Kingmaker: Kingdom Come: (Book 4)

It’s always fun to watch the characters try to resolve their truly dangerous and difficult problems. Throughout the series, you grow to truly care about them. Given the title, I did rather expect more on Warwick, but while he moved a lot of the action, he was ultimately peripheral to the story. Excellent battle descriptions and scenes.

The Kingmaker trilogy is a roaring, fascinating look at the time of the War of Roses, in which the characters take front stage and shine through the blood and gore that makes war so horrible. The struggles of the main characters, Thomas and Katherine, seem overwhelming but time after time they manage to overcome them. The reader cheers them on, hoping for the best outcome. Not until the very last pages do we know if they will prevail. Full of fascinating historical details, the books are impossible to put down.

Totally engrossing. Although I don't usually care for reading a story written in the present tense, once I got past that, I found that I was completely drawn into the world of Thomas and Katherine. I read all four books because I just had to know what happened to them! I learned a little bit of 15th century medical hygiene practices and weaponry too. Well done, Toby Clements

Love these books because you truly come away with a sense of what it was to live in the time of the war of Roses.

After the first three excellent books this final volume of the series does not disappoint. Highly recommended! I ended up reading the first three again before I read Kingdom Come to get the full benefit of this great series. Great characterization, action and really good adherence to the historical facts. I’m truly sorry there isn’t a book 5 to come.

The few unfamiliar medieval terms and places are easy enough to Google as one reads along. This series should be an even bigger best-seller in this country than in the UK.

This wonderful book is the 4th and regrettably the final volume of the incredible "Kingmaker" series by the author Toby Clements.The book is of a superb quality and it gives the reader an enormous thrill and satisfaction when reading this splendid tale.Like it predecessors this book also contains a beautifully expounded author's note at the end of the book, while at the beginning you'll find once more the Family Tree of Edward III, with interwoven the Houses of York, Lancaster and Tudor, while there's also a wonderful detailed map with a "List of Battles", as well as a great list of the cast of Major Historical Figures.Great storytelling is once again of a top-notch quality from this author, for he really makes this book such a joy to read, because he produces believable life-like characters, whether they are real or fictional figures, and they come all vividly to life within this astounding story of heroics, treachery, fear and courage between all the people involved.Within this maelstrom of battles and slaughter between different factions, our main fictional characters, Thomas and Katherine Everingham of Marton Hall, must come to terms with these circumstances and their surroundings, and especially hope to make the right decisions for their future.We have now come into the year AD 1470 and England is still in turmoil with King Edward IV on the throne but attempts to regain the throne are to be made not only by the Lancastrian claimants under the guidance of Margaret of Anjou, wife of King Henry VI, and her son Prince Edward of Westminster, but also by the "Kingmaker", the Earl of Warwick, who is scheming with George, the Duke of Clarence, who's Edward IV's brother, by getting this same George on the throne as King of England.What will follow is that after an exile in Holland and Flanders King Edward IV will return to England to reclaim his crown, and so after assembling his armies he will fight his enemies at the Battle of Barnet first, in AD 1470, and after that the decisive battle of Tewkesbury in AD 1471 to become at that particular moment of history the undisputed King of England.Highly recommended, for this book is absolutely astonishing and in my mind it deserves to be called: "A Fantastic Fitting End"!

Please write another series in the Medieval periodI loved this one very good story

Alles gut. Eine sehr interessante Serie.

This wonderful book is the 4th and regrettably the final volume of the incredible "Kingmaker" series by the author Toby Clements.The book is of a superb quality and it gives the reader an enormous thrill and satisfaction when reading this splendid tale.Like it predecessors this book also contains a beautifully expounded author's note at the end of the book, while at the beginning you'll find once more the Family Tree of Edward III, with interwoven the Houses of York, Lancaster and Tudor, while there's also a wonderful detailed map with a "List of Battles", as well as a great list of the cast of Major Historical Figures.Great storytelling is once again of a top-notch quality from this author, for he really makes this book such a joy to read, because he produces believable life-like characters, whether they are real or fictional figures, and they come all vividly to life within this astounding story of heroics, treachery, fear and courage between all the people involved.Within this maelstrom of battles and slaughter between different factions, our main fictional characters, Thomas and Katherine Everingham of Marton Hall, must come to terms with these circumstances and their surroundings, and especially hope to make the right decisions for their future.We have now come into the year AD 1470 and England is still in turmoil with King Edward IV on the throne but attempts to regain the throne are to be made not only by the Lancastrian claimants under the guidance of Margaret of Anjou, wife of King Henry VI, and her son Prince Edward of Westminster, but also by the "Kingmaker", the Earl of Warwick, who is scheming with George, the Duke of Clarence, who's Edward IV's brother, by getting this same George on the throne as King of England.What will follow is that after an exile in Holland and Flanders King Edward IV will return to England to reclaim his crown, and so after assembling his armies he will fight his enemies at the Battle of Barnet first, in AD 1470, and after that the decisive battle of Tewkesbury in AD 1471 to become at that particular moment of history the undisputed King of England.Highly recommended, for this book is absolutely astonishing and in my mind it deserves to be called: "A Fantastic Fitting End"!

Through the characters of Thomas and Katherine, from their earliest meeting, I have been totally caught up in their world: the Wars of the Roses swirl around them, life is cheap and precarious, and the fates of ordinary people are overwhelmingly dictated by the actions of great lords, kings and would be kings. This author brings that curious medieval world to vivid life and gives us a very real and immediate landscape with the ravages of war shown unsparingly and the reader's pity fully engaged.Thomas and Katherine Everingham and their young son have survived to see Edward the Fourth established on his throne, have found some peace and are building a life with friends and adherents at Marton, where their former mentor Sir John Fakenham used to live. The turmoil, however, is kick started yet again, when the Earl of Warwick (said Kingmaker), breaks faith with his monarch, Edward, in favour of the feeble and unworldly Henry and his son, known as Edward of Westminster. Thomas, partly as a result of an inappropriate comment to a lawyer with whom he has property dealings, is pulled yet again into the mayhem as King Edward is deposed, the royal family enter sanctuary, and he has to flee abroad. For the little Everingham family, this means yet more upheaval and for Thomas more vicious battles when all he wants is peace and a life on the land at Marton. Along the way, however, the circumstances of Katherine's birth and her placement in a religious order as a child, are satisfactorily and surprisingly explained.The narrative never lets up: Toby Clements is brilliant at conveying the struggles of people to live their lives in the midst of battles and terrors over which they have no control. I wholeheartedly recommend this, the fourth and final (I think!) book in the series and look forward to more superb novels from this author.

This was the last book in the series, and it roinded things off nicely. It was packed with detail of life in the 15th century, sometimes too much for me; I ended up skimming some of the battle scenes because I didn’t really want to read about the practicalities of fighting with polleaxe v billhook in such detail. It was interesting to read what it was like to wear a helmet, and in particular the lack of vision for a soldier.I did get a bit lost sometimes in the politics, especially with the character of Wilkes - and things that are talked about harked back to earlier books in the series; I read so many books that I can’t remember all the details of a book I read 2 years ago!I did have one question left at the end though ........ we know that Thomas found out the secret of Katherine’s parentage, but did he tell Katherine herself? Presumably so, but her reaction to it would have been interesting.