It took me a solid year to read this book - I kept taking it out of the library and not managing to read it before it was due again, and then putting it back on hold. But I finally made it all the way through. I realized that I knew of the Plantagenets as a concept but had very little actual knowledge of them beyond the version of Richard II that Shakespeare told, King Richard the Lionhearted and King John via Robin Hood tellings, and Kings Edward I and Edward II via Braveheart, which whew. So it was great to read an actual history of these kings, even if on occasion it leaned a bit harder into "I know people think these kings were gay but probably they weren't" than I prefer in my popular history, given that there wasn't a lot of evidence for the assertion that certain figures weren't gay, either. Also, I had been hoping for more on the women of the era, although of course it did include a fair amount of information about Eleanor of Aquitaine.
On the whole I thought this was a very good overview of the ruling family that spanned hundreds of years and hundreds of miles, but I do now want to read more about individual reigns in this period in order to get a bit deeper on it all. For a starting place on this era in English history, however, I think it's a great choice.
Grade: A
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