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A review by jmschnepp
The Twice-Hanged Man by Priscilla Royal
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? N/A
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.0
The Twice Hanged Man follows Eleanor, Prioress of Tyndale. The story opens with the Prioress, her brother, his wife, a nun and a priest. Accompanied by Robert, her brother, Elizabeth, her sister-in-law, Sister Anne and Brother Thomas, she was fleeing Wales for the safety of Wynethrope in England. Elizabeth goes into labor on their trip. Sister Anne and Prioress Eleanor help Elizabeth through the harrowing ordeal of childbirth that existed particularly at this time in history. Elizabeth bears her second child, a daughter, but her fight for her life is not yet over.
Eleanor interrupted by the local abbot, Abbot Gerald, seeking an audience. Father Payn, the abbot's priest, has died and someone has declared that they saw a dead man kneeling over his body. What ensues is the efforts of the Prioress, Sister Anne and Brother Thomas to discover what happened to the Father and send the spirit back to hell.
I found the writing to be juvenile and the plot predictable. It took much longer for me to complete this book than it should have. I continued to read out of principle - trying to give the author and the storyline the benefit of the doubt. I figured it was possible that the issue was that I had come into the series on book 15 rather than starting at the beginning.
The book is a stand alone story, but I found little character development and less to love about the individual characters as I continued to wade through the pages. I have no doubt that some of the internal struggles the reader is privy to existed in the "Religious" (as Eleanor and Thomas were called in the book) at that time, but I found the amount of time spent on relating those struggles in print off-putting. Overall the books was readable, but I'm not inclined at this point to read anything further by this author.
Eleanor interrupted by the local abbot, Abbot Gerald, seeking an audience. Father Payn, the abbot's priest, has died and someone has declared that they saw a dead man kneeling over his body. What ensues is the efforts of the Prioress, Sister Anne and Brother Thomas to discover what happened to the Father and send the spirit back to hell.
I found the writing to be juvenile and the plot predictable. It took much longer for me to complete this book than it should have. I continued to read out of principle - trying to give the author and the storyline the benefit of the doubt. I figured it was possible that the issue was that I had come into the series on book 15 rather than starting at the beginning.
The book is a stand alone story, but I found little character development and less to love about the individual characters as I continued to wade through the pages. I have no doubt that some of the internal struggles the reader is privy to existed in the "Religious" (as Eleanor and Thomas were called in the book) at that time, but I found the amount of time spent on relating those struggles in print off-putting. Overall the books was readable, but I'm not inclined at this point to read anything further by this author.