Shadow of Night

No. No. Just f-ing NO!

I couldn't finish this piece of crap. Yes, I call it a piece of crap. You liked it, fine, I didn't. That's fine also. There's enough books in the world so that not everyone need to like the same books.

I managed to read 5 first chapters. I suppose that's about 112 pages.
Deborah Harkness hasn't done much research of the time she has set her book in AND WHICH SHE CLAIMS TO LOVE. “I thought I wanted to be a Tudor-Stuart historian”, she says. 8-[
I am pretty forgiving, but there are things that just... I can't.
So - if you want to write historical fiction, remember that there is a thing called SCA. In most Western cities there's a chapter of the Society of Creative Anachronists, who REALLY are passionate about these things, and they will have studied the normal, everyday things, like what people ate for breakfast, and they know exactly what people were wearing and they have made replicas of these clothes as close to the original as possible. They are also very nice people, so if you are an author, you can contact them and ask them to help you with your research and live a day as if you were living in the time period you write about. And there are people out there who are interested in EVERY DAMN PERIOD OF TIME like this. It would have been EASY for Deborah to go find someone to help her with historical re-enactment, so that she would have actually known how much the Elizabethan dress limits you. (Not much. Might take a little time to adjust and get used to it, but in reality it doesn't limit on much. It doesn't make curtsying in any way difficult, because you don't bend at the waist (even though you could with the Elizabethan stays) when you curtsy, and it's quite easy to walk in curves and around furniture. Which she would know if she actually knew what historical clothes are made of and had worn one. )

They invent a background story:

The characters included dead French parents, avaricious noblemen who had preyed on a helpless orphan (me), and aged lechers intent on stripping me of my virtue. The tale turned epic with my spiritual trials and conversion from Catholicism to Calvinism. These led to voluntary exile on England's Protestant shores, years of abject poverty, and Matthew's fortuitous rescue and instantaneous regard.

“A working knowledge of Elizabethan currency had not been covered in my graduate education. Nor had household management, the proper order of donning undergarments, forms of address for servants, or how to make a medicine for Tom's headache. Discussions with Françoise about my wardrobe revealed my ignorance of common names for ordinary colors. “Gooseturd green” was familiar to me, but the peculiar shade of grizzled brown known as “rat hair” was not. My experiences thus far had me planning to throttle the first Tudor historian I met upon my return for gross dereliction of duty.”

sigh