Liviu's Reviews > League of Spies: Fortunes of France: Volume 4

Heard of this series (Fortunes of France) for a while - even before the English translation project started a few years back - but while I took a look at it at various times, I never progressed much in the first book; by chance this one (4th book) attracted my attention recently and then it kept my interest though overall while I greatly enjoyed it in parts, it definitely could have been superb - here I think the translation is at fault at least comparing to the famous Druon series, The accused Kings, which I read in both Romanian translation and French original and found it superb in both, while the English translation seemed almost a travesty, butchering it from an interesting series to a run of the mill adventure series that uses 5 common words only so to speak; I cannot say it for sure for League of Spies though i will try to see a French-language sample, but again the language is really childish in many instances and I kind of doubt it was so in the original French; anyway, worth reading but a better translation would help a lot

As for the book itself, it starts in 1574 just after the Huguenot massacre in Paris which our hero has barely escaped (in volume 3 I guess) and returned to his father's estate, and continues the story for a while until things get settled (the hero finally marries his lady love and moves to Paris for good) and then it jumps to 1584, when the narrator, now personal physician to King Henry III in Paris, starts acting as secret agent for the king as troubles with the Duke de Guise and his Holy League mount; as expected the story follows the well-known events of the times and ends with the Blois Estates General and the notable events there in December 1588, but in the meantime, we get to see the Queen of England, hear about the machinations of Spain and the Armada etc; lots of interesting and colorful characters, action, intrigue - this should have been an awesome book, but the language is often very puerile and as noted I strongly believe the translation is just bad