A Love Most Dangerous

"A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies..." (George R.R. Martin) and Alice's life is a life really worth reading. This is a fabulous book, and a great story. I love the way we get to know Alice through her thoughts, and through the little vignettes about her life that appear in the early part of her tale. "I used to think that snowflakes were fairies when I saw them as a child. Good fairies, white and kind yet strong enough to protect me should I have need."

The descriptions throughout the book create beautiful, and often mouth-watering, pictures. The scenes portraying the feasts and foods of the day leave one wanting to be sitting at the table enjoying the repast with them. "... a glistening swan, roasted and embellished with fruit and sweetmeats. ... stuffed inside it would be an aviary of birds: goose, chicken, partridge, pheasant, woodcock, snipe, pigeon, heron, capon and song-birds."

This tale talks to me on so many levels. Mr Lake captures the essence of this young woman perfectly. We meet her emerging into womanhood, still innocent enough to recall her childhood dreams;
`I used to spend hours staring into the fire as a child. I thought the flames were little creatures ... once I began to read, I populated the fire with more exotic creatures, dragons, phoenix and salamander. I made up stories concerning them. ... I was always a Princess and the brightest flame was always the Prince. ... always, he would defeat my tormentors and carry me away on his white horse.' I remember such dreams from my own childhood, and although those days are long gone passages like this transport me right back there.

The story transports us to another world as we follow Alice on her incredible journey from innocent dreams, and her protected and privileged life, through a living hell when she falls from grace and meets reality head on. I was shocked, horrified and heartbroken all at once but I love the emotion it evoked as I read it. The tragic loss of innocence, the fear, the anger, and the dread of what would happen next. The stench of the streets filled my nostrils, and I trembled at the treatment metered out to so many, particularly women, of the day.

The characters that inhabit Alice's world enchant, enrage and engage. I loved and hated them in turn, but I believed them all and their descriptions again evoke fantastic pictures;
"The man entered the room, placing his feet down carefully as if fearful of stepping in the wrong place. He was in his forties by the look of him, clean shaven and with curling hair, his face long and with a chin like a shovel. His nose was also long and seemed to be designed to sniff ahead of him, compensating, perhaps for his little eyes which were small and crossed and seemed to be insufficient for their purpose. He was tall and thin with skinny legs which did not look as though they would readily bear his weight. He had the look of a heron. 'This is Nicholas Frost, ' ...".

I came to feel I knew these people well, and I knew who to fear, who to trust and who to love. I found myself holding my breath as I turned the pages. I was sad when I got to the last page, but I know this is a book I will read again. It's a book that deserves more than one reading. Alice's world is complicated, convoluted and quite terrifying, but so intriguing and such a pleasure to inhabit from a safe distance.

My favourite line in the book was too hard to choose, it took me some time to whittle it down to just two - ;
"... my head, like Anne's, may well have fallen from my shoulders and rolled, pitter-patter, across the timbers of the stage."

"Not even the great god Janus was as two faced as the nobles of the Kingdom on that day."

Congratulations on a wonderful, and page turning, book.