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Kingmaker: Winter Pilgrims: (Book 1) Paperback – 1 May 2015
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Toby Clements
(Author)
Toby Clements
(Author)
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Product details
- Publisher : ARROW LTD - MASS MARKET; 1st edition (1 May 2015)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 576 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0099585871
- ISBN-13 : 978-0099585879
- Dimensions : 12.9 x 3.6 x 19.8 cm
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Best Sellers Rank:
340,728 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- 32,379 in Literary Fiction (Books)
- 53,748 in Historical Fiction (Books)
- 143,587 in Religion & Spirituality (Books)
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Review
Magnificent. An historical tour de force, revealing Clements to be a novelist every bit as good as Cornwell, Gregory or Iggulden. Kingmaker is the best book I’ve read this year by some margin. ― Ben Kane
It’s amazing … there’s a real sense of time and place, and real immersion in the period, real rounded characters, with utterly plausible lives. Fantastic! People who love Conn Iggulden and Bernard Cornwell are going to love it too. ― Manda Scott
Toby Clements captures the grimness, grit and grime of 15th-century life, but with compassion and humanity, as seen through the eyes of common people ... period detail is wonderfully accurate as are the setpiece skirmishes and bloodbath at Towton. ― Daily Mail
It is Clements’s ability to excite both tender emotions and a capacity for bloodthirstiness that has allowed him to achieve what Shakespeare couldn’t manage, and spin a consistently enthralling story out of the Wars of the Roses. ― Daily Telegraph
Clements truly lets rip with the poleaxes, billhooks and glaives, sparing no detail as he recreates the blood and thunder of the battlefield ... But mere retro-bloodfest this is not - amid the butchery emerges a tender, heroic love story. ― The Sun
It’s amazing … there’s a real sense of time and place, and real immersion in the period, real rounded characters, with utterly plausible lives. Fantastic! People who love Conn Iggulden and Bernard Cornwell are going to love it too. ― Manda Scott
Toby Clements captures the grimness, grit and grime of 15th-century life, but with compassion and humanity, as seen through the eyes of common people ... period detail is wonderfully accurate as are the setpiece skirmishes and bloodbath at Towton. ― Daily Mail
It is Clements’s ability to excite both tender emotions and a capacity for bloodthirstiness that has allowed him to achieve what Shakespeare couldn’t manage, and spin a consistently enthralling story out of the Wars of the Roses. ― Daily Telegraph
Clements truly lets rip with the poleaxes, billhooks and glaives, sparing no detail as he recreates the blood and thunder of the battlefield ... But mere retro-bloodfest this is not - amid the butchery emerges a tender, heroic love story. ― The Sun
Book Description
Set during England's bloody and brutal War of the Roses, the first novel in an epic historical fiction series. If you liked Conn Iggulden's Stormbird, you will love Toby Clement's KINGMAKER novels.
About the Author
Toby Clements was inspired to write Kingmaker- Winter Pilgrims having first become obsessed by the Wars of the Roses after a school trip to Tewkesbury Abbey, on the steps of which the Lancastrian claim to the English throne was extinguished in a welter of blood in 1471.Since then he has read everything he can get his hands on and spent long weekends at re-enactment fairs. He has learned to use the longbow and how to fight with the poll axe, how to start a fire with a flint and steel and a shred of baked linen. He has even helped tan a piece of leather (a disgusting experience involving lots of urine and dog faeces). Little by little he became less interested in the dealings of the high and mighty, however colourful and amazing they might have been, and more fascinated by the common folk of the 15th Century- how they lived, loved, fought and died. How tough they were, how resourceful, resilient and clever. As much as anything this book is a hymn to them.He lives in London with his wife and three children. Winter Pilgrims is his first novel.
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4.5 out of 5 stars
4.5 out of 5
289 global ratings
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Reviewed in Australia on 17 August 2018
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Storyline well described and the historic content close to fact. Looking forward to reading the other three books in this series.
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Eudamus
5.0 out of 5 stars
Genuinely great read
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 7 December 2017Verified Purchase
Really, really enjoyed this. I thoroughly recommend it to literary-friendly historical fiction fans. The author makes the period come alive, but manages to wear his research lightly, which is no mean trick. I was surprised at the fuss about the prose being in the present tense. I thought it added poetry, and was one of the things that made it better than a lot of (more popular) historical page-turners. I found myself much more invested in Katherine than Thomas - this might be due to her more modern sensibilities. Although a number of the Katherine/Richard scenes did put me in mind of a certain Blackadder episode. It runs a bit close to overdoing the coincidence, but I think it stays on the right side of (dramatic) credibility. For a first novel of this standard, I detect some heroic editorship. The pace of the plot suggests an old hand. Anyway. One of those books that'll make you miss your train stop. Bloody good show.
11 people found this helpful
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Mig Bardsley
5.0 out of 5 stars
A fabulously good read
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 19 February 2017Verified Purchase
An extraordinarily good telling of the wars of the roses. Toby Clements drags history out of the pages, trailing mud and gore and hauls you into it along with the struggling armies and the constantly battered people who lived under the heels of kings and lords and landowners and the cataclysmic changes of their fortunes. I can't recall another book which has so completely and convincingly brought the past to life for me. The characters are strong and likable and the story of Thomas and Katherine is riveting and brilliantly wound together with the events of the time. Somehow he gives a view that is both intimate and general, detailed and broad, brutal and tender, of battles and lives at many levels in the fifteenth century. The writing is brilliant - every word works and every page gives new images and new ideas and it's all solidly worked out. (Other reviewers have objected to the use of present tense - I found that it intensified the immediacy). Every character is complete and grows and leaps off the page. And it's a roller coaster of a ride from the first shocking pages to the end. I've already bought and read the next two books in the series (they're as good) and can't wait for the fourth.
7 people found this helpful
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fran
1.0 out of 5 stars
Gruesome
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 29 January 2021Verified Purchase
I rarely write reviews for books I dislike but I felt so strongly about this one that I had to warn other readers. I bought this on the recommendation of a friend and was pleased to see an endorsement from Hilary Mantel on the cover. But the first 50 odd pages were blood, violence, cruelty and torture taken to a totally unnecessary level. I know these were violent lawless times, but there was no need to go on and on and on about it. The author could have moved his characters into the story with some references back to what they were escaping without sickening his readers at the outset.
I read a lot of historical fiction, (and some non fiction) so I ploughed on a bit further, and a story started to emerge. But I had lost interest. It was not well written, the characters were only known through their suffering and if I became drawn to one, I soon learned not to be as they would soon be dying a horrible death.
I may be being totally unfair and maybe there was a really good story, well told, which emerged later, but I don't think I want to read any book which starts like this! Although, many readers do enjoy this author it seems from other reviews, I wanted to say not everyone will! Be warned!
I read a lot of historical fiction, (and some non fiction) so I ploughed on a bit further, and a story started to emerge. But I had lost interest. It was not well written, the characters were only known through their suffering and if I became drawn to one, I soon learned not to be as they would soon be dying a horrible death.
I may be being totally unfair and maybe there was a really good story, well told, which emerged later, but I don't think I want to read any book which starts like this! Although, many readers do enjoy this author it seems from other reviews, I wanted to say not everyone will! Be warned!

Mieczyslaw Kasprzyk
5.0 out of 5 stars
Marvellous!
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 21 December 2015Verified Purchase
What a magnificent read! This was another one of those books that I just couldn't put down. It started just like any other piece of historical fiction these days but rapidly took on another life as the cold snow and mist enveloped it. Suddenly it became brutal and dangerous and then calmed down a little as we scrambled back onto safer ground.
A monk momentarily forgets himself and acts spontaneously, saving the lives of two nuns. In the aftermath he is almost killed but, perhaps through a mixture of pure chance and a rough upbringing, survives (aided in part by one of the nuns, Katherine). From then on we follow Thomas, the monk, and Katherine (who, for safety's sake takes on the guise of a boy, Kit) through the interlocking pieces of jigsaw in what becomes what must be called their adventure.
It is the beginning of the Wars of the Roses and the violence that escalates in a brutal world. Thomas becomes an archer-cum-soldier while "Kit" assists their adopted lord. Normally all this would take on an air of having to suspend some disbelief but here, in this story, the process takes on a degree of verisimilitude. Like tangled threads lives are twisted together in co-operation and hate, in blood and violent death, but also in love and affection.
Throughout, Toby Clements is able to build a world that is dirty and grubby and nasty,, inhabited by homicidal and decent people, by down-to-earth soldiers and arrogant lords. The mud oozes and the ice cracks. There are times you smell the s*** and the blood, and shiver with the cold, and none more so that at that brutal climax, the battle of Towton. We are immersed in the butchery and chaos yet also the peace of silence and fatigue, moments of active, bloody, fighting in the chaos of the melee sprinkled with instances of detachment, of merely observing. It's rare when you come across a writer who captures what one can accept was, is, the experience of battle - and when you do you never forget it.
I have one minor complaint. Throughout, Toby Clements writes in the present tense. Sometimes that feels a little too false but at other times it has the impact of maintaining a sense of drama. Loved it.
A monk momentarily forgets himself and acts spontaneously, saving the lives of two nuns. In the aftermath he is almost killed but, perhaps through a mixture of pure chance and a rough upbringing, survives (aided in part by one of the nuns, Katherine). From then on we follow Thomas, the monk, and Katherine (who, for safety's sake takes on the guise of a boy, Kit) through the interlocking pieces of jigsaw in what becomes what must be called their adventure.
It is the beginning of the Wars of the Roses and the violence that escalates in a brutal world. Thomas becomes an archer-cum-soldier while "Kit" assists their adopted lord. Normally all this would take on an air of having to suspend some disbelief but here, in this story, the process takes on a degree of verisimilitude. Like tangled threads lives are twisted together in co-operation and hate, in blood and violent death, but also in love and affection.
Throughout, Toby Clements is able to build a world that is dirty and grubby and nasty,, inhabited by homicidal and decent people, by down-to-earth soldiers and arrogant lords. The mud oozes and the ice cracks. There are times you smell the s*** and the blood, and shiver with the cold, and none more so that at that brutal climax, the battle of Towton. We are immersed in the butchery and chaos yet also the peace of silence and fatigue, moments of active, bloody, fighting in the chaos of the melee sprinkled with instances of detachment, of merely observing. It's rare when you come across a writer who captures what one can accept was, is, the experience of battle - and when you do you never forget it.
I have one minor complaint. Throughout, Toby Clements writes in the present tense. Sometimes that feels a little too false but at other times it has the impact of maintaining a sense of drama. Loved it.
6 people found this helpful
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Darius
4.0 out of 5 stars
thoroughly enjoyable
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 19 August 2014Verified Purchase
Most reviews have scored 5 stars and I must admit, I was close to giving it 5 but due to a somewhat rushed and relatively weak description of the final battle, had to settle for a score of 4. Nevertheless I found this book a very enjoyable read. The vivid description of the times is extremely well written portraying a detailed scenario of 15th Century England. The first half of the book is excellent, introduces wonderful characters playing roles in a great plot. However, towards the end it seemed the author was rushing to the end, probably because the book already had over 500 pages. And what is missing for me are the details of the battle, who is who, where on the field and how they fight. Despite this apparent failure to describe the battle in greater detail, it is still well researched and well written and I shall certainly be looking out for the next volume of the Trilogy. Well done to a new author of historical fiction, Toby Clements !
One person found this helpful
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