![Cover image for The chalice : [a novel]](/client/assets/5.1294/ctx//client/images/no_image.png "Cover image for The chalice : [a novel]")
Available:*
Library | Call Number | Status |
|---|---|---|
Searching... Silver Falls Library | FIC BILYEAU | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... Monmouth Public Library | Fic (m) Bilyeau, N. 2013 | Searching... Unknown |
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Summary
Summary
In the next novel from Nancy Bilyeau after her acclaimed debut The Crown , novice Joanna Stafford plunges into an even more dangerous conspiracy as she comes up against some of the most powerful men of her era.
In the midst of England's Reformation, a young novice will risk everything to defy the most powerful men of her era.
In 1538, England's bloody power struggle between crown and cross threatens to tear the country apart. Novice Joanna Stafford has tasted the wrath of the royal court, discovered what lies within the king's torture rooms, and escaped death at the hands of those desperate to possess the power of an ancient relic.
Even with all she has experienced, the quiet life is not for Joanna. Despite the possibilities of arrest and imprisonment, she becomes caught up in a shadowy international plot targeting Henry VIII himself. As the power plays turn vicious, Joanna realizes her role is more critical than she'd ever imagined. She must choose between those she loves most and assuming her part in a prophecy foretold by three seers. Repelled by violence, Joanna seizes a future with a man who loves her. But no matter how hard she tries, she cannot escape the spreading darkness of her destiny.
To learn the final, sinister piece of the prophecy, she flees across Europe with a corrupt spy sent by Spain. As she completes the puzzle in the dungeon of a twelfth-century Belgian fortress, Joanna realizes the life of Henry VIII as well as the future of Christendom are in her hands--hands that must someday hold the chalice that lies at the center of these deadly prophecies. . . .
Reviews (2)
Kirkus Review
A historical novel set during the time of Henry VIII. It opens in Canterbury in 1528, when the heroine, Joanna Stafford, is only 17 and her mother, worried about her daughter's health, pretends to take her to benefit from healing waters there. In fact, it is her mother's desire to have her daughter meet a woman with the gift of prophecy, a woman who is the first to see the role Joanna is destined to play in the future of the ongoing conflict between the crown and the cross. Her mother had come from Spain with Katherine of Aragon and married into an English family related to the Tudors. Because an uncle, the Duke of Buckingham, had been executed for treason after soliciting prophetic information about the death and heirs of King Henry, Joanna prefers to obey the command of her cousin to never solicit the knowledge or advice of seers. Her mother's distress, however, moves her, and she pays attention to the first of what will be three seers who reveal, in progressive parts, her ultimate destiny. The next chapter moves us to Dartford in 1538, at which time we see Joanna as a nun whose beauty inspires an uncomfortable lust in the men who meet her. Thereafter, Joanna, who would like to start a tapestry weaving business, continues to deny and resist her ultimate destiny but eventually, after an agonizing period of indecision, gives in and agrees to travel to Ghent (the birthplace of the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V) to meet with the third seer. Joanna's interest in weaving tapestries is an appropriate analogy for this layered book of historical suspense.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
Henry VIII has defrocked the priesthood and despoiled the Church's convents and monasteries, though he has not killed its spirit in this sequel to The Crown (2012), continuing the story of Joanna Stafford, former nun and sometime spy, whose destiny is uncomfortably tied both to prophecy and the Tudors. Lovely Joanna's naivete, her budding sexuality, and her inner turmoil, combined with the overwhelming greed of powerful religious and political men, again obscures her vision. Three indecipherable prophecies eventually propel her toward rebellion, and while these omens form the weakest part of the story, Joanna emerges as a compelling character who someow manages to weather a fierce emotional battering and the threat of execution. Presenting his narrative through the eyes of a young woman who eventually must accept the cup of her fate, Bilyeau paints a moving portrait of Catholicism during the Reformation and of reclusive, spiritual people adjusting to the world outside the cloister. This intriguing and suspenseful historical novel pairs well with C. J. Sansom's Dissolution (2003) and has the insightful feminine perspective of Brenda Rickman Vantrease's The Heretic's Wife (2010).--Baker, Jen Copyright 2010 Booklist