Debbie Taylor (1)

The Fourth Queen traces the story of an Irish girl, Helen Gloag, who rose to become the Queen of Morocco. The story oscillates between a third person account from Helen and the first person account from bedeviling fictitious dwarf Micophilus.

In Morocco, the Emperor followed the Islamic law of having four wives (thus the name of the book).

The book is roughly broken out in three parts. The first third of the book we followed Helen's abduction and her meeting Microphilus. We are introduce to Microphilus and life in the harem. Microphilus is obtuse and blunt and I can see why people do not like him. A lot of times I found his thought process fascinating until he gets hit by Cupid's Arrow and start behaving like a love sick puppy dog.

The second part follows Helen's rise to the fourth wife / queen ... and finally a mystery as someone is trying to kill Helen. The characters just did not interest me as much especially as they moved to their respective coordinates of their love triangle. Maybe more like a love tangle because I got frustratingly tangled wonderings of "Does he/she love me...love me not?"

There's enough to like the book that I don't regret reading it. But enough to dislike to be happy to be done reading it.






… (mere)

Based on some truth, The Fourth Queen by Debbie Taylor is a remarkable story about Helen Goag, a young Scottish girl who is captured by Barbary pirates when on her way to North America. Her pale skin, green eyes and red-blonde hair set her apart and she is sold into the Emperor of Morocco’s harem.

The bulk of the story is set in this claustrophobic court of women where everyone wants a chance to be with the Emperor with the hope of having children and securing a better life for themselves. Even when the Emperor favours her and raises her to be one of his Queens, her life is in constant danger and she must learn to navigate the schemes, lies and jealousy that surround her. Luckily, she is befriended by the curator of the harem, a dwarf who falls in love with the Scottish beauty.

The narrative switches between Helen and the dwarf so we get to understand the motives of each. The story is a little overlong, some of the characters felt too one-sided to be believable and there were a few details that didn’t ring absolutely true, but overall I enjoyed this exotic, evocative read and found The Fourth Queen to be a highly readable story.… (mere)

This historical novel promised to be right up my alley, but while it is an interesting book, it wasn't a page turner. It certainly succeeds in vividly describing suffocating harem life, though the portrayal is so relentlessly negative I found myself questioning it . The sources consulted by the author are all by Westerners. While women of that time and place were confined and oppressed, I found myself wondering whether their situation was uniformly so bad, or if it was the view of the few Westerners who observed it.

The plot revolves around treacherous harem politics, certainly full of tension but the tension sometimes fades in pages of dialog. There are two points of view: the kidnapped Helen's and that of the dwarf Microphilus. I'm at a loss as to why Helen's point of view is rendered in the third person, while Microphilus speaks to us in first person. He becomes the more interesting character by far, reminiscent of Tyrion Lannister from Game of Thrones with his world-weariness and his impossible love for Helen.

It would have been interesting to know if there are any Moroccan sources in translation that discuss Helen Gloag's story, and if so, how they saw her.

For comparison, I recommend [b:Sofia|2649638|Sofia|Ann Chamberlin|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1266995653s/2649638.jpg|7152681] by Ann Chamberlin, about an Italian woman, roughly contemporary with Helen Goag, who was kidnapped and rose to power in the Ottoman Sultan's harem.… (mere)