Rebels and Traitors (A Marcus Didius Falco Novel)

Read this book in 2014, and its a standalone book about the English Civil War.The book has been very well researches historically, and these historical details have been superbly implemented within this huge but also entertaining story, and it is set between the years AD 1634-1657.Its a story mainly about the lives of Gideon Jukes and Juliana Lovell, both on opposite sides of the Parliamentarian/Royalist divide, and their attraction towards each other during and after the war.This tale is also about a King, Charles I, who refuses to listen and pay the consequences in January, AD 1649, its about the divide between Parliamentarian and Royalist, also about the Aristocrats and the peasants, and not to forget about loyalty and treachery, before, during and after the English Civil War.What is to follow is a huge but also gripping tale about a country in turmoil, where people wherever they are must somehow seem to survive this terrible civil war that is waging throughout the land, and where friend and foe cannot be trusted, and where the fighting will go on right till the end between Parliamentarians and Royalists, and all this in a determined effort to take power and control of the land.Very much recommended, for this is an enormous wonderful attempt to put the English Civil War into one great book, and in my opinion this author has succeeded comprehensively, and that's why I like to call this sublime effort: "A Beautiful English Civil War Tale"!

I love Lyndsey Davis' books so on a hunt for anything on our Civil War period and finding something by her, I was confident in trying this.Not disappointed as this filled in so much for me in terms of the various groups involved in the war. The characters she drew were human with real strengths and weaknesses.Davis provides so much historical information together with interesting characters.I'll definitely read this again.

I have to admit it took a while to get into the rhythm of this book, but there was no doubt in my mind that by the end of the first chapters I was reading something good, and all the better for starting steadily. The history of the time is complicated [and how] but my guess is that you wouldn't be tackling a book like this at all unless you were at the very least interested in the seventeenth century. What drove the narrative along were the sympathetic and convincing characters, enough of good and bad in each to make them believable. Lambert and his wife, the Tews... the secondary characters weave their way in and out of the story at just the right moments. But what I loved most was the depiction of the children, Tom, Val and their baby sister, reminding us how any upheaval will inevitably continue to affect the next generation. The ending is not a 'happy ever after,' but thank goodness for that, as it is most certainly the right one.

I am a big fan of Davis' Falco novels having read every single one. Here, as other reviewers have commented, Davis has succumbed too much to "tell" and not enough "show" leaving the reader with the feeling of having picked up a densely researched academic piece that has somehow got mixed up with parts of a novel. A great novel is in there somewhere! Perhaps it would have been better if Davis had used all that research to bring us 20 civil war novels (like the 20 Roman novels) rather than trying to pack it all into one. I also agree with others who have said it is trying to do too much - we flit from character to character, location to location without a coherent narrative drive other than the chronology and happenstance of the war.Having said all that, it is still worth reading: I felt as though I learned a lot about this terrible time in our history and the main characters are three-dimensional, believable and sympathetic. If only we could have spent more time with them!

I read this book when it was first published and thought, ho hum. I've just reread it, years later, on my Kindle and found that it was better written and a better story than I'd remembered. Silly as it sounds I think it's because I was reading it on a Kindle and not as a hardback book. This is a huge book and since I normally read in bed I think that the 'struggle' to hold a heavy long book was why I didn't like it the first time I read it. I learned A LOT about the English Civil War and found Davis has done her normally excellent job of historical research.