A review by chrudos
The Bleeding Land by Giles Kristian

3.0

This book was somehow not very distinct. One of the author's main motivations was to cover this unexplored area of British history. Well, he did not succeed for me. The main story was quite interesting, but it could have happened in any time of early modern period, there is not much of the specific feel of the history. In many instances the story is quite confusing. We have one brother as the main narrator, and then there is the younger brother that sometimes takes over the narration and couple of times I was not quite sure who I am actually reading about (the names of horses were quite a good clue). There are essentially no other characters than the two brothers that would be very well developed. I think it might be intentional so the reader does not know with which group to side with, but it also kills some of the engagement. Other thing that I was missing was some elaborate explanation of what equipment and how they were using it. For example, the author probably uses the words "rifle" and "musket" interchangeably, but I cannot be sure. I also did not get any sense of what tactics were the parties actually using. The main engagement felt more like a great chaotic brawl (which it probably was, but it felt that there was no sense of any formations from the very beginning, which seems unlikely). In addition, the author wanted to show how the main conflict divided families etc. True enough, the River's family gets divided, but only for a very random personal reason. The book does not give sense of the reason why were some people so fervently loyal to the king and others on the side of the parliament. It looked like everyone had his private reason to choose the side, but that seems unlikely. There had to be some political/ideological reason to put the masses into motion, no? There was some mention of the suspicion of catholic conspiracy, but was that it? Seems unlikely since both sides were protestant... This is where other characters could be useful.
Overall, I might be following up with the series, but not in a near future. This book was 2.7 for me.