Bronze Summer: The Northland Trilogy (Northland series)
This second in Baxter’s series set in Bronze Age Europe around 1100 BCE (following Stone Spring, 2011) describes cultures on the move: traders, squabbling factions from the East, refugees from a volcanic eruption in Iceland. Most of the novel is a slowly paced, well-researched (if somewhat pedantic) description of a world perched on the edge of massive climate change and groups of people from different lands wangling for power. Although this construct affords a fabulous view of the author’s imagined Bronze Age Europe—one in which Britain is connected to the Continent—the many characters act mainly as vehicles for the message about earth science and ethno-ecology and are difficult to tell apart; the plot is disjointed; and the action, not inappropriately, is often crude (rape, mutilation, bodily functions). Intriguing and compelling story lines, such as murder schemes, separated lovers, people stranded on an erupting volcano, slave captures, pagan rites, and familial relationships, are often abandoned in favor of descriptive passages of the bleak, amorphous setting. Those who enjoyed the series debut will want to read this follow-up, but historical-fiction readers hoping for a storyteller like Jean Auel (and Baxter’s science-fiction fans looking for action and plot) are likely to be disappointed. --Jen Baker