[VMR]∎ [PDF] Great Maria The Hera Series Cecelia Holland 9780939149841 Books

Great Maria The Hera Series Cecelia Holland 9780939149841 Books

Download As PDF : Great Maria The Hera Series Cecelia Holland 9780939149841 Books

Great Maria The Hera Series Cecelia Holland 9780939149841 Books

I am a fairly old lady. I have read a gazillion books in my life, but this one is my favorite, My next favorite is the trilogy by Conrad Richter. But I have read Maria more than half a dozen times. I love Maria. The story is very real, the characters are wonderful and Maria is brave and silly and willful and loving. Thank you, Cecelia Holland, from the bottom of my heart.


Tags : Great Maria (The Hera Series) [Cecelia Holland] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. When Maria obeys her father's wishes in marrying an ambitious young knight, she assumes a role of grim responsibility in the feudal society of southern Italy,Cecelia Holland,Great Maria (The Hera Series),Soho Press,0939149842,1001265782,General,Middle Ages;Fiction.,Normans;Italy;Sicily;Fiction.,Sicily (Italy);History;1016-1194;Fiction.,Fiction,Fiction - Historical,Fiction General,Historical - General,History,Holland, Cecelia - Prose & Criticism,Italy,Middle Ages,Modern fiction,Normans,Sicily,Sicily (Italy)

Great Maria The Hera Series Cecelia Holland 9780939149841 Books Reviews

I've read a handful of Cecelia Holland's books, and this is my favoite so far. Holland's writing tends not to waste a lot of words on what the characters are thinking or feeling. Took me a little while to get used to her style. It's also one of her thickest books, so I think the characters had more room to develop, and for me to get to know them better. I liked Maria and her husband, Richard, even though they sometimes lacked morals. For the time period they were in, they were practical and they were survivors. They are definitely not your typical heroine or knight in shining armor. Holland doesn't romanticize the era or Maria and Richard's relationship and I found that more believable.
This book is hard for me to review because I usually find something positive to say, unfortunately that's not the case for this book. The characters have no depth and the author's style reads like a laundry list. The conversations are shallow, stilted and there is no continuity. I read to the end and some passages gave a glimmer of good story, but short lived. Maybe it's just me, because the book and author are lauded by New York Times, etc., but I found it a painful read.
This story has been my utter favorite historical novel by an American author for almost 30 years. Every time I read it, I revel in a new nuance. Holland at her very best. I enjoy nearly everything she's written, but the earlier books, The Great Maria amongst them, are unparallelled. The Earl and The Kings in Winter are two others of similar caliber. The Great Maria is the highly realistic story of the life and climb to power of a robber baron's daughter in the time of the Norman Conquest of southern Italy. Maria is an impressive heroine, a quick witted, ambitious and practical. She must make the most of life with the less-handsome but more visionary of two brothers, both landless younger Norman sons. The brother soldiers of fortune are anxious to grab power and wrestle for themselves a fiefdom in the anarchy that was Italy in the 11th century. Maria shoulders her share of the work in the family's climb in influence, while running her household, bearing and raising their many children, and as necessary, defying her autonomous husband. She is decisive, ruthless, shrewd, yet tender in her affections and appealing to the reader. She must also deal with the politics of her husband's ambitious relations, local nobles challenged by the brothers, and keeping the church on her side whilst her husband cultivates the saracens in the population. Richard, her driven husband, is also a complex character, far-seeing and capable of tender emotions, but not above meting out a judicious beating when he perceives his authority questioned by his headstrong wife. Maria never quits, never caves, and emerges at the end, his victorious partner in their joint rule.

The cover of the version I just bought seems ill-matched with Maria herself as I see her. I think her costume appears more renaissance than high dark ages, and her expression is certainly not of the resolute character that reading the book reveals. Definitely a case of Don't Judge the Book by Its Cover!
Great Maria is one of my favorite Cecelia Holland novels. Readers expecting a romance will doubtless be disappointed since the novel is more difficult--and richer and more satisfying--than the typical historical romance. This is set during the period when Norman adventurers invaded and conquered Sicily and southern Italy (late 11th and 12th centuries). The conquest is loose, so there's lots of ravaging going on among the Normans, the previous Muslim conquerors, and the earlier inhabitants--Sicilians, Italians, and so on. The Normans of this era aren't suave courtiers. They're rough-edged and violent. The nobility holes up in castles, marriages are economic and political, and women are regarded as not much more than property and brood cows. Maria grows and survives in this milieu, but she doesn't transcend the culture. She's of the place and time, not a modern female shoehorned into the past. As time passes, she sheds most of the romantic illusions of her girlhood, takes steps to protect her place, and makes a typically medieval restitution for her sins. She's a survivor. The novel doesn't mark specific political events or bring historical people on stage; Maria's world is much more circumscribed than that. Holland's style is unadorned; she writes mostly in short sentences meant, I think, to echo the world she's writing about.
I am a fairly old lady. I have read a gazillion books in my life, but this one is my favorite, My next favorite is the trilogy by Conrad Richter. But I have read Maria more than half a dozen times. I love Maria. The story is very real, the characters are wonderful and Maria is brave and silly and willful and loving. Thank you, Cecelia Holland, from the bottom of my heart.