Not to be confused with Bloodline, by Conn Iggulden, which we reviewed last year. I'm sure that won't confuse the search algorithms for the site at all. This happens to also be the first book whose title is not strongly reflected by a component in the book; the closest I came up with for the name's inspiration was a vision Lindon has at almost the end of the novel. All of that, however, is getting ahead of ourselves; the relevancy of the title was far from the only thing different about this latest instalment in the Cradle series (I will link to the reviews for the previous books in the series at the bottom of the post).
Wars of the Roses Series Review
Considering that a lot of classic fantasy genre tropes come from this period and region of history, perhaps that is a bit of an oversight on my part, one that reading Iggulden's Wars of the Roses series has helped me address. In fact, reading these books, combined with some thinking I've been doing recently about plotting, has led me to some interesting reflections. So while this is still a review of the series, I also want to talk a little about those thoughts.
Bloodline Review
Perhaps the most interesting facet of the writing of Iggulden's Wars of the Roses historical fiction series is how, while the POV character switches frequently within each book, each novel seems to focus on a different character for its primary storyline, the character with whom the reader is meant to sympathize. In the first book, it was Margaret of Anjou. In the second book, it transitioned to York, particularly King Edward. With the third book, the series began to transition its focus to Earl Warwick, Richard Neville.
IGC Publishing 