Anna Belfrage’s Queen of Shadows is a profoundly heart-wrenching and gripping work of historical fiction, a tale of forbidden love, a drama of duty and power struggles over a royal succession. The story is set in 14th-century Castile in an expertly crafted and skilful reimagining of real historical figures and events. Castile’s King Alfonso XI’s lawful wife is Queen Maria of Portugal. But the king is deeply in love with his lifelong mistress, Leonor de Guzman. The details of their individual lives are intertwined with internal political power struggles for control of the Castilian throne. A page-turner, the story keeps readers riveted to the very end.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading Queen of Shadows for its compelling characters and the forbidden love at its heart. I liked how the lives of King Alfonso, Leonor, and Queen Maria are interwoven. For me, Leonor, the lifelong love and mistress of King Alfonso, is the central character. Leonor knows of the hatred, enmity, and jealousy of the nobility who support the lawful wife and queen, Maria. I liked how Leonor draws on her inner courage, her fierce, independent way of thinking, and her fearless protection of her sons. For me, King Alfonso’s character sprang to life both through his love for Leonor and when he accepts the inevitable duties and obligations of a king, to make painful decisions and sacrifices to maintain peace in his kingdom, and to protect Castile. The narrative gained strength as Queen Maria’s thoughts and emotions, and her jealousy of Leonor, are interwoven into the plot. The story also brought vividly to life the political and family dramas through two key secondary characters, Alma Ponce de Leon, Leonor's personal attendant, and Rodrigo Alonso de Altamar, a personal guard in the king’s entourage. I highly recommend Anna Belfrage’s fantastic and absorbing novel for readers who enjoy historical dramas and the consequences of forbidden love.

Like all who read and write historical fiction, I love to travel through time, through books. However, in reading Anna Belfrage’s Queen of Shadows, I encountered a time and place I had never traveled to before: Castile, a historical region of Spain, in the 14th century. There, I met King Alfonso XI and his wife, Maria of Portugal, both as ruthless as any rulers of the late Middle Ages, and the king’s mistress, the fair Leonor, who is his true love, his queen of the shadows. I also met Alma, a poor relation of Leonor and one of her attendants, and Roderigo, a handsome young nobleman in the King’s service, as well as a host of other colorful characters carefully drawn by the author. Their stories intertwine to form an immersive tale of love, intrigue, revenge, war, and politics as complex as any historical novel I have read.

What I appreciated most about the book was how well Anna Belfrage blended historical fact and fiction, creating a world both vivid and treacherous in which the characters are neither all good nor all bad, but somewhere in between. My particular favorite is Alma, an Everywoman who grows from a young girl to an adult woman of good sense and sensibilities, and who acts as a kind of touchstone to the wild passions of her “betters.” I also enjoyed the humor, particularly in the sly observations of those who must follow the whims of a privileged class that has too much power and too few scruples. If you are like me and enjoy epic reads, I wholeheartedly recommend the high drama of Queen of Shadows. I really enjoyed it.