King Stupor

This book has too many kings in it. Or maybe it's me. But I'm tired of reading about kings. Peter Ackroyd does have a way with a phrase, even phrases involving the dreaded kings: "In the summer of 1453 the king fell into a stupor" or "Five doctors had been appointed to watch over the ailing king. It was believed that the dung of doves, applied to the soles of the feet, induced healing sleep." And Ackroyd has an endearing habit of dropping a richly mysterious and allusive sentence into the middle of a paragraph with no warning and no further comment: "A man who called himself 'Queen of the Faery' preached in the towns and villages of Kent." And that's it for the Queen of the Faery. Now there's a dude I need to google.