I loved Mr Brown's first book. It is an amazing portrayal of life and war in and around the time of the Norman Invasion in 1066.
It is an old saying that the second book is harder to write than the first but this does not appear to be the case with Mr Brown. His writing style has soared in confidence in his portrayal of life after the Norman Invasion. This is a novel which takes you along at pace.You will visualise it so clearly it would be criminal not to turn it into a film for those who are not so keen on reading as the rest of us. It would be a film with the potential of Braveheart.
The book itself is deeply oppressive detailing the harshness of life under the Normans. The brutality is endemic and the drudgery of life for the Saxons is starkly highlighted. In Hereward's camp the players act out their lives in the cetainty that the Norman killing machine will eventually seek them out and destroy them as the last pocket of resistance.
The story is underlain with a forlorn but nonetheless dogged determination not to give in to the enemy. It is that indomitable spirit that makes the British what they are- the very essence of guts and courage.
Oh! And in a book full of bad guys there is one character who truly drips evil. He makes your flesh crawl. You can feel the poison ooze out of the pages and his vindictive atmosphere pervades the whole story. I kept looking round to make sure he wasn't behind me!
This naked malice is in stark contrast to a father's love for his son and his desperate race to find him and reunite his family.
I can thoroughly recommend this novel to you and I will use that hackneyed cliché - It truly is a book you won't be able to put down.
An Amazon customer from Lincolnshire