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caidyn's review
informative
medium-paced
4.0
An intriguing man. I had never really heard of him before this, but he was a much more successful Wolsey or Cromwell.
1outside's review
3.0
Well, towards the end of the book, I was pretty much willing him to die already.
This is my first, and for a long time likely only, dive into French history, and boy what a doozy!
For two physically ailing individuals, Louis XIII & Richelieu sure loved war making.
I have to say I slightly gave up on the war-related who-with-whys somewhere in the last quarter of the book. Trying to keep up with all the court & royal family intrigue was enough.
I suppose I expected less of that and more of Richelieu as a person. Of course you could argue that considering his job, bringing a lot of the war & court crap is inevitable in a biography of his, I just wish it had more of Richelieu on top of all that.
He does make his proper presence felt here and there - the garden strolls with his BFF, his love of theatre - but frankly I would have wanted much more of this. It's clear there is a fuckload of correspondence available from this time period, yet not enough of it ends up in the book. His family gets mentioned, every now and then - that he found prestigious jobs for them - but you can find pretty much no correspondence with them, or even who they were (apart from brother and niece(s)) - and I find the lack of all this a gross fault of the book.
As is, this is a book relatively swiftly relating the French history of the time of Richelieu's life - with an emphasis on him, but an emphasis too slight to deserve to be called a biography of this undoubtedly interesting person.
P.S. They were all a bunch of fucking drama queens (Richelieu resigned approx. 159 times during his service to the king), and it seems none of them were actually at any point drama queening abt anything important to their poor suffering subjects. A bit surprised the revolution didn't come sooner TBH. Jeezes.
P.P.S. I realise giving the book a 3/5 might seem a bit high after bitching about it in my review, but I do have to give credit where credit is due when it comes to the research, plus I did end up learning quite a few new things - even about Richelieu himself - that I had had no idea about before I started reading the book.
It gave me context, which is invaluable; what it didn't give me was what I wanted - a proper biography.
This is my first, and for a long time likely only, dive into French history, and boy what a doozy!
For two physically ailing individuals, Louis XIII & Richelieu sure loved war making.
I have to say I slightly gave up on the war-related who-with-whys somewhere in the last quarter of the book. Trying to keep up with all the court & royal family intrigue was enough.
I suppose I expected less of that and more of Richelieu as a person. Of course you could argue that considering his job, bringing a lot of the war & court crap is inevitable in a biography of his, I just wish it had more of Richelieu on top of all that.
He does make his proper presence felt here and there - the garden strolls with his BFF, his love of theatre - but frankly I would have wanted much more of this. It's clear there is a fuckload of correspondence available from this time period, yet not enough of it ends up in the book. His family gets mentioned, every now and then - that he found prestigious jobs for them - but you can find pretty much no correspondence with them, or even who they were (apart from brother and niece(s)) - and I find the lack of all this a gross fault of the book.
As is, this is a book relatively swiftly relating the French history of the time of Richelieu's life - with an emphasis on him, but an emphasis too slight to deserve to be called a biography of this undoubtedly interesting person.
P.S. They were all a bunch of fucking drama queens (Richelieu resigned approx. 159 times during his service to the king), and it seems none of them were actually at any point drama queening abt anything important to their poor suffering subjects. A bit surprised the revolution didn't come sooner TBH. Jeezes.
P.P.S. I realise giving the book a 3/5 might seem a bit high after bitching about it in my review, but I do have to give credit where credit is due when it comes to the research, plus I did end up learning quite a few new things - even about Richelieu himself - that I had had no idea about before I started reading the book.
It gave me context, which is invaluable; what it didn't give me was what I wanted - a proper biography.
peterseanesq's review
5.0
My Amazon review -
http://www.amazon.com/review/REZLJDXP6W97O/ref=cm_cr_rdp_perm
http://www.amazon.com/review/REZLJDXP6W97O/ref=cm_cr_rdp_perm
cbushwrite's review
4.0
My habit, lately, has been to randomly snag promising-looking books from the "New" shelves at my library. Having enjoyed "The Three Musketeers" while in high school, I got very excited to see this on the shelf. Of course, it had to come home with me.
This is an interesting, highly readable, examination of the cardinal's life. It skips back and forth a bit in the beginning of the book, and it is unclear how Richelieu came to power--sometimes, it was simply a matter of being in the right place at the right time, and other times, it was simply luck that kept him alive and upwardly mobile. He comes off as something of a sycophant, more than a man who ruled a kingdom.
However, it also provides insight into the lives of the king, his mother, and the cardinal himself. Far from caricatures, these are people motivated by love, hate, and fear. Just like anyone else. Seeing how powerful emotions intertwine with turbulent times and produce the beginnings of modernity is the gift of Jean-Vincent Blanchard. Thankfully, he shares it with us.
This is an interesting, highly readable, examination of the cardinal's life. It skips back and forth a bit in the beginning of the book, and it is unclear how Richelieu came to power--sometimes, it was simply a matter of being in the right place at the right time, and other times, it was simply luck that kept him alive and upwardly mobile. He comes off as something of a sycophant, more than a man who ruled a kingdom.
However, it also provides insight into the lives of the king, his mother, and the cardinal himself. Far from caricatures, these are people motivated by love, hate, and fear. Just like anyone else. Seeing how powerful emotions intertwine with turbulent times and produce the beginnings of modernity is the gift of Jean-Vincent Blanchard. Thankfully, he shares it with us.