Month: June 2018

Throwback Thursday: Feast of Sorrow by Crystal King

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ThrowbackThursday

Throwback Thursday is a weekly meme created by Renee at It’s Book Talk.  It’s designed as an opportunity to share old favourites as well as books that we’ve finally got around to reading that were published over a year ago.

Today I’m revisiting a book I reviewed last year – Feast of Sorrow by Crystal King – which was published in hardback and as an ebook on 25th April 2017.   Set in Ancient Rome, Feast of Sorrow was recently published in paperback as well and is also available as an audiobook.  You can find purchase links below.

Crystal’s second historical novel The Chef’ Secret, set in Renaissance Rome, is a fictional retelling of the life of Bartolomeo Scappi, private chef to four Popes and the author of one of history’s best selling cookbooks.   It is due to be published by Touchstone Books in February 2019 and I, for one, will be looking forward to reading it.

FeastofSorrowAbout the Book

On a blistering day in the twenty-sixth year of Augustus Caesar’s reign, a young chef, Thrasius, is acquired for the exorbitant price of twenty thousand denarii. His purchaser is the infamous gourmet Marcus Gavius Apicius, wealthy beyond measure, obsessed with a taste for fine meals from exotic places, and a singular ambition: to serve as culinary advisor to Caesar, an honor that will cement his legacy as Rome’s leading epicure.

Apicius rightfully believes that Thrasius is the key to his culinary success, and with Thrasius’s help he soon becomes known for his lavish parties and fantastic meals. Thrasius finds a family in Apicius’s household, his daughter Apicata, his wife Aelia, and her handmaiden, Passia whom Thrasius quickly falls in love with. But as Apicius draws closer to his ultimate goal, his reckless disregard for any who might get in his way takes a dangerous turn that threatens his young family and places his entire household at the mercy of the most powerful forces in Rome.

Praise for Feast of Sorrow

“Crystal King’s debut is a feast for the senses, bringing ancient Rome to dark, vibrant life. Politics, intrigue, danger, and passion mix deliciously in this tale of a young slave vaulted into the corridors of power as personal chef to the ancient world’s greatest gourmet. Not to be missed!” (Kate Quinn, author of Mistress of Rome)

“An engaging foray into the treacherous world of Claudio-Julian Rome from a fresh perspective. Who knew that the gourmand Apicius was larger than life? King deftly serves up intrigue, scandal and heartbreak with lashings of exotic sauces, mouth-watering recipes and the occasional drop of poison. Highly recommended.” (Elisabeth Storrs, author of the series Tales of Ancient Rome)

“Through the lens of a slave in ancient Rome, Crystal King illuminates a realm of seemingly impossible gluttony and excess, along with every other deadly sin. In the household of outrageous gourmand Apicius, he of extraordinarily decadent mores, one man, a slave, Thrasius, provides the sole ethical center. Feast of Sorrow is impossible to put down.” (Randy Susan Meyers, bestselling author of Accidents of Marriage)

“Crystal King has clearly done her homework. The historical world of Feast of Sorrow lives and breathes, and it is a delight to follow its characters’ struggle for happiness and survival amidst the simmering peril of Rome’s great houses. Even if you’re not a foodie drawn to novels of ancient Rome, this immersive, sensorily rich page-turner will take you for a delicious and unforgettable ride.” (Tim Weed, author of Will Poole’s Island)

“Crystal King’s debut novel, Feast of Sorrow, tells the story of Apicius, the notorious gourmand of ancient Rome, from the viewpoint of his slave and cook Thrasius. It’s a dark and engrossing read, and provides an evocative new perspective on the rule of Tiberius.” (Emily Hauser, author of For the Most Beautiful)

“Crystal King has written a delicious feast of a book, one that allows us to not only see, but also taste ancient Rome in all its dark and varied appetites.” (Yael Goldstein Love, author of Overture)

Format: Hardcover, ebook, paperback (416 pp.)  Publisher: Touchstone
Published: 25th April 2017                                         Genre: Historical Fiction

Purchase Links*
Amazon.co.uk ǀ  Amazon.com  | Hive.co.uk (supporting local UK bookshops)
*links provided for convenience, not as part of any affiliate programme

Find Feast of Sorrow on Goodreads

My Review

I really enjoyed the author’s assured writing and the fascinating details of daily Roman life and customs that are woven into the plot – dining customs, religious rituals, rules of hospitality and so on.  The focus of the book is the life of Apicius so naturally there are gorgeous descriptions of actual Roman recipes, even if some of the ingredients themselves are not so gorgeous sounding to modern diners.  Each section of the book opens with an authentic recipe from the time.

Through the invented character of Thrasius, the cook, the author enables the reader to get up close and personal with the real-life Apicius.  He is vain and single-minded to the point of selfishness and, as Thrasius remarks, ‘apt to assume the world revolved around him’.  However, one cannot help admiring his passion for food and for seeking out new ingredients and taste experiences.  Unfortunately, along the way, he creates some powerful enemies although those closest to him show absolute loyalty to the end.    Apicius’ story is one of ambition bringing success but with tragic consequences for himself and those around him.

As well as Apicius, well-known figures from Roman history feature – Livia, Sejanus, Ovid and Tiberius Caesar – feature prominently in the plot.    Political rivalries and the jockeying for position, power and influence are played out through the medium of food at elaborate banquets featuring the choicest and most expensive ingredients.  It’s a game of gastronomic one-upmanship but one with dangerous consequences.

I really enjoyed Feast of Sorrow which should appeal to fans of historical fiction, cookery or Roman history.  I received an advance reader copy courtesy of NetGalley and publishers, Touchstone, in return for an honest review.

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CrystalKingAbout the Author

Crystal King is an author, culinary enthusiast and marketing expert. Her writing is fuelled by a love of history and a passion for the food, language and culture of Italy. She has taught classes in writing, creativity and social media at Harvard Extension School, Boston University, Mass College of Art, UMass Boston and Grub Street, one of the leading creative writing centres in the US. A Pushcart-nominated poet and former co-editor of the online literary arts journal Plum Ruby Review, Crystal received her M.A. in Critical and Creative Thinking from UMass Boston, where she developed a series of exercises and writing prompts to help fiction writers in medias res. She considers Italy her next great love, after her husband, Joe, and their two cats, Nero and Merlin.

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Blog Tour/Review/Guest Post: The Hidden Bones (Clare Hills #1) by Nicola Ford

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I’m delighted to be hosting today’s stop on the blog tour for The Hidden Bones by Nicola Ford. It’s the first in a new crime mystery series featuring archaeologist Clare Hills. You can read my review of The Hidden Bones below plus I also have a wonderful guest post from Nicola, entitled ‘Wiltshire Noire’.

The Hidden BonesAbout the Book

Following the recent death of her husband, Clare Hills is listless and unsure of her place in the world. When her former university friend Dr David Barbrook asks her to help him sift through the effects of deceased archaeologist Gerald Hart, she sees this as a useful distraction from her grief. During her search, Clare stumbles across the unpublished journals detailing Gerald’s most glittering dig. Hidden from view for decades and supposedly destroyed in an arson attack, she cannot believe her luck. Finding the Hungerbourne Barrows archive is every archaeologist’s dream. Determined to document Gerald’s career-defining find for the public, Clare and David delve into his meticulously kept records of the excavation.

But the dream suddenly becomes a nightmare as the pair unearth a disturbing discovery, putting them at the centre of a murder inquiry and in the path of a dangerous killer determined to bury the truth for ever.

Format: Hardcover, ebook (352 pp.)   Publisher: Allison and Busby Published: 21st June 2018  Genre: Crime, Mystery

Purchase Links*
Amazon.co.uk ǀ Publisher ǀ Hive.co.uk (supporting UK bookshops)
*links provided for convenience, not as part of any affiliate programme

Find The Hidden Bones on Goodreads

Guest Post: ‘Wiltshire Noire’ by Nicola Ford, author of The Hidden Bones

People make landscapes and landscapes make people. Whether it’s the urban inner city landscape of London, New York or Paris or the bleakly beautiful uplands of the High Peak. Both are to a large extent man made and where we live and spend our lives shapes not only our views and opinions but also how we live our lives and the choices we make. And sometimes those decisions can lead us to very dark places.

For many years now I’ve had the privilege of living and working in Wiltshire. It’s a county that encompasses some of the most magical landscape in the country. But it’s also one of the most frequently overlooked. Every year thousands of holiday makers make their way through Wiltshire on their way to the delights of Devon and Cornwall, most of them giving little more than a passing glance at this ancient county. But it’s a county that holds many secrets. It’s littered with more ancient sites per square mile than virtually any other place on the planet.

Those places include the two extraordinary landscapes that I’m privileged to spend my days working in as the National Trust Archaeologist for the Stonehenge and Avebury World Heritage Site. But the deep past that suffuses Wiltshire stretches well beyond the boundaries of these two landscapes. Bronze Age burial mounds, Roman Villas, Saxon cemeteries, Norman castles, Gothic cathedrals and Iron Age hill forts jockey for space alongside the great megalithic monuments of our Neolithic ancestors.

For those of us who live in this ancient shire the past is ever present. And it affects our daily lives in ways that we’re often not even wholly aware of. It’s that ever present effect of both the deep past and the more recent past on how people think about the place they call home and how they act as a consequence that I wanted to explore in The Hidden Bones.

There is folklore and legends aplenty here but there’s sometimes something darker too. Making a life on or from the land has many pleasures but the rural life isn’t always a bucolic idyll. Life in a small village on the uplands of the Marlborough Downs or Salisbury Plain can be every bit as tough as the inner city. The challenges are just different.

As an archaeologist I’ve worked in many landscapes across many countries. I’ve seen the effects of how people have carved out their lives on the bones of the land, and their choices always leave their trace for the next generation. They bequeath us a many layered inheritance that shapes the future in ways that they couldn’t possibly have imagined. In The Hidden Bones, when archaeologists Clare Hills and David Barbrook start to strip away those layers, they reveal a past that none of them had expected and within which lies the darkest of secrets. A secret that someone will go to any lengths to protect.                                                                                           © Nicola Ford, 2018

My Review

Recently widowed, Clare is feeling rather lost at having to cope on her own after years of  happy marriage. The death of her husband was both sudden and unexpected. When her old university friend, David, contacts her about getting involved in his research project, it seems like the perfect distraction from her grief and also an opportunity to rekindle her love of archaeology.

Initially, I wasn’t sure I shared Clare and David’s excitement at the discovery of a missing artefact as they comb through the papers of deceased archaeologist, Gerald Hart, famed for his work on the Hungerbourne Barrow.   However, that all changed when the pair make a startling discovery about one of the finds in the collection. It brings to light revelations from the past that although historic definitely do not relate to the Bronze Age. I was now hooked.

History starts to repeat itself in other ways as the excavation team led by David and Clare are plagued by graffiti warning messages and accidents on site, just as occurred at the time of the original excavation. But are they actually just accidents or are they manifestations of an ancient curse or something more sinister but distinctly earthbound?  When events turn darker and more dangerous still, it becomes clear that there is someone who will stop at nothing to prevent the excavation continuing.

The author certainly kept me guessing about who the culprit was. One minute I was sure I knew who was responsible, the next minute I was convinced it was someone else. Eventually the perpetrator and their motive is revealed but not before lucky escapes for some members of the team and just the opposite for others.

It turns out archaeology has much in common with the investigation of a crime. They both involve gathering and piecing together evidence, investigating available source information, testing assumptions and coming to conclusions. A crime scene must be preserved in the same way as an archaeological excavation site. Because of the author’s background, the details about the excavation and the archaeological procedures felt completely authentic.  I also got the same sense about David’s tussles with his university head of department over the need to deliver research funding that appears to be such a feature of modern day academia.

What I particularly enjoyed about the book was the strong cast of female characters – Clare, obviously, but also Margaret and Jo. Along with David, the author has lined up an interesting team for future books in the series.   The Hidden Bones is an engrossing murder mystery with engaging characters that will appeal to lovers of crime fiction, fans of TV’s Time Team or those with an interest in history or archaeology.

I received an uncorrected proof copy courtesy of publishers, Allison and Busby, in return for an honest and unbiased review.

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In three words: Suspenseful, engrossing, mystery

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Nicola FordAbout the Author

Nicola Ford is the pen-name for archaeologist Dr Nick Snashall, National Trust Archaeologist for the Stonehenge and Avebury World Heritage Site. Through her day-job and now her writing, she’s spent more than most people thinking about the dead. Her writing brings together the worlds of archaeology and crime, unravelling the tangled threads left behind by murder to reveal the stories of those who can no longer speak for themselves.

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