Coming of the Dragon / Peaceweaver

Posted on May 18, 2015 by Lia

I recently reread these two books by Rebecca Barnhouse. They’re billed as Young Adult, but I thought them an enjoyable read for adults as well. What initially attracted me to them is the fact that they’re loosely based on the Anglo-saxon Beowulf saga, though they don’t deal with those events directly.

The first book (Coming of the Dragon) takes place many years after the slaying of Grendel, when Beowulf is an aged king. It’s the story of Rune, a young man with a mysterious past, who has to discover his origins. Then of course a dragon comes into it, but I don’t want to give away the whole plot…

Peaceweaver is a companion piece, which I actually thought even better. The protagonist, Hild, is sent away to the Kingdom of the Geats as a peaceweaver when her family discovers she has the sight – a gift they’re not comfortable with. She’s a really interesting character with believable faults and insecurities and some startling talents!

Rebecca Barnhouse obviously has a thorough knowledge of early medieval times, but she also adds a dollop of magic and mystery to make things more interesting. I would dearly love to read the next novel in the series, but apparently the third book ‘Ring Giver’ was dropped by the publisher and she is now looking for a new one. Fingers crossed she finds one soon!

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Clariel

Posted on November 6, 2014 by Lia

Garth Nix’s most recent fantasy novel is set in the Old Kingdom, the same world as his earlier Abhorsen series (Sabriel, Lirael, Abhorsen), but several centuries earlier. It is a standalone novel, but I would very much recommend reading Sabriel (which I still consider the best of the series) first. The story is well written and Nix’s world full of interesting concepts. The dead do not necessarily stay dead and some people are able to cross into Death and its nine precincts and command the dead with special bells, a magic which is often abused.

In fact I would have liked to see more of his world and also of neighbouring Ancelstierre and the borderlands along the wall separating the two kingdoms. In the earlier books I especially loved the concept that when the wind blows from the Old Kingdom, Ancelstierre’s wonderful new technology, so similar to our own, fails disastrously.

Clariel, the protagonist, is descended from both the royal house and the Abhorsens, necromancers who are in charge of making sure that the dead stay dead. Through her mother she has inherited the berserker rage running in the royal family, an interesting twist for a woman character. Yet despite her noble parentage she wants to live in the forest as a ranger, a profession however not deemed suitable for a woman of her lineage. Clariel’s struggle to get her desire dominates the first part of the book.

In many ways it is the story of a young woman failed by the adults around her who do not do their duty: her parents who leave her in the dark about her inherited powers, the king who lets his kingdom go to ruin while his daughter, the heir, has run away. Finally her grandfather the Abhorsen who thinks of nothing but horses and hunting, neglecting to guard the dark powers he’s been entrusted with. In contrast Clariel herself, even though feeling somewhat detached from the people and the world around her, has a strong sense of responsibility, which keeps her from running away to the forest as she would like to do.

Then, after the inward conflict of the first part, in a pivotal scene the struggle turns outward and the pace picks up. Even though you can see it coming – and readers of the first three books will probably guess from the title – it’s a bit sad to see Clariel’s good intentions led astray. I don’t want to give anything more away here though, except to say that the ending is ambiguous, both happy and sad. Nevertheless I really enjoyed the book and the world it is set in.

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A History of Ancient Britain

Posted on October 3, 2014 by Lia
Ness of Brodgar

The Ness of Brodgar, Orkney Islands

I recently watched ‘A History of Ancient Britain’, an excellent BBC series by Neil Oliver about the settlement of Britain from its earliest time around 12’000 BC up to the bronze age. At times it focuses rather a lot on the presenter, but you get to see places and items that you would not ordinarily have access to. He travels all over the British Isles and some of the scenery and objects that he gets to handle are absolutely stunning.

The series starts on a beach in South Wales, where archaeologists found the footprints of a band of hunter-gatherers, men, women and children, that crossed the mud flats there 8000 years ago. It’s very poignant to see these usually so fleeting traces preserved when the people who made them are long gone. YouTube has a preview of this episode.

From a writer’s perspective, what also interested me were his interviews with people recreating ancient foods or fighting methods. It’s quite hands-on and he doesn’t hold back with trying out stuff himself, whether it’s grinding flour in a hand quern, smelting copper or sticking arrows in a dead pig!

There are four episodes altogether:
– age of ice
– age of ancestors
– age of cosmology
– age of bronze

And there’s also a follow-on series from the bronze age up to the Romans called ‘A History of Ancient Britain: Celtic Britain’. All in all, I enjoyed it very much and would recommend it to anybody interested in prehistory and how people used to live.

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Richard III

Posted on September 18, 2014 by Lia

Richard III (Wikipedia)Isn’t modern science an amazing thing? Over 500 years after England’s last Plantagenet king Richard III was killed at the Battle of Bosworth Field in 1485, scientists are piecing together his final moments. They can even make a guess what wounds caused his death and which ones were inflicted afterwards. The Guardian has an interesting article about it.

The skeleton found in a car park in Leicester a couple of years ago also shows that he suffered from scoliosis, a curvature of the spine. However, this does not automatically mean that he really looked like the hunchbacked villain from Shakespeare’s play, as the scoliosis was not a particularly bad one. One of his shoulders was probably slightly higher than the other, but that could have been concealed with clever tailoring. And the poor man probably suffered from back aches! Leicester University has a picture of a reconstruction of his spine.

They’ve also announced that he’ll be reburied next spring – in Leicester Cathedral, not the car park.

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Still alive!

Posted on September 14, 2014 by Lia

A friend recently recommended ‘Steal like an artist’ by Austin Kleon to me (thank you, Medea!). While the book is not very long – only 140 pages and containing lots of drawings – it gave me a much needed kick to continue with my writing and to take up blogging again. If you’re an artist of any kind or just want to inject more creativity into your life, this book is worth a read and also contains practical suggestions of how to give your work new impulses.

One point the author makes is that you should write what you would like to read yourself. That is certainly true for any story you write, but it’s also what I would like to do with this blog. It will contain some of the curious odds and ends I stumble upon while doing research or whatever else takes my fancy and I hope you’ll find some of it of interest to yourself, too.

So here’s a picture from my ‘swipe file’, my collection of anything that inspires me or that I think worth saving for later (keeping a ‘swipe file’ is another suggestion from ‘Steal like an artist’). I found this picture by chance while looking up wave patterns, which in turn lead to white caps or so called ‘white horses’ (my current story has to do with sailing ships, so I’m reading up on weather and currents). The English photographer Richard Austin captured the Sea King’s horses jumping the Cobb in Lyme Regis during the storms last winter:

(picture is from the Daily Mail website)

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