Sunday, March 14, 2010

The Angelique Series by Anne Golon

When I read these books for the first time I wasn't even in my teens and fell in love with them, despite the good-natured ribbing of my family who doubted the books' literary value. To their credit I kept getting new volumes for birthdays and Christmases as they became available.
Fast forward to 2010 and my acute bouts of homesickness. I kept wishing for some way to reconnect, if you will, and what better way to go back in time than with a multi-volume book series? And so for the last month I've been reading like I used to, during lunch, while waiting in line, for 10 minutes between breakfast and rushing out the door and way too late into the night. I devoured 13 books in a month, some over 500 pages long, and couldn't be happier. For one thing I re-discovered the absolutely amazing historical novels where fact and fiction are blended so seamlessly you never know where one ends and the other begins and where the plot and characters are so beautifully and thoroughly developed that I've been looking up places and people on the web for days now and guess what? They're all real! Another reason for happiness is that there are 2 books at the end of the series I didn't know about and the last one, written decades after the first, shows that the brilliant Anne Golon hasn't lost her touch or interest in her cast of characters. Last, but not least, I was thrilled to find out that 2 more books are coming and now I only hope that the 88-year-old author finishes them and we fans get to spend more time with the heroine who's become so real for us. We know everything will end well because so say the Tarot cards of the two little quakers but how exactly will the Sun King deal with not having his two willful vassals under his red heel? That question hasn't been answered yet and I just can't wait to find out.
I can write more, much more, but as it will not be enough will stop for now. May be later I'll talk some more about things this series has made me think about but right now I just want to tell you to go out and find these books, even though they've been out of print for the longest time, read them and discover the series that just might be impossible to categorize as a single-genre creation because it is history, adventure and romance all in one. What it is not is mediocre erotica the covers suggest it is. I would really like to know who designed those and what in the world were they thinking....

No comments:

Post a Comment