Coffee Pot Book Tour: The Anarchy by Tracey Warr

August 23, 2021

Coffee Pot Book Tour: The Anarchy by Tracey Warr

The Details

Book Title: The Anarchy

Series: Conquest, Book 3

Author: Tracey Warr

Publication Date: 2nd June 2020

Publisher: Impress Books

Page Length: 218 Pages

Genre: Historical Fiction/ Historical Romance

The Blurb

Unhappily married to Stephen de Marais, the Welsh princess, Nest, becomes increasingly embroiled in her countrymen’s resistance to the Norman occupation of her family lands. She plans to visit King Henry in the hope of securing a life away from her unwanted husband, but grieving for the loss of his son, the King is obsessed with relics and prophecies.

Meanwhile, Haith tries to avoid the reality that Nest is married to another man by distracting himself with the mystery of the shipwreck in which the King’s heir drowned. As Haith pieces together fragments of the tragedy, he discovers a chest full of secrets, but will the revelations bring a culprit to light and aid the grieving King?

Will the two lovers be united as Nest fights for independence and Haith struggles to protect King Henry?

My Review

Thank you to Tracey for allowing me to read and review her book, The Anarchy, third is a series. I’ll start by saying I did not read the first two installments of this series. That being said I had no problem diving into the story of Nest, an 11^th century Welsh Princess. The writing is immersive and the pace crisp. I enjoyed learning more about Welsh history and their long bitter fight against the Norman invaders. Nest’s story is typical of highborn women, often forced to marry men not of their choosing. In the opening scene, Nest is marrying a man many years her junior. The book tell her story for independence and she seeks help from King Henry I of England, a man rumored to have been her lover.

The Anarchy is more than just a dry a history of a far-off period. The author has skillfully woven a mystery into the narrative. Haith, confident of the King and Nest’s lover, searches for clues in hopes of finding the culprit responsible for the sinking of the White Ship which resulted in the death of King Henry’s son and heir. The ‘mystery’ was well thought out and kept me guessing.

I really enjoyed reading The Anarchy and hope to go back and read the first two books in the series. I highly recommend this book to lovers of historical fiction, especially those with an interest in Welsh and Norman history.

The Author

Tracey Warr (1958- ) was born in London and lives in the UK and France. Her first historical novel, Almodis the Peaceweaver (Impress, 2011) is set in 11th century France and Spain and is a fictionalised account of the true story of the Occitan female lord, Almodis de la Marche, who was Countess of Toulouse and Barcelona. It was shortlisted for the Impress Prize for New Fiction and the Rome Film Festival Books Initiative and won a Santander Research Award. Her second novel, The Viking Hostage, set in 10th century France and Wales, was published by Impress Books in 2014 and topped the Amazon Australia charts. Her Conquest trilogy, Daughter of the Last King, The Drowned Court, and The Anarchy recount the story of a Welsh noblewoman caught up in the struggle between the Welsh and the Normans in the 12th century. She was awarded a Literature Wales Writers Bursary. Her writing is a weave of researched history and imagined stories in the gaps in history.

Tracey Warr studied English at University of Hull and Oxford University, gaining a BA (Hons) and MPhil. She worked at the Arts Council, Institute of Contemporary Arts, Chatto & Windus Publishers, and edited Poetry Review magazine with Mick Imlah. She also publishes art writing on contemporary artists, and in 2016 she published a future fiction novella, Meanda, in English and French, as part of the art project, Exoplanet Lot. She recently published a series of three books, The Water Age, which are future fiction and art and writing workshop books - one for adults and one for children - on the topic of water in the future. She gained a PhD in Art History in 2007 and was Guest Professor at Bauhaus University and Senior Lecturer at Oxford Brookes University and Dartington College of Arts. Her published books on contemporary art include The Artist’s Body (Phaidon, 2000), Remote Performances in Nature and Architecture (Routledge, 2015) and The Midden (Garret, 2018). She gained an MA in Creative Writing at University of Wales Trinity St David in 2011. She is Head of Research at Dartington Trust and teaches on MA Poetics of Imagination for Dartington Arts School.

Social Media Links:

Website: https://traceywarrwriting.com/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/TraceyWarr1

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/traceywarrhistoricalwriting/

LinkedIn: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/traceywarr

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tracey.warr.9/

Amazon Author Page: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Tracey-Warr/e/B0053YDVPE

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/series/192570-conquest

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