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Book Review of Grave Goods (Mistress of the Art of Death, Bk 3) (aka Relics of the Dead)

Grave Goods (Mistress of the Art of Death, Bk 3) (aka Relics of the Dead)
nnaylime avatar reviewed on + 14 more book reviews


** spoiler alert ** Henry II's Mistress of the Art of Death is summoned to identify bones purportedly belonging to King Arthur and Guinevere. SIGN ME UP!

That out of the way, I wasn't nearly as fond of this book as I was of the two that preceded it, though it did pick up at the end, it dragged at the beginning and I began to see a bit of odd redundancy between this book and the previous.

There's more than one villain--however one is always with the church; one of the villains will be a woman; one of the villains will speak Latin; one of the villains will be non-culpable due to insanity. Menopause and insanity go hand-in-hand (and not just from the perspective of the contemporaries [which I could excuse:], but as an actual OPTION [that really angered me, but there were enough other redeeming factors to keep me from giving the book a lower rating.:])

What I did really like about the book was the nail-biting climax, that Henry II redeemed himself at the end (as he always does [in his way:]) while bringing a great deal of humanity to the crown, and the over-arching real mystery related to King Arthur, which is something in which I've long-been fascinated.