Teaser Tuesday – The Lady of the Rivers by Philippa Gregory

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Just do the following:

1. Grab your current read
2. Open to a random page
3. Share two “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
4. BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
5. Share the title and author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

My teaser:

“Men command the world that they know,” she says. “Everything that men know, they make their own. Everything that they learn, they claim for themselves. They are like the alchemists who look for the laws that govern the world, and hen want to own them and keep them secret. Everything they discover, they hug to themselves, they shape knowledge into their own selfish image. What is left to us women, but the realms of the unknown?”

page 19-20, The Lady of the Rivers (Cousins’ War 3) by Philippa Gregory

Synopsis:
Jacquetta, daughter of the Count of Luxembourg and kinswoman to half the royalty of Europe, was married to the great Englishman John, Duke of Bedford, uncle to Henry VI. Widowed at the age of nineteen she took the extraordinary risk of marrying a gentleman of her house-hold for love, and then carved out a life for herself as Queen Margaret of Anjou’s close friend and a Lancaster supporter – until the day that her daughter Elizabeth Woodville fell in love and married the rival king Edward IV. Of all the little-known but important women of the period, her dramatic story is the most neglected. With her links to Melusina, and to the founder of the house of Luxembourg, together with her reputation for making magic, she is the most haunting of heroines.

What I think of it so far:
I’m almost 1/3rd of the way through this one and it’s intriguing. The whole period (pre-Tudors, beginning the novel at the time of Joan of Arc’s capture) is fascinating and it’s so interesting looking at the characters who shaped the English monarchy and directly influenced the Tudor reign by their actions. Jacquetta is a wonderful character – so full of hope and promise. She’s a feisty one who is unafraid to go after what she wants. I enjoyed both the earlier novels in this trilogy and have high hopes of this third installment.