The Last Kingdom

The Last Kingdom by Bernard Cornwell is the first in his 10-book Saxon Chronicles Series.

Here's what Cornwell says about the series on his website:

The Saxon Stories tell the tale of Alfred the Great and his descendants through the eyes of Uhtred, an English boy born into the aristocracy of ninth-century Northumbria, captured by the Danes and taught the Viking ways. 

A year or so ago, I watched the first episode of the TV series based on the books, and thought it well-done and interesting but too gory for my taste.

However, in my Reading Northumberland project, this series surfaced as a great way to fill in the gaps between the Romans and the Reivers, so I decided to read book 1 and see how I liked it.  The verdict is in--I loved The Last Kingdom and ordered the next book in the series, The Pale Horseman.

I thought Uhtred was an excellent hero.  Encountering him as a young boy, I got to see the world of the Britons as well as the world of the invading Danes through his eyes.  Watching him grow up, with dueling allegiances to the tribe of his father and that of his adopted father, the Danish warrior Ragnar, was a great way to learn about the customs, biases, and motivations of both camps. Ragnar was also a wonderful character, and I could see why Uhtred loved him more than he did his own father.  Uhtred is by no means a saintly character--he is full of flaws and reckless impulses but the core of the character is solid gold and I look forward to reading more about how he fares.

The book is extremely readable, despite all the place names being old English. Thank goodness for the map and the list of place names and their modern equivalents at the front of the book, both of which I referred to constantly.

This is definitely an adventure book.  Just knowing that there are 10 books in the series kept me calm while Uhtred got into one hair-raising escapade after another.  It's also pretty gory--life in general in the 9th century was brutal, short, messy, hard, and tenuous.  The battle scenes in particular were pretty graphic for me, but easier to read than to watch! Despite that, the world Cornwell portrays also has room for love, loyalty, friendship, humor, and a reverence for beauty and nature.

I'm actually thinking about giving the TV series another try. I know it will gory, but in reading the book after watching episode 1, it seems that they stuck to the book version fairly faithfully.  Of course, one episode isn't enough of a test.

Steel Bonnets

Steel Bonnets by Flashman author, George MacDonald Fraser, is a non-fiction account of the English/Scottish border troubles that plagued the area from Elizabethan to Georgian times.

I confess that I didn't finish the book as it got too ponderous for me, but the first half was quite interesting.  The border lands during this time period make the American Wild West look positively tame.  Cattle raids, family feuds, lynchings, lawlessness, pillage, revenge, spite, and sheer dastardliness were the norm.  It was absolutely crazy, and neither the English nor the Scottish governments were at all effective in curtailing the violence.

The opening of the pages of the book was absolutely priceless -- go to Amazon and "Look Inside" and read pages 1 and 2. Basically, Richard Nixon, Lyndon Johnson, and Billy Graham are archetypical Border Reivers.  My imagination has been having fun putting Richard Nixon in a steel bonnet.

And the rest of the introduction, including the bit about Hadrian's Wall and Roman Britain, were terrific and definitely germane to my current interest in Reading Northumberland, but after awhile I felt I just didn't need to read any more anecdotes about the uniformly rotten people who made life hell for those who were simply trying to stay alive and keep their families fed and safe.

As I walk the Hadrian's Wall Path this July, I will be on the lookout for Peel towers as well as traces of Roman Britain, thanks to Steel Bonnets.

From Wikipedia: Arnside Tower, a late-medieval Pele tower in Cumbria

Now, that I have a better understanding of the history of the area and the social and political dynamics, I may revisit Dorothy Dunnett's Game of Kings, which I abandoned a few weeks ago.

I'm glad I read as much of Steel Bonnets as I did, but also glad I didn't feel compelled to soldier on.

Medicus

Medicus, by Ruth Downie, was a thorough treat.  Part of my Reading Northumberland project, Medicus is the first in a mystery series featuring Roman army doctor Gaius Petrius Ruso, serving in Britannia in the mid-second century.  It takes place in Deva (aka modern Chester) shortly after Trajan's death and just before Hadrian's visit, during which he orders the building of his wall.

I did start to read this novel a few years ago and stopped reading only a quarter of the way into it when I got interested in another topic.  I'm so glad that I revisited the book as I prep for my Hadrian's Wall Path hike this July, as it was so much fun to read.

I enjoyed the central character, Ruso, who is well-meaning but plagued with problems as his good intentions get in the way of career advancement, familial obligations, and medical integrity.  I enjoyed reading about his life on the Roman frontier, his roommate and medical colleague, the charming Valens, and his adjustment to his move from his last posting in Africa to the very different town in Britain.  Downie provided a good bit about the remnants of the Druid religion, and I liked visiting the villages of the Britons.  She did a good job of showing both sides of the story--the Roman occupiers and the Britons, some who resist and some who assimilate.

The mystery was interesting too--involving slaves, prostitution, graft, murder, and love.  What more do you need for a thumping good mystery? Oh, yes, good writing and great dialogue--Downie provided both.

I definitely plan to read more in the series for fun and knowledge as I prep for my trek.

The Marches: A Borderland Journey between England and Scotland

I read The Marches: A Borderland Journey between England and Scotland by Rory Stewart as part of my Reading Northumberland project.

For the most part, I really enjoyed it.  Stewart, a UK politician who was an MP during the writing of the book, details two long-distance walks. The first is an East-to-West trek along the Hadrian's Wall Path while his 93-year-old father meets him at various points along the path for a meal or chat.  The second is a much longer trek from his cottage in the Lake District to his father's house in Scotland. The third section of the book involves his father's death and funeral.

In the course of all three sections, Stewart talks about his and his father's careers, in the UK and abroad, politically and militarily, in the case of his father.  He also delves into the history of the region, and discusses the socio-political forces at work over time, from the point of view of his own Conservative political stance.

I enjoyed the middle section the most.  I was a bit annoyed during the Hadrian's Wall section because I wanted to hear more about the Wall and the walk and the environment, but he kept on veering off into his time in Afghanistan or his father's time in Malaysia and other foreign posts or his childhood or his education.  Not that that wasn't interesting, but it wasn't why I was reading the book.

The middle section, however, was a more cohesive narrative that included the history, geography, ecology, and philosophical musings about the nature of borders and boundaries, natural and political. I learned a lot and appreciated Stewart's descriptions of the landscape and villages and farms and cities as well as the farmers, laborers, and others he encountered.

I think the single most interesting thing I learned was about the Highland Boundary Line, the geological demarcation between the Highlands and Lowlands of Scotland.

Just beyond my father's fences, and the suburbs of Crieff, lay the starkest geological division in Britain. Four hundred million years ago, two continents--once 4,500 miles apart--had collided. A little later, two further plates had struck, slipped, and sheared, driving tight ripples diagonally across Scotland. The older schists and slates of rock to the north-west rose to form the Grampian Mountains. This chain--200 million years older than anything in southern Scotland or England--was the beginning of the Highlands. At its foot to the south was the rift valley of red sandstone, once an ocean, in which our fields stood--a separate geology that stretched a hundred miles long and fifty miles south, forming a separate culture.

Here's a map that shows the location of the Highland Boundary Fault.

I found the last section heavy going, and ended up skimming the very end.

I really enjoy travel books and trekking stories, and those parts of The Marches were quite good. However, the entire book read like a politician's position paper that would vault him onto the next stage of his career.  Not to mention that politically I'm not very sympathetic to the Conservative cause as a general rule.

So, a mixed reaction.  I read the book wanting to get something different from what the author wanted to give.  Sometimes that happens.

Next up in non-fiction is The Steel Bonnets: The Story of the Anglo-Scottish Border Reivers, by George MacDonald Fraser. I'm also reading Medicus, another Roman Britain fiction, and have a few both fiction books on deck.

The Eagle of the Ninth

From Luguvallium in the west to Segedunum in the east, the Wall ran, leaping along with the jagged contours of the land; a great gash of stone-work, still raw with newness. Eighty miles of fortresses, mile-castles, watch-towers, strung on one great curtain wall, and backed by the vallum ditch and the coast-to-coast Legionary road; and huddled along its southern side, the low sprawl of wine-shops, temples, married quarters, and markets that always gathered in the wake of the Legions. A great and never-ceasing smother of noise: voices, marching feet, turning wheels, the ring of hammer on armourer's anvil, the clear calling of trumpets over all. This was the great Wall of Hadrian, shutting out the menace of the North.

This is the beginning of chapter 11 of The Eagle of the Ninth, by Rosemary Sutcliff, and part of my Northumberland reading project, in prep for my walk along Hadrian's Wall this summer, and it is precisely why I wanted to read the book in the first place.  There is a marvelous sense of place throughout the book, as the hero, Marcus Aquila, travels from Exeter (Isca Dumnoniorum) in the south to Silchester (Calleva Atrebatum), up to Chilurnium (on the Wall near Corbridge) and then on to Caledonia (the Highlands of Scotland).

According to Wikipedia:

The Eagle of the Ninth is linked by the Aquila family dolphin ring and listed here in fictional chronological order. (They were not written as a series by the author.)

• The Eagle of the Ninth
• The Silver Branch
• Frontier Wolf
• The Lantern Bearers
• Sword at Sunset
• Dawn Wind
• Sword Song
• The Shield Ring

I enjoyed The Eagle of the Ninth immensely--I found it in the YA section of my library, but I didn't let that throw me off.  I loved both the hero, Marcus, a young Roman Centurion from Etruria who comes to live with his uncle in Calleva after he is badly injured in a battle at Isca Dumnoniorum.  There he meets and saves a young Briton gladiator, Esca, makes him his slave, and then makes him his friend.

Together they go on a quest to find out what happened to the Ninth Legion, which marched into the mists of the north and never marched back. It was a first rate historical adventure story and I learned a lot about Roman Britain, the customs and religions of both the conquering Romans and the rebellious Britons, the landscape, and the smell of the air and the feel of the landscape. I will definitely read a few more in the series if not all of them, and I'm looking forward to the movie version, The Eagle, which came out in 2011.

I found myself referring repeatedly to the internet for help with Roman site names, although Sutcliff did provide a map at the beginning of the book and a list of place names at the end.  Here's one that I liked.