The Anne Boleyn Cypher

Reviewed By  Janet Mawdesley       December 12, 2022

 

Author  Phillipa Vincent-Connolly

Distributor:      Sapere books
ISBN:                 9781800557741
Publisher:         Sapere Books
Release Date:   October 2022  

   Website:   https://saperebooks.com/

FaceBook:    

YouTube:   

Instagram:   

X Formally Twitter:    

Time travel into Tudor England is not a new concept but The Anne Boleyn Cypher offers a different viewpoint into the life of Anne Boleyn, a young woman who became the second wife of Henry VIII, Queen of England between 1553 to 1536, gave birth to the child who would become Queen Elizabeth I, and was tried and later beheaded on trumped up charges on 19 May 1536.

Elizabeth (Beth) Wickers is a second year student studying for her BA in Early British History. Amongst her friends there is much chatter about time travel, Cardinal Wolseley and holiday gossip. At the end of her first lecture she is offered a box of books by Professor Marshall. All she needs to do is collect them from his office.

Looking through the box she finds a ring with the initials AB on it; putting it on she is about to leave the room when she notices a book The Life and Death of Anne Boleyn by Eric Ives. She decides she would like to borrow that but it will not move off the shelf. The wall does move though and she finds herself in a long, musty corridor which eventually leads her to a bedroom, which to her modern day mind reminds her of a film set or stage play. Except it is not. It is the real thing: Anne Boleyn’s bedroom and it is around the year 1526.

And so begins a time travel into Historic Fiction that makes interesting reading as Elizabeth (Beth) Vickers realises that she is caught in History and has to be very careful what she tells Anne, as Anne is still an impressionable young woman with her future in front of her. Some of the fiction is a little implausible, but then that is the art of poetic license; the facts are correct.

Slow moving in parts, the work could be tighter to help hold the narrative together, but overall the storyline is attractive. The final chapter is intriguing as it leaves the door wide open for further time travel intrigue from the Courts of Tudor England or later, as the case may be.

The Anne Boleyn Cypher is book one in the Timeless Falcon Series.