very like Philippa Gregory with the quirks of writing and the magical bits removed, and guess what? I found I missed the very things that irritate me about PG.

It strikes me that all these novels about royal women suffer from the same problem, which is that said women were very often far from where the action was taking place. Isabella was constantly waiting for Fernando to return from war, writing letters and doing administrative stuff it's true, but all the REALLY interesting events were happening offstage while Isabella popped out babies and worried about money. Perhaps it's time we started writing about the royal men rather than the women, but I think there's a prevailing fear that women readers (most histfic readers I suspect) won't identify with a male protagonist.

I thought the ending was a little odd, too. The story just seems to grind to a halt, with an attempt at reconciling past and present (view spoiler)[through Christopher Columbus, who pops up in a rather deus ex machina way (although historically accurate I'm sure, given the date we'd reached) to remind Isabella that nobody had thought she'd do anything much with her life either. (hide spoiler)] It didn't work for me.

So my rating reflects the fact that, while I liked learning about this unexplored slice of history, I wasn't thrilled by the novel as a novel. If it'd been nonfiction, I think I'd have rather enjoyed it as an Alison Weir kind of read.