When Christ and His Saints Slept by Sharon Kay Penman

Susan · Post by **Susan** » Thu July 23rd, 2009, 11:46 am

[quote=""Carine""]On her website Sharon is talking about paperback re-issues of When Christ and his Saints Slept and Time and Chance :

When will these re-issues be available ? I have searched BD and Amazon (UK and US) and Barnes & Nobles, but can't find them anywhere.[/quote]

Carine, I'll ask Sharon for you.

zsigandr · Post by **zsigandr** » Thu July 23rd, 2009, 2:54 pm

Great review! I love SKP's book as well. My favourite part of the novel was Maude's escape as well - what an amazing and daring thing to do! With parents like Maude and Geoffrey of Anjou, you can see how Henry II becomes such a confident, dominating force to be reckoned with.

Susan · Post by **Susan** » Thu July 23rd, 2009, 3:44 pm

[quote=""Susan""]Carine, I'll ask Sharon for you.[/quote]

Carine, here's what Sharon said: "I'd asked Ballantine the same question, why the upcoming re-issues of Saints and Chance weren't listed for pre-order on Amazon as DB is. It turns out that Amazon will only do that when a book first comes out in paperback. Please tell your friend that all three books of the trilogy will be out on July 28th. If she wants to buy DB from Amazon.co.uk, she can pre-order the upcoming paperback edition now; it will be published by Penguin.uk on August 6th. But as of July 28th, the first two books in the trilogy ought to be available for sale on Amazon and B & N and any on-line bookshop."

Carine · Post by **Carine** » Thu July 23rd, 2009, 3:56 pm

[quote=""Susan""]Carine, here's what Sharon said: "I'd asked Ballantine the same question, why the upcoming re-issues of Saints and Chance weren't listed for pre-order on Amazon as DB is. It turns out that Amazon will only do that when a book first comes out in paperback. Please tell your friend that all three books of the trilogy will be out on July 28th. If she wants to buy DB from Amazon.co.uk, she can pre-order the upcoming paperback edition now; it will be published by Penguin.uk on August 6th. But as of July 28th, the first two books in the trilogy ought to be available for sale on Amazon and B & N and any on-line bookshop."[/quote]

Thank you so much Susan ! That was reallly a very friendly gesture of you to ask Sharon for me.

Susan · Post by **Susan** » Thu July 23rd, 2009, 4:29 pm

[quote=""Carine""]Thank you so much Susan ! That was reallly a very friendly gesture of you to ask Sharon for me.

[/quote]

You are very welcome, Carine!

robinbird79 · Post by **robinbird79** » Thu July 23rd, 2009, 11:16 pm

[quote=""Susan""]Carine, here's what Sharon said: "I'd asked Ballantine the same question, why the upcoming re-issues of Saints and Chance weren't listed for pre-order on Amazon as DB is. It turns out that Amazon will only do that when a book first comes out in paperback. Please tell your friend that all three books of the trilogy will be out on July 28th. If she wants to buy DB from Amazon.co.uk, she can pre-order the upcoming paperback edition now; it will be published by Penguin.uk on August 6th. But as of July 28th, the first two books in the trilogy ought to be available for sale on Amazon and B & N and any on-line bookshop."[/quote]

I'm glad I saw this! I've been wanting to get copies of these!

Chatterbox · Post by **Chatterbox** » Fri July 24th, 2009, 12:07 am

This is easily one of my SKP faves, and I want to buy it on Kindle -- but it's one of those that isn't available yet. Grrrrr.

Miss Moppet · Post by **Miss Moppet** » Fri April 2nd, 2010, 5:46 pm

When I was a little girl I had a chart showing the Kings and Queens of England on my bedroom wall. I was especially interested in the Queens of England - that is, the ones who had ruled in their own right, not the consorts. But there weren't too many of those. Prior to Mary I (if you don't count Lady Jane Grey), there was only one - Matilda.

So I was disappointed to learn that Matilda had never really reigned. On his death her father, Henry I, who had lost his only legitimate son in the wreck of the White Ship, left the crown to her. But her cousin Stephen seized the throne, beginning a civil war of nearly twenty years (1135-1154), a period of misrule, bloodshed and suffering when, as the Peterborough Chronicle put it, 'Christ and all his saints slept.'

Sharon Kay Penman follows the main protagonists - Matilda herself (here called Maude, the vernacular version of her name, because Stephen was also married to a Matilda), her estranged husband Geoffrey of Anjou, Stephen and his wife Matilda of Boulogne - untangling the complex intrigues of the time and providing glimpses of the effects of the war on the unfortunate peasants and townspeople who were caught up in the conflict. She also follows the fortunes of a fictional character, Ranulf, illegitimate son of Henry I, who decides to support his half-sister Maude, but at great personal cost.

Ranulf's adventures provide a link between the first two thirds of the book - the conflict between Maude and Stephen - and the last third, when the next generation reignites the war all over again. Stephen wants to crown his son Eustace king in his lifetime, while Maude and Geoffrey are determined that their son Henry, already Duke of Normandy, will win the crown of England. Although this book and its sequels, Time and Chance and Devil's Brood, are sometimes called the 'Eleanor of Aquitaine trilogy', Eleanor herself doesn't make an appearance until 700 pages in. When she does, sparks immediately fly between her and Henry, despite the fact that she is still - unhappily - married to the King of France.

For me personally, this was an excellent introduction to a period of English history I didn't know much about and a chance to meet two fascinating twelfth-century women, the Empress Maude and Eleanor of Aquitaine. There was just one thing about the book which disappointed me - we don't get to meet Henry I, whose actions are the catalyst for much of the plot. I wanted to know more about him and his relationship with Maude/Matilda.

There are some books which leave you feeling glad that you read them, sorry you've come to the end and exhilarated by the whole experience. This is one of them.

Cross-posted to The Misadventures of Moppet where I have quoted from my two favourite scenes:

http://misadventuresofmoppet.wordpress. ... ay-penman/

annis · Post by **annis** » Sat April 3rd, 2010, 7:01 pm

I love sprawling epics like this one, and SKP is so good at creating characters you can relate to.

I agree with you about Henry I - why is there no fiction around about him? He's a fascinating subject- a real hard man. I was just reading about the way he dealt with the Riot of Rouen at the age of about 19. He already showed the iron hand which would later make him such an effective ruler.

Juliet Dymoke's "Henry of the High Rock" is the only novel I know of about him, though he does appear in George Shipway's 2 book series about Walter Tirel, "The Paladin" and "The Wolf Time", which cover the later years of William the Conqueror's reign and the struggle for power between William's three sons before and after his death.

EC2 · Post by **EC2** » Sat April 3rd, 2010, 7:19 pm

I agree Annis and Miss Moppet. He has been very neglected and yet I would say that he is probably one of England's greatest kings. I don't think he was particularly pleasant person (I'm writing about him at the moment at the latter end of his reign and I've encountered him in the course of my alternative research). A hard man is right, but a hard man who kept the peace - 35 years of it under his iron rule. It was a relatively good time for the man in the street and the peasant in the field, and England was super-rich. Henry was not above taking drastic measures when he found his civil servants with their hands in the money box (his moneyers). He cut off their hands and had them nailed to various doors! He was a man for law and order and a controlling fist.
Of course when Henry's iron grip was removed, it was chaos, particularly given his lack of direction re the succession. My take on that was that he didn't want to think of a world where he wasn't there controlling it, and he was still trying to play all sides when the surfeit of lampreys finally did for him (did he jump or was he pushed?).
He really does need a big novel about him. In some ways he was greater than his grandson, the oft-lauded Henry II. Just not as glam.