When Christ and His Saints Slept

by Sharon Kay Penman

Book Overview

A.D. 1135. As church bells tolled for the death of England's King Henry I, his barons faced the unwelcome prospect of being ruled by a woman: Henry's beautiful daughter Maude, Countess of Anjou. But before Maude could claim her throne, her cousin Stephen seized it. In their long and bitter struggle, all of England bled and burned. Sharon Kay Penman's magnificent fifth novel summons to life a spectacular medieval tragedy whose unfolding breaks the...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0345396685
• ISBN13: 9780345396686
• Release Date: February 1996
• Publisher: Ballantine Books
• Length: 784 Pages
• Weight: 1.38 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.3" x 5.6" x 8.2"

Customer Reviews

Penman Vol. 1

Penman emerged long ago as one of the best historical novelists and continues to solidify her reputation with each new release. Her special genius lies in the bright and shining historical detail that she can weave into both plot and dialog (she's a very good student of history and at times is absolutely brilliant in conveying to us the workings of medieval minds).Chronologically, this is the first book. It's also the first in the Henry & Eleanor trilogy (the others are Space & Time and Devil's Brood).There is no doubt When Christ And His Saints Slept will stand as a superior work for ages to come. There is certainly a very complex plot (because this era of English history was quite convoluted). Penman does an excellent job of keeping it all straight for us as she leads us through the maze of characters. Yes, it's complicated but if you read the history of these times you quickly come to see what a great job she did in her design of the story.There are touching moments (everybody seems to remember her scene of Henry meeting Eleanor in the garden of the Cite Palace) and Penman is great at establishing dynamic moments for a wide range of events (the deaths of Kings, Maude & Eleanor's machinations, etc.). But the true genius is the broad historical scope that is painted on top of the shimmering details of brief moments. It truely does feel as if you are living the story yourself, and it is this bringing us readers in as witnesses that stands as Penman's contribution to the art of the historical novel.If you prefer to read in chronological order:1101-1154 When Christ And His Saints Slept (Vol 1 of Trilogy)1156-1171 Time And Space (Vol 2 of Trilogy)12th Cent Devil's Brood (Vol 3 of Trilogy)- not yet released1192-1193 The Queen's Man1193 Cruel As The Grave1183-1232 Here Be Dragons (Vol 1 of Welsh Trilogy)1231-1267 Falls The Shadow (Vol 2 of Welsh Trilogy)1271-1283 The Reckoning (Vol 3 of Welsh Trilogy)1459-1492 The Sunne In Splendour

Fabulous story

There are times when you wonder why people have to make up stories when history provides such wonderful tales. The events in English history portrayed here are an excellent example of this, and Ms Penman does a wonderful job narrating them.We have the fabulous characters of Steven and Maude, and their seemingly endless conflict, and we meet her son Henry and the wonderful Eleanor of Aquitaine, some of the most remarkable people in history. Ms Penman does a wonderful job in animating them for the modern reader.There are adventures aplenty, like Maud escaping from a castle in a snow storm wrapped in a white cloak, as well as all the richly embroidered details of every day life you expect from a great historical novel.Ms Penman is a great writer, as she showed so well with "The Sunne in Splendour", and this is a great book.

Extraordinarily well researched, AND well written!

I've long been interested in the period of history from the fall of the Roman Empire to Elizabeth I of England. Most of my reading about this period has been non-fiction until now. I usually find most historical fiction takes too many liberties with the facts and/or deteriorates into the "bodice-ripper" genre all too common when historical fact is scarce.Ms. Penman's work is, therefore, a pleasant surprise. She sticks to the facts where it matters. She introduces fictional characters as *observers* to the action (as in the character of Ranulf, purported to be one of Henry I's many illegitmate children), rather than active participants who could change the course of history. Where these fictionalized characters were involved in action, it was always along side one of the non-fictional participants, as a "witness." Penman is very careful not to let her fictional characters do too much. Seeing the long civil war through Ranulf's eyes made it seem very personal, and revealed what was probably the real human cost of the bloody and largely unnecessary conflict. It is a device used also by Edward Rutherfurd in _Sarum_ (his description of the of the plague and its contagious consequences from the perspective of the rat is brilliant).I felt that I was looking at a sort of historical "connect the dots" -- there exists some documentation about this period, but there are gaps. Penman has adeptly connected the the known factual battles, seiges, etc. with fictionalized-but-plausible minor events dealing with day-to-day life. I particularly liked her inclusion of concluding notes, in which she explains which characters are fictional, which are "real," and some of the background including different (sometimes conflicting) theories on how/why certain characters acted and reacted.All in all, an excellent effort in shining light on the darkness that fell on England in the twelfth century, a period of chaos followed the Plantagenets, starting with Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine. I'll be looking forward to Penman's next book in this series.