(English text and images below.  Some images in spoiler tags -- trigger warning: substantial gross-out factor.)

Images en bas, quelques-uns marquées "spoiler" -- attention: risque de nausée considérable.

Thanatos: le titre du chapitre dit tout ce qui est nécessaire pour résumir le chapitre no. 5. -- En aillerurs, puisque Nicolas résiste à confirmer l'identité du mort trouvé avec l'aide de la vieille Émilie, probablement il vaut mieux ne pas encore fermer le dossier sur ce sujet-ci.  Pourtant, même si ce n'est pas l'un, sûrement ça veut dire que c'est l'autre ... et le propriétaire de ces vêtements, en aurait-il vraiment se débarassé volontiers?  Je le doute.

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Thanatos: The title of chapter 5 says all that's necessary to sum up its contents. -- Since, incidentally, Nicolas refuses to confirm the identity of the dead person found with old Émilie's help, it's probably a good idea to keep an open mind on that.  But surely, if it's not one then it must be the other ... and would the owner of those clothes really have given them up voluntarily?  I doubt it.

Place de Grève and Quartier de l'Hôtel de Ville (late 18th century map and depiction from the 1750s, respectively).  The Place de Grève was later renamed Place de l'Hôtel de Ville (and still has that name today). -- For reference: Le Châtelet is just to the left of here.

Montfaucon, the actual location where the largely decomposed body was recovered. 

(For reference: The Place de Grève / today: Place de l'Hôtel de Ville is in the spot of the "Pa" of the word "Paris"; Le Châtelet was just beyond the second bridge to the left of there.)

by Anna-Marie Crowhurst

Set in the seventeenth century, Ursula Flight is an unusual girl with a curious mind and a hankering for adventure. As a child she applies herself to learning to read and to learn about the world in ways that girls of her era seldom do, then a chance meeting with an actress leads her to fascination with a vocation with a bad reputation that is outweighed by the appeal of life on the stage.

Ursula is a likeable character from the start. She's intelligent and curious, more interested in an experience for its own merits than in 'what people will think'. However, although her father encourages her learning, when a local Lord takes a fancy to young Ursula, her father effectively orders her to marry him. Needless to say, Ursula is not pleased with being effectively sold into marriage.

The story is mostly told in first person, so we get a look inside the thoughts of a young girl, her fancies, and her unspoken opinions all along. One of her interests is in writing plays, so we are given interludes that she has depicted as a playwrite and have to wonder how much embellishment Ursula has added to her private writings.

Facing some difficult circumstances in an era when women were treated much as property brings out the strength in the character, even through girlish fancies. The story kept me interested all the way through and made me wonder if I would have had the courage to do some of the things she does to overcome obstacles to her happiness.

It's DAY 2 of my Luminous Blog Tour, and I am excited to share this first touching book review from author Stephanie Churchill.

It's painful watching these people fail themselves. The quotes from their older selves are depressingly accurate:

'Drinking, drugging, sleeping around, it's all the same thing. You have these lines you won't cross but then you cross them and suddenly you possess the vary dangerous information that you can break the rule and the world won't instantly come to an end. You've taken a big black bold line and you've made it a little bit grey. Now, every time you cross it again it just gets greyer and greyer until one day you look around and you think, "there was a line here once, I think."'

 

Not much is known about King Henry’s third wife, so Weir had to rely on her imagination more than in previous books, and I found her imagination somewhat lacking. She portrays Jane as a pious anti church reform woman who once believed she’d been Called to a spiritual life, but gave up on her dream of being a nun in favor of a posting in Queen Katherine’s household at Court. The nun thing is an invention of Weir’s and doesn’t really add much to the story other than to unnecessarily reinforce Jane’s piousness. This piousness is referenced again and again, but rather than portray Jane as a straight-laced goody-two-shoes, Weir tried to make her more complex. Which is how we get a Jane that loves Queen Katherine and hates Anne Boleyn for having an affair with the King (among other reasons), and later justifies her own affair with the King by telling herself that his marriage to Anne wasn’t legitimate and therefor it’s not adultery. (It’s still fornication, but pious Jane doesn’t bat an eye at that. It’s true love, so God will totes understand.) She feels somewhat responsible for Anne’s ultimate fate and is haunted by her specter (literally—she starts seeing an Anne-shaped shadow in her bedchamber at night), but not even a mild ghost infestation can spice up the blandest of Henry’s wives. Basically, boring queen = boring book. Without a truly interesting character to distract me, I was painfully aware that Weir’s prose isn’t much more than a checklist of historical events as she thinks her version of Jane would have perceived them.