Reviews tagging 'Blood'

King Alfred's Daughter: The Remarkable Story of AEthelflaed, Lady of the Mercians, the Heroine who was Written Out of History by David Stokes

1 review

bethpaws's review

adventurous challenging dark informative inspiring tense medium-paced

4.75

An interesting account of the most active years of the Lady of Mercia Æthelflæd. Whist battles naturally feature heavily there is enough character to keep the reader interested. A list of the characters at the start of the book certainly helped me keep track in the early stages of reading whilst familiarising myself with Anglo-Saxon names of these historical characters, many of which were very similar. You can tell the author is a historian and so whilst this is a novel I felt like I was also having an engaging history lesson. I did get irritated by the use of statements like 'it was a decision I would regret' but wonder if this was done to ensure the reader would remember events to ensure the story flowed (especially with the complex character names).
 Interesting timeline and historical notes at the end.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child death, Violence, Blood, War, and Injury/Injury detail