{"id":1010,"date":"2013-11-23T11:36:01","date_gmt":"2013-11-23T16:36:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mayliang.us\/?p=1010"},"modified":"2013-11-23T11:36:01","modified_gmt":"2013-11-23T16:36:01","slug":"book-review-the-confessions-of-catherine-de-medici-by-c-w-gortner","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mayliang.us\/?p=1010","title":{"rendered":"Book review:  The Confessions of Catherine de Medici by C.W. Gortner"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a style=\"float: left; padding-right: 20px;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.goodreads.com\/book\/show\/6801454-the-confessions-of-catherine-de-medici\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"The Confessions of Catherine de Medici\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net\/books\/1320520974m\/6801454.jpg?ssl=1\" border=\"0\" \/><\/a><a href=\"https:\/\/www.goodreads.com\/book\/show\/6801454-the-confessions-of-catherine-de-medici\">The Confessions of Catherine de Medici<\/a> by <a href=\"https:\/\/www.goodreads.com\/author\/show\/169656.C_W_Gortner\">C.W. Gortner<\/a><\/p>\n<p>My rating: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.goodreads.com\/review\/show\/771990988\">4 of 5 stars<\/a><\/p>\n<p>I had a difficult time getting into the author&#8217;s previous book, The Last Queen, so I wasn&#8217;t sure what I would think about this book. I was pleasantly surprised to discover that I really liked it. It may be because I have always had some sympathy for Catherine de Medici. Strong and powerful women in medieval times have never gotten a fair portrayal from (male) historians. And Catherine was certainly both to have survived what she did, and help her sons in their efforts to rule France.<br \/>\nThe author doesn&#8217;t attempt to whitewash what Catherine did. And even her most sympathetic supporter cannot deny her ruthlessness. But he paints an understanding portrait of a woman who was forced to do what she did to preserve the crown for her sons and keep France from plunging into a religious war that would tear the kingdom apart. It&#8217;s a portrait of Catherine that is well-rounded and gives an accurate depiction of the forces she was up against.<br \/>\nThe secondary characters are well drawn, and the book is very well paced. For those who enjoy well-written historical fiction, I highly recommend this book.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.goodreads.com\/review\/list\/1396812-may\">View all my reviews<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Confessions of Catherine de Medici by C.W. Gortner My rating: 4 of 5 stars I had a difficult time getting into the author&#8217;s previous book, The Last Queen, so I wasn&#8217;t sure what I would think about this book. I was pleasantly surprised to discover that I really liked it. It may be because [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[40],"tags":[336,123,122],"class_list":["post-1010","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","tag-books","tag-c-w-gortner","tag-the-confessions-of-catherine-de-medici"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p23QXm-gi","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mayliang.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1010","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mayliang.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mayliang.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mayliang.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mayliang.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1010"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mayliang.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1010\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1011,"href":"https:\/\/mayliang.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1010\/revisions\/1011"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mayliang.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1010"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mayliang.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1010"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mayliang.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1010"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}