Hunter S. Jones’ wonderful book Phoenix Rising: A Novel of Anne Boleyn is out today in kindle and paperback formats. Here is the blurb:
The last hour of Anne Boleyn’s life…
Court intrigue, revenge and all the secrets of the last hour are revealed as one queen falls and another rises to take her place on destiny’s stage.
A young Anne Boleyn arrives at the court of King Henry VIII. She is to be presented at the Shrovetide pageant, le Château Vert. The young and ambitious Anne has no idea that a chance encounter before the pageant will lead to her capturing the heart of the king. What begins as a distraction becomes his obsession and leads to her destruction.
Love, hate, loyalty and betrayal come together in a single dramatic moment… the execution of a queen. The history of England will be changed for ever.
Go to http://getbook.at/phoenix_rising for the kindle version or http://getbook.at/phoenix_rising_pb for the paperback.
The gift of Phoenix Rising has been the friends made on the journey to publication. Thank you very much for this.
It’s a pleasure, Hunter, I’m happy to be part of your journey, it’s a wonderful novel.
See? When I signed up to follow your blog years ago, I never dreamt that you would be recommending my book. This is truly a fantastic journey.
Ha! Bless you! When I started this blog I never thought I’d have visitors from all around the world visiting it and that I’d make so many friends through it.
I had pre-ordered on Amazon, and yesterday being Anne Boleyn Day it was my chosed Kindle book of the day. I couldn’t put it down, so much contemporary detail and so many emotions in a relatively short book, and such a different way of telling the tale, using the astrological terms. Personally I liked how Jane Seymour showed herself up as being pretty spiteful and ruthless whilst accusing Anne of the same. I am one of those people who thinks Jane had an ambitious and ruthless streak to match that of her brothers, and that she wasn’t nearly as nice as Henry would have liked everyone to think! The book draws that out very well. And the portrayal of Anne had me reaching for the Kleenex…so brave and so much wronged.
Me, too. Have always, since I was 12 years old when I discovered Anne Boleyn and Henry VIII from seeing the movie “Anne of the Thousand Days”, and all the other things on the small and big screens, that Jane was a snake in the grass and not what she appeared to be. Know that I’m older, I do still believe that she was a snake in the grass, but she had the good sense to keep her mouth shut, unlike Anne Boleyn, which, I think, had she not died from birthing complications, would of kept her alive and well long afterwards. The one thing I do have to say about Jane, she did try and succeed in reuniting Henry’s daughters to him and she did step in as a mother figure, no matter what she might have felt towards them.
Just got this book two days ago on my kindle. I couldn’t put
it down! !
I loved it 🙂
Can I say that the mix of medicine, magic, prayers, astrology, maths and science of the doctors and scientists in the sixteenth century and seventeenth century fascinates me. We think it strange that an astronomer or doctor or other people who studied the scientific method would use astrological charts, but then both were mixed and little difference was done between them. A chart was made up by consulting many other things, health, stars, planets at the person’s birth, and mathematics played a vital role as well. The finished chart was very complex. Natural magic and prayers are connected to birth and allowed but making a chart in order to harm was punishable by death. The lines between the two were often blurred. It’s most important to remember that people were just discovering new things about the heavens, the planets, how the body worked, and would not know many things that we take for granted about the human body for another two or three centuries. The most fascinating person I enjoyed reading about over the years in connection with this subject is the Emperor who had all of the scientific people at his court, but also allowed people to come and explore magic and the future. Even Kepler visited him. John Dee also stands out, and the fact that Elizabeth I employed him proves that in the right circumstances, exploring the strange was encouraged. Henry Viii and Anne Boleyn asked all the leading astrological people about the sex of their first baby, even though such a thing was frowned upon. That they were all proved wrong also showed why it was frowned upon. But we know today that people did mix religious beliefs and natural magic or folk medicine. Ronald Hutton has done some excellent work in this area. The recent three part series with Helen Carter, Marriage, Deaths and Births Medieval Period shows that the midwives used prayers and spells for the protection of the mother, to determine the sex of a child, and safe delivery. I am enjoying your book which I have recently begun, it captures the mix and uses of medicine and magic very well. A remarkable and interesting time to live in, your other article is wonderful. Thanks for sharing and good fortune with the book.