Well, I am certainly never going to be able to process the words "Richard, Duke of Gloucester" or "Richard III" in the same way ever again.

There were so many things that I loved about this book. I'm actually a little mad I didn't come across Penman's writing sooner. Now that I have, I am going to be scouring stores for every single book she has ever written and will not rest until I have read them all. I do have a few criticisms and niggles with this retelling of the War of the Roses, but the overall enjoyment and richness I found in these pages far outweighed any negatives for me. The depth, attention to detail, epic scale, scope of human experiences and emotions covered in its pages, not to mention the very subject matter it dealt with, among other things, all came together to make this a delightful and deeply immersive read for me.

Some of the major highlights for me were definitely how Penman wrote characters and relationships. Edward IV's reputation for philandering has always made me view him with a bit of contempt, but I found myself growing quite fond of him over the course of this novel because of the way Penman portrayed him, and I think that is in no small part because of how she handled the brotherly bond between him and Richard. The relationship between Richard and his niece, Elizabeth of York also pleasantly surprised me, and it was a detail relating to their bond that came closest to drawing some tears from me towards the end of the book. In a much smaller word count than that dedicated to Edward IV or Elizabeth of York, Edmund, Earl of Rutland's brief point-of-view scenes endeared me to him so much that despite their brevity and culmination, he—rather unfortunately for me—became and remained my favourite character for the vast bulk of the novel.
The attention paid to Richard's relationship with Anne Neville was also unexpected and quite sweet, although at times it did feel overbearing.
With regards to Richard himself, I enjoyed his journey as a character and sympathised with him throughout. Although there were also a few sections of the novel where he felt a little distant. Before reading this novel I had never given much independent thought to Richard, usually taking what various sources told me about him at face value. But now I am very curious to pick through the sources myself and investigate the historical truth about the man and find out a bit more about how much creative liberty Penman used in her portrayal of him.
I also appreciated the way Penman handled both the brutality and the licentiousness of the era and its players, finding that content generally quite respectfully and tastefully dealt with while avoiding the extremes of gratuitous excess, awkward sanitisation or total omission.

My major issues and niggles are pretty much the same touched on by the user Craig in his review, and are more nitpicks than things which negatively impacted my enjoyment or immersion:
1. I know this book is already very long, but there were some key moments that were summarised or relayed through dialogue instead of shown. I feel like this diminished their impact a little.
2. In her quest to absolve Richard, Penman makes him, at times, a little too saintly and I felt this made his character feel less nuanced and complex. For me Anne Neville suffered a bit of the same, but more from a sense that the author was trying too hard to make her endearing rather than trying too hard to absolve her.
3. In that same quest to absolve Richard, other characters necessarily have to take on the role of instigator, murderer, schemer, etc. The way this was handled for some of the other characters (namely the Woodvilles, and Elizabeth Woodville in particular) made them come across as a little a too villainous and conniving, and so diminished their nuance and complexity as well.

Despite these little qualms, this book was a rich and lavish journey that I am so glad I found! It also happens to be Penman's debut novel, and I am beyond excited to see how her writing and characterisation evolve over the course of her other novels if this is how she starts off!
Before getting to any of Penman's other works, however, I am very much looking forward to letting Anya Seton take me back a hundred or so years before these events to read about Katherine Swynford and John of Gaunt, First Duke of Lancaster, who are basically the ones to blame for this whole War of the Roses conflict happening in the first place.

9/10 will absolutely be re-reading this door-stopper, even knowing that the character I become most attached to dies on page 42 of the edition I have and I will spend the next 830 pages feeling kind of sad about it. ( )

Loved this book, hated all the blasphemies. ( )

Read a quarter of the 900 small-print pages & gave up. Too many battles and repetive back & forth power struggles. A slog. Which is a shame because some of the characters were well done.

The Sunne in Splendour by Sharon Kay Penman was both interesting and well-written. I found it particularly interesting as it deals with a time frame I'm not very familiar with as most histories, biographies, and novels I've favoured previously have covered the Tudor period.

Obviously reading it for the first time in 2024 changes how I came to it as a reader. The de-villianisation of Richard III has been going strong for a few years now, but I can imagine this would have been a very different and interesting take when first published.

In conclusion, my short, very reductive review of this book is that I did not expect to finish it having the hots for Richard III, but here I am. ( )

Beautifully done. This sweeping historical novel about the Plantagenets and the War of the Roses provided a different look at the all to brief reign of England's Richard III and the earlier, longer reign of his older brother, Edward IV. Most of what has come down to us in history derives from the Tudors' "winner's history," but Ms. Penman has excavated contemporaneous writings from the period of the Plantagenet reign to give life to and a very different dimension to that family. ( )