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“�� never forget it, never �� that the world’s greatest fool is a Welshman who trusts an English King.��

FALLS THE SHADOW is a fictionalized biography of Simon de Montfort, the 13th century champion of representative government who fought to the death for the Oxford Provisions, the natural descendant of Runnymede’s Magna Carta. De Montfort, now known as the hero of the people and a man ahead of his time who crafted the embryonic structure of a people's parliament, was the bitter enemy of Henry III, a man now known as one of England’s weakest and most incompetent monarchs and a fervent believer in the God-given right of kings to rule their feudal kingdom with complete, unquestioned authority.

As expansive as the historical canvas on which Sharon Kay Penman paints her recreation of 13th century England is - its politics, its landscapes, and its evolution, warfare, social customs, law and marriage, even its dietary proclivities �� she keeps a firm and disciplined grip on all of the story lines, all of her characters, and all of the meaningful real-life historical developments. The reader of what is a door-stopper by any definition will never find themselves forced to re-read, or to stop to gather one’s thoughts. The lush drama, the thrill, the gripping re-creation of the real-life historical developments and the heart throbbing romance that Penman has chosen to create between Simon and his wife, Nell, is, to say the least, compelling.

On the horrors of medieval siege warfare, for example:

“The mangonels heaved boulders into the inner bailey, and the trebuchets hurled the dreaded Greek fire, which not even water could extinguish. The castle came rapidly to life; men appeared, yawning and cursing, upon the roof battlements, at the narrow arrow slits �� he knew how unpleasant conditions must be for those mewed up within the keep, denied light or fresh air, unable to escape the pungent stink of the latrines, having to ration every swallow of water, to count every mouthful of food.��

Some wry humour on the vagaries of bathing and brothels:

�� ‘I’m just going out to take a piss. It’s sweltering in here; mayhap I’ll take another dip in the lake.�� ��

�� ‘Again?�� She was accustomed to humoring the quirks of her customers, but never had she encountered one so bizarre. In truth, the man was besotted with bathing, even insisting that she take a bath herself ere he’d bed her! Were all lords so daft about soap and water?��

Next up, of course, THE RECKONING, the final entry in Penman’s masterful Welsh Princes trilogy, in which Llewelyn, now reluctantly acknowledged by the English crown as the Prince of Wales, butts heads with Edward I, the willful and much more capable son of the mercurial Henry III. Sharon Kay Penman is a master of the historical fiction genre and her Welsh Princes trilogy deserves a strong recommendation and a place on the shelves of any lover of the genre.

Paul Weiss