Bijoux
Editorial Reviews
Book Description
Olivia Peyton's first venture as a novelist has produced a highly original, disconcerting and fascinating story that has the passion, intensity and brilliant color of a painting by Nicolas Poussin. Through a cast of characters who with their private passions are caught up in the maelstrom of history, the author evokes a decadent 17th c. society as it sinks into vice and irresponsibility and becomes engulfed in the master plans of Louis XIV. From the time of the great civil war in 1642, the novel takes the reader through the turmoil of French political and social life, through the tragedy and heroism of a people destined to herald a Sun King. The alchemy of love is the central theme, and it is played with several variations, one or two of which are the strangest to be found in literature since the writing of the Marquis de Sade. War, politics, friendship, loyalty, religious belief are among the subsidiary themes which the author develops in her own original way. There are passages of unforgettable visualization - the building of Versailles, the execution of Cinq-Mars by Richelieu, the conspiracies of the Company of the Blessed Sacrament, the adventures of an older musketeer D'Artagnan, the legend of the French vampire, Noctambule, and the identity of the infamous prisoner, the Man in the Iron Mask. Filled with the raciness of its age and the shocking unconventionality of underground history, this fact-filled fiction is rigorously constructed and the dramatic interest is maintained at a high, page-turning pitch. "Does it matter, in the end, though, all the titles and the gloire?" Bijoux comments at the conclusion of the novel. "I think not when I consider what I have experienced; I think not, indeed."
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Bijoux,Olivia Peyton,BookSurge Publishing,1588986136,Fiction,Literary,Mystery & Detective - General,Fiction / Romance / Historical,Olivia Peyton
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