Gisborne

Book of Knights - Book 2 of The Gisborne Saga

Romance - Historical
373 Pages
Reviewed on 07/14/2013
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Author Biography

Prue was born in Australia and studied history and politics at the University of Tasmania. She has worked as a hotel cleaner, a cosmetician in a major department store, and a bookseller. But most properly she has been a journalist/researcher for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation where she met her husband, also a journalist and subsequently a media executive, now a communications consultant and farmer.

She now farms in Tasmania with her husband, in a cropping and grazing operation. She spent almost ten years as a state coordinator for the cancer therapy program Look Good Feel Better and time as walker for Riding for the Disabled and for the local Dogs' Home. She has two adult children, two dogs, and claims she has too much garden and too little time to write.

Prue writes historical fantasy for which A Thousand Glass Flowers (Book Three of the quartet, The Chronicles of Eirie) received a silver medallion in the 2012 Readers' Favorite Book Awards in the USA. She also writes historical fiction, for which Gisborne: Book of Pawns received an Honourable Mention in the 2012 Golden Claddagh Writing Contest (USA), a 2013 Rone Award (USA) and a 2014 Indie Book Readers' Appreciation Group's gold medallion (USA). The Huffington Post has done a story on her work and she has been interviewed a number of times by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

She has concluded The Gisborne Trilogy and has just finished writing Tobias, the first in an historical fiction trilogy called The Triptych Chronicles, due to be published in August of 2015. She has also completed two short story anthologies which are to be published in 2015. Each of her e-novels have ranked unbroken in Amazon.co.uk's Top 100 since publication and continue to rank, for which she thanks all her readers!

    Book Review

Reviewed by Jack Magnus for Readers' Favorite

Gisborne: Book of Knights is book 2 of Prue Batten's Gisborne Saga. The saga is set in the 12th century and is centered around Richard the Lionheart's crusades. Lady Ysobel de Courcey is in hiding with her son, William, while her lover and the head of Richard's intelligence operations, Sir Guy of Gisborne, has been tried by an ecclesiastical court for the murder of her husband. While he was spared the gallows, Guy has been sent into exile with a military escort. He has arranged for Ysobel and his son to be sheltered in a safe house in Genoa, an unlikely location to Ysobel's mind, as Guy's cousin and mortal enemy, Sir Robert Halsham is known to be in the vicinity. Halsham seeks to use Guy's child and Ysobel as bait to entrap Guy. Ysobel chafes at the confinement, feeling that she could be more useful in aiding Guy instead of enduring the indignity of being kept unaware of any developments and closely watched at all times.

Although this is book 2 of The Gisborne Saga, Gisborne: Book of Knights can be read on its own. Prue Batten's historical expertise makes this book an exciting glimpse into a darker time in history. Ysobel is a strong and compelling character, and Batten surrounds her with a cast of intriguing personalities who, by the end of the tale, have become real in their own right. While this is categorized as a historical romance, it should not be overlooked by fans of historical novels. There's much to discover and learn in Gisborne: Book of Knights, and most readers will not be disappointed.