Symbol Maker’s Daughter is a historical romance set in the time just before the emergence of Henry Tudor who will become King Henry VII, the sovereign who ends the War of the Roses, forms the Tudor dynasty, and becomes the father of Henry VIII. The protagonist is Nicola, a young woman whose father, a jeweler as well as a lord, tasks her with delivering a clandestine message to Henry Tudor. The problem is that the message is from the occult, and witches are feared in the times in which this book is set, so she faces not only the warring factions of the Tudors and the Lancasters and Yorks, but the potential for being burned at the stake as a witch. She is assisted by a young prince, Drue, from a fictitious country near the Papal States, who is running around England incognito.
At 434 pages, Symbol Maker’s Daughter is far too long and too slow. Some judicious pruning of historical events would have made it more readable. Also, it is not particularly romantic with little to no sexual tension between Nicola and Drue. There are too many repetitions of Nicola’s objective. She is a TSTL heroine—one who is too stupid to live, endangering not only herself but others as she races off to complete her task without fully thinking things through and never seeming to learn from the consequences of her prior similar acts. A large cast of characters and a distant point of view keeps the reader from establishing a relationship with any of them, including the protagonist and her love interest.
A wealth of historical detail, however, sets the scene quite well.
Any number of books have been released recently in which the female protagonist is identified in terms of her husband or father. To mention a few I’ve read: The Van Gogh Woman, The Collector’s Apprentice, The Doctor’s Daughter, The Daughter of Doctor Moreau, The Surgeon’s Daughter. I find it appalling that the patriarchy is so strong we must define our protagonists in terms of the dominant male in their life. It’s time for a shift from this sort of title.
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Symbol Maker’s Daughter (River Grove Books, September 7, 2022) is available through:
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