Having finished reading this book today (at 10:30 am), nicely in time for my Third Tuesday Book Club meeting at Barnes & Noble tonight, I am now prepared to do my review of this book for my weblog. It promises to be an interesting discussion; it’s not every day you find a historical romance that also contains real live Angels and Demons within it. According to Wikipedia (caveat lector), the author teaches in the Department of Government at Claremont McKenna College in Claremont, California. She is also the grand-niece of Fred “Bonehead” Merkle, who was the youngest player on the New York Giants Baseball Team on the day in 1908 when, with two outs in the bottom of the ninth in a tie game against the Chicago Cubs, after the (apparently) winning run for the Giants was made by the player on third base crossing home, he failed to touch second base on advancing from first base, as he was under the impression that the game was over. However, an alert Chicago Cubs player noted his error, got the ball, touched second base, and succeeded in having Merkle called out on a force play, which meant that the “winning” run did not count. The game was thus still tied, but they could not play further innings that day due to darkness (and due to all of the Giants fans out on the field celebrating their apparent victory). In the makeup game played two weeks later, the Cubs won the game and the National League Pennant, and went on to win the World Series. Merkle played for 19 seasons, retired in 1926, and died in 1956, when his grand-niece was aged 14, and thus before she wrote this book I am reviewing. (And for those reading this review on my weblog, and who do not wish to read further, it’s a very good book, though I remain mystified as to why the title is The Serpent Garden, as there are no serpents nor gardens to speak of in the book.)
This book begins in Tudor England, in 1514, when King Henry XVIII was young and still married to Catherine of Aragon in hopes of a male heir. In London, we meet Suzanna Dallet, wife to a guild painter, who learned how to do paintings (especially miniature paintings) from her father, a Flemish painter; in fact, her husband basically married her to get her father’s secrets. As the book opens, her parents have died, Susanna is some eight or nine months pregnant, and resolved to be a good wife, and to not do any painting.
In short order, circumstances beyond her control make it necessary for her to pick up her brushes and paint; her brush takes her to the entourage of Archbishop Wolsey (not yet Cardinal), and then to the court of Princess Mary Tudor (the King’s younger sister), with whom she goes to Paris for the Princess’s wedding to the elderly King Louis XII of France.
Along the way, she is caught up in a swirl of events caused by the raising of the Demon Belphagor by an inordinately ambitious occultist (fortunately, the minor Angel Hadriel is in her corner) which involve Templar secrets, the Priory of Sion, secret passageways under Paris, murder, masterworks of art, betrayal, enchantment, cherubs betting on the results of tourneys, runaway horses, a sea voyage, and handsome young couriers in the service of Archbishop Wolsey.
This is a very good read, and I very much enjoyed reading it; and I think I will have a good time at tonight’s Third Tuesday Book Club meeting.
From The Recamier 
Incense, was there any incense?
And where did everyone poop ‘n pee? Having lived my life with flush toilets, I remain curious as to what went on before flush toilets. And who wiped Henry VIII’s butt after he got too large to reach … ? That’s the story I want to read!
I do not recall any incense; however, there were several mentions of chamber pots. (When necessary, one, or one’s lower level servant, would just pitch the contents out of the window; and occasionally, the pitching of the contents of one’s chamber pot was a comment on the goings-on in the street below.)
Nag still does that …