The Black Arrow - Robert Louis Stevenson

Advantages: You may gain insight into a turbulent time in English History - the War of the Roses (white and red)
Disadvantages: It is not always easy to unravel who is on which side at which time; sentences can be long and complicated.

...it, just a bit, for the poor unsuspecting reader intent on a quick action thriller to while away an hour or two at a time. Robert Lewis Stevenson, like Charles Dickens, initially wrote many of his stories for weekly consumption as a serial (money was the driving force behind such). Perhaps the modern day equivalent would be weekly episodes of television programmes ~ but the book (or the weekly magazine) has the advantage of being subject to the ...
...of the reader's own choosing ~ and not pushed at you by a producer's prime-time scheduling ~ competing with dinner, homework and family time. When serialised for "Young Folks" magazine in 17 weekly instalments in 1883, the title was "The Black Arrow: A Tale Of Tunstall Forest" but this was changed when it was edited into book form ( five or six years later) to "The Black Arrow: A Tale Of The Two Roses" ~ Robert Lewis Stevenson himself considered ... Read review