Owen Lloyd, only son and heir of impoverished Welsh landowner Sir Thomas Lloyd, resented the hard times into which his family had fallen, thanks in no small part to the grasping Turberville familly—recent English newcomers in their area of the Welsh Marches. Riding out to fight on the Yorkist side of the Wars of the Roses, Owen and his father were at the Battle of Edgecote, where Owen distinguished himself in combat, despite being on the losing side. Returning to Kenfig Castle after surviving that defeat, only for Sir Thomas to be murdered by one of the Turbervilles, and then avenged by his son in a melee at Caerphilly Castle, the exiled Owen would eventually go on to fight for the Yorkist cause at Barnet and Tewkesbury, and to take service with the Duke of Gloucester (King Richard III), before eventually returning to his Welsh home in triumph...

Unsurprisingly, given the fact that I have enjoyed the twelve previous Ronald Welch novels I have read—all part of his Carey Family Chronicles, which follow the fortunes of another Welsh land-owning family through many centuries of British history—I found Sun of York quite engaging, and raced through it in two days. It is the first work of historical fiction, for children or adults, that I have read that is set during the Wars of the Roses, and was very interesting to me, on that score. In many ways, this felt like it could have been another volume in the Carey Family Chronicles, which never covered this particular episode of history. In any case, I enjoyed the story, and found Owen an appealing hero. I appreciated the thoroughly non-romantic look at the warfare of the time—the stiff but brutal combat of men in armor, the looting of bodies after battle—and I also found the depiction of a young Richard III quite fascinating. Given the poor reputation his character often has in the pages of history and literature, I thought Welch did an excellent job creating a more nuanced vision of him. As he observes in his historical afterword, "he was probably no worse than any of the other leading figures of his time."

Recommended to young readers who enjoy good historical fiction, and to anyone seeking children's fiction set during the Wars of the Roses. ( )