Top critical review
2.0 out of 5 starsNot recommended
Reviewed in the United States on October 31, 2020
Merchants of Virtue (The Huguenot Connection Book 1) by Paul C.R. Monk
Jeanne Delpech de Castanet and her family are French Protestant or Huguenots living in a Huguenot enclave, Montauban. It is 1685 and a Catholic king, James II rules England. This gives permission to Louis XIV, James' cousin, to invalidate the Edict of Nantes - which ended the religious wars of France and gave Protestants a right to freely worship in the country. As the edict is being replaced with the Edict of Fountainbleue - making Catholicism the only religion allowed in France, a set of persecutions are implemented by the king and the Church, forcing Huguenots to chose between their faith or their livelihoods.
Jeanne and her husband, Jacob, refuse to convert and are forced into numerous tortures and humiliations. The book tells us the trials and suffering that they must endure.
Narrated from a universal point of view, in British English, the book is definitively part one of a trilogy. It does not stand alone, simply because it's brought to an abrupt end. Never understood why writers would break up a perfect story in the middle of the plot. Especially when the book was so short I read it all at once.
Characters are flat and other than their beliefs, you know almost nothing about them. They are but a name on a page. It's hard to really care for them when you know so little about them.
Even though it was a very easy read, I would not recommend it or, for that matter, the series.
