Review: Disturbs and Fascinates
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 05 14, 2014
I was very much looking forward to Terry Tyler's re-envisioning of the story of King Henry the VIII and his six wives--the original dysfunctional family! Tyler has gift for presenting "big themes" in a fresh, contemporary style that keeps readers turning the pages. KINGS AND QUEENS, an ambitious undertaking, largely delivers what it promises--a tense family drama populated by complicated and uniquely flawed human beings.Harry Lanchester is a wealthy property developer in the south of England. Tyler's novel follows him from 1971--when he unexpectedly inherits control of the family firm--to 2007. Harry is a compelling character, though not particularly likable. He's rich, handsome, and clever enough to know how to win people to his way of thinking, however wrongheaded his position may be. Harry loves to be in love. In many ways his romanticism is his biggest weakness. Coupled with a serious lack of empathy, it leads to a series of great "loves,"  but the actual emotional connections prove tenuous. For Harry, people really don't exist outside of their relation to him. Even his own children are mostly extensions of himself...evidence of where he's failed or succeeded. What's wonderful is that Harry, once he gets past the flash and glam of his early adulthood, is fairly aware of his weaknesses. There are times when he appears to wish he were a better person, but he's rarely moved enough by these insights to try and be better.Harry's wives match him in complexity. Tyler gives each woman a worthy and believable back story that accounts for how they end up caught in Harry's web, though they should probably have known better. She also gives each a clear voice, allowing them to narrate a large part of their own story. First wife Cathy is especially compelling. Her relationship with Harry is forged in grief and ends in such pure betrayal, I found myself plotting Harry's death on her behalf. The usurper of her happiness, Annette, gets her comeuppance in spades. Oddly, there's nothing satisfying about her fall, just a sense of  waste that is echoed again and again in her successors: Jenny, Hannah (not an actual wife though she certainly functions as such), and Keira. Kate, Harry's last wife, is the only one to escape relatively unscathed, though one has the sense that her future happiness will be tainted by alliances and rivalries developing among her step-children as they come into their own and take on the family business.If I have one criticism of the book, it is the amount of exposition, especially in the opening chapters. There are great big blocks of back story--largely provided by Will Brandon, Harry's friend and lifelong confident. Tyler faced quite a challenge orienting readers in a book that spans so many years. Will's voice proved a little distant for me. He's too far removed from the real actors, and so he delays the reader from making an emotional investment. Will is a great foil for Harry, certainly, but I think allowing Cathy to start the narrative might have given readers an easier entrance into the drama.Even so, KINGS AND QUEENS is a superior novel filled with emotion and suspense. It is based on and informed by historical fact, but it doesn't allow those facts to overwhelm the plot or the reader. I'm glad to hear that Tyler's planning a sequel.