Reviewed by W. Keith McCoy, Somerset County Library System
History may favor the victors, but in the case of the Norman Conquest, we tend to remember the English, who lost at Hastings in 1066. In this novel, the first in a proposed series, and set not quite three years after the monumental battle, the victorious Normans are still loathed by the native English. Tancred a Dinant, a knight in service to a Norman Earl, is on patrol near Durham, when the locals revolt and storm the city. Durham is quickly taken, Tancred wounded, and he recovers in York. There another earl commissions him to lead his wife and daughter to safety before the rebels lay siege to that fortress. But moving the women is not all: there is also a secret message to deliver, with some treachery mixed in. And who is the woman in the convent? The author mixes history and fiction together well, the characters are engaging, and there is plenty of battlefield excitement. Verdict: Those who enjoy Bernard Cornwell’s books will also revel in the details and derring-do of Aitcheson’s view from the invader’s side.
Originally reviewed in Library Journal!
