Manda Scott

Breaca wants more than anything to be a 'dreamer', one of the revered mystics who interpret true dreams and who call upon nature's powers in battle. But from her first kill at age 11 or 12, it is clear that Breaca is destined to be a warrior. The opposite is true of her younger brother Ban, who despite his desire to fight, is marked out as a dreamer by his powerful visions. Dreaming the Eagle follows both of the siblings as they prepare for the inevitable Roman invasion.

Some readers will show more find this first book in the quartet slow - after all the invasion comes only at the very end. But I found Scott's reconstruction of life in Celtic Britain fascinating. I enjoyed reading about Breaca's quest for a true dream (which reminded me a great deal of a Native American vision quest) and the time she spends on Mona. I also enjoyed reading about Ban - I liked him more than I did Breaca despite his foolhardiness, so I preferred the sections about him despite some of the hardships he faced.

One issue that I did have with Dreaming the Eagle were the number of ambiguous relationships and ambiguous dialogue. At times, the characters (particularly Breaca and Caradoc) would have a conversation that clearly had a hidden significance, and I wasn't always sure what was going on. I don't mind having to work a bit for subtext, but I don't particularly like a section of dialogue to be one big riddle. It's frustrating, and there were at least a few times where I felt like I was missing the significance of some gesture or action that was never really explained.

Despite these frustrations, I was thoroughly engrossed in the world of the Iceni and of the Romans. There were enough battle or other action scenes to keep my blood pounding. And if the climactic battle didn't go at all how I expected it would (character-wise, not history-wise), it only made me more eager to read Dreaming the Bull - I need to find out what happens to Breaca and the others!

More at A Hoyden's Look at Literature. show less

The historical heroine Boudica is one who has always fascinated me: warrior woman, leader of the legendary Eceni, fierce defender of her homeland, nemesis of the might of Rome. So it was with relish I picked up the first of a series of novels about Boudica by British author, Manda Scott. I was not disappointed.

Scott's realization of Boudica and her development as the leader of her people is a well-researched, richly detailed historical novel without the usual descent into romantic saccharine show more usually accompanying the work of many female historical fiction writers. This is a gritty portrayal, not unlike the work of Bernard Cornwell. There are, of course, artistic liberties which have been taken, but most of them done with sensitivity to the integrity of historical accuracy.

If you love realistic historical fiction I highly recommend plunging into Dreaming the Eagle, by Manda Scott. Very much look forward to reading the next in the series. show less

What a marvellous book! I bought it as a bit of a punt during a post-payday book spree, largely on the basis of a very favourable review in The Times. I have been sold the dummy by those reviews before, of course, but I am glad I heeded this one.

It moves between the present day and various points during the Second World War and the years immediately following it. It opens in the present day with the grim discovery of the corpse of an elderly woman, killed in a car in the parking lot of the show more main railway station in Orleans. Police Captain Inès Picaut is called to the scene, and immediately recognises the killing as a professional assassination, rather than a random theft-driven crime. Picaut and all her colleagues are also struck by how beautiful the victim had been.

It is not easy to identify the victim, although Picaut and her team eventually establish that she was using the name of Sophie Destaville. This doesn’t advance their investigation very far as Ms Destaville seems to have left no computer footprint, suggesting that it was merely a pseudonym, or perhaps more appropriately a nom de guerre. They do, however, find a business card sewn into the lining of the dead woman’s jacket. Picaut is additionally concerned because the killing has all the hallmarks of a terrorist act: significant enough in France in these sombre days, but more poignant still as a major conference of senior international security service personnel is currently in progress in Orleans itself. The business card leads Picaut’s team to a film company that has been making a documentary about the Maquis, the Resistance Forces that led the fight against the German occupation of France during the War.

Meanwhile, the narrative flits back to the Second World War, focusing on various French members of the Resistance, and on their close contacts among the British intelligence services and the newly created Special Operations Executive. We see them going through commando-style training in the Scottish Highlands and receiving intensive initiation onto the world of cryptology. The chapters set in the war paint a fascinating picture of the grim nature of life for the Resistance, and for the people living in the areas in which they were active. It has seemed all too easy in recent years to talk about rampant collaboration in Vichy France, but this book shows how much more complex the issue was. In many ways this was reminiscent of Simon Mawer’s The Girl Who Fell From the Sky and Sebastian’s Faulks’s Charlotte Gray, although though I think it was even better than either of them.

All the key ingredients of a great novel are here: a gripping plot, a mystery story, and a cast of immensely plausible characters, complete with an enigmatic protagonist in Picaut. As if all that were not enough, Scott writes with great elegance, too

All in all, a very serendipitous selection, and one of the best books I have read all year. show less

To me, this is historical fiction done to an extremely high standard. These detail-rich tales of resistance to imperial oppression are always timely but in these times especially so. And for me Scott has a unique talent in capturing a plausible view of what our ancestors' heathen (and I count myself proudly as a heathen as well) spirituality may have looked like as a lived experience; for that alone these books would be worth a look. In all, I'd say if you like historical fiction and are show more interested in the interplay between Rome and the peoples she did and wished to subjugate, an interplay that shows the nuances of value and meaning that run across all sides, you'd do well to read these books. I will move on to the next, when I have had some time to let this one settle . show less