THE EDGE ON THE SWORD

One of history’s most dramatic heroines is restrained by a low-key presentation. Fifteen-year-old Æthelflæd, eldest child of Alfred the Great, spends her days learning her letters and wandering with her beloved brother. But Flæd loses these simple freedoms once her father betroths her to the ruler of Mercia, to cement an alliance against the marauding Danes. Flæd is appalled; not only is she to leave her home to marry a much older stranger, but she is also saddled with a warder who shadows her every movement. Nonetheless, Flæd and her guard slowly build a tentative friendship; he teaches her weapons and tactics, and she shares her tricks of horsemanship and woodcraft. But enemies are secretly watching, waiting for their moment to strike; and Flæd’s future will depend on how much she has learned. Tingle briefly notes the sources for the real Æthelflæd, and her first novel painstakingly recreates Anglo-Saxon life with numerous telling details, from tidbits of gnomic poetry to the construction of shoes. Yet the central characters remain maddeningly elusive; all the time spent inside Flæd’s viewpoint gives little feeling for her personality. The slow-paced plot is equally uninvolving; only in the final chapters—when Flæd has to draw from all her lessons in history, poetry, politics, and war, in order to lead her rebellious retainers safely through the bandits’ murderous assaults—do all these carefully laid nuggets of information come together in an exciting, and moving, climax. Unfortunately, by then too many readers may have given up. (Fiction. 11-16)