Review: Far exceeded all my expectations!
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 08 22, 2013
I am always looking for great historical fiction that is written with such a sense of authenticity that I can feel myself in that time and place. This book does that. This book was just amazingly good. It has all the elements that make you keep turning the pages far into the night: a really unique storyline; excellent research into the background, customs, details, and people of the time; strongly defined characters; imaginative ways to build suspense; excellent writing; unexpected twists that are believable; and a tale that will tug at your heartstrings. Ceridwen; the daughter of Cerd, grows up in 9h century England during the migration period when the Danes were sacking much of the countryside, slaughtering the Anglo Saxons. It was a time of war and terrific upheaval for almost all of England. The story follows Ceridwen as she leaves the priory in Mercia where she was raised and chances upon a group of thegns escorting a young maiden and her maid on a cross-oountry journey.  SPOILER ALERT  Ceridwen strikes up a friendship with Aelfwyn, an Anglosaxon maiden being forced into a marriage of alliance with a Dane,. Ceridwen joins Aelfwyn, arriving at the Dane's stronghold in a bleak and wasted landscape. Powerless and friendless women among the war-hungry Danish lords of the land, the two women's lives are filled with fear and dread. Aelfwyn seeks to win her new husband's favor and succeeds in bringing some semblance of gentility into their new lives and in easing the burdens of the vanquished local inhabitants. Two of the Danish lord's nephews have designs on Ceridwen, who finds herself drawn to one of nephews. The discovery of a gravely wounded young man in the cellar leads to Ceridwen's risking a desperate escape to save the man's life. Then ensues a journey across England in an attempt to reach the young man's people, all the while hiding from Danish marauders. The author gives the reader a vivid sense of the terror and anxiety women endured in that era in England, as well as how voiceless they were in the matter of marriage.