Characterization reigns supreme in this layered, gripping historical fiction tale set in Britain.
Three individuals from two warring religions begin to form a family in this debut adventure.
This historical fiction series opener is set in 788 in Britain, a nation that has largely been taken over by Christian Germanic Saxon invaders from the Indigenous Druids. At the novel’s center is a man on a mission. After the Druids are forced to abandon their hidden sanctuary, Caelym, a young priest, is sent to find Annwr, the sister of the supreme priestess Feywn. Annwr was abducted 15 years prior by a Saxon war band. He discovers Annwr on the grounds of a convent, where her charge, Aleswina, the dead king’s teenage daughter, resides. The teen was banished by her cousin King Gilberth. Caelym also has his own secret crusade: to find his two young sons, Arddwn and Lliem, who were sent away with a faithful servant two years ago. When the cruel Gilberth’s men come for Aleswina because he has decided to marry her, she throws in with Annwr and Caelym in an effort to escape that fate. The trio, rife with conflict, must cross unknown territory for three purposes: to locate Arddwn and Lliem, to find a safe place for Aleswina, and finally to connect with the remaining Druids en route to their new homeland. Linden’s well-researched tale eloquently brings to life a lesser-known period of transition in Britain. The riveting story illustrates that religious strife has been woven into that country’s tapestry for centuries. And life was difficult for the underclass even back then. The author has created a strong foundation for her series with well-developed characters whom readers can embrace. Still, with all those Welsh-sounding Druid names missing some vowels, the book could have used a pronunciation guide to go with its cast of characters. But that’s a small quibble. What’s important is that readers will care about what happens to Annwr, Caelym, Aleswina, and the others in future volumes. In the interim, this installment is a sterling exploration of a tumultuous era.
Characterization reigns supreme in this layered, gripping historical fiction tale set in Britain.Pub Date: June 15, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-64742-114-4
Page Count: 336
Publisher: She Writes Press
Review Posted Online: March 22, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Fans of Stockett’s bestselling debut will love this engaging follow-up.
Stockett heads to Mississippi for another historical novel about feisty women.
This time, perhaps recalling criticisms of cultural appropriation in The Help (2009), she sticks to feisty white women, with one exception. The setting is Oxford in 1933. For two miserable years, 11-year-old Meg has lived in “the Orphan,” a county asylum for parentless girls. Chairlady Garnett—a villain so one-note she’d twirl a mustache if she had one—makes it her mission to ostracize the older girls she deems unadoptable, stigmatizing them as offspring of the “feebleminded” mothers who abandoned them. She particularly has it in for smart, sassy Meg, who refuses to believe her mother’s mysterious disappearance was deliberate. Elsewhere in Oxford, Birdie Calhoun comes to visit her sister Frances, who married a wealthy banker, to ask for money on behalf of their mother and grandmother back in Footely. Frances isn’t thrilled by this reminder of her impoverished small-town origins. But she’s trying to climb up in Oxford society by volunteering at the Orphan, the asylum’s books need to be done before the state inspector shows up in a few weeks, and Birdie is a bookkeeper. Having neatly arranged to keep Birdie in town and draw these two storylines together, Stockett goes on to spin a compulsively readable yarn with enough plot for a half-dozen novels. Birdie and Meg become friends, Meg is adopted despite Garnett’s best efforts, Meg’s mother turns up at the Orphan demanding to know where her child is—and that’s less than a quarter of the way through a long, winding narrative that keeps piling on more dramatic developments until all loose ends are neatly, if hastily, wrapped up in the final pages. Stockett might be making a point about Southern women facing facts and standing up for themselves, but mostly this is just a satisfyingly twisty tale that should make a great miniseries.
Fans of Stockett’s bestselling debut will love this engaging follow-up.Pub Date: May 5, 2026
ISBN: 9781954118812
Page Count: 656
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.
Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II.
In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring passeurs: people who aided the escape of others during the war. Cut to spring, 1940: Viann has said goodbye to husband Antoine, who's off to hold the Maginot line against invading Germans. She returns to tending her small farm, Le Jardin, in the Loire Valley, teaching at the local school and coping with daughter Sophie’s adolescent rebellion. Soon, that world is upended: The Germans march into Paris and refugees flee south, overrunning Viann’s land. Her long-estranged younger sister, Isabelle, who has been kicked out of multiple convent schools, is sent to Le Jardin by Julien, their father in Paris, a drunken, decidedly unpaternal Great War veteran. As the depredations increase in the occupied zone—food rationing, systematic looting, and the billeting of a German officer, Capt. Beck, at Le Jardin—Isabelle’s outspokenness is a liability. She joins the Resistance, volunteering for dangerous duty: shepherding downed Allied airmen across the Pyrenees to Spain. Code-named the Nightingale, Isabelle will rescue many before she's captured. Meanwhile, Viann’s journey from passive to active resistance is less dramatic but no less wrenching. Hannah vividly demonstrates how the Nazis, through starvation, intimidation and barbarity both casual and calculated, demoralized the French, engineering a community collapse that enabled the deportations and deaths of more than 70,000 Jews. Hannah’s proven storytelling skills are ideally suited to depicting such cataclysmic events, but her tendency to sentimentalize undermines the gravitas of this tale.
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-57722-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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