Review of "All The King's Bastards" by G. Lawrence.

"STRONGLY RECOMMENDED" - A rewarding and memorable reading experience. ​ ​This book provides the reader of any genre a deeply rich,  rewarding and memorable experience.  This novel fully met or exceeded the editing quality of traditionally published novels. Spelling or mechanical errors were virtually undetectable to the average reader.  The novel's structure (plot, characters, flow, dialogue, etc) sweeps up the reader, exceeds genre expectations, and introduces a new dimension to the art form.

​Click here to read more on Rule One Book Reviews rating system.

TITLE: All the King's Bastards
PUBLISHER: Independently Published
AUTHOR: G. Lawrence
GENRE(S): Speculative Historical Fiction
PUBLICATION DATE: June 11, 2025​
AMAZON REVIEWS/RATINGS AT DISCOVERY: 19/4.4 Star Average
AMAZON KINDLE RANKING AT DISCOVERY: #79,105 
WHY IT GOT MY ATTENTION:
Once again, the X algorithm served me a book post from an author account I did not follow. This one appeals directly to history buffs and sets its hooks into the reader's like me fast and hard. The cover is outstanding! It sets a mood that that reflects the book's content and vibe. The pitch is solid, but the sample really pulled me in. I was hit by some great lines in just the first few paragraphs to include this gem: "She supposed this was what they meant by pale as death, for nothing in life was this shade of white, this shade of white with a touch of grey." In only a few pages I came the conclusion this is a highly promising novel. 
DATE PLACED ON CANDIDATE LIST:7 July 2025
​STATUS: Reviewed 21 January 2026

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The Review

BOTTOM LINE UP FRONT - Epic Alternate History, Exceptional Character-Driven Plot. 

As 2026 begins like 2025 ended, with a standout “Strongly Recommended” novel  from a talented UK indie author. "All the King's Bastards" is a powerhouse of alternate-history fiction, featuring compelling characters and razor-sharp dialogue.
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Set during the Tudor period in England, the story opens with a gripping hook: the unexpected death of Henry VIII. From there, the novel plunges readers into a web of Machiavellian power plays vying for the empty throne. It builds relentlessly to a dramatic close, leaving England teetering on the brink of civil war and perfectly positioned for the sequel.
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​Lawrence’s prose is top-shelf, and her characters feel fully realized and deeply human. These strengths, combined with the irresistible creative drama of “what could have been,” make this a must-read for fans of British royal dramas. Yet the novel’s appeal stretches far beyond that niche, and anyone who enjoys rich historical fiction and intense human drama will find it highly satisfying.

PLOT

What if?​

It's a timeless question, and the perfect spark for any writer to dive into the tantalizing realm of "what could have been." In "All the King's Bastards," author Gemma Lawrence masterfully blends history and fiction to explore an alternate timeline pivoting on one of the most impactful moments in British history.

First, a quick recap of what really happened: In January 1536, Henry VIII, King of England, was thrown from his horse during a jousting tournament. He suffered severe injuries and lay unconscious for hours. Fearing for his life, his then-queen, pregnant Anne Boleyn miscarried their child shortly afterward. Henry recovered, but his marriage to Anne did not. She was eventually executed, Henry moved on to a new wife, and their daughter, Elizabeth, would one day become one of England's greatest monarchs.

But what if Henry had died that day on the jousting field?

That is precisely the question Lawrence tackles in "All the King's Bastards" (the first book in the "A Succession of Chaos" series). The novel opens with a pregnant Queen Anne Boleyn standing over her husband's still-warm body, mourning the man she loved while already calculating her next steps in a desperate bid to secure power. In the chaotic days and weeks that follow Henry's death, Anne fights to establish herself as regent: a placeholder and protector for her young daughter, Elizabeth, until the girl comes of age to claim the throne as queen.

Anne leans heavily on the counsel of her late husband's trusted minister and spymaster, Thomas Cromwell, as she scrambles to build alliances and neutralize her enemies. Yet even Cromwell's loyalty casts a shadow of doubt. Tensions escalate as rival factions maneuver to place Mary, Henry's daughter by Catherine of Aragon, on the throne. Even Henry Fitzroy, Henry's bastard son and once a figure close to Anne, throws his hat into the ring to become king.

Like pieces on a chessboard, the claimants advance and retreat through layers of personal ambition, betrayal, and political intrigue—sometimes as players, sometimes as pawns—until England teeters on the edge of civil war.

THEMES

The novel’s overarching themes are power, loyalty, and love, and the extreme lengths the powerful will go to seize and hold onto them. Lawrence explores these themes through her richly drawn characters.

It was fascinating to see the loyalty that almost every side in the conflict for the throne had (or at least professed to have) toward their dead king, Henry VIII. While he was a great leader with a tremendous historical impact, he became something of a mess in his later years, leaving behind a trail of dead wives and dead political allies. His loyalty to those who served him was notoriously fickle. In Lawrence’s fictional timeline, however, Henry dies at the peak of his power and health (and with only one ex-wife), leaving a powerful, largely unspoiled legacy of loyalty to his memory among most of the characters. That kind of loyalty probably wouldn’t have survived had he died even a few years later. As a reader, you can always feel Henry VIII’s ghost looming behind many of the power moves the characters make.

​As for love, there’s a great deal of love of country and love of crown in this novel. Lawrence imbues the commoners with an unbridled passion for either Queen Anne or Queen Mary. That love, manipulated by several of the key players, leads to horrible violence before the novel is through.

CHARACTERS

This is a deeply character-driven novel. It’s the characters who make the story so compelling, with the rich historical backdrop serving merely as a wonderful bonus. Lawrence takes her characters seriously and invests tremendous care in breathing life into them from the very first moment the reader encounters them. She achieves this through a skillful balance of dialogue, narrative description, and internal monologue.The author carefully balances this literary triad in every chapter, never relying too heavily on any one element. Instead, she spreads them thoughtfully to create a well-rounded, authentic view of each character. She never force-feeds the reader information, but instead builds her characters gradually, layer by layer, from one encounter to the next.

The following excerpt from "All the King's Bastards" features George Boleyn, Anne’s brother, as he reflects on his wife, Jane. It’s an excellent example of Lawrence’s prose and the subtle, masterful way she develops her characters:

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“Oddly, at such times, he missed Jane. When he slept beside her, he never woke in the night, never had bad dreams. Sometimes when he woke, he would find himself wrapped about her, and she nestled into him as if he was protecting her and she him, as if in sleep and dreams they knew this solid truth of mutual protection, of the worth of being cherished and could find one another, true souls touching. It was as if she sheltered him from all the demons chasing him in the night. There was in him at such times an understanding that when he was with her, he was where he was supposed to be. Something about Jane felt like home. He did not want to lose that, and yet he never seemed able to treat her well.”

— All the King's Bastards: A Succession of Chaos by G. Lawrence
https://a.co/aWXPrOl

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Some of the key players, and rivals for the throne, in this novel are Mary Tudor (daughter of Henry’s first wife, Catherine of Aragon), Henry FitzRoy (Henry’s illegitimate son by one of his many mistresses), and Anne Boleyn herself. Anne, Mary, and Henry FitzRoy become the major chess pieces set in motion after the king’s death, with nearly every other character hinging their plots, fortunes, and fates around these three.

Queen Anne Boleyn is the primary protagonist: an intelligent, strong-willed, deeply flawed, and vulnerable woman caught in a time of titanic political, social, and religious upheaval. Fate hands her a once-in-a-lifetime moment where the entire future of England rests in her hands. It’s all hers—and her infant daughter Elizabeth’s—if she can hold it. Anne seeks the throne for many reasons, not the least of which is sheer personal survival. One of the most compelling aspects of her character is her fierce motherly instinct. Protecting her daughter Elizabeth becomes one of her primary motivations, and she draws profound inspiration and strength from the little girl.

Lawrence shows us Anne at a time when she still genuinely loved and trusted her husband Henry—the very man who, in real history, would eventually have her executed. It is from this place of love and loyalty that her story begins, and that starting point is what makes Anne (and every character) so intriguing.

​Anne makes mistakes. She lives in constant fear for Elizabeth’s safety. She commits to actions based on incomplete information. She relies heavily on councilors (men and women alike) she isn’t entirely sure she can trust (and some of them ultimately betray her.) The same depth and care Lawrence pours into Anne, she extends equally to the myriad other characters in this story (and there are legion of them). There are no minor, “throwaway” characters here.

While much of the plot centers on royalty, one of Lawrence’s strongest and most affecting story arcs follows a commoner: the child Magpye. Magpye is the daughter of an innkeeper, and through her family we see how these royal upheavals ripple down to the streets of London and affect ordinary people.

​I loved reading about these historical figures with little prior knowledge of who they really were, then finishing the novel and going back to do actual research to see how close the author came to plausibility. In hindsight, I have to say Lawrence did an outstanding job extrapolating each real historical figure into a believable, fully fleshed-out fictional character starting from that fateful moment in January 1536 when a king fell from his horse.

SETTING

Here and there, almost without the reader even noticing it at first, Lawrence quietly turns Tudor England into a character in its own right. She takes us on an immersive tour: from the earthy, fresh scent of a commoner’s garden in the morning mist, to the oppressive, claustrophobic feel of London’s narrow streets hemmed in by overhanging timber-framed buildings. 

This excerpt is a great example of how Lawrence brings 1536 Tudor England vividly to life:

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“He had never liked the River Thames, Chapuys thought as nervously he waited on his barge hovering off the Water Gate of the Tower. It was so grey and choppy, even on a good day when one could see the fish swimming beneath the water, it still seemed an angry river, dark of mood and ominous of intent. It was not a river that would flood often, it was true, not one to rush into the city, but still, there always seemed something resentful about it, a simmering rage kept captive just under the lapping skin of the water, as if something buried there long ago had not died but haunted the river, waiting for a chance to return.”

— All the King's Bastards: A Succession of Chaos by G. Lawrence
https://a.co/5Oq8unE

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STYLE, PACING AND LANGUAGE

The greatest challenge I faced as a reader not intimately familiar with the Tudor period, or all the historical figures from that era, was simply keeping everyone and everything straight in my head. As someone who isn’t particularly drawn to this chapter of history, it would have been easy to feel overwhelmed by the sheer number of characters, the layers of plots and plots-within-plots, and just give up, DNF the book and move on to something else. For that reason, I almost didn’t add Lawrence’s novel to my reading list.

But I picked up "All the King's Bastards" because the excellent prose grabbed me right from the start. As I kept reading, the book never disappointed. The following excerpt is a perfect example of Lawrence’s writing style, and the main reason this novel was so good:

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“People think death is one moment, and perhaps for the person who has died this is so, but for those left behind, death never ends. The dead die, and the living live with death then always in their lives. It is the space left behind when a loved one leaves, the shadow always missing at one’s side. It is the gap in heart, in mind, in the daylight and night that a person leaves behind. It is the silence when their voice might have answered. Never does it leave, never does it go.”

— All the King's Bastards: A Succession of Chaos by G. Lawrence
https://a.co/2MN3R2a

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The author helped the reader keep track of each character by clearly stating—in the chapter title—which character’s POV or story arc was primary for that chapter, along with where and when the action was taking place. This simple structural technique made it easy for me to flip back, re-read sections, and get everyone and everything straight in my head. About a quarter of the way through the book, it let me lock the entire cast into place so I could finally relax and truly enjoy the novel.

Lawrence also keeps the chapters short, which was especially helpful during the dialogue-heavy first half, when so much of the action consisted of people “talking in castles.” That phrase—“talking in castles”—pretty much defines this period of history and this genre of literature for me, and it’s usually a huge personal turn-off. It’s exactly why I tend to avoid books about the British monarchy. Let me be blunt: I’m a Neanderthal American guy with a severe allergy to Masterpiece Theatre, frilly collars, puffy shirts, “M'Lord” this and “'M'Lady” that. My eyes glaze over instantly. So it’s no small feat that Lawrence burned right through my neanderthal prejudices and kept me turning pages. I’m glad she did, because the novel’s second half picks up speed dramatically, and all that “talking in castles” in the first half pays off in spades.

On a related note, I went into this novel expecting a heavily female-oriented story written primarily for female readers. That’s not at all what Lawrence delivered. "All the King's Bastards" gives us excellently written, three-dimensional protagonists, antagonists, and supporting characters of both genders—realistic, well-balanced, free of stereotypes, and historically-appropriate. Men who enjoy history and alternate history might find this novel enjoyable. Also of note, the novel is light on romance/sex, graphic violence, and profanity. 

RECOMMENDATIONS

"All the King's Bastards" is a well-written alternate-history novel of power, love, loyalty, and betrayal, set at one of the most pivotal crossroads in British history. Excellent prose, sharp dialogue, and deeply compelling characters grab the reader’s attention from the start, while the steadily building plot and mounting tension keep it locked in place. Author G. Lawrence’s tale of rival factions battling for the throne in the chaotic aftermath of Henry VIII’s untimely death is clearly a must-read for fans of British royal historical fiction. Yet it reaches far beyond that niche—it will likely appeal to any history buff or anyone who loves intricate intrigue and richly character-driven stories.

For all these reasons, "All the King's Bastards" by G. Lawrence earns a well-deserved “Strongly Recommended” rating.